Author: Lou Carreras

Marine carving as a trade was an outgrowth of my family background and my professional interests in boat and shipbuilding arts. I have an abiding interest in all things maritime, and my blog is as much about Maritime life as it is about marine carving. Like most sailors,​ I love sea stories
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Maturity

Little Sabrina jumped up onto the keyboard of my computer this morning and performed one of her special edits on what I was writing. Tap on the keyboard, and away went what I was writing. 

With her second tap, she popped the music program on, and Dave Van Ronk started crooning out the words to Stealing – “Stealing, stealing, pretty mama don’t you tell on me. I’m stealin’ back to my sweet old used to be…” 

The music and words transported me back to the 1960s and the front room of my friends Bob and Chris’ Baltimore apartment. An impromptu jug band is around me, and we are all soulfully wailing out the song to the thump of a washtub bass, jug, and a washboard. I’m on guitar, and Bob is singing lead on this verse. Thump. I’m back fifty years and more later, still singing the words to a bemused kitten. How this kitten triggered a shift of this intensity into the past, I don’t know. One minute, I’m writing a post on growing up, and the next, I’m embarking on a journey. The rehearsal was for a performance at the old Crack of Doom coffeehouse that evening. The morning following, I was departing to return to Boston and then Portland. In Portland, I’d start the path to an infatuation with coastal Maine, serious woodcarving, and eventually college. But that night, I was still a relatively young Folkie hoping for a good string of gigs at coffeehouses, a recording contract, dates with adoring young women, and many exciting road trips I’d memorialize into song. OK, the fantasies were heavy on the adoring young women. Part of me wished that I could steal back to that time and enjoy the passion we had.

The kitten is now on my shoulder and gently touching my throat. This is probably her first exposure to music and a human singing. Like me all those years ago, she has a lot to learn.

Well, as Herman Melville said. “You know nothing till you know all, which is the reason we never know any thing.”  But Sabrina is purring in my ear that if she doesn’t get breakfast there’ll be more keyboard tapping, and who knows where that might lead.

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Money!

Remember that song from years ago by the Bare Naked Ladies – If I Had a Million Dollars? Well, I bet it started lots of people musing, “What would I do if I had a cool million?” Of course, the answer is a lot of dumb stuff because most of us have never had a lot of money and might run into issues managing it. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from articles I’ve read on lottery winners.

So doing what I do best, imagine weird shit, I started planning for a future of great wealth. Please note I mentioned planning, not plans. Plans never survive contact with reality. Planning prepares us to face what comes. So, in my planning, I begin by figuring out how to disappear. Perhaps I’ll hide in Oshgosh and pretend to be a janitor. Why? To hide from all the fifth cousins who suddenly rediscover dear cousin Louis, “Lou, I just need a couple of thou for a hot deal!”

Then I’ll become impish and require all requests for aid be submitted in handwritten triplicate, in Classical Latin ( none of that debased Church Latin, mind you!), notarized, and sent certified mail, receipt required. Of course, I won’t be home. For those who persist in seeking me out, I’ll insist that at the audience, they play the William Tell overture using axillary sound effects alone. I’ll be sitting in my rocker reading the Wall Street Journal.

Well, so much for the weird shit. Having managed a budget for an entire Federal program, albeit small, I know exactly how fast a million dollars can disappear. So, I’ve decided that a tithe system will work best: a tenth to my favorite charities – animal shelters, a tenth to immediate family members ( luckily, we are a small family), and so on. Having had friends and almost friends who were con artists, I will not be accepting proposals to multiply the money, buy rare antiquities, or invest in ancient manuscripts. Donations to my Alma Maters will be in round sums, say a hundred dollars. My wardrobe of tattered long-sleeved T-shirts, grungy dock pants, and boat shoes will be upgraded – I’ll buy some new stuff at LL Bean.

I will return to coastal Maine and become even more crusty, irritable, and irascible than I already am. Life is good.

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Celestial Navigation

I’ve always wished that I had been able to become an excellent offshore navigator. Yes, I learned some pilotage, dead reckoning, and enough general sailing techniques to be safe and competent, but no real celestial navigation. To those who barely understand port from starboard, my throwing around terms like semi-diameter of the moon, right ascending, line of position, and such might be impressive. But my tuition in that study ended when I left Coastal Maine for grad school.

 The Cap’n ensured that I was a competent, able-bodied seaman. I could hand reef and steer. One of my essential family duties was as the Cap’ns crew onboard the 34-foot ketch Psyche. But I had just begun learning celestial navigation when the final debacle, fracas, or battle royal, began with his daughter, essentially ended the marriage, and ended attendance in the Cap’ns school of seamanship.

