Saturday, July 30, 2011

The Great Auk











Someone once said, "There will have to be another Earth and another Heaven before the Great



Auk is seen again."




I heard that anecdote from the lips of Gordon Slade as he read his Great Auk poem in the Anglican Church on Battle Harbour on the day a smithsonian research vessel returned from a urchin expedition near Nain. The name of the boat. Alca i. out of Portsmouth, NH.




I later learned that the boat rarely stays in Portsmouth but is stamped thusly for tax savings. Those smithsonian folks must be minding the budget.




I thought Alca i meant Alca I. Like number 1. And somewhere was an Alca II. But Alca is a lonely genus with only one member. The great auk is gone and I mourn his passing. My work will hopefully ensure the arctic wolf does not vanish as well.







On a lighter note an American tour group showed up (they all got an earful of my wolf quest) so an American Flag was raised. It rebelled against the wind for some political reason so when the southwesterly came in, the stars and bars pretended it was a nor'easter. Maybe it was pointing me toward my country.




Oggy Strikes Back

I've applied for "environmental refugee" status in Canada. The deciduous memories of America are falling into the duff of flat desire.
One day I'll sing you my sea shanty song called "The Queen of Labrador"
"Oh, Dana, sing me home. Oh, Dana, sing me home. Oh, Dana sing me home once more, to the land of Labrador."
For now you will have to entertain yourself with this unplanned rant I vomited forth. It looks like a good green screen photoshop effect but I forgot to zoom out after filming the icebergs and so I look big and outlined in the pristine air quality.
I am chopping wood and carrying water as I await my shrimp boat to leave for Nuuk, Greenland, the stopping off point for Ellesmere Island and arctic expeditions.
Everyone loves the wolf idea now.
It's one thing to tell a Maine Potato farmer that the wolf is imperiled but it is another to tell a world explorer on boats.
"I'll tell you how to get to Ellesmere..." he begins.




Rant VideoAs for freedom, if you think a government provides freedom then you are an asshole who couldn't spell freedom. Despite what PHS taught you, Freedom is an individual ethic, not something you choose from a political bill of rights like #5 with chicken fingers off a Kim Lai menu. Governments protect land thieves from the peasants with pitchforks.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.