Islanders using everything they can from the sea
One recipe for “seaweed pudding”:
Put a cup of dried seaweed in a pan and add a liter of whole milk.
Gently bring to boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.
Strain through a fine sieve or a muslin cloth into a bowl and cool.
Put in a refrigerator to set for a couple of hours.
The harvesting of seaweed — mostly kelp — (including increasingly from aquaculture) for food and many other uses has greatly increased in the past few years. And seaweed aquaculture is more and more promoted for environmental reasons. For one thing, it absorbs some of the excess carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by fossil-fuel burning. For another, seaweed — especially “kelp forests” — is a home for many species.
'Tangled floor'
A stand of trees
you know the kind,
a golden grove,
a farmer’s pride.
Are now but stumps
with greening sprouts
that struggle upward
to find some light.
Gone the careful line
along the lane
the cluster’s done
and so the shade.
I oftentimes came
to sense the souls
that rested there deep
below those pines.
More than trees
they seemed to me
a hiding place
for things I need.
I’ll not be dreaming
among those trees
with hands on bark
looking up.
There’s nothing left
but tangled floor
and nothing gained
but these metaphors.
“Epitaph,’’ by William Hall, a Rhode Island-Florida-Michigan-based painter and writer
Taking them in
Here’s a brand-new watercolor by William Hall. There’s show of his watercolors at the Jessie Edwards Studio, on Water Street, Block Island, R.I., through Sept. 4.
The back story of the painting here is that Howard Milikin, a great-grandfather of Mr. Hall, was a navigational pilot from Block Island. He would be ferried from Block Island to meet incoming clipper ships and then pilot them into New England ports. His license was unlimited.
Maintenance by the moon
Mr. Hall explains that this picture is about scraping the bottom of boats, in this case a Block Island Double Ender, at very low tides Seaweed and barnacles slowed work boats. So this stuff needed to be regularly scraped off. Predictable very low tides would leave parts of Old Harbor, on Block Island, above water for 6 to 8 hours a day for several days in a row in the 19th Century heyday of these boats, which were essential for the islanders' fishing and transportation needs.
Double Enders were secured to the dock to wait for the extreme low tides. When they sat on the mud the work could be done. After scraping, antifouling paint was applied. Several fishermen and their wives worked together to get the scraping and painting done fast within the window of opportunity provided by the low tides.
"Think of it as fishermen's barn-raising. Over two days several boats could fully scrapped, '' Mr. Hall says.
If you take it away, you get it for free
"Truck in the Woods'' (in Thetford, Vt.), by William Hall.