Why was I leaving a near-perfect and idyllic existence in coastal Maine for graduate work in the dirty city? Yeah, I know; framed that way, it would seem that I was nuts. Like most things, it was more complicated than it appeared on the surface. 

Not that a life spent in a boatyard or as a lobsterman were lousy career choices, but those were the apparent choices if I stayed on the coast. I wanted to teach anthropology, and the route to being a professor lay through grad school. The family unit closed ranks against this, and the ultimatum was delivered; the Cap’n, speaking for the entire family, said, ” It’s this way or the highway.”

Well, it was the highway. Have I ever mentioned that I have problems with authority and arbitrary decisions? 

Like in old times, I was on the road with a pack, a guitar, and a cat ( the Gray Menace). Twenty-four hours later, I was in Philadelphia preparing for a vigorous first year of grad school. I continued to sail during the summers in small sloops, and my interest in maritime anthropology grew and developed.

There was just this little tag end left over. I never did learn celestial navigation, and if I could take a week-long course along the coast of Maine, it would be on a schooner learning to navigate, mess cooking in the galley, and doing my bit to hand, reef, and steer. I’d love to assume that I’d not fail and finally be successful in fulfilling this old desire.

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Ripples

 Now, as ne’er do well folksinger, road bum, and once in a while charlatan, I was well experienced in escape tactics. My favorite was to pack my pack, grab the guitar, and put my thumb out. But sooner rather than later, I ran out of places, people, or things to hide behind. Fresh off an attempt to murder me, I bottomed out in a strange place. Emotionally and mentally, I realized that what needed to change was me and not where I was physically.

And that’s how I found myself a student in a lecture hall at Boston University on a cold Monday evening in January. My last stint as a student in high school left me with a solid anti-authoritarian attitude that I have to this day. Teachers strutted about all full of self-importance, cockalorum, and cheap braggadocio. Disagree and get sent to detention or be expelled. High school days ended with me spending more time in a Washington Heights pool hall than a classroom. For some years, my classroom had been coffeehouses, roadside diners, and vast stretches of highway. Until recently,

it had been enough.

On the stage was a very slender older woman. The podium could not contain her enthusiasm as she walked about,

gesturing and talking about the ancient city, the beginning of literature and great sagas. I thought she was moonstruck and probably overdue for a refill on her meds. This was my introduction to Professor Elizabeth Barker. While I never had an extended conversation with her outside of class, she profoundly affected me and the direction I was traveling. I followed her through three semester-long courses. She introduced me to literature as diverse as the Annumaelish, Gilgamesh, Wojchek, Madame Bovary, To the Lighthouse, D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature, and James Joyce’s Dubliner’s. Somewhere along the way, about when I was reading D.H. Lawrence, some new plans for my life began to kick in. I was going to get a degree.

When Professor Barker died in 1989, she left behind thousands of us who’d had their lives altered by the journeys we had taken with her. She had been a Metropolitan College professor at BU for many years, instituted college-level courses in Massachuset prisons, was a labor organizer, and was a tenant’s rights activist.

Students of history, anthropologists, and many others tend to discount the “great man” theory of change. But some great people can have outsized effects while drawing little attention. It’s just that unlike politicians, dictators, and so-called titans of industry, they attract less press. Their influence is more subtle. They don’t produce waves; they make ripples, which subtly affect all they touch.

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Great Things

Favorite artist? Why me, of course. 

Wait before you judge. There is a reason for my rating. An early mentor, Ron Campbell, rather abruptly gave me this advice after a particularly wearying session of self-critique, “if you don’t like your work, don’t expect others to like it either.” He suggested I look at each piece, isolate what I liked about it and what needed improving, and work on retaining the good and improving the rest. We don’t forge ahead in every area at once; sometimes, it’s by bits and pieces. 

Ron insisted on giving me space in his gallery in Ottowa even though I was completely new to sculpture and a beginning carver. Two of my very early abstract pieces sold that fall, and the sales gave me a bit of a financial boost and some much-needed confidence to keep going.

So it’s essential to like your own work. You can go too far in this. Strutting around like a rampant peacock is OK if you are a peacock, but it is unattractive in an artist. Liking your work is one thing; equating yourself with Dali, Arp, DaVinci, or Rembrandt is something else.

So here is the scoop. Enjoy your work for all its positive features. Then, place yourself in perspective. Whose studio or shop would you be an apprentice or journeyman in? 

As I style myself as a ship’s carver, I can see myself as an apprentice in the shops of McIntire, Bellamy, Robb, or one of the Skillins brothers. When I visit the Mystic Seaport or Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum, I find myself standing among the works of those I consider my masters. So yes, I am my favorite, in a way. But I have a perspective on where I stand among those with much to teach me.

