On Desire

In a scalding tub, burning away the muscle ache from yesterday’s kooky backward run. I skip showers for several days running just so I can dip neck deep in steamy agua caliente.

Today I bought a minivan from my fam and pondered how to introduce the concept of future artifacts into the project. I’ve got some major elements present in the current extended trailer. What’s missing is character development including DK’s science fiction influenced premise for Around Lake Michigan which points to artifacts of future sustainable civilizations. Take a breathe!

What does an artifact of FSC look like? Tricky, that. An artifact is anything that gets us past the hospice culture and on into living. Sure there will always be uncertainty, but can’t we take the pistol out of our maw for a decade or two, just give it a rest? Yes we can! Yes we did – in the post present.

Artifacts are telegrams from the future – we solved it and here’s how. Jet cars or sail boats? Soylent green or CSAs? Artifacts can be RL processes and perhaps cybernetic extensions. When Mozilla builds an open source Facebook into Firefox – that sort of thing. If Monsanto were run by Geshe Michael.

I know, it’s Dan Kelly’s perplexing internal world. Not since Tolkien has any artist fabricated a fantasy so arcane and detailed. Forget about comprehensible, this is the future talking. Buckle your seatbelts.

We’ll clarify all soon enough. The really big waves are preceeded by a sucking sound.

44 days until the scheduled launch. In 3 weeks I’ll look back wistfully and think, “I remember back when there was plenty of time.”

The logistics of sailing and camping for three months are significant. There’s the boat itself which includes spare parts and repair supplies. For those who haven’t sailed, know that it takes lots of rope, pulleys and metal doodads.

Navigation is handled mostly on the iPhone with compass and chart applications, but I’ll carry actual compasses for backup. There’s also safety equipment required by the Coast Guard like flares and lights.

Food and shelter is handled with a wilderness camping kit – backpacking tent, sleeping bags, tiny stove, pots etc. Don’t forget the CNA or Composting Nitrogen Accumulator, aka Poopomatic TM.

On top of getting around and maintaining life, remember we’re making a movie here. That means at least one camera, cables, tripod, microphones, hard drive, laptop, batteries and solar panels for charging it all.

All this stuff has to weigh less than 250 lbs and be sealed in dry bags. There’s no cabin on Hello World.

Boats, islands, spaceships and planets are related – they have finite carrying capacity, specific conditions (gear) are required for life and long term survival requires attention and careful planning. Around Lake Michigan explores this idea, it is the project’s inherent artifact.

How do we realize sustainable civilizations? We find artifacts and figure out what they imply.

I’ve been so focused on social phenomenon that my first thought when I wake up is to get online. With only a month left before launch, it’s time to kick the habit.

I’m replacing my morning urge to compute with yoga and tai chi practice. I’ve joked about being eye candy for the camera but the truth is that Around Lake Michigan is physically demanding. I might spend hours hanging in harness if there’s big wind. I’ve got to pack and haul 70 lb drybags twice daily and push 300 lbs of sailboat on and off the beach… for three months.

My friends know I’ve been into yoga for about 20 years and studied tai chi since 2004. As a pragmatic guy, I judge the value of these disciplines by what they have enabled me to do, both physically and emotionally. I can call upon deep resources when things get intense.

Being fit and capable is as essential as packing flares and first aid. I’m confident I can get up to fighting trim within the month.

How is physicality an artifact of a future sustainable civilization? Yoga and Tai Chi are ancient practices with an expanding reach, even discounting the trite and goofy mutations. Bodies must move for optimal health, we are not designed to be sedentary. To be fit is to be alive and present. Julie had this great insight about the metaphor of planet as island, island as boat, boat as planet. With her usual directness she added – body as earth. Our body is a metaphor for earth. If we wish to be adept stewards of the earth, we must begin with our personal cosmos and portable ocean – our own body. Learning to steward and celebrate ourselves, what a concept.

8:30 am on Crystal Lake and it’s quite brisk and still. Strangely though, it feels different than the deep silence of a couple days back. This morning i don’t hear so many creatures speaking and their timing isn’t concerted, they just tweet and caw whenever.

The difference could be that two days ago was vernal equinox. Why wouldn’t the birds behave differently on this day? Tuned into the rhythms, it might be the day when they take inventory – who has survived the winter? Who is present and ready to begin our great dance again? Perhaps the silence in between the strange cadence of thier calls is a listening.

Whether or not Michigan’s last wild wolverine has died, we don’t know. Our culture is not very wild aware. The wolverine’s passing makes me wonder how animals assess their surround, the available cast of characters. It would seem likely that they might. It’s a gaian viewpoint to expect this degree of inherent organization in wild things, but then I am an earthman, what other viewpoint is there for me? Why deny my own experience?

Species interact, depend on each other even if they’re in competition. It’s a little theory on the second* day of spring, Enjoy.

* Spring equinox was March 20  at ~12:30pm EST (UTC-5), so today is the second day (< 24 hours). If we go by dates then it’s the third day.

Either by…

http://twitter.com/OnDesire

or

http://twitter.com/FutureArtifacts

Thanks for taking the time to check us out.

My name is Dan Kelly and I am working on the documentary movie. From May – August of 2010, I’ll be sailing a 16 ft catamaran all the way around Lake Michigan – solo. That’s about 1000 miles.  Along the way I’ll visit people and places related to sustainability. With a high quality mobile production kit,  I’ll record my discoveries and post them here.

I want to establish local connections before I go, that’s why I followed you. You might have great ideas about where to stop or who to visit. Perhaps you’d like to meet me yourself and talk about the future over tea or a beer.

Feel free to wander around this site and learn more. If you are intrigued with the project, email me directly wild@artisthouse.com or  follow me for updates on Twitter – http://twitter.com/OnDesire.

Thanks for your time!

Dan
Hello World
and the On Desire team

Open water on Crystal Lake, the ice is off.

Woke to the murmer of a gray lake and an empty wind in a deep silence. The kwhoo of a morning dove, caw of a crow, and the trill and warble of song birds never overlapping. Each event takes it turn, opening and closing the lovely quiet as if to make it more.
The sudden rich echo of a seagull’s cackle reminds me what’s ahead. A maybe March in Northern Michigan, maybe waking up, maybe winter is over – just maybe. Around these parts that’s enough.
Without my morning sojourn in the icy outhouse, I’d be a just another human without a clue. So thanks Dan Kelly for having the good sense to accumulate nitrogen outside and open to awakening.

Is the social phenomena getting out of hand? I trust that I’ve peaked on the Facebook learning curve with the establishment of the On Desire fan page – complete with RSS feed.

I’d like to shift gears and get back to actually making my movie. I’ve already complained to Julie about all this, she was like “Suck it up dude, outreach is essential.” Where’s my hot intern, my bushy tailed bright eyed assistant director? Where’s my staff? I’ve got an awesome team of advisors and collaborators no doubt, gratitude for that! Before I go blind from staring at arcane interfaces designed to completely fry the fatty tissues of the human brain, I’ve got to attract some administrative talent. We’re hiring!

You can catch the wave of the future... Join Trickster Pictures LLC today!

On Desire

• our collective destiny – Desire

• philosophy (coming soon)

• open process (coming soon)

• history

• guestbook

• definitions (coming soon)

• open process projects and events

• Around Lake Michigan, Search for Sustainable Civilizations

•  premise

• character development for the guide

• objectives

• 2009 expedition

• movies

• map

• inventory details

• 2010 expedition

• proposed itinerary

• map

• inventory details

• collaborators

I needed a break from social phenomena this morning so I went outside and cut down some trees. How does that jive with the project ethic?

About 20 years ago I allowed the lawn around the Artist house to grow wild. The non native grass sprouted long and tufty and then native flora started to reappear, tiny conifers and the prehistoric looking dinosaur grass. The massive poplar, a landmark of the yard, surrounded itself with new saplings and then toppled into the lake. This event coincided with the first visit to Michigan of my yet to be exwife. I ignored the implications and married her anyway – but that’s another story.

Poplar trees grow fast, they probably are filling an important niche in reforesting of open land. Around the house they are vulnerable to infections that twist thier trunks and rot them out. That’s how it was with the two monsters I knocked down today. They were over 30 feet and maybe 15 years old, loosing thier core near ground level. A big storm could snap them off and then what? Maybe my or my neighbor’s house, or even me – crushed.

I dusted off the electric chainsaw and dropped them carefully, directing the thick trunks to a safe landing. Next step will be to chop them up, clear the braches and create a staging area for Hello World.

Thaw is coming and Crystal Lake is preparing to move. From crispy white to frosty green and deep blue, the solid ice is thinning. Soon enough – great sheets of quartz splinters blown ashore by big wind and singing a shattered song, a chorus of clinks.

I ran roads today, 3 miles in 27:11 or 9+ minute miles, with a starter mile backward in 10:00. Better than the 11:00 minute miles I ran at the end of February. Progress! I’m weighing in at 184, lean on the shoulders and buttery round the abs. I’m going to give birth to a beautiful energy baby soon.

Bounce rate has dropped from 40% to 10%, whoo! Congratulations team, landing page analysis and revisions are a success.

We’re generating a trickle of new visitors by selective follows on Twitter every day. From analytics it was pretty clear that the landing page didn’t engage, almost half of new visitors saw it and left. During the meeting we discussed how the landing page could be simplified and focused.

Note to self – remember to snap screen shots before making changes to key pages!? Since I didn’t make http://ondesire.com available to search engines until recently (doh!)  Waybackmachine doesn’t have an archive, so there’s no before shot. If I’m lucky I’ll find an archival screenshot on our local drives. For now, the best I can do is show the after and describe the before, bah.  Anyway, here’s the landing page circa 10-03-12 at 11:12.

http://ondesire.com landing page 10-03-12 11:12

Header

The title was been changed from “On Desire” to “Desire”.

The subtitle was changed from “Big World Small Footprint” to “The crux of human experience, our collective destiny” – Melonie, Dan

Page

The page title was changed from “You are Here” to “Our Collective Destiny, Desire” – Melonie, Dan

The body text was simplified to explain the On Desire concept and emphasize the only active project, Around Lake Michigan – Steve, Dan

Two active movie links were added, tho the picture is not obviously a video link yet – Patrick

Sidebar

Archive was changed to BLOG – Julie

A twitter icon was added

Launch date was added – Julie

PAGES was removed. Around Lake Michigan pages were brought to the top of the list and On Desire to the bottom.

Added An Around Lake Michigan premise page which will become a 15 second “watch this first” video link. The page starts with character development and then presents the character’s premise, addressing Jonathan’s doom feedback – Melonie, Jonathan, Dan

Other

I’m fleshing out the links on the collaborators page and making a point of linking to resources like WBAI and SOMA (great music). Not only do I want to share the resources that inspire the project, these links increase the interconnectivity of ondesire to the rest of the www.

Jonathan has been questioning the veracity of the doom assertion in the ALM / artifact premise. A premise or pitch is a shorthand introduction to a project – typically delivered in less than 15 seconds (and often in an elevator). A great pitch should distill a project and summarize it rather than simplify. Here’s the current version of the ALM pitch.

We know that a sustainable civilization is coming because if it doesn’t show up, we (human beings) are doomed. Since we all expect to survive, survivable civilization(s) must emerge within the next 10 – 15 years. That means they must be already coming together, they must be in the process of emerging right now.  We can can expect to find fragments and partially assembled components everywhere. These artifacts of future survivable civilizations can be discovered and shared, growing awareness globally. That is the objective of Around Lake Michigan.

Is this premise inherently misleading and broken? Jonathan offered some interesting insights.

Jonathan – What’s the proof that we are doomed? That reminds me of mainstream media’s fear mongering and exaggeration which makes intelligent folks allergic.

The more I think about it, the more of a core issue it seems this might be, as far as making this site truly communicate with folks.

It isn’t clear who is the source of the information, when you say that there’s dark things up ahead. Where is this prophecy coming from, you (dan kelly), the scientific community, the mainstream media, etc.? If the prophecy is coming from one of these sources, then you need to explain why the audience should be looking to themselves to answer what the solutions are, rather than this source. And that isn’t usually easy.

Example, if the scientific community is saying global warming is the problem to focus on, and people respect them and this opinion of theirs, then they’ll naturally look to the scientific community to tell them exactly what they should do about it. They won’t look to themselves for the answers, because they weren’t even capable of noticing the problem until science pointed it out to them.

Another example is 9/11. From observations and common sense people could see that it was not an accident, but not who was to blame for it. Later that same day the government/media started putting up a picture of Osama Bin Laden, explained who he was supposed to be and that he was supposed to be responsible. And so it was the government/media that folks followed to war, not their own individual pieces of knowledge or independent viewpoints.

If you want to break out of this system, of people following “leaders” or “experts”, and instead trusting in and finding solutions to problems themselves, then they have to become aware of the problem within their own experiences and minds. Otherwise it is just more blind faith. You need to show people the symptoms of a problem they can become aware of within their own life experience, independently. Ask them to confirm what you are saying within the things they have already seen.

Certainly if the artifacts of the solution are already around us, there must also be the artifacts of the problem for people to confirm what is going on for themselves.

Within the context of ALM and this website, you as the stand-in character for the everyman, the joe average, could talk about your personal experiences that made you become an environmentalist. Maybe recount how you saw certain things change over your lifetime that made you aware the present course was heading in a very dark direction.

Then recount some of the artifacts of a possible future way of life, that you experienced over your lifetime, that lead you to start this search for a sustainable way of life.

This reminder about individual experience is indeed powerful and worthy. Mass disconnection from direct experience is what makes the toxic consumption juggernaut possible. On Desire is a DIY effort, it’s about taking personal responsibility for the situation. “What situation?” Jonathan asks. What exactly is our ALM guide, Dan Kelly talking about? Let’s tease out some story from this.

A character effectively developed is believable. The audience travels with the ALM guide because they can relate to him, his struggles and aspirations have been offered and accepted by the audience. They don’t need to agree with him or even like him to go along on his journey, they just have to get him. Search the posts for “guide” for more background on this.

Andrea made the point that Dan Kelly can’t be a detached observer. Who would believe that a detached observer would fix buy a 16 foot cat and sail 1000 miles searching for artifacts of a survivable future? That sounds slightly passionate if not a obviously nuts. This character is motivated by something more compelling than reports on CNN, he is acting from his gut. He may be delusional, but his direct experience has galvanized action.

Of course the audience should look to their own experience, absolutely. That’s what makes character development possible. It’s tricky to ask for that in the premise though, there’s just not enough time. All we need to do is communicate that this is Dan Kelly’s premise, and illustrate how he acquired it.

Now the pitch starts like this… There’s this guy who believes (insert premise). Well – that’s interesting, how did he come to believe that? Cue character development.

The character development will illustrate how this guy’s direct experience – a heady brew of ecstatic physicality, presence with wilderness, speculative storytelling, an affinity for science and intuitive mysticism intoxicated him with the premise.

If the character makes a robust commit to act on his direct experience, that will be an example for others to attend to and act on theirs… and we’ve made a training film.

In conclusion, deconstructing the premise is a useful exercise. The character Dan Kelly has an epic bent. He has a strong feeling that earth and her human inhabitants are facing a crucial moment. Does he conjure the threat of annihilation to spice an otherwise dreary RL existence? Is he tilting at windmills? There’s no story without conflict, right?

Frodo lives!

Sheila Stafford says that many drowned men are found with their flies open, suggesting that boats and urination can be a dangerous combo. This was one of many topics we covered during an arts luncheon today with Flora Ricca Hoffman and Melanie Steffes at Poppycocks.

We’ve had two dream team meetings, in Brooklyn (Faisal, Erica and Dan) and last Saturday in Beulah (Steve Elrick, Melonie, Jonathan, Lucas Kelly and Dan).

Inviting collaboration and contribution was the focus of Saturday’s meeting. Components of the ask package for fundraising were presented and discussed. Our collective web presence, including project blogs like http://ondesire.com and contractor blogs (http://meloniesteffes.com and http://jonathankellyarts.com) are key. We reviewed the design of the landing page for http://ondesire.com and discussed what our expectations are for it.