Or as Van Gogh said: “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” 

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Branches

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite hobby or pastime?
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Yesterday, I took the first cuts into one of the thick and wide cherry planks I purchased last month for making bowls. About four inches from one end got cut off due to the inevitable end checking—some of these bits I saved for possible combs or other dodads. I’ve learned it’s wisest not to speculate too early on what odd bits will turn into. My shop produces very little waste. Odds and ends become spoons, spatulas, small bowls, boxes, and quirky carvings. Even the most negligible waste has its role in feeding the woodstove, and the ashes fertilize the garden. There is no panacea for waste, but some interesting solutions await finding.

When he was young, my oldest used to pick up all the twisty scrap from the bandsaw and create fascinating assemblage sculptures with a hot glue gun. I’ve suggested he take a box of scrap home on his next visit and experiment. He might have an item suitable for sale and display. And I have less scrap to repurpose.

From the preceding, you might think that my favorite pastime was wood salvage, and I do take a lot of satisfaction when I’ve found the correct use for a piece of wood. But actually, My carving is the hands-down winner. Carving is my favorite hobby, pastime, and occupation rolled into one.

But there are different branches here. I love the traditional carving styles I use when carving eagles and ship portraits. But I am also in love with the opportunity to do freehand carving that results in flowing forms. That’s where the spoons and bowls come in. The conventions I use for an eagle or carving a schooner go by the board, and the only thing that matters is the grain of the wood and my interpretation of how it should be expressed. 

Not to go too far down the sinkhole of where my stylistic influences lie, but I did not start to be a nautical or marine carver. A chance meeting with Dali in New York when I was a high school student and early interest in the works of Arp set me off in a very different direction. If you ever ran across any of my very early work, you wouldn’t recognize it as related to the ship’s portraits I currently create. Only one of those very early works still survives in my hands, and I have no idea where the galleries sold the others.

So, the bowls and spoons are my way of letting out that other side of my creative spark. I like to play with shape, contour, and contrast. 

And you thought I was making functional spoons. Silly!

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Possessions!

Daily writing prompt
What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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Possessions?

Well, clothes don’t make the man. And everything that I wear can easily be replaced. Those old suits in the back of the closet? Refuse from my days working for the Gov; very forgettable.

Books? Well, OK. Now, we get a bit closer to home. But, about ninety-five percent of them can be replaced through used booksellers in a week or two of fun online shopping.

Tools? Hey, keep your grubby fingers off my tools! You wanna fight! Get the hell away from there, or I will call the cops!

But before they get here, I’m gonna mess you up really bad!

Possessions? Tools are not possessions. They are special.

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A Class Act

A lot of people are hung up on clothes. You’d look at me and immediately see that I’m not. I am in a long-sleeved T-shirt, old ratty dock pants, and white socks. Sartorial elegance I am not. If such a thing exists, I’ll never qualify on anyone’s Register of Elegance. This is OK with me; I won’t get frazzled if you look down your nose at my comfortable dishabille. 

OK, a special trip to the store was required when my oldest son married. I worried that they heard a rumor that I’d show up in one of my Hawaiian shirts, ratty shorts, and boat shoes, my everyday attire. I did not want my new daughter-in-law and son to be miserable on their wedding day.

Well, I spiked that rumor right off. I decided to do something radically different: go for that upscale hustler vibe. You know – “slip me some crimson, Jimson, I’m way out of line!”

See, I got class!

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Agree to Disagree

Daily writing prompt
What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?
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I was told when I was young that my youthful idealism would fade, be a youthful fad, and eventually leave only the occasional lurid memory. Damn! I’ve waited so long for the lurid memories to kick in, but mostly, I get a bunch of boring stuff. In the meantime, some of the polish has gone off my idealism, but there’s been no rush to become a conservative. One of my friends, who is a conservative, says it speaks to my deep-seated immaturity. Luckily, he smiles when he says this.

It’s an unusual, for these days, friendship where the arguments heat up, and we each declare the other destitute of original thought and leave the coffee shop in a huff. Then, the next week, we are at it again, with no malice concerning what came before.

Someone was once unwise enough to get in the middle…she found herself retreating rapidly as we jointly turned on her. How horrible. She tried to make peace when we were destroying the other’s positions so pleasurably. Will either of us change our minds? Who knows, but over time we do learn from each other because the nature of the disputes evolves as events shift and our positions alter.

We wish we could bequeath this to others: the ability to enjoy disagreement civilly but with passion.