•

Melonie – The silhouette image of Dan on Hello World looks “girly”. It’s the first thing I think about when I see this page.

Dan – This is because the camera pack on his left side  gives an impression of wide hips which combined with the long hair  makes the image a little confusing.

Actions

Is it disturbing or discordant to visitors? Some testing is needed. It’s possible to either switch out this picture or try to ps the camera pack out. Might not be a bad idea to broaden my shoulders and add an ornate cod piece while were at it.

•

Jonathan – I’d like to see a link to the latest news, so that folks can jump to immediately to the last 5-6 posts.

Action

The simplest solution is a link to all posts. The most recent will show up first.

•

Melonie – “Desire – the crux of human experience.” That’s important, it should be a headline or bigger.

Dan – “You are here” was intended to give a sense of place, suggesting maps and geography. We can repurpose this for the maps area.

Action

Replace “You are Here” with the crux of human experience” to give it more prominence and simplify the page. Move you are here to the maps page.

•

Dan – On Desire was conceived as a container for many projects, Around Lake Michigan being one of them. Currently, ALM is the only project in there, so it needs to be more prominent.

Action

On the sidebar, move Events up to the top and all the ondesire.com background down to the bottom. Perhaps move the background out of the sidebar totally.

•

Jonathan – The archives take a lot of real estate, be good to move them farther down the sidebar so it’s less cluttered up top.

Dan – Not sure that’s possible. If we had a little WP magic we could link to a separate page where the archives could live. Look into it.  A benefit of the archives being on the sidebar is it demonstrates project longevity.

Action

Investigate whether archives become a landing page link?

•

Dan – Perhaps Dan and Hello World are the vanguard for a wave of expeditions worldwide, perhaps one objective is to inspire other expeditions. ALM could be a demonstration on how to look for artifacts of a survivable future. How could the site be an aggregator for artifacts? Searchers could report discoveries by…

writing a letter / email

leaving a phone message

sending audio or video recordings – youtube, vimeo etc.

Steve – what about incorporating song writing? Steve relates a recent effort to rewrite the lyrics of Route 66 to fit the sights along M22. Could this be worked into ALM? Would song writers and performers be inspired with images of trip geography?

Dan – I really wanted to bring my guitar with me last September, the idea of a giant song writing quilt is awesome. Lucas and Melonie are both making music too, Steve sings so maybe we already have a strong base.

What other ideas can we deploy for hooking the general public into the project?

Action

Who could organize  and manage the music project? How would it work? What’s our protocol for integrating new artifacts, a resource for contributing must be developed.

•

Melonie – Right now the project is the Dan show. We need more artifacts up ASAP.

Dan – absolutely. We have some great material.

Action

Priority – put up other interviews.

•

Dan – The premise, the pitch. We know that a sustainable civilization is coming because if it doesn’t show up, we (human beings) are doomed. Since we all expect to survive, a survivable civilization must emerge within the next 10 – 15 years. That means it must be already coming together, it must be in the process of emerging.  We can can expect to find fragments and partially assembled components everywhere, right now. These artifacts of a future survivable civilization can be discovered and shared, growing awareness globally. That is the objective of Around Lake Michigan.

Jonathan – What’s the proof that we are doomed? That reminds me of mainstream media’s fear mongering and exaggeration which makes intelligent folks are allergic.

Dan – maybe “doom” switched to “things getting really unpleasant,” (wink, nod). Kind of under-promising approach.

Jonathan – Showing change from past to present, activate personal observation.

Melonie – focus on the good stuff, spreading the solutions

Action

A 15 second premise video could be the first thing that visitors encounter.

Jonathan – we need definitions on the site, like xroll, civilizations and artifacts.

Action

Build a project dictionary or a wikitionary

Dan – How do you guys feel about the process of blogging?

Melonie – an old friend found me through my website, I was embarrassed. the first thing I thought was I hope he didn’t read my blog.

Jonathan – I am posting technical stuff because I don’t feel very creative right now. When writing about technical issues, there’s a lot of overhead involved in explaining something simple. Saying exactly what I want, a process of taking stuff away.

Melonie – What about exploring your feelings about the project?

Dan – We will continue to blog, because it’s very powerful to look into ourselves and express what we are becoming. It’s very helpful for our development as artists and for our ability to communicate clearly – to each other and to the world at large. It’s an investment in ourselves.  Melonie’s reaction is very telling, why should we be embarrassed about our own thoughts and feelings? What’s the matter with developing a public presence? Is that ego or just sharing? An open project means we share our lessons and discoveries.

Action

Steve and Lucas can be encouraged to launch showcase sites with Jonathan and Melonie’s help. Jonathan and Melonie write a 1 or 2 paragraph premise – why writing and sharing my journey makes sense for me, or if it did make sense for me, why would it?

Hello World floats above the kitchen facilitating daily communion.

A sustainable civilization is a diverse proposition that includes all our future activity and experience. An artifact of a sustainable civilization is any object, process or behavior that points to the fundamental operating principles of a sustainable civilization. These principles in turn reveal individual perspectives that are in sync, viewpoints worth adopting. By adopting these viewpoints myself, I can travel into the future.

What’s the difference between changing the actual date and experiencing a Future Resonant Life? A significant date change means gray hair and wrinkles for my nephews and nieces while a FRL lets them grow slow. Why bother tasting a happy collective destiny if I’ve got to loose my peeps? Obviously whack, that.

So here’s the FRL groove so far and Prime Directives of Around Lake Michigan. Can you say “primordial soup”?

• reuse, renovate, re-purpose, multipurpose, rebuild, maker aesthetic, DIY

• low impact, small footprint, efficient, resource sipping, frugal, improvise, make do

• in accord with the global life support system. recognize and integrate into evolved cycles, inter-connection and inter-reliance

• RL networks, community, social capital, reputation economy, whuffie

• open source, open process, building knowledge, creative commons, transparency, global archives

• science fiction – extrapolation of social and technological developments to find the future and influence it, applied imagination, exploring alternate scenarios yields better choices.

• art, supercharged communication, cognitive hacks, surprise, direct experience transfer /  translation, experience of being fully alive, mysticism, shamanism, storytelling

• other…

Writing under Hello World

Sign a petition and help Michigan’s Attorney General Mike Cox to protect Lake Michigan by closing the locks in Chicago.

http://StopAsianCarp.com

Great Lakes Restoration has posted video from a February 12, 2010 meeting on Asian carp. With luck, I’ll approaching carp entry points by the end of May. My brother in Arizona can’t stand my singing, and he’s about the same size as one of these fish. Maybe I can sing the carp away.

Today I am thinking about the indivisibility of story and audience. Which comes first? In May 2010, Hello World and I return to the Big Lake. I’d like to start with a more robust social presence than the project had in 2009. WordPress and Twitter apps on the iPhone were swell, but there hadn’t been much outreach before the launch.

Could we start this May with a robust and attentive audience of say 5000? If so, who would they be? Who should we invite? How should time be balanced between building a following and building the story?

That last question is a doozie, it scares me. Scan back through the posts from July – August 2009 and you’ll see how much preparation was going on. That’s where I am now, just two months from launch. Do I have time to build an audience? Do I want an audience if I am ill prepared for performance?  What’s the point of having an incredible performance that nobody sees? What does an auspicious balance between audience building and story building look like?

Let’s back up and look at who the audience might be.  Content attracts an audience that can relate to it. Context diversifies the audience. Both content and context flow from my story, so what’s my story? Story -> content + context -> audience. This might all seem abstract, so here’s an example.

A guy is going to sail a small catamaran around Lake Michigan. If that’s the story, then the content would be sailboats, water, beaches, maybe some interesting weather. This content appeals to folks familiar with Lake Michigan, sailors and some outdoor enthusiasts.

Add more story and the content expands… This guy believes he can fathom the future of the human race, he thinks he can figure out how we will radically reinvent our planetary presence and avoid environmental apoocalypse. Now the content includes encounters with all manner of kooky folks with clues about the future – rocking chair philosophers, garage scientists, mad prophets, sincere visionaries, hard working fanatics, angels in brown paper bags, irascible recluses and so on. The audience now includes folks who enjoy debate, new ideas, all the friends and family of the kooky folks, folks who are themselves somewhat kooky and anyone who thinks the human race is in big trouble.

Now comes the lovely magic of context. This guy who is going to sail around Lake Michigan likes science fiction. Not the watered down low octane Hollwood fluff, but the hard core, straight to the vein hard core. Science fiction from books. His shelves are sagging with ragged paperbacks from the masters – Bradbury, Wilhelm, Le Guin, Clarke, Dick, Lethem, Swanwick, Stephanson. He’s steeped deep. We explain this to the audience and suddenly we get this guy a little more. Poor dear, his brain’s been fried from too much reading! He’s projecting his imagination into the real world, he probably thinks his catamaran is the space shuttle. What will happen to this sap, will he end up drowned after being knocked off his boat by alien Asian carp? Now the content includes the guy’s history, scenes depicting his heartbreaking literary obsession – moments that make a connection to him. The audience may not agree with who he is or what he believes, but they can relate! He is every man, every woman. He becomes a placeholder for all of us. A 21st century Don Quixote on an impossible quest. If context is pulled off properly, the audience includes all, whether or not they like boats, philosophy or give a rats ass about the earth.

So I guess the question of balance didn’t get resolved here. Hmm. I’ll be back.

Two words – asian carp.

Wanted: Folks publishing with integrity and insight about the connections between environment, sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment. Comment with your recommendations.

Getting fit for my return to the water in May, just 66 days away. Not only do I need to be eye candy, but I’ve gotta muscle 300 lbs of sailboat ashore over sand or stone.

Anastasia opined that I’m loosing tone – no wonder with all this screen staring. I’ve slacked on my body worship, maybe moving 2-3 times a week, if that.

I hit Prospect Park in my Five Fingers this morning, slogging through 2.5 miles of snow and drizzle in 28 minutes. Nothing to brag about, but it’s a start.

I’m also using my WordPress iPhone app to post, gotta get back into practice with that too.

Countdown begins!

Since the Around Lake Michigan movies are presented in a resizable window outside of the blog proper, folks couldn’t comment – doh! Just created a stack of posts to fix this slight oversight… and away we go!

Watch the movies and let us know what happens to you!

On December 13, 2008 I attended an Awakening the Dreamer symposium at Boricua College with Melanie Ida Chopko, aka Melonie Amazing. On Valentines Day weekend 2010, I trained with 34 others to be a symposium facilitator.

Fuzzy pix of the Valentine Watershed facilitators and trainers. February 12 -14, 2010

The symposium is a fascinating blend of modalities designed to activate waves of sleepy and disillusioned humans and deploy them to save our collective butts. Imagine bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence on the planet. Here’s the recipe…

2-30 new participants (the audience)
1-3  facilitators / presenters
AV equipment, DVDs
the script

The script is the key ingredient. It’s authored by various manifestations of local consciousness collectively known as Earth – aka Mother Earth, Gaia and Pachamama. Because of it’s unique origins the script acts like an energy pipe, connecting the audience directly to our fabulous starship’s forgotten super computer. This is not immediately obvious to the audience (and even some of the facilitators) as the script appears to be an ordinary stack of papers in a 3 ring binder.

If this sounds nutty then you are definitely reading the wrong blog.

In a largish room combine all ingredients for about 2-5 hours. This is called the symposium. Include non gmo snacks and drinks.

The facilitators offer the script to the audience, either by reciting it verbatim, rephrasing it into their own words or reading it directly from the binder. The results are the same regardless of how the script is offered – most of the audience enjoys a restored connection to planetary consciousness, enabling the conversion of their frustration and angst into great reservoirs of survival savvy.  Powerful shifts towards a sustainable, just and fulfilling human presence, perfectly adapted to local conditions, manifests within months. A sense of community pervades.

Some members of the audience will demonstrate a strong desire for the script. A couple of days of additional exposure will make them facilitators.  As new facilitators emerge, symposiums become more numerous and the process accelerates. A note about facilitators… angels in sackcloth, misfits and mad poets all make excellent facilitators, but there’s really no ideal type. Advertising executives and soccer moms/dads, elementary students, retirees, stock brokers – basically any articulate human has the capacity to facilitate.

•••

Last night my nephew texted me about my weekend of environmental training – what was it all about? I passed him the ATD trailer link but he was still baffled. I didn’t know what to tell him, how to give the gestalt. Hence the above post, my first independent assimilation exercise. ‘Script’ is my shorthand by the way, ATD folks call it the symposium materials.

Here’s one highlight. 34 of us spent the weekend working through the material and on the last day we broke into groups to practice presenting.  Nancy, Majandra, Keith, Darelyn and myself worked with Geri. As we took turns presenting, our unique talents and gifts were suddenly activated. We stumbled over the text and gaffed a bit, but underneath it all there was resonance. We had an enhanced quality of presence, we were upgraded.

Keith and I talked it over afterwards – it was the Earth. I have been actively practicing flowing Earth energy, feeling alive, being an Earth agent – but this was a new experience. The pages and pages of symposium material are the Mother’s point of presence. It’s not mere human gabble, science this and opinion that. It’s a direct connection, something I thought only existed in wilderness. My fellow presenters and I were amplified by offering it. Earth can speak to us directly, using actual symbolic language. Earth can make it’s own memes. Damn!

The primary lesson I learned making Daughter of God or DOG is this – finishing a movie by yourself takes forever. To complete DOG and support ALM this year, I’ve assembled a team of two knob spinning freelancers and five adhoc experts. Here’s some quick introductions.

Art Department
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Dan Kelly. Me.

Jonathan Kelly is a emerging artist working primarily in the digital domain. He’s been doing 3D modeling and game development for the past 4-5 years and has been expanding into editing and motion graphics with Premiere and After Effects respectively. He also has plans to pick up some programming to be able to extend and customize his toolkit. Jonathan has contributed significantly to the apocalyptic ambience of DOG with futuristic cars and a derelict cruise ship.
http://jonathankellyarts.com

Melonie Steffes is a painter and musician. She is also an awesome mom and no slouch with a power saw. Melonie went on location for DOG in the spring of 2006 as assistant director, fabrication specialist and set stylist. Though Melonie favors real world materials, she has been computer savvy for at least a decade and is the proud owner of a zippy new OSX platform. Melonie is going to be mixing and matching traditional and digital expression to expand the visual horizons of both DOG and ALM.
http://meloniesteffes.com

Business and Outreach
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Julie Constantin is a financier and business magus. Her venture capital career boasts a bevy of brave new start-ups and she’s raised multi-millions for nonprofit organizations. She’s seriously connected, an iconoclast and very hard to kill. She too is an amazing mom. Julie will be turbo charging our projects with her expertise on management and social marketing and blowing our minds with her visions of the post future.
http://www.constantinpartners.com/

Editorial and Story Advisors
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Faisal Azam is an editor, filmmaker and writer. Faisal has plenty of corporate clients you’ve actually heard of and though he could have sold his soul to the beast a thousand times, he remains a force of integrity and goodness in the universe. He also has bitchin’ cool long hair. He and his squeeze Erica live in some god forsaken corner of Queens, but if you show up he’ll juice you some carrots. Faisal has generously offered to recut DOG to bring out the tasty bits. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s going to get even more deeply entangled in our crazy schemes. With any luck, we’ll drag Erica along too.
http://www.faisalazam.com/

Jeff Gibbs is a filmmaker and composer. His hutzpah has powered such documentary blockbusters as Bowling for Columbine and Capitalism, A Love Story. In every camp he visits, his integrity and passion causes fur to bristle and minds to open. Jeff has had a profound influence on the development and philosophy of On Desire and Around Lake Michigan. His recent incarnation as a media savvy Lorax is galvanizing forest stewardship throughout Northern Michigan. He’s also rumored to be working on his own monumental cinematic expose of the human condition.

Steve Elrick is a painter, theatrical director and performer. He’s directed countless plays during his multi-decade career as the President of the Benzie County Players. Affable and gregarious, Steve is universally loved by the local arts community and anyone with half a brain would agree that he is the region’s premier arts advocate and ambassador. His acutely inquisitive nature and noble carriage merely hint at the full extent of his stellar character, a character only mildly tarnished by his crazed obsession with punning.

Andrea Maio is a filmmaker with an affinity for the experimental. She is a recent transplant to Benzie County, squatting her family’s cabin in Elberta when she’s not negotiating big deals in LA. Currently she’s pitching a food series centered around the Great Lakes region, featuring intimate portraits of cuisine artisans like the vintners of the Leelanau Pennisula. Andrea is also a gifted teacher, giving her a storytelling turbo charge. Her insightful guidance continues to inform the development of Around Lake Michigan.

But wait… Faisal is in New York, Julie’s in California, Jonathan and Melonie are in Michigan… Short of scorching the upper atmosphere with combusted kerosene, how can they effectively collaborate? Geographic and atmospheric impact are minimized by the Trickster Pictures Collaboratory.

Last year my documentary about sailing around the Hawaiian Islands morphed into a documentary about sailing around Lake Michigan. In September of 2009 I soloed 300 miles on the 16 foor catamaran Hello World, searching for sustainable civilizations.  The plan for 2010 is to sail the entire perimeter of Lake Michigan, over 1000 miles!

The name of the documentary is (appropriately) Around Lake Michigan, Search for Sustainable Civilizations. Here’s the pitch.

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If we can’t figure out how to live in accord with the global life support system, human beings are doomed. Becoming sustainable is bigger than recycling or buying low flush toilets, it’s a reimagining of our presence on the planet.

As the operations of governments and corporations are often at odds with human survival, we can’t rely on their guidance. The adventure of survival belongs to each of us.

The fragments of a sustainable civilization already exist, we have but to gather and assemble them. All over the world folks are figuring out what it looks like, inventing and rehearsing the survivable future.

In the spring of 2010 Dan Kelly resumes his expedition aboard the 16 foot catamaran Hello World, sailing Around Lake Michigan to Search for Sustainable Civilizations. Dan picked the big lake because it’s close to home, but it doesn’t matter where we start. The answers are all around us – wherever we are.

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Visit the Around Lake Michigan blog at http://ondesire.com and toss in your two cents. We’re looking for ideas – people to interview and places to check out along the shores of Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois.  Share your clues and rumors about sustainable civilizations. Offer feedback on the video vignettes,  comment on the posts or create your own posts about relevant issues. Blogging is fun!

Lots of visitors and activity at http://ondesire will translate into contributions of equipment, expertise and funding for Around Lake Michigan this spring.

Folks always wonder what they can do beyond insulating their homes and installing compact florescent light bulbs. Flooding On Desire with your awareness sprouts the seeds of our native weeds.

Choose one…

I can toss my two cents but I’ve never visited On Desire before. Register at http://ondesire.com

I’ve already registered and ready to contribute, let’s go! Log in at http://ondesire.com

I only want to visit On Desire for now. Visit http://ondesire.com

There was another way of doing things once, a way that has become marginalized and almost forgotten but perhaps not quite totally annihilated. A way that isn’t self destructive.

We all know the legend… the native people of several continents knew the way, lived it. Then the bad old European colonizers showed up with their plagues, organized ignorance and naked greed. The native people were nearly rubbed out and their ways was lost, almost.

If the people who practiced the old way couldn’t prevail in combat, then that’s the way it goes. One culture is stronger than another. Survival of the fittest, that’s natures way, right?  One might just as well believe that dumb Poles charged their horses directly at Nazi tanks in the battle of Krojanty.

You can turn a zillion dollars into 10 zillion by making a movie about it – big blue people, lots of explosions and a happy ending this time.

Meanwhile back on earth, we’re still fehgked. Our current behavior is killing us, we need to rediscover what’s been forgotten. Is there anyone left who remembers how it worked?

I am mostly invader stock, descended from European peasants and workers.  My mom’s parents had been farmers in Austria/Hungary. My dad’s parents were a mish mash of ingredients from the British Isles – Ireland, Scotland and England, and had been in America for several generations. However, there’s a rumor that my dad’s mom had some cherokee blood. Maybe I can claim lineage.

The bottom line is that this knowledge of the way is inherent in the earth’s systems, the wilds. If we just pay attention we can get back in alignment. Lineage is good – knowledge passed down and life ways maintained, but it’s built into the planet, we need look no further than the great big beautiful planet.

Inspired by http://www.suppressedhistories.net/

I thought I had a plan for making the mothership blog, but not quite. Now I am confused. Here’s a little map to illustrate the flow.

FORUM collaboratory

|| feeding

BLOG Mothership (holyboners.com)

BLOG Daughter of God (dogthemovie.com)

BLOG Around Lake Michigan (ondesire.com)

BLOG Awesomeshit (artisthouse.com/fellowship)

Now this may seem silly, but I am hung up in an aesthetic snag. Holyboners is about fortunate mistakes but does this premise apply to Ondesire as well? Holyboners was a fine premise for Daughter of God, but I don’t think it flies for ALM. Not that I am giving up this wonderful principle but I think I am moving beyond fortunate mistakes as my primary strategy. What then would be the guiding force for the mothership?

TT seems a likely candidate, but there’s two problems. Though the mothership blog is not exactly public, it will be feeding the satellite blogs, and that in theory drives traffic back to the mothership unless I password protect it. I can use TT when crossposting to ondesire certainly, but it still invites exploration.

TT requires finesse. It’s not something to implement overnight.

The second problem is the guy in California owns TT.com and wants $2500 for it. It would be lovely to own the entire set and I don’t mind paying him something, but get real – he’s had the sucker since 2002. 8 years of paying for it or $80 let’s guess and then whatever other overhead he’s got. $100 if he’s savvy. I’ve offered him $200. I doubt he’ll bite, camping is his business.

The point is I’d like to launch TT eventually, but to mastermind a huge media effort just to have the traffic stolen later? The name will become a traffic magnet once I get going, increasing the value of that domain.

I probably should have not said, “I’ll check back in a few months” – it’s a contradiction to my premise of preparing to launch a media campaign for a film. If he counters my $200, perhaps I’ve got a chance.

Let’s come back to earth. I’ve configured blogs that will work as they are. I can play a bit of a waiting game with Don from California though he knows via whois I own every TT but his .com and that I am trying to create a matched set. I am motivated to assemble it. He knows he can wait me out, but he’s not even bargaining. I can always visualize his help, hee hee. That’s my kind of leverage. $400. I can play the straw man who is bidding against me, though I would need another account. It’s oh so fun to strategize, but much easier just to visualize.

So the plan is… holyboners remains the name of the mothership for now. If we want to rename the mothership later, that’s fine. In the meantime let’s just assemble the infrastructure and move forward. Let’s test for awhile – the whole mothership concept might be not be feasible.

Before we go – distill into a domain name the guiding principles of my journey, of my practice. Another time, perhaps.

Afterwards… The beauty of visualization. After an interesting exchange of emails with Don I got TT.com for $380. How about that? $20 under the visualized price! Could it be any clearer?

We’ve been writing and writing. What has all this writing accomplished? Here’s what we know so far.

• Objectives for the project are identified
• The story centers around the guide character – his motivations, experience, starting point and transformation
• Several character development schemes have been proposed
• An insane/ingenious approach to generate cutaway material – xroll – is on the table
• Scene construction supporting non linear presentation has been outlined

to be continued

Holographic scenes are trembling moments of pure gestalt. Put them in a sequence and call that a movie.  Perhaps an alternate sequence reveals more. If you play it backward you hear, “I buried Paul.”

I’m imagining a burst of experience that also has a whole story inside it, everything is there.

Won’t a series of holographic scenes feel repetitive, like we are saying the same things over and over again? What if the things we are saying in each scene are slightly different. One thing about people is their layered motivation. I don’t shoot you because I hate you, that’s like so totally impoverished. I shoot you because I burnt my toast this morning AND you’re a brutal serial rapist AND you remind me of my older brother who I loved but was killed in the war then my parents kept his room like a shrine AND my girlfriend want’s to get married though I don’t really love her AND I dreamt of red roses last night AND…

It’s the layers of motivation that give the story depth. They can be completely separate tracks, none alone sufficient to prompt action, but together – viola!

What the hell is xroll? What if it’s not a gimmick, but a central organizing principle? It’s thoughts and experience, something like the memories of Spotless Mind and the dream sequences of Brazil. There’s symbolism and layers of meaning, but xroll doesn’t have to resolve in the sense that everything is sewed up nice and neat, it just has to evoke. Resolution is an evocation, everything comes together and wham, there’s an emotion there. The typical Hollywood resolution is “Yippee, we won!” Think about Casablanca, that resolution was bitter sweet comradely cynicism between Rick and the french cop. Dude, layers of emotion, complexity.

A turbocharged vignette that serves up an emotional cocktail to nuance the next moment, flows from xroll. After Effects verite, magical realism in motion.

A plot is the structure that sequences events, yes/no? No – a plot exists however the events are sequenced. Humans have a strong temporal sensibility, even if the events are out of order, we’ll put them back in sequence. On second thought, yes – maybe a plot is a structure that sequences events, maybe what we call plots are just applications of temporal sensibility. This scene leads to this scene which leads to this scene… we’ll find a plot given enough chunks.

If we think of xroll as the spine of the narrative, then perhaps the actual traveling and scenes of same are extensions of it. Xroll contrasts to b-roll in that it’s central as opposed to peripheral. It’s what we keep returning to, the continuity. In ALM, are the sailing moments Xroll? The best part of the trip certainly, the core of the adventure. Why not?

Looks like a script is about to happen, the old index card shtick.

Holographic scenes… moments which taste of eternity, fragments that contain the whole. Xroll… the threads between the scenes, revelations of the underlying fabric of reality.

I’m skating the edge of confusion and rapture here. If the above sounds like blather, there’s a 50% chance it is.

Making movies – I’ve discussed how much work is involved and how there’s not enough me to go around.  I need to amp up 1) art / production and 2) fundraising and outreach. I am in the process of contracting two artists who have worked with me in the past, Jonathan Kelly and Melonie Steffes. Jonathan built 3D models for DOG (2007-2009), while Melonie constructed sets and props on location in Canada (2006). Together, we three will form an art department and manifest the rest of these movies.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been cultivating advisors and collaborators, polymaths all. Faisal Azam has generously re-imagined the editorial for DOG last summer and fall. Andrea Maio has been a savvy advisor for ALM, both from the story and fundraising perspective. Julie Constantin and I are exploring social collaboration and outreach for the projects, and she’s a funding powerhouse. Steve Elrick is a long time ally with great insights about expression and storytelling. Then of course there’s Jeff Gibbs, keeping it real.

I am pretty lucky to have all these folks, now I want to figure out how to bring them together and really tap their power. Is it a forum or what? I imagine resumes and portfolios too.

The last several ALM posts have been about clarifying DK’s journey, why exactly did he get on the boat? Is he really searching for sustainable civilizations or was there another reason? Why is this trip shrouded in mystery? Maybe he was really sailing off to commit murder, to make a remote rendevous with extra terrestrials, to perform a sacred ritual of summoning… with only the eyes of gods and satellites upon him. Why does he take this trip and why do we care?

He has a stated mission and maybe he is sincere, or maybe he’s obfuscating his true motives. Perhaps he is sincere and he achieves his mission, but maybe the achievement pales in comparison to an unexpected boon. If he is hiding something, is the secret mission ever revealed? Does he achieve his objective and what does his machinations have to do with the world at large? Does he even know why he is really going, or is he driven by sleeper programming?

It’s intriguing to dive deeper into a treatment, to treat the significant layers.

Whatever his reason for going, the mission doesn’t necessarily determine the outcome. It’s perhaps the difference between what he sets out to do and what actually happens that’s interesting. Someone wants something badly and is having difficulty getting it, having difficulty remembering what it is, changes his mind, get’s something better – the game has many variations. Deconstructing DK’s motivation is a worthy excercise, because there may be more here than even he realizes. BTW, it creeps me out in a fun way to view myself from a meta perspective, PKD style.

‘What’ DK is going after implies ‘why’ – and that’s the basis of the story. DK is going after super powers, he is searching for sustainable civilizations, he is channeling wild wisdom. The ending comes when the going after is done – DK demonstrates enhanced power, he has retrieved artifacts from the future, he shares the wisdom… or he gave up, failed, found something better, changed his mind, etc.

I think a start and end is cool, that is we understand why DK goes and can evaluate what he gets, decide for ourselves whether he was successful.

Last night coming out of Sanshiro Sugata I and II, I overheard someone say, “the message was be nice to your enemies”. They missed the point, Sanshiro wasn’t being nice to his enemies, he de-enemized them, that was the triumph of Judo. That’s the essence of Japanese martial arts as portrayed by Kurusawa, not to vanquish your enemies but to transform them. Sanshiro’s strength is his power to transform.

It’s very the ending that we understand what Sanshiro has actually accomplished, and without being hit over the head with it. Lovely. A student becoming a martial arts master is a perfect vehicle for this sort of trip, what does he set out to do, what is the completion of his journey?  Does he get the girl? Without question – after he gets himself.

Dan Kelly is on this journey of discovery, he’s off to become miraculous, he’s searching for sustainable civilizations, he’s just an average American with an FBI record. Whatever his journey is, it’s open ended. Perhaps he has a general idea why he is out there but he doesn’t know what he will find or how it will change him. ALM is his transformation, what he thinks he’s about and what actually happens to him. The premise is open ended, but at the same time we have to know whether he succeeded in doing what he set out to. We want to know his start and end points.

Andrea’s approach is to cut the interviews short and then just have DK summarize what he learned, fitting the pieces together as he goes. His process is interpreted, translated to flow as a story. After Effects verite. Whatever’s not relevant drops to the cutting room floor, or maybe we’ll flashback out of sequence for special emphasis. Essentially I (the director) take over the narrative, it’s about getting the audience inside DK’s head, his thoughts and experience. This sort of thing would typically get tied together with voice over… but wait!

If we want to make these meta observations, long leaps of intuition and connection, why not do it experimentally – xroll? Suddenly, xroll isn’t a contrivance, it’s a way to experience DK’s thought flow directly, or at least as translated to the silver screen. Beyond mere voice over – it’s visual voice over.

The guide’s voice is like glue that holds the disparate pieces together and makes connections. Xroll goes beyond the guide’s voice to create a visual and audio style or environment that tells us we are in thought space, a bridging mode, the spine of the narrative.

What if there were a visual structure, a visual reference that anchored everything back? It could be map based – folks would be expecting a map anyway so we could make the map mental but disguised as geography. Or imagine an interface or an idea web. Since film is linear, we use a linear design rather than a spatial web that has to be scrolled across. How are elements organized in linear fashion, what’s an effective system for that?

Duh, a plot. A plot is a linear structure for organizing information. Wow, 360 degrees in one post, phenomenal. A book (comic book) seems linear in theory but it’s not strictly linear in execution. We can open a comic to any page and jump forward and backward pretty much instanteously. Except in a social setting like a theater, this is increasingly the case with movies too. Forget about physically rewinding the VCR tape past the playback heads, that’s archaic technology. Now we can pop to anywhere on the timeline with a click, or jump between chapters. Movies are designed to spool from beginning to end, they are typically not designed to work as random access.

Another circle – ALM could be designed for random access. Xroll and holographic scenes support this. Even in traditional linear spooling, xroll is the scaffold for constructing the experience, it’s the spinal cord of a flashing, sparking neural network. There’s where the script starts, the central concepts adjacent, meshing and turning together. What are they? The great galloping thoughts of DK on his journey, the fundamental ideas that infect him along the way, he stages of his transformation.

introduction for character Dan Kelly (everyman)

Unless you’re totally evil or from another planet, you are probably concerned about the future of this one, our earth. It’s old news to talk about how much trouble we are in, so I won’t waste time doing so. Basically, we are screwed. The mutant marriage between governments and corporations is pulling the plug on the global life support system, pretty soon there won’t be enough food, water, air to breath, etc. As I said, this is old news.

Scuttling around trying not to think about it – the end of the world as we know it. I got fed up with this 21 century duck and cover. Recycling, new light bulbs and donations to the Sierra club weren’t enough somehow. I wanted to get out into the world, learn and take action. Change my own destiny and maybe the rest of the world’s too.

We’ve been are our own enemies for at least 100 years, starting back when the father of public relations Edward Bernays got his start, training women how to smoke. I am talking about consumption, our shared madness. I’ve been committing suicide for the better part of my life, me and a few billion other people. We’re consumers. Can we find a way to really live? A better question might be, do we want to live? Can we find a way to enjoy the benefits of science and art without wiping out the foundation of our lives? Is there a sustainable civilization?

I decided to answer this question for myself – what would an excellent life feel like? I am not so different from other people, a civilization is made of individuals like me. Maybe if I found my life, I would find a tiny part of our collective future. Perhaps others could learn something from my search. I could bring a whole planet along with me, as I search for sustainable civilizations.

Options

Discuss postponing DOG to do ALM

Carl and Yves as mentors

introduction for character Dan Kelly (becoming miraculous)

During intense experience I often get a clue about my full potential, what I am capable of. If I get into a situation that calls for a little something extra then lo, something extra shows up. When there’s no other option but to tap into extraordinary energy, it’s always been there. I am going to call this extraordinary energy – magic.

Miracle making.

When I realized how much trouble the planet was in and assessed the task of healing all the damage, I realized that a miracle might be needed to turn things around. If we were past the point of no return on carbon loading, then the global life support system would crash and that pretty much means we’re doomed. I have an affinity for science, great stuff – astronomy, cognition, computers… love it. However, if I’ve got to go beyond science to save the planet, I don’t have a problem with that. If I’ve got to go with divine intervention, fine.

In 1976, after watching the first Star Wars I wondered where my light saber was. The feeling has never quite left me, even as I hit my 30s then 40′s and watched George Lucas dilute his vision in sparkle and schlock.

Over the years, my powers began to manifest. It started with healing – if I found a damaged body, my hands would tingle.

One day, Richard showed up in his wetsuit. He had been windsurfing near my house and injured his knee. I think he had problems with it in the past and had seen a doctor, so he was pretty distraught, “I know I am going to need surgery this time.” I asked him to sit down and share the food I had been making with another friend, Ann. He eased into a rocking chair and I brought him a plate. I felt the tingle. Richard was a professional massage therapist and so I was a little shy asking him if I could help him, but he cautiously accepted. We all sat around for an hour or so, eating and talking while I gently worked on this knee, following my intuition. Eventually he stood up and said that it felt better. He got in his car and went home. A couple of days later we checked in with each other. His knee was totally fine.

On a remote island, hiking at night, I discovered I could sense objects in the darkness, as if some kind of proximity radar had activated. It was an experience totally new to me, like growing another sense. I wondered how many other undocumented features the human body had.

One rainy evening I slipped off my friend’s fire escape and fell 12 feet to concrete, landing flat on my back. The impact was so intense that I involuntarily pissed myself. After lying there for a few moments, I felt compelled to move. Movement is contraindicated after a bad fall as spinal cords can be severed by broken bone, leading to permanent paralysis. Knowing this rationally, I ignored the calls of my friend Jon to “stay still, don’t move!” I painfully rolled over onto my stomach, got onto my hands and knees, and promptly passed out.

I had a vision. I was in a sort of control room, doing something really engaging and important. I felt both ecstatic and purposeful. Then, an annoying noise began to intrude. It was alien and at the same time vaguely familiar. It was a person’s name (what’s a person? what’s a name?) being repeated. I then realized that the name was somehow my name, that there was this other existence where that name belonged to me. My friend was back there, calling my name. I felt compassion for my friends who were very worried about me, perhaps I better go back and make them feel better. I left the ecstatic place and came back to consciousness with the friendly flavor of loamy soil in my mouth – I had buried my face in a little swirl of dirt and leaves by the floor drain. I told Jon I was back and asked him how long I had been out, he said about 20 seconds. Seemed like a lot went down in those 20 seconds.

I told him I was going to get up and he protested, he said an ambulance was coming. I asked him why and he said that his wife Laura had called 911 as soon as I had passed out. Now I was totally determined to get up and out of there, this was not an experience I cared to end in a hospital – and me with no health care! He asked me again not to move but I told him to trust me, I was alright and ready to get up. “I’ll help you” he said and I replied “No, don’t help me,” but he was having none of it. “I am going to help you!”

I slowly stood up with his arm on me, everything intact, amazing. I tried walking and that worked too, tho there was quite a bit of pain. We went back into their house and waited for the ambulance to arrive. I convinced the paramedics that I was fine and that I wasn’t going to ride with them. They made me sign papers and I headed home to a hot bath.

This incident was something of a demonstration. Did I slip off the deck by mistake? On a dark rainy evening, I tossed my body into the void, fell 12 feet down into darkness, missing iron handrails and push mowers by inches. I fit into a spatial keyhole with very little room for error and impacted flat backed on concrete, taking most of the impact on my coccyx. My head did not bang against the concrete, my neck didn’t break. I was up and walking within minutes and fully recovered within a month. I got xrays just to be sure and there were no fractures. Fluke, crazy luck? We make our luck.

I began to make my luck in earnest, to train my power decisively. I knew that if I told folks I was traveling around becoming magic, they might not get it. So I came up with this idea of searching for a sustainable civilization. Basically, one formula for healing the earth would be to replace the current status quo with something more humane and balanced. It might be a good idea to figure out what that looked like first and then I could cause it to be. This would be my cover story, but the main objective was to open my channels of power, to activate all my undocumented features. etc. If saving the earth was going to take a miracle, I would become miraculous.

introduction for character Dan Kelly (time traveler)

Yes, another movie about how much trouble we are in. It’s also about how we got out of the trouble. If you remember the future as I do, you’ll know that we almost didn’t make it. Did I mention that I am a time traveler? Actually time refugee is a slicker fit.

Anyway, we almost didn’t make it. Looking back from the future, it’s much easier to see just how precarious the present is, but of course it’s not so obvious if the now is all you’ve ever known.  At the risk of sounding optimistic, I think the human race learned a valuable lesson by going through this, so in the after-future we won’t likely make the same mistakes we made in the pre-present.

To simplify the tenses, I’ll just refer to the present as the past. So how did we do it? We found our survival by looking for it. Folks just got bored with killing themselves and decided to try to find a little life. Some walked, some rode bicycles, some let the wind blow them hither and yon. They were like backwards archeologists – instead of searching for past civilizations, they went searching for future ones. The theory goes like this – since we decided to survive – then we would. That implied there was a way to survive, and probably the seeds of that way were scattered all over the place, just waiting to sprout. If folks found those seeds, then they could extrapolate what the seeds might grow into. Viola, the future. That’s how time travel works, btw or at least did work back in the day… that is, right now.

Let’s relive your ‘about to be’, discover what has almost happened and reenact a search that so many have yet to make. A sailboat I think and an inland ocean. I will be your guide of how we survived, how we didn’t cook the planet nor allow ignorance and greed to prevail – as it so ominously threatens to do so AT THIS VERY MOMENT, again, even though that may not be totally obvious. I am catching you at your most receptive, cause when the shit starts to hit the fan, there won’t be time to watch documentaries, you’ll be too busy building dikes and fending off looters. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Who is this character Dan Kelly, ALM guide? Why is the audience intrigued by his journey?

Based on my discussion with Andrea, I can’t assume the audience will understand my assumptions and motivations regarding ALM. The 900 lb gorilla in the room is me, this project springs from my own crazed mind. Andrea’s golden nugget – the audience doesn’t need to agree with me, they just need to be able to get me, to find me plausible.

It’s easy to forget just how weird a cat I am. The audience might not believe I am for real, so the project provides context. It’s helpful to step back and think of myself as a fictional character that has to be introduced to the audience. Rather than flooding the screen with a DK fest, I like the idea of providing just enough character development to intrigue and maybe vex a tad. Who the hell is this guy?

There are two objectives for ALM, to establish rapport between my character and the audience, and to present a pragmatic magic primer aka Terrorist Training Films TM. The pragmatic magic can be integral to the character development, or it could happen incidentally without ever being named, just oozing across. That’s a key question – do I put the magical agenda front and center or allow it to suffuse the project, giving it to the audience by osmosis? For the character Dan Kelly magic is an underlying rhythm, a given. He brings it to the fore only occasionally, either through his musings or by getting kicked in the ass by the big boot of circumstance.

These are worthy distinctions because initially I didn’t think much about my own role in this, I had the idea that I would somehow be this ghost collaging the insights of others. I was just one of those others, a host. Now I see that the whole thing is driven by DK, his choice to go in the first place, his decision where to stop, who to see. Why? What’s he about? What makes him do this? If we don’t know, nothing makes much sense.

I am test driving different versions of the ALM guide, just to see what pops. So far they are…

ALM guide, becoming miraculous – out of the closet about the true nature of ALM, provides ‘evidence’ of magic, no shame.

ALM guide, time refugee – a science fiction enthusiast, slipping into iconic characters as a way to speak about the unspeakable, “you’ve seen it in movies, now live it – THE END OF THE WORLD”

So the guide discussion is this – how much DK is enough?

2.1 Objectives common to both projects…

2.2 Objectives of DOG

2.3 Objectives of ALM

2.3.1 convey the main character (premise / starting point) to establish rapport. He becomes a compelling guide / proxy for the audience (get inside his head)

2.3.1.1 snafu

2.3.1.1.1 life support system threatened

2.3.1.1.1.1 suicidal status quo – centuries in the making

2.3.1.1.1.1.1 -> empires/colonies -> industrial revolution -> consumer culture ->

2.3.1.1.1.2 ignorance on purpose – it’s not an accident, ok?

2.3.1.1.1.2.1 we’re supposed to stay stupid – school, culture, food, jobs, religion

2.3.1.1.1.3 toxic training makes consumers culpable

2.3.1.1.1.3.1 individual impact multiplied by billions

2.3.1.1.2 healing prevented (deliberate)

2.3.1.1.2.1 sustainable civ already exists in fragmented state (indigenous species) but

2.3.1.1.2.2 entrenched powers keep future artifacts obscure and scattered

2.3.1.1.2.3 acquisition and assembly discouraged (there are no options)

2.3.1.1.3 oh and BTW, we’ll need a miracle

2.3.1.1.3.1 carbon past point of no return

2.3.1.1.3.2 invisible opponents

2.3.1.1.3.3 trained to go insane, each of us our own enemy – soldiers attacking their own supply lines and themselves

2.3.1.2 our choice

2.3.1.2.1 decide to thrive

2.3.1.2.1.1 with rigorous persistance most anything is possible

2.3.1.2.1.2 find out what we really are

2.3.1.2.1.3 notice and question self imposed limits

2.3.1.2.1.4 live our bliss

2.3.1.2.1.5 identify (equate survival) with a robust global life support system

2.3.1.2.2 spread the love

2.3.1.2.2.1 do yourself first, then bring others along with shared techniques, knowledge, resources

2.3.1.2.2.2 vigorous practice of art / science to inspire and translate

2.3.1.2.2.3 build and celebrate community

2.3.1.2.3 find a way

2.3.1.2.3.1 pay attention

2.3.1.2.3.2 have an idea

2.3.1.2.3.3 start anywhere

2.3.1.2.3.4 have fun, have an adventure

2.3.1.2.3.5 repeat

2.3.1.3 becoming miraculous

2.3.1.3.1 simplicity rather than convenience

2.3.1.3.2 discovering the body’s undocumented features

2.3.1.4.3 presence

2.3.1.3.4 beyond what we know

2.3.1.3.5 that which does not kill me… big adventure

2.3.1.3.6 feel it into being

2.3.1.3.7 ecstatic evidence

2.3.2 illustrated guide to post consumer pragmatic magic, or becoming miraculous

2.3.2.1 objectives don’t have to be revealed to the audience, they just have to be achieved. ALM never needs to explain that the point of the project is to show the audience how to become miraculous, it just has to do it. this is just the story of one man who thinks he can become miraculous and how he goes about it. one does not have to believe it’s possible to want to watch. he’s insane, how interesting. it doesn’t have to hold itself out as a manual for magic making, even though that’s exactly what it is – a terrorist training film. it can also hold itself out as a magic manual in a sort of tongue and cheek style, hiding in plain sight.

2.3.2.2 definition of miraculous and magic

2.3.2.2.1 is the magic only in my head then? is it a shared reality or private hallucination – that’s the question the audience asks. Dan – first we imagine the subtle energy, then we feel it… what’s the difference? first we have an idea, then we work towards realizing it… what’s the difference?

2.3.2.2.2 Miracles are not uncommon, they are the norm.  Western folk are indoctrinated to ignore and even to deny them. If evidence of magic is presented, it must fit into a impoverished box which removes the very components that enable – participation. My experience of reverence is a connection to the experiment – I am this too. I am inextricably tangled in the test.

2.3.2.2.3 remember, we say demonstrate, we say illustrate. that’s doable. Rewriting the accepted definition of miracle does not cut it. What folks want to see is a suspension of physics, or the manifestation of an entity that is not easily cataloged by Darwin. What is proof to the documentary audience? Personal accounts? Recreations? Graphs and charts? An excellent question. When we say illustrate, what do we mean?

2.3.2.3 what’s miraculous about ALM? what did i do or experience that was miraculous? how did I invite magic?

2.3.2.3.1 connection to wilderness

2.3.2.3.1.1 this experience is available to those who can slip the default conditioning. it is perhaps a gift in these strange times to be able to feel the earth, be present in the wild places and ‘get it’. It’s pure feeling, a heady cocktail of emotions – elation, reverence, acute perception, open and available, power. For those who don’t know, can’t know, it’s a joke, a cliche. Thier scoffing laughter is zombie conditioning, keeps us all from knowing what we are, the sound of self loathing. Instead, allow robust joy to well up inside and perhaps laugh maniacally – like a mutant ape who has busted the lock on his cage, or chuckle gently – at the wonder of being anything at all, even just alive.

2.3.2.3.2 opening to the moment – release of temporal conditioning

2.3.2.3.3 men who ride mountains – discovering extra capability

2.3.2.3.4 my tribe is everywhere – expand and celebrate

2.3.2.3.5 beyond my self

2.3.2.3.6 risk alone

2.3.2.3.7 human and hobie and wind and water = one

2.3.2.3.8 miracles are repeatable, verifiable. reality as experienced by a flexible consciousness

2.3.2.3.9 strange things happen when communing with a planet sized entity that is your own personal starship. the very components of my body are of earth origins

2.3.3 open the process, share the process

2.3.3.1 songwriting and composition – lyrics about the journey

2.3.3.2 not only where are the artifacts but how to recognize and document them DIY. Distributing the on desire approach (crowd sourcing)

2.3.3.2.1 letters, drawings, audio, video

2.3.3.3 video remixes

2.3.3.4 ttf – having your own direct experience, trusting your own direct experience

√

2.1 Objectives common to both projects…

2.1.1 completion in 2010 OR new funding and remake

2.1.1.2 if new funding and remake,  some version of the original becomes a fund raising vehicle, proof of concept, extensive previsualization etc.

2.1.1.1 if completion, then quality (hits personal aesthetic, key collaborators thumbs up)

2.1.2 expansion of post production team with dynamic and effective work approach, tuned workflow, ideal gear mix and just enough knowledge

2.1.3 success

2.1.3.1 accepted 3 oscar qualifying festivals 2011

2.1.3.2 awards / recognition for innovation/experimental, visual impact/effects, story

2.1.3.3 vehicle for future funding, collaboration, career

2.1.3.4 500,000 views in first 6 months after release

2.1.3.5 favorable reviews and appreciation by relevant players

2.1.3.6 spanish or chinese subtitle versions

Good Earth, have you been reading the recent posts from http://ondesire.com and http://holyboners.com? I have – and they are beginning to spin out of control. Some sort of fugue state is being entered into here, so many eggs are cracking wide I expect there’s one heck of a mega omelet on the horizon. I haven’t even done my review of Cameron’s Avatar in 3D or last night’s dinner with my favorite Africans. Let’s get this sorted out right now.

The Questions

What are my objectives for the two current projects?

What’s my plan to finish them / take them to the next level?

The Answers

I’ve got a mission, so let’s start there, Activating global consciousness to steward and expand the wilds. It’s a good mission, and one would expect my current projects to be in alignment. How then do these two movie projects support my mission?

1.0 Mission

1.1 DOG

Daughter of God is my most ambitious narrative project to date. It’s a surreal exploration of how picturesque and hilarious a crippled global life support system can get. The backstory also explores colonization and exploitation on a planetary scale. With this project I model my theories, channeling the answers to the questions that Fia asked last night – who benefits from the demise of an entire planet? Follow the money, follow the extraction of wealth. Who’s targeting all the world saviors, whose running this prison?

So Daughter of God is a vehicle for piercing the veil. It’s a way of figuring some things out, of playing with the story. Ah, there’s an insight.

What if the story has fragments, alternate eddies and branches? What if the edit is actually scrambled up to suggest alternate possibilities, variant explanations, visions beyond the existing narrative where all the backstories intermingle and cross pollinate? Y’all getting this? That’s how we rebuild the edit, with intersecting time lines and outcomes. Moments that suggest, fragments.

That means that the best moments are extracted and then interwoven as flash sidewise or parallel possibility, while remaining perfectly ordinary, like brushing teeth. Little diversion this, but worthy.

In summary, DOG supports the mission by being a way to better understand what might actually be going on in RL, suggest in ways like the i ching, never the same movie twice, ya get me? Got cha.

1.2 ALM

Seeking the artifacts of a future sustainable civilization is pragmatic action. No external authority is going to assemble our optimal existence and conveniently implode. We are responsible, I am responsible. The future surrounds us, fragments of annihilation and transcendence for the taking. We choose what we gather, I choose. That’s ALM, humans taking responsibility for our collective destiny, one Dan at a time. An adventure of autonomy and connection, of becoming miraculous and capable of planet saving. A hero’s journey waiting for each of us.

It’s about me, as Andrea pointed out, and my reinvention disguised as a sailing trip. Is it universal? Does it translate beyond boats and big lakes? Only if folks share my starting point. They don’t have to agree, they just have to get me. Stepping back, I realize that I am a character in this story.

The Dan Kelly character has a premise, aspirations, a costume, a budget, skills, assumptions, experience and a history. What do we need to know about him so that we can travel with him, suspend our disbelief, make his joy and pain our own?

He is a treehugger, an artist, a science fictionary, a warrior, a lover, a mystic, a caretaker, a technologist, a dreamer, a visionary. My character needs to be introduced to the audience, my character wants something badly and is having trouble getting it, my character undergoes a transformation. Don’t we all?

In summary, ALM supports the mission because it’s about what happens when WE decide to thrive. As my glorious destiny relies on the repair and care of the global life support system, I must become capable of healing planets. I must discover and eventually implement sustainable civilizations. If these epic outcomes are beyond the scope of my present self, then I must purposefully transform and become miraculous. That is the journey worth taking, the true and vital journey of ALM, common to all.

Epilogue

Many folks will find the premise crazy, so I’ve got to make a solid case that my character actually believes that he can develop extraordinary abilities and has ‘evidence’ to support it. Then even if they think my character is crazy, they’ll go on the journey with him. This crazy character will venture out to become a super hero and the surprise ending will be – maybe he was not so crazy after all.

The audience attitude might begin with ‘the poor delusional fellow is captivating’ then gradually progress to ‘wait, maybe he’s making sense’ and finish with ‘whoa, where do I sign up?’ It’s a cognitive hack for extracting folks from the suicidal hypnosis of dominant culture. Start them off with the idea that they are watching a crazy person running amuck, then give them cause to question that premise and in so doing examine their assumptions about what it means to be rational in a culture bent on apocalypse. Wonko the Sane lived outside the asylum (and he got his movie made).

I scanned and posted the audience feedback cards within a week of the Evening of Exploration, but over a month went by before I read and sorted them into categories. Why did it take so long? This question triggered a small crisis – Am I loosing momentum on the ALM project? Do I have a plan? What have I accomplished in the 3 months since the end of the trip?

This is one of those exciting blog moments where I have to grope around for a bit. Flashback!

October – December 2009

In early October Hello World and I returned home with about 30 hours of HD video. During the next two weeks I converted the video, shot a visual inventory and edited Evolution, the repair and packing sequence. I sorted, cleaned and stored all the gear. Hitching a ride back to Brooklyn with my brother Steve on 10/20, I settled down to catalog the video and post excerpts to the ondesire blog. Was there a feature length documentary lurking in there somewhere?  In theory, a methodical review of the raw material would allow major themes to percolate.

Watching the video and seeing all the folks who supported ALM started me fantasizing about throwing a big party. I also wanted to introduce more of my Northern Michigan tribe to the project and expand it’s audience. I imagined organizing an event around a rough cut of the movie and including structured feedback both to foster interaction and create a sense of participation. I was planning to return to to Northern Michigan for Thanksgiving anyway, maybe a month was enough time to plan an event and cut a rough…

The Evening of Exploration was born!

Turns out that 1 month was not enough time to become familiar with all the footage, edit something coherent AND organize / promote a public exhibition. I dedicated a lot of energy to getting the theater filled – repeatedly emailing the scattered tribe, blogging, creating enticing imagery and composing press releases. To expand and diversify the audience, I invited Gretchen Eichberger to present choreography and the ukulele duo Saldaje (Melonie Steffes and Shawn Anchak) to play music. The price I paid for a nearly full theater was less time for editing.

Sweating bullets that the bumpy NYC to Chicago Amtrak ride would ding the stack of sata hard drives humming at my feet, I finally found a decent introduction – only four days before the Evening. My brother and sister helped me hash out a protocol for audience feedback in the rental car from Chicago to Beulah. Over the holiday, I grappled with the stark realization that my rough cut would NOT be the kernel of a coherent structure, but rather a smorgasbord of loosely connected ideas.

The Evening was fun and I reconnected with many excellent people. My original objectives were achieved to varying degrees…

Celebrate those who helped with the project

Seeing themselves onscreen often makes folks excited. Just being invited to a special event is nice too, especially if there’s food and  interesting art. I could’ve done a better job of recognizing the collaborators if the movie had credits and / or if I mentioned specific names during my introduction. Basically, that didn’t happen because I ran out of time.

Connect regional folks to the project, build community support and awareness

It’s been over a month since the evening, so if I am planning on following up and consolidating this audience, I had better do it in the next couple of days. The evening did facilitate a productive feedback session with Steve Elrick. Also, a fantastic new friend and ally has appeared as a direct result of the Evening’s intense promotion. Andrea Maio is a film maker who missed the Evening but tracked me down after. We had a blast hanging out and she has since decided to relocate to Benzie County. I’ll be linking to her blog as soon as it’s up. Finally, Susan Koenig wrote an article about the Evening that may or may not have appeared in the Benzie Record Patriot, I’m still waiting to hear.

Get some structured feedback

I threw a variety of material at the audience, curious only to know what stood out, what made an impression. My feedback protocol wasn’t all that rigorous because the editing had barely begun. The responses were useful, the same five moments were mentioned by 52% of the audience. Several folks disregarded my instructions and offered detailed advice about editing and some even felt compelled to trot out their personal angst… awesome! I am so grateful for the responses, the only people I have a beef with are those that didn’t bother to fill out cards – like my brother and father. Geez, relatives can be a real pain.

Deadline motivates

Setting an intense deadline was both good and bad.

Rather than taking that the time to move methodically through the video, I was forced to slam together disparate fragments just to have something to show. This deferred the real edit process by a month. As the Evening got closer, I felt very scattered and struggled to let go of my expectations. I fretted that telling a disjointed story would actually deter the audience from following ALM’s progress. Key elements of the event were scaled down or abandoned because time was tight.

I am only now recovering from the trauma of promising a little too much.  Deadlines are productive only when matched to specific outcomes well within the range of the possible. Deadlines can have an element of risk, they can stretch our identity and push our personal envelope – a little. Finessing the balance between what we are and what we want to be is the art of the setting deadlines. It’s wise to take an inventory of variables first – how many new things will have happen at once? Even for a turbo charged polymath, attempting more than 2 new things is asking for trouble.

The Evening would have been a better if I had conceptualized the event as presenting ‘selected excerpts’, rather than promising a ‘rough cut’. The problem was in my own mind, most folks don’t know the difference between selected excerpts and a rough cut anyway. Crazy expectations caused me to wig out.

December 2009 – January 2o1o

I whiled away another 2 weeks in Beulah before renting a Hyundai and returning to Brooklyn. Once back, I bit the bullet and dropped $2000 on 20 x 1 TB hard drives for cloning my archive. I need about 6 drives more to finish, but at least now I can travel with ALM. I finally tallied the feedback results and posted some comments. Andrea suggested a new tack for the project that I like. I’ve been reorganizing the blogs in preparation for the next push and feel the power flowing back. So maybe I am not groping anymore.

I’ve finally gone through the response cards from the Evening of Exploration and tallied the results. Admittedly, asking for ‘the most memorable moment’ was not a very rigorous approach to feedback but then the Evening of Exploration was about more than feedback. The primary objective was to gather the Northern Michigan arts community together and introduce them to the project. Also, setting an intense deadline was intended to amp up my post-production process.

I’ll do a more rigorous evaluation of the Evening and it’s objectives later, but for now let’s look at the responses. Of the 86 cards, there were about 131 different moments mentioned, including advice about editing and other random critique. Let’s keep it simple and concentrate on the top 5 moments, which are mentioned in 52% of the total responses. The top five break down as follows…

• 32% (positive) Tanya and Homegrown
• 20% (mostly positive, several strong objections) Cherry pit spitting monolog
• 18% (positive) Hello World repair and packing sequence
• 15% (positive) Rich Branstrom – builds things from trash, influences others
• 15% (positive) Ray Minervini – cities for cars, not for people

Homegrown

I haven’t spoken with Chris and Tanya Winkelmann of Homegrown since November and I’m excited to let Tanya know that she stole the show. Some might think that organic food is old news, but the Winkelmanns’ story illustrates that it’s not, that education about the integrity of our food supply is vital. Tanya and Chris’s story is not only about edible education, but also “action instead of just thought or talk”. Indeed. Of the top five moments, Tanya’s interview grabbed 1/3 of attention.

Cherry Pit Spitting Monolog

The cherry pit spitting monolog came in second with mixed reviews. Several folks objected (strongly) to me talking with my mouth full! Love it. My intention was to break up the heavy ponderings with a little visual comedy and emphasize rather than minimize the cherry pit spitting. For the record, I don’t think I actually thought this through on location – I was just having breakfast and doing my usual on camera update. I had happened to put some wild cherries into my porridge.

The critical feedback helped me realize that I am not communicating how much work the Search for Sustainable Civilizations was. I ate while filming because there were only so many hours in the day and finding a way to combine two activities was a boon. I have to give more context – during the cherry pit spitting breakfast I was totally worn out and sore from sailing the day before. It’s not that I want sympathy from the audience but based on the almost angry comments about proper manners folks don’t get that my choices were constrained, that I was wiped out. Most of the positive comments focused on the content of the monolog, which is encouraging.

Hello World Evolution

My new filmmaker friend Andrea described the Hello World evolution sequence as my sparkling personality showing through. I am pleased that it worked for the audience because I put some solid time into the edit – I think it reflects my pleasure as an editor. It’s got several elements that I like – maker ethic, comedy, excitement and an epic feeling thanks to Gustav Holst. I actually see it as something of a placeholder for a more polished sequence, so it’s really encouraging to know that it’s getting high marks already. As a side note, the rest of Andrea’s comment goes like this, (paraphrase)… “in contrast to the Hello World sequence, your actual on camera monologs don’t really reflect how charming and funny you are in real life.” Gotta love that gal.

Ritch Branstrom, Adhoc workshop

Ritch was actually mentioned for more than trash art, so I broke the comments referring to him into categories. He made it to the top five for all the mentions of junk artist. Some folks also wrote about his energy or how well comes across as a character. Frankly as cinematographer and editor, I’ve got to take credit for his on screen vibe… through the magic of cinema, I made him seem like an amazing guy – another triumph of art over reality. Kidding! Ritch really IS amazing, honest.

Ray Minervini

Ray Minervini made an impression on folks with his “cities are designed for cars and not for people” line. That really seemed to resonate. Ray was really able to paint a picture with words and folks got it.

What does memory look like? What do thoughts look like? What is the magic ingredient that makes reality real?

I dunno.

Let’s make some language. We’ve already got B roll, an antiquated term for supplementary footage used to cover audio edits in an interview. The concept of turbo charged B roll is experimental, so let’s call it exroll or xr, cause it sounds cool and avoids controversy about pronunciation later, (is it zeeroll or exeroll?).

So what do we need to make xr? Here’s what clobbered me in the Barnes and Noble yesterday – I’d like to be able to code visually again as in the bygone days of Director and Lingo. I’d like to be able to deal with a variety of media. I’d like the host application to be open source. Can you say – Open Source After Effects? Not yet? So it looks like I am stuck with After Effects.

After Effects is pretty great, and it’s got Javascript built in – expressions. I’ve already experimented with algorithmic animation in AE, so I’ve got a clue what’s possible.

Now we’ve got another piece of the puzzle. I just sent Patrick back with some After Effects tutorials, we’ll see how far he gets. I need lots of rotoscoping done for DOG, but now I’ve got another reason to climb the AE learning curve, XR. It’s almost time to start recruiting.

I had a flash today while listening to a Democracy Now report on http://storycorps.org, a huge oral history project catching the compelling eloquence of regular folks. That’s sort of what ALM is about too – finding extraordinary answers to global survival in ourselves.

I was thinking how cool it would be to visualize Storycorp histories with maybe animation or collage. It could be fun to listen to these stories and make sketches, to draw what came to mind and then match the sketches to the audio later. There’s power enough in the human voice alone, especially when the speaker is recorded in a dark room without the distractions of camera, bright lights and staring interviewer. With a shift to the internal world, memory playback becomes more vivid and descriptions more intense and compelling.

The brilliant colors that fire in the dark theater of imagination could be rediscovered. Rather than complementing narrative audio with contextual b-roll or a sync shot of the head that’s talking, interviews could be illustrated from inside that head. Then it hit me, this is the enhanced b-roll idea I need for the ALM interviews.

Backstory – While talking to Steve Elrick about his thoughts on the November 28 ALM sneak preview, I proposed the idea of enhanced b-roll for the interviews. I’ve got these heads talking and some cutaway imagery to edit to (b-roll), but we’ve seen all that before. It’s the same old, here’s the talent speaking and here’s some contextual shots to cover the edits. But what if there were b-roll custom built from scratch that took the moment to another level? What if we could see what the talent saw, an impressionistic glimpse of the talents own experience? Is this an opportunity to innovate the whole technique of b-roll beyond present art, redefine b-roll? Perhaps…

So here’s how I can start. I identify the audio for the segments I want to use and sketch some new visuals, forgetting completely about the live action. I can pull from the vast vocabulary of animation and live action to visualize them – cell, collage, clay, 3D, visual remix. I could recruit a slew of visual artists to help, especially my talented visual friends currently sucking wind in the not yet recovered economy. Viola, turbo b-roll. Illustrate it as if it were oral history, that’s the ticket. Make art, yay!

The “evolution” of Hello World is already leaning in this direction. The stop action treatment works, folks like it. Andrea said it was projected my delightful personality more accurately than my actual live action improvs. Sounds like a direction to me.

09-09-05 Hello World Evolution (newer OS)
09-09-05 Hello World Evolution (older OS)

On November 28, 2009, 150 adventurers gathered at the Mills Community House Theater in Benzonia Michigan for an Evening of Exploration. Introducing new work by local artists in a historic venue, this event may herald an economic and creative renaissance in Michigan’s smallest county.

“The idea is to amp up our creative community by showcasing new artists and works in progress,” host Dan Kelly explained. “I presented a 45 minute excerpt from my documentary movie, Around Lake Michigan, Gretchen Eichberger made her dance and choreography debut with Glorious Dawn, and the recently formed ukulele duo Saldaje (Melonie Steffes and Shaun Anchek) played their first amplified theater show. This was an artistic expedition, a discovery both for the audience and the featured artists.”

More than half of those attending identified themselves as working artists, comprising a vertitable who’s who of the region’s most accomplished writers, painters, musicians, actors, and directors from Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Manistee and Benzie counties.

“There is a great need to create community and for artistic expression,” said composer and filmmaker Jeff Gibbs. “you (Gretchen and Dan) have your fingers on the pulse of that.”

The Mills Community House was also featured prominently. “The second floor theater is a fantastic venue for performance, education or even a dance party,” stated Kelly, “and there’s even a commercial kitchen on the bottom floor of the building. Yet the theater is not well known. One of our goals was to introduce this space and have it adopted by local artists.”

Steve Elrick, painter, Benzie County Players president and Mills Community House board member, was excited to see a full house. “This is the largest one night audience since the theater re-opened in 2007. The Mills board and volunteers worked hard to get the theater accessible to the public, I was glad to see that many people in there, it was awesome.”

The event ran from 6 pm – 9 pm and through reservations were required, there was no charge. Catering was provided by Suz Mclaughlin and served by Sarah Lousinau of Still Grinning, and featured the produce of regional farmers. Other local businesses also benefited.

“I heard that lots of folks went to the Cold Creek Inn and Road House after the show,” choregrapher Gretchen Eichberger commented. “The Mills is centrally located between Grand Traverse and Manistee counties, we envision making it a go to destination, a venue for innovative events that attracts new audiences and energizes businesses in Beulah and Benzonia. If we add the Benzie bus into the mix, it really opens up lots of possibilities.”

Future Evenings of Exploration are in the works. For more information contact:

Gretchen Eichberger 231 871-0215
Dan Kelly 231 882-0460

Photography by Jon Mead

About 140 people attended our Evening of Exploration. We had a great ukulele and vocal set with Melonie and Shaun, Gretchen danced Glorious Dawn and I presented a 45 minute rough cut of Around Lake Michigan. Afterwards, I asked everyone to recall the most memorable moment or scene from the movie and to write a few sentences about it. We collected 86 feedback cards from the audience, a little over 50% response.

The following are two sided cards, front and back are layed out horizontally…

An Evening of Exploration with Benzie County artists

On November 28, 2009 from 6 pm – 10 pm, Gretchen Eichberger-Kudlak and Dan Kelly will present an evening of exploration at the Mills Community House Theater.

Dan will show a rough cut of the feature length movie Around Lake Michigan, The Search for Sustainable Civilizations, documenting his recent 300 mile sail aboard the 16 foot catamaran, Hello World. Sailing to Elberta Beach, North Manitou Island, Traverse City, Beaver Island and the UP’s Garden and Stonington Peninsulas, Dan discovered artifacts of our shared destiny. Audience feedback will follow the screening with Q and A. This is a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes of film making and participate in a work in progress.

Doors open at 6:00 pm with Melonie Steffes and Shaun Anchak of the ukulele duo Saldajé, who will bless the stage as the theater fills to capacity. Doors close promptly at 7:00 pm when Gretchen will make her Dancer / Choreographer debut in Glorious Dawn, inspired by John Boswell’s remix of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos television series. Around Lake Michigan follows immediately after.

Admission is FREE but SPACE IS LIMITED – please make RESERVATIONS now!

Call / text 231 882-0460 or email explore@ondesire.com. Include the full names of everyone you want on the guest list. An unprecedented arts event in the Benzie County style – and you are invited.

This event is made possible with generous support from the Mills Community House, John Boswell, Northwest Michigan Folklife Center, Artist house, Inc. and Apple Computer, Inc.

The Mills Community House
891 Michigan Avenue US-31
Benzonia, Michigan 49616

map

A feature film in 5 days? A engaging, edifying, feature film in 5 days? How much sencha green tea will it take?

Finally, the video the network has been clamoring for! The dynamic duo of digestion, Chris and Tanya Winkelman and the origins of Homegrown. It all started with a breakfast burrito the day after arriving in Grand Traverse Bay.

09-09-13 Chris and Tanya Winkelman Homegrown (newer OS)
09-09-13 Chris and Tanya Winkelman Homegrown (older OS)

Big boats traverse the Big Lake, and Hello World and I had a close encounter. What are the chances of getting squished by an ore carrier? Only our 5th day out already we’re having near death experiences. Fun! Lazily crossing from North Manitou to Northport, lapping up the sun and thankful for a little wind after a morning becalmed. What’s that low rumble, been hearing it for awhile now? Hey, maybe that isn’t a sailboat on the horizon, maybe that’s… a big boat. They come up pretty quick when they’re pointed right at you.

09-09-10 The Manitowoc (newer OS)
09-09-10 The Manitowoc (older OS)

Gretchen and I are excited to welcome Saldaje to our Evening of Exploration. Shaun and Melonie do some spooky and magical things with ukuleles.

Two – count ‘em – two new chapters are available for your viewing pleasure, both documenting my two night sojourn on North Manitou Island. Disasters and blessings interpenetrate.

09-09-09 Crescent City under Hello World (newer OS)
09-09-09 Crescent City under Hello World (older OS)

09-09-10 North Manitou Becalmed (newer OS)
09-09-10 North Manitou Becalmed (older OS)

Have I written about this yet, or have I just thought about writing about it? I admit I’ve been inventing open source filmmaking in a vacuum, I am only slightly aware of what other filmmakers are doing on this front. I’ll eventually plug into all the social networking juice associated with open source film projects, but for now I remain blissfully ignorant, aside from the original inspiration of Robert Greenwald’s Rethinking Afghanistan. Actually, another important early influence was the Rebel’s Guide forum, where production strategies are shared.

What is Dan Kelly’s vision of open source filmmaking? So far three facets – chronicle, outreach, and get naked.

Chronicle

It’s about chronicling the process on this blog and connected channels – Twitter and Linked in for example. Even if nobody reads my ramblings, taking the time to communicate what’s going on helps me to focus and clarify my vision. As I take on more ambitious outcomes, I begin to walk the less traveled path. If there are other artists out there with related outcomes, perhaps they’ll improve their chances of success by learning about my exploits. If those folks and I connect and communicate, that’s nirvana. I am one neuron and the blog variations are my synapses, snaking out towards other neurons. You can make a brain by networking lots of neurons. Essentially, open source film making is one way to become part of something bigger, to amplify and extend myself.

Outreach

That snaking pseudopodia part is important. As I mentioned above, it’s great to be a closet scribbler, that’s how Stephen King got his start after all. Eventually King had to slither out of his closet, he must have shared his work with friends and eventually editors. Without slithering, where would Stephen King be? One must learn to slither and ooze… what ho! Here’s the internet.

Oozing is a great word I think, because the internet is a universe of jagged dross. Spam and old school marketing schemes have inflexible edges meant to slice and tear, to force action. On the world wide web, incessant avalanches of edgy memes whirl and flash. Cognitive armor seems essential for extended surfing. Had enough metaphors? Bear with me… in RL surfing implies water. Water can’t be cut with a knife – it just gets out of the way.

Savvy neurons fluidly slide past sharp edges while expanding connections with oozed out extensions. These extensions are not hooks or bait, they are the neuron itself, awareness. Neurons flow into their surround, questing softly like spilled water on a level table. If water meets water, little puddles become bigger puddles, and the ocean of intelligence grows. Need some practical applications of how oozing works? On an online forum, only humans can enter. Having a persistent and relevant presence is the only way to network with the other humans there. That’s oozing… a sparkling puddle gently spreading. Oozing puddles are only good for making bigger puddles, so there’s no point in attempting a call to action or trying to motivate them.

I am sure this seems like a wild half baked digression, but outreach is not code for marketing. Making the distinction is important because we can’t afford to have ineffective outreach, the stakes are very high. Marketing harks back to the days of manipulating behavior and that’s the root of our problems on Planet Earth. Rather than manipulated behavior, let’s build a foundation on expanded consciousness. whoa.

Get Naked

Admit it, you skipped down to this part. Ok, maybe you started to read about the neural network, but that was boooring! So here we are, about to get naked.

Am I all about quality? Sure. Do I care about details and subtlety? I like to think so. Am I crafting a sublime aesthetic? You betcha! Well, screw all that – we are going open source!

Sharing the process goes beyond writing, it means providing access to a good portion of the raw footage. Sure some editing and assembling to illustrate the main ideas, but don’t get too precious, don’t fret about perfection. That’s what it means to get naked – to expose your bare essence to the scrutiny of the world. No polish or preening, no flowing mumu to hide my fat butt, no makeup or mousse. Just the raw sinewy meat, wrapped in glowing skin. Me, me… beautiful me!

This means that the work can be immediately available if activists or educators need it. It means I rough out ideas rapidly. It means others can give feedback and enhance the work. It’s an access point for collaborators to contribute. It’s gives the project a presence and buzz before the release. It’s a little more like what science is supposed to be, while retaining all the power of art. I keep finding things I like about this approach, now that I’ve gotten over being stark naked 24/7.

Drawbacks? Being stark naked is a little scary, but it helps that I am fit and svelte. I’ve got a nice body and by analogy my project is fun and engaging. So why not? Another problem is all that ownership crap, rights etc. In theory, Creative Commons protects the project from exploitaton by commercial entities. Another issue might be my eligibility for film festivals that dig the whole world premier schtick. My only defense there is that I am not posting my final edit, only sketches. If that doesn’t fly, then c’est live. Festivals serve the mission, not the other way around.

That’s my latest spiel on open source film making and why I am doing it. I think I may be repeating myself a little but that’s a habit I had even before I started turning into an old coot.

A sacred place on a sacred day, North Manitou Island, 09/09/09. Ponderings on turning back, being myself and ending the war against wisdom, aka consumption by becoming poetry incarnate.

09-09-09 Crescent City on North Manitou Island (newer OS)
09-09-09 Crescent City on North Manitou Island (older OS)

No turning back now, the invitations and press releases for the November 28th event are public. There’s also a swell new image for my collaboration with Gretchen, check it on the ‘save the date’ page…

An evening of exploration with local artists

Explore an evening of cinema and performance with filmmaker Dan Kelly and Dancer/Choreographer Gretchen Eichberger-Kudlak at the Mills Community House Theater in Benzonia, Saturday November 28 from 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm.

The feature film Around Lake Michigan documents Kelly’s search for sustainable civilizations aboard the 16 foot sailing catamaran, Hello World. Kelly will host a pre-screening of Around Lake Michigan followed by audience feedback. This is a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes of filmmaking and participate in a work in progress.

The evening begins with Eichberger-Kudlak’s dance debut, Glorious Dawn, choreographed to John Boswell’s remix of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos television series.

This is a free event but seating is limited. Call or text 231 882-0460, or email explore@ondesire.com to get on the guest list. Doors open at 6 pm and close at 7 pm.  Late arrivals will not be admitted.

This event is made possible with generous support from the Mills Community House, John Boswell, Northwest Michigan Folklife Center, Artist house, Inc. and Apple Computer, Inc.

Another working sketch posted, the transit from Sleeping Bear Point to North Manitou Island. The queasiness associated with exposing works in progress is becoming less of an issue. I think this sketch works and gets the idea across. There’s enough structure there to remind me where I want to go with it, and I’ve become pretty familiar with the raw content it’s extracted from. I usually fret about the soundtrack and creating a fortunate visual rhythm, but I am kinda proud that I didn’t get all precious. Cutting to music is fun stuff that I can breeze through later. So, enjoy.

I continue to slam together a rough cut for the November 28 test screening event in Benzonia, Michigan. Why have I scheduled a test screening?

Proof of concept

A little more than a month has passed since I ran Hello World up on Point Betsie beach after 300 miles of sailing and filmmaking Around Lake Michigan. An exhilarating first step, but the concept is not proven until a movie emerges. It’s not enough to know that something good is in there, the goodness must be teased out and shared.

Fresh

The sooner the better. Although I am currently operating out of the United Gardens penthouse in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, the wind and water of the Big Lake are still ghosting around my guts. I’ve got to build a first draft while the feeling is fresh.

Crew / Community

Back in Michigan, the project still has residual momentum. Sharing the results right away energizes my peeps, let’s the community see what’s afoot and offers an entry point for joining in. A film maker builds a crew – folks sign on because of their affinity for the film maker, the shared aesthetic of the work and the money. Even if money was not tight, the first two attractors are more my style. Solid rapport and an inspiring vision are more likely to yield awesome movies than big budgets. More likely to yield sustainable civilizations for that matter, not to mention repair and support the global life support system.

Sharing the project energizes the community and enhances the crew. I have a hunch that for open source projects, the crew shades into the audience. The distinction between collaborator and spectator is fuzzy. When their attention is engaged, folks become involved. That’s basic marketing, but what I am trying to articulate is a transition from consumer to producer, from fans to crew. Rather than engaging attention to sell a product (movie), I want to activate consciousness. The product is the audience themselves, attending to their own experience, their collective existence. Life is good after all, struggles and woe are needed for an interesting plot. Movies are stories, and stories are oblique references to the unspeakable. On November 28, I want to remind folks of their own story, that’s as good as it gets.

I shot around 20 hours of video in September. Is that enough to build a coherent feature length movie?

My original idea was to post video during the trip, but It turns out that sailing 20-30 miles, camping/packing, shooting and editing are four unique and demanding jobs. Usually only two of them (occasionally three) are doable in any given day. So…

A trip rhythm might flow like this – sail to an interview or location and shoot (day 1-2), rough cut a ten – twenty minute chapter, perhaps moving to a remote site to minimize distraction (day 3-4) and post to the blog as at the next decent cell connection, (day 5).  Repeat. If the weekly postings are consistent the chapters become episodes of a show. At the end of the trip the episodes might be reconfigured as a feature or perhaps a trilogy.

With more advanced packing techniques I may be able to reduce my cargo and the inherent complications of carrying gear for so many diverse activities. I can schedule destinations based on the rhythm and perhaps develop editing templates so chapters can be easily assembled. There’s lots of strategies for handling the unique workload of a windy filmmaker, the first step is feeling it – taking in the experience.

Then there’s the open source philosophy. Open source started with software development but has been migrating to other disciplines. It’s a cooperative ethic. My posted chapters are available under a Creative Commons license, which basically allows non commercial use with attribution, meaning folks can work with my video in their own projects as long as they are not making a profit and I get credit. This might queer my chances at distribution or getting into festivals, but I like the idea of providing public access to the film as it happens.

This is a lesson I took from working with Jeff Gibbs on his Planet project. We were in West Virginia interviewing a man whose land was being destroyed by a nearby mountaintop removal operation. I proposed to Jeff that we leave some footage behind so the local activists would have more resources for their struggle, but he declined – he needed the footage to remain under wraps until the entire project was completed, even if it took years. He didn’t want his footage getting used in some other project, he didn’t want to get his story scooped. His reasons made sense, but it meant that the local folks wouldn’t be any better off by our visit.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since. I recognize that by putting great gobs of my source material online I may be risking my feature project but if I find something that can advance global consciousness or energize regional activism then posting as I go makes sense.

As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t get to put much video up in transit, so the next best thing is to open up the editing process. This makes me feel a bit queasy though because I am showing rough cuts which are by nature – rough. I am making the first pass on my source material, grabbing interesting moments and slamming them into some kind of sketch. In a closed editing process would then drop that sketch into the archive for later review by the post production team. In an open process sketches go up on the web, warts and all, for public access. This is probably not really such a big deal – my public is less than 200-300 people presently. However, it’s likely to increase if I keep presenting interesting and valuable material. It’s both a marketing ploy and a proof of concept. I want to explore how an open source movie would actually work. What are the implications and can it be scaled up?

For me, this is what the entire project has been moving towards.

If you’ll be in or near Northern Michigan on November 28, come to the On Desire / Around Lake Michigan SPECIAL EVENT! Join the amazing folks who participated and supported the Around Lake Michigan, Search for Sustainable Civilizations project. We’ll be gathering at Benzie County’s most historic theatrical venue, TBA, (not Dan’s house). Spread the word – but space is limited! RSVP ASAP so to put you and your party on the guest list.

press release

Back in Brooklyn after a 13 hour drive with my brother Steve yesterday. We’ve got a date today to help a mutual friend with his apartment, then Steve will be heading back to Michigan on Wednesday. Meanwhile, wow! What’s it like to be back in the burghs of NYC after almost 5 months of water work and wilds? As we flowed through the three and four lane feed lines of Manhattan yesterday evening, I couldn’t help comparing the presence of the Big Lake with the approaching Big City. Caught in a cluster of steel quanta hurtling along animated asphalt, eerie lights barely penetrating the dark jumble and riot of overpowered civilization. Just a week or so prior, the shape of distant clouds determined the day and the tickle of wind on my cheek was significant. Awesome energies inherent in either scenario, and perhaps there is relationship, commonality. I am the bridge between them certainly and they are both wonders of the planet earth at this general locus of space time. Could there be more?

Hello World

Just before launching last month, I took some pictures of the waste generated from Hello World’s renovation. Getting her ready required power, raw material and room in the landfill. Around Lake Michigan is a search for sustainable civilizations that utilized unsustainable technologies. That’s seems contradictory, was ALM a sham?

Renovating this boat took resources, it had a footprint. Was it a large or a small footprint? Until the final budget is tallied, there’s no real data to examine. That should be ready in the next few days, but in the meantime, I’ll elaborate on the premise.

Big Bear points out that wind turbine and solar panel factories are powered by coal and nuclear plants. That’s a significant footprint. He also suggests that solar panels cannot break even, they can never generate enough electricity to pay for their cost. If one takes into account their carbon and toxic cost as well as their monetary price, he might just be right. I don’t know. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that there was such a thing as a profitable solar panel, that after 10 years of operation, it would pay it’s total cost (carbon, toxic, monetary) back twice. That would mean that the panel paid for itself and paid for a second panel. If that were possible, wouldn’t it make sense to make these panels? We would be investing energy to make more energy, rather than just burning it up.

Hello World is an experiment and a sort of calculation. I create a solar powered transportation platform (sailboat) with a finite investment of energy and materials while generating a byproduct of garbage and carbon. I then sail 300 miles making minimal additional impact, finding and documenting low impact or perhaps even sustainable technologies and strategies. What would have to happen for Around Lake Michigan to break even and pay back the inital investment? If I never sail Hello World again, if I never find anything of value or I never share the documentation, what did those 300 miles cost? How far would I have to sail to make a ‘profit’? What would I need to find?

Perhaps just the process of calculation and accountability is enough of a discovery. We tend to think that sailboats and solar panels are easy on the earth, same goes for organic food and compact florescent bulbs. We shirk our responsibility by embracing generalizations rather than actually finding out for ourselves. It’s the training we’ve been given since birth – buy stuff. That’s the plug we’ve got to pull.

Anyway, I’m going through the posts and fleshing them out. The video is fully digested and ready to edit and post. Can’t wait to see where it’s all gonna go!

Talked with two of my bio brothers yesterday about the trip.

Mike and I both have an affinity for the national parks and we discussed how I might craft a proposal based on ALM to increase access to parks without increasing impact. During the trip I made several overnight stops within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore where camping is prohibited. I even met up with a ranger south of Esch Road, the morning after. Being on Hello World meant I had the option to anchor and sleep on the boat, so it’s not technically camping. Also, I carried a composting toilet so I never needed facilities or dug catholes on park land. In additon, since I carried my own stove, I never built fires on the beach. Mike and I discussed how a constituency could be organized around sustainable camping and presented to park adminisitrators. Beach cat sailors, kayakers and canoers with proper equipment and training could perhaps get special permits for transient camping. This would increase visitation to the park, perhaps even enabling handicap and youth access to remote areas.

Steve and I talked about techniques for making the hulls leak resistant and how to amp up traffic to the ondesire.com project.

He suggested that hulls could be pressurized and/or vacuumed to determine their structural integrity. With a threaded connector that matched the drain hole, air could be pumped in to the hull and then soapy water spread around questionable areas – wherever bubbles appear the hulls are not air tight. Another approach would be to suck air out of the hulls and wait to see if the vacuum remains or how long it takes to equalize. A flexible seal around where the pylons meet the decks is important. This area likely opens and closes a little in heavy weather, when the hulls are subject to flexing and torque.

Of course, getting on the Hobie forums, explaining my recent experience and asking for advice about leaky hulls is a given. I might even drive some traffic to ondesire.com, as folks from the forums follow links from my posts. This sort of effort could be replicated on all sorts of forums – post production forums, vixia forums, underwater, etc. I’ve got plenty of questions to ask!

What I need is a few more bodies to help me do this outreach.

On the subject of collaboration, I definitely am looking forward to doing a review of products and services. I had some stellar gear and a little crap, and I feel compelled to provide detailed reports. This will likely be helpful in facilitating future collaborations, too!

Today I’d like to take exploded view pictures of everything before stowing it away for the winter.

Phase 1 of Around Lake Michigan is complete. The overview – 300 miles of sailing in about 30 days, 50+ hours of video recorded including travel and interviews, plenty of low/no impact camping, many new friends, 20,000 hits on the blog and no arrests, tickets or injuries.

It’s a few days since my return and I’m unpacking gear, sorting out the video and deciphering my notes. In the next couple of weeks I’ll review what I’ve accomplished and learned in detail. Specifically, I want to look at equipment – what worked, what didn’t and what was missing, such as a waterproof housing for the camera with fixed mounting points for hands free recording in heavy weather.

The overall approach to documenting is worth looking at too. I’ve an enhanced appreciation for the amount of effort needed – planning and scheduling a documentary film, shooting the film, sailing between 4 – 8 hours a day, packing and unpacking a boat and blogging. That’s a lot of stuff to do. It will be fun to discuss how this all flowed.

Packing and cargo strategies are significant – where does everything go, how quickly can the boat be packed and unpacked, do items need to be dry, how can packs be shifted to balance the boat while sailing? How would cargo be recovered if the boat flipped? I often spent hours getting ready to launch in the morning, is there any way to speed this up?.

Looking over the blog, it’s fairly skeletal. It’s a little tough to follow along, a chart showing my route would have been ideal. 90% of the video has yet to be posted.

So while the computer churns away, turning Vixia video into something I can edit, there’s plenty to think about.

Lake Michigan shares 1600 miles of shoreline with 4 states. The 2009 expedition of Around Lake Michigan explored about 300 miles or 1/5 of the perimeter in 3 weeks.

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1. Elberta Beach 09/05 – 09/06

2. South of Esch Road and Otter Creek 09/06 – 09/07

3 South of Sleeping Bear Point 09/07 – 09/08

4 Crescent City, North Manitou Island 09/08 – 09/10

5 Northport 09/10 – 09/11

6 West End Beach, Traverse City 09/11 – 09/17

7 Old Mission Peninsula 09/17 – 09/18

8 Barnes Park 09/18 – 09/19

9 Charlevoix 09/19 – 09/20

10 St James Bay, Beaver Island 09/20 – 9/23

11 Garden Island 9/23 – 9/24

12 UP 9/24 – 9/25

13 Dune Buggy Blowouts 9/25 – 9/26

14 Stonington Peninsula 9/26 – 9/30

15 South of Crescent City, North Manitou Island 9/30 – 10/1

16 Point Betsie (bike ride back to house) 10/1 – 10/2

It’s best to start the morning slowly after a 9 hour enchanted sail, to take a languid inventory of all of your parts, cozy warm in the sleeping bag. A trip down to the boat for toothbrush and iPhone charging gear, a sauntering walk in an open sunny field to brush up the teeth and make a nitrogen rich deposit, lazing in the tent with a light breakfast of cheese, raisins and sesame butter.

Atop the bluff, the wind felt stiff and westerly. I was packed and launched by 1:00 pm.

Looking back at North Manitou Island, north is to the left and south to the right. The bluff campsite above the landing is the green swath just left of south edge of the photo. Crescent City is the low lying area to the north.

After much tacking and fitful wind, I finally approached and cleared South Manitou at 5:00 pm. The wreck of the Francisco Morazan standing out in the sun was a temptation, I’d never been able to approach from the water, much less board her. That expedition would have meant another night camped and now that I was only 19 miles from my home turf I felt ready to finish, even if it meant sailing into the night again. Also, who could say what the wind and the weather would be tomorrow or the next day? Sans robot radio and cell phone connection, not me.

An ore boat on the horizon

My charts gave me a heading of 193 degrees, and a half an hour later I could see some smudges on the far southern horizon, my destination. The wind was blowing me home now to the south and then eventually providing real power from the east. As Point Betsie grew, I kept looking back at South Manitou to gauge how much I had traveled. The big bluffs were still towering over the water 10 miles away. I had never realized how easily one could spot the Manitou Islands from Point Betsie. No wonder John Barnes had lusted after them. He and Joe Sturges had done the trip on their 16 foot Hobie Cat almost 20 years ago, and everyone thought them crazy kids.

I decided to head to the western most edge of the point rather than follow the bearing offered by my chart. I hadn’t been adjusting for declination on the trip and I suspected that was why the chart offered the odd bearing off to the east. There’s a reason it’s called Point Betsie – the lighthouse is at the end of the point.

There was some question whether the light in the lighthouse was actually operational. It had been years since I’d been there at night and the complex had been mostly decommissioned and sold to private parties many years ago. I spotted the Frankfort Airport light, past the bluff and behind Crystal Lake about 10 miles. Crystal Lake! The Artist house and my Benzie rook was about as close as Point Betsie now, if Hello World could go airborne.

The west was gray and overcast so the last hour of the sun’s progress was hidden. There would likely be no sunset watchers at Point Betsie to greet me. I was judging how much light I had left by the official sunset time from windfinder.com – 7:44 pm. It was just about that time when the lighthouse began flashing at me! Yee hoo!

I really felt a homecoming now, like a mariner of old returning to home port. The wind was stronger and I even got a little song out of the rudders as I flashed past the lighthouse. The moon was like a streetlight, bright and white on the beach. As I turned into the beach, the wind just shut off. I made a couple of feeble passes back and forth before finally landing with a crunch. Made it!

I threw all the bags off and dragged up Hello World, using the baolong fenders under the hulls over as usual. It was a good hour before she was 6 feet from the surf, sitting prettily on her baolongs. I repacked her for the night removing only the bike, the prepared food bag and the drybag containing the precious cargo of project hard drive and computer. I hit the road and biked the 6 or so miles back to the house. I was in the tub soaking and sipping stew by 11:00.

The next morning I started catching up on the blog. My plan was to call Patrick as if from the boat and ask him to go to my house to “look for something”. Then I’d surprise him by being there. My brother Steve called to ask where I was, I made some misleading references to Wisconsin and so forth, telling him that my actual location was secret. Patrick called me back later and told me he’d drive to my house in 45 minutes and would call me from there.

After about an hour of waiting for Patrick I got a call from Justin at the Coast Guard. Did I have a boat called Hello Kitty at Point Betsie? There was a report it was half in the surf and he wanted to know if there were people that needed searching for. I assured him that no search was needed and that I’d be picking up the boat later that day. Half in the water? I checked windfinder and sure enough, the easterly wind had picked up over 30 mph overnight, possibly blowing Hello World off the beach. Shit, where was Patrick? Icalled his cell without getting through. I then started to worry that maybe something happened to him, he was running pretty late now.

I forgot about all my clever surprise tactics and just waited for him to drive up. When he did I jumped in and said “Let’s go to Point Betsie.” Off we went.

Sure enough Hello World was being sucked into the surf, her gear hanging off precariously. The baolongs were long gone, but amazingly, everything else was there. We threw off our shoes and socks and waded into the frigid surging waves to do battle. Struggling against the sucking surf, we tossed off all her baggage and began wrestling her up. I had left one of the hull drain cocks open and water and sand had packed itself into the hull, increasing her weight. Not good.

With a few clueless tourists looking on, we eventually muscled her up high and dry. All the baggage and sails went into Patrick’s Subaru. We dropped the mast and lashed it to the roof rack. Much lightened, we were able to drag her all the way to the dune grass. While we were there John Anderson from Detroit showed up. He had phoned his brother with the project URL and they had checked out ondesire.com, got my information and phoned the Coast Guard. He had even tried to pull her up with help from some bystanders. So not all tourists are clueless, my apologies!

John Anderson, Hero

Post Point Betsie recovery - Photo by Patrick Kelly

I put a request into Jim Barnes to borrow his van. He had a catering job the next day but said he was pretty much ready and would be happy to give us a hand. We drove to his house and the three of us jumped into Jim’s van (after unhooking the catering trailer) and sped out to the property where he keeps his Hobie 16 and trailer, with only an hour until dusk. We off-loaded his Hobie and dragged the trailer over to Point Betsie where I waylaid a sunset watcher from Springfield, Illinois to help drag Hello World to the road. The four of us together huffed and puffed her up to the trailer suffering no serious injuries in the process. I thanked our friend and sent him back to the water with plenty of time to see the sun sink. Getting her up on the trailer and strapped down in a jiffy, we were off again to my place to dump Hello World gently in the driveway. Another trip back to Jim’s property where we put his Hobie back on his trailer (it was dark now) and finally returning to his house for a beer and sandwiches. Phew! Patrick and I eventually returned to the house where I taught him to smoke sage out of the old flintlock pistol.

So Long Stonington Peninsula - Photo by Ritch Branstrom

There I was in Wisconsin waters, having just passed between Washington Island and the Door Peninsula. Twenty eight miles in 3 hours, a decent trek for one day. I’d left Ritch and Hello World’s caretakers, Bunny and Ed at noon near the limestone cliffs of the Stonington Peninsula and caught a brisk wind south. A delightful ride, save for my nearly frozen feet. Too much strolling around in the Little Bay Du Noc preparing to launch. Also, a bit of confusion along the way about which shimmering mirage was actually Washington Island. Too much western slide and I could sucked into the funnel of Green Bay.

I’d just tip toed over the shoal between Plum Island and a tiny mainland town not shown on my charts, when it happened. The wind kicked in with a magical tingle, the tiller gave a little jump and Hello World swept away from Wisconsin, back out into the open waters of Lake Michigan!

Not finding any stuck linkages in the rudders or snagged sail lines, I concluded that mystic powers were at work. Based on the SE course, the next landfall would be Point Betsie, 44 miles away! 3:00 pm was a little late to start Big Lake crossing, but the wind was a friendly NW ish at 8 knots (7 mph), the sun was shining, there was plenty of food and what the fuck.

It was a steady ride. An hour or two later I could discern a shimmering shadow on the horizon, a very prominent point or an island. Point Betsie could not be sticking out that much! Perhaps this was an enchanted island, impossible to chart and reachable only by a special boat such as the very one I was not quite sailing.

The shadow to the SE grew and darkened to a silhouette, while the sun sank towards the horizon. Time slowed and all events extended into infinity, the island (for certainly it was an island) forever getting closer, the sun ever dropping towards the waters edge… but neither did the island arrive nor the sun set. I successfully took pictures of this state of events, establishing hard evidence that reality is variable. Sailboats sailing themselves is one thing, but a deactivation of the spacetime continuum? C’mon!

Eventually the island got close enough to be identified – North Manitou! There were the great sandy bluffs north of Crescent City.  Still the sun sank ever closer to the horizon without touching it, let alone pass behind it. I could see the potholes and blowouts to the north of the island. I wondered how I could safely land without lights to guide me in, for North Manitou is a maintained in a state of wilderness, no houses and no fires. That’s when the full miracle manifested. I noticed a nearly full moon hanging over the island. When the sun passed, the moon would guide me in.

I gobbled some vegetarian heat fuel in preparation for the final approach – raisins, sesame butter and mild cheddar, all mixed up. Now that our destination was obvious, I was back in control. The wind was getting more intense now and I was on the wire, that is to say I was harnessed up and attached to the trapeze, counterbalancing the push of the wind by standing out away from the boat. A grand sight for any late season campers equipped with magnification – Hello World dashing toward them through the swells, sails ablaze with orange sunset sailed by a mad shaman, standing back and flipping perpetually overboard, sheet in one hand and tiller in the other. A grand site from my angle, no doubt!

I had switched on my little nav light for some pretense at legality, but it’s light blinded me and I missed Crescent City by 100 yards. We crashed up on wide sandy beach, clunking a few rocks at the very end. I jumped off, waded to the bow and immediately fell into the surf, the sheet line wrapped around my legs. It was now about 9 pm and I was chilled and shaky. Hello World was banging up and down in the surf, I had to get her unloaded and properly beached. I dragged packs off her in the moonlight, dropped sails and after an hour or so, had her safely up. I struggled into the camp pack and followed what I thought was a wash up the bluff, but turned out to be a trail to a idyllic campsite. Popped the tent, climbed in and fell into a coma.

To Wisconsin!

It’s 9:00 am at Rapid River, Michigan on the Stonington Penninsula. There’s a big wind ready to blow me south to Green Bay and beyond. Robot weather reports are out of commission as my little radio got wet on the trip across the Big Bay Du Noc. I’m relying on windfinder.com which predicted windspeeds falling to 17 mph by 10:00am. That’s my tentative launch time. Theoretically running with the wind matches boat speed to wind speed, so if I can handle the boat in this blow then I’ll make Wisconsin in an hour or two.

Launch canceled. Ritch and I drove up to the boat and it’s blowing 20 mph steady with gusts to 25-30. Chilly too. I’ll be here another day looks like. Good for a blog update!

Ritch and I discovered several additional artifacts of sustainable civilizations in our interviews.

I jettisoned the sludge around 9:00 am and headed southwest, with the intention of hyper jumping 40 miles across the UP and camping just past the Garden Peninsula on summer island. It was to be a short and very intense day.

The wind was blowing from the NE at a solid 15 – 20 mph and the swells were 10+ feet from trough to crest. The first 2 hours were some of the most exhilarating and awe inspiring I’ve ever lived.

For those of you who ski or snowboard, think about moguls. Approaching a field of moguls at speed, the mind slips into a space where evaluation and reaction blend together, we observe our decisions rather than make them. Now imagine the moguls moving, rising up and collapsing all around, rushing at you, pulling away.

A Hobie 16 has two basic controls, the tiller by which the rudders turn the boat and the sheet lines that control the tension on the main sail and the jib, which determines how fast the boat moves. When running with the wind, the jib may not be so important as it is often blocked by the main sail. On this day only the tiller (direction) and main sheet line (speed) are relevant.

Technical explanation starts…

Airplanes are sucked up into the air, not thrust up into it. Airfoils (wings) are so shaped that air traveling over the wing is moving faster than air traveling under the wing, lowering the air pressure at the top because the fast moving air thins out. Lower pressure (vacuum) at the top sucks the wing up.

A fabric sail can take a wing shaped profile too and that’s the most efficient kind of sailing, enabling boats to go faster than the wind. Instead of going up, the sailing ‘wing’ is pulled forward. When the wind is coming from directly behind the sailboat and the sheet is at right angles to the hull, the wing shape isn’t possible because the wind only has access to one side of the sail. In this situation the sail is pushed by the wind so the speed of the boat is about the same as the speed of the wind.

Loosening the sheet lines allows the sail to swing towards 90 degrees, decreasing speed. Tightening the sheet with a corresponding change of direction enables the wind to travel past both sides of the sail, increasing speed. Keep in mind that going slower doesn’t mean stopping. Running with a 15 mph wind, the boat will be traveling about 15 mph. The only way to apply brakes is to get out of the wind. Imagine a car that could only slow down only if it turned 180 degrees. Might be tough to u-turn if you are going 50 mph.

Wait a minute, 15 mph isn’t very fast! Going 15-20 mph on a 16 ft Hobie cat on big water feels like going 50 mph on a motorcycle or 90 mph in a car.  Screwing up in any case could be bad. There’s loose ropes to get tangled up in, big hunks of aluminum and fiberglass flying through the air if the hobie flips and of course plenty of water for drowning. Trust me, 15-20 mph on a Hobie cat is intense.

Technical explanation ends…

Esoteric explaination begins…

Sailing is a collaboration between the crew, the boat and the local manifestation of the universe. Think about this – the sailboat and sailor are a synergy, alone they can do nothing but together they form a unique entity, a sailing being. The sailor senses and acts with her entire body, the face and hands read the direction and speed of the invisible wind, the eyes take in sail telltales and shape, what the water is up to and where the hell she is going. The body feels the swell and drop of the boat on the water, the pitch and roll of the hulls. The ears hear how the boat frame is twisting, the song of the rudders, how the water is rushing past the hulls and the bluster of the air as it interacts with the boat. In intense wind complete body presence is required, an absolute activation of sense and ability. It’s an ecstatic state, an excellent terror.

Can a boat be conscious? I give my consciousness to the boat and integrate myself (submerge or release) into the aluminum, dacron and steel. I can think, but it’s SO not needed – and can even be a dangerous. I give my mentation to the synergy and it spreads out over the whole being, into every rope and wire. What I am has fuzzy edges, my edges don’t stop at my skin or even the hulls and sails. I am the surging water, the moving air, the warming sun or the ominous clouds – it’s all relevant. Effective action in the center of a synergy is thought free, I am not because I think, I am because I am. Once I let it out and open it up, consciousness is clearly everywhere. Getting in that space is to tap into true power.

Esoteric explaination ends…

Ok so, enough exposition, back to the story. I am on a 16 foot Hobie Cat with about 500 lbs of cargo. That’s the equivalent of 3 medium sized sailors, close to the maximum crew capacity for the Hobie 16. 330 lbs of that is dead weight, backpacks that need to be shifted and secured for proper balance. Live crew would supposedly go where they were told without pushing and prodding. I am wearing a harness hooked into a long wire attached to the mast, this let’s me shift my weight to where it’s needed to balance the boat. Left hand ready on the sheet line and right hand grabs the tiller. There’s a 15-20 mph wind behind the boat and 15 foot waves rising and collapsing all around, moving approximately in the same direction as the wind.

Here’s a taste of what inner dialog might sound like if there was time to have it. The following paragraph would take about 3 seconds in realtime and my reactions would be automatic, without deliberation.

We (me and Hello World) tighten the sheet (sheet in) and turn slightly to the left (port) to rush up the sloping back of a big wave, lining up with the wave with a slight starboard turn as we reach the tippy top.  As the wave crest white caps and curls, we teeter over the brink and hurtle down the wave’s face, dropping 15 feet over 20 feet of forward travel, immediately loosening the sheet (sheet out) and sliding over to port to keep the forward tips of our hulls from digging into the bottom of the wave’s trough. As the hulls glide into the trough we sheet in to accelerate up the next wave… but wait, the next wave is already collapsing, we’re in a wind shadow from the wave we just rode. Hard to port, sheet in and accelerate! Racing parallel to the waves, we find another wave to climb – faster! Don’t let a big wave hit us broadside and roll us over, here it comes – too late! Hard turn to starboard, ass to the wave and surf it for all it’s worth, sheet out! Turn to port, sheet in and up out of the new trough, quick!

Sheet in, sheet out, weave back and forth, climb and surf – for two hours! I felt fluid, automatic, intuitive. All the endless hours as a kid on the Hobie 14 came back to me, the tai chi like slow motion sailing in hardly a puff of wind, the hold on for dear life crazy ass blowing shouting for survival. All that time I was just playing around, thrills and fun – of no consequence, no importance… or so I thought. That experience came bubbling up to serve me in the moment. I didn’t know I knew how to sail like that. It was sublime.

After two hours the wind let up a bit and I could come off of DEFCON 5 – high alert. Though it never felt like stress or unpleasant, just scary and wonderful.

With all this heavy manuevering, Zilliax’s bike began to eat through it’s ropes. One bungie stood between me and total disaster, I had to stop for an emergency fix.  To have a frigging bicycle dragging under the boat in these conditions would be unthinkable and horrific. So it was that I crash landed on the next available spit of land. Coming in at a moderately high speed, we hit the shallow stony bottom and skidded over 50 feet with much crunching and grinding. I jumped off and secured the bike while Hello World was rocked back and forth on it’s hard perch. Getting her out of the shallows was an epic feat, but at last we were back in open water.

I knew that Summer Island was just beyond the last point on the Garden Peninsula, but point after point passed without any sign of an island. After another hour or so of hard sailing, I started thinking about taking a break. To the north, a tempting blowout beckoned. I decided to turn right and give it a rest…

1:00 pm when we landed, 4 hours total transit time, with an hour spent fixing bike ropes and sidetracking to a rest stop. 40 miles in an intense 3 hours. A personal, phew, record.

I saw the Upper Penninsula of Michigan pretty quick but my vector brought the coast up gradually. As the shore came into view, I could not see the rosy beige colors of friendly quartz sand beaches, but rather blue water breaking on gray shelves of stone. Not ideal for landing, but the wind was moderate. Simultaneously drawing closer and moving up the coast, the gray broke suddenly and familiar dunes and blowouts appeared. I swooped in for a landing, avoiding a cabin further north. Just as I landed I saw a flash of blue through the trees to the south – another cottage? I’d have to check this out before making camp.

Hello World was awash in thick algae as I tugged her up. It was a sort of organic sludge that I’d never seen before. I quickly bopped down the beach to check out that blue flash and found tire tracks in the sand heading that way. Turned out to be a chemical toilet at a turnaround with fire pits. I’d stumbled upon a public access – and not a soul in sight. Workable.

I trudged back to the boat and warily observed the muck, it was mostly green so how bad could that be? I dropped sail and made camp, deciding to sleep on the boat in case there was any sudden activity or vehicles from the public access. I would use the tarp rather than the tent to expedite my morning departure. I pumped the muck water and made stew which turned out to be pretty yummy.

Back in the woods behind the dunes there were signs that the property was being carved up for sale. Why does everything have to be for sale?

Seemed like I’d stayed for days and days, but it was only four days. Easy to get in the groove on Beaver with so many friendly folks around.  I’m off to pack the boat and launch. With luck, Naubenway today.

I bought gear and parts at Power Hardware – washers to make a new pulley to replace the one I lost on the main sheet traveler, a new compass, anchor bag… so many things vanish on the water, securing gear is an important discipline that comes from hard experience. The list of things lost is long. Not to mention things ruined – iPhone from trusting untested equipment. I mostly mourn the lost things because now they are in the lake where they just don’t belong, it’s a double badness, I loose useful stuff and the lake accumulates more crap.

I also sent rent for my Brooklyn crib to Phil Charles in Brooklyn. The post office lady gave me a free postage paid envelope ’cause I only had my ATM card and there was a minimum $10 charge. Is this a groovy place or what?

I didn’t make it off Beaver until 5:00 pm, so I popped over to Garden Island and camped, ready for an early morning depature between Whisky and Squaw Islands.

Monday morning, while waiting to interview Dick Burris the stonemason,  I chatted with Doug Tilley, manager at the CMU research station over breakfast at the Dalwhinnie Bakery. Dick and I connected later, two interviews in one day! We ended up riding out to the Award winning Transfer Station for yet another interview and then taking a mask and snorkle excursion to the sunken car graveyard in Beaver Bay. “They just dragged them out on the ice and waited for them to fall through”, says Dick.

Dick decided to stay in the Rubber Duck  while I dove. At 10-12 feet of depth, there were about 20 ancient-ish autos in various states of decay – even one with wooden spokes on the wheels! I spotted what appeared to be a lead acid battery at 10 feet of depth. I suggested to Dick that it shouldn’t be down there and he said let’s get it. After struggling to secure a rope to it, Dick tied me a decent slip knot and I got it around the bulky zebra muscle encrusted monster, slashing myself in three places. We hauled it up and brought it back – environmental remediation Kelly and Burris style.

I made the mistake of taking my new iPhone down in it’s little waterproof bag, supposedly rated for 10 feet underwater. I shot pictures and movies, but a few tiny drops of water inside the bag afterwards boded poorly – the iPhone died about 20 minutes after returning to the dock. Fortunately I had kept my older model and was able to activate it that evening. Pictures and local blog postings – gone. Reliable GPS – gone.

It’s all good. the next day Dick and I went back out with his underwater ready Sony camera and dove an honest to goodness shipwreck from the 1800s and returned to the car graveyard.

There are disasters, problems and blessings. Any life worth living is an admixture of these. So much life in a couple of days.

First my current position. At a power enabled table in Danny Donegals Pub, Beaver Island, sipping a Oberon Beaver style, with a slice of orange. Short on paper money I am trying to stretch my $10 minimum so I can sit here for a couple of hours to charge batteries and copy memory cards. Started with an O’Hara’s Stout so I really don’t need another beer, but it’s a sacrifice I’ve got to make for the good of the project. Pam the bartender has got to be here until midnight so I coaxed her to switch off the hokey dance contest on TV and put on some music she likes – Tom Petty. She’s cleaning up and I’m making this movie.

I busted out of the anchor at Charlevoix at 8:30 am. The skipper of Pool Party yelled out as I passed,

“Where ya headed?”

“The U… P…” I shouted back.

He put his hand to his ear and I shouted again, but then one of his fishing lines tugged and he was no longer interested in my answer. The reason he didn’t hear me was because my answer was silly, I wasn’t headed for the the UP that morning, I was going for Beaver Island. I left him and grumbling cement plant behind me. It’s owned by the Brazilians I’ve since found out.

A cement plant that looks and sounds like what I imagine a nuclear reactor would.

Looking back at the compass, I noticed the needle had fallen off it’s pivot and the entire bezel was gone. This is the same bezel that had been frozen in place at the start of the trip. It would have taken some serious force to pop that bezel off, so there must have been a minor explosion from internal pressure, perhaps due to the dramatic temperature changes – from this morning’s 40 degree chill to the warmth of direct sunlight. There was a strong chemical smell from whatever liquid had been in there. I stuffed the remains into the pack. I’d have to rely on the new GPS enabled iPhone now.

Silva compass features handy exploding bezel

I skated north on southish winds for the better part of the day, coming in site of Beaver and watching her resolve from dark blobs into an actual island. The wind reports called for the blow to fade around 1:00 pm, so rather than take a lazy northerly course straight to the island, I decided to make faster vectors to the NE and NW to get close quickly. If I could get within a couple of miles of the island before the wind puttered out, I was probably good.

I made it to the southern tip and proceeded up the east coast by about 2:00 pm. The wind was indeed changing but I was within 1000 ft of shore, so I decided to anchor and take a swim. It was a perfect sandy bottom at about 30 feet of depth. The sun was shining and the water brisk, lovely. There were a couple of cottages visible on the beach with long stretches of sand between them. Why not land and reconnoiter?

The shore was unusual – polished gravel shoals or jettys running parallel to shore, sheltering deeper pools that lapped sandy beaches. The ducks and gulls watched with increasing annoyance as I approached their spots.

I pulled up Hello World and explored.  There were many signs of thriving wildlife and bright orange ribbons tied to trees as if marking a trail – the juxtaposition was kinda depressing.  I followed the ribbons and came to Donna’s Place, an empty cottage often rented, judging by the sign on the door. I headed back to the boat and made ready to launch, firing up the poopinator and debating my next move. Farther north was St James Bay and likely a decent cell signal. That seemed the best course of action.

I pushed off and moved north on an easy south wind. Sure enough, a big cell tower showed up just before St James Bay. I surprised Gretchen and then my parents by calling and reporting my location. I could imagine Gretchen telling her husband James – “Dan Kelly’s on Beaver Island!” This is the same James who bet me a dollar I couldn’t start an engine with the power of my mind. He also scared the dickens out of my dad by ranting on about how dangerous the big lake was just before I launched. Of course it’s dangerous, but my dad is already shitting bricks, he doesn’t need the husband of my producer getting him even more wound up. Actually, maybe it was good for him. It certainly made for a sweet moment – lightly tossing off my arrival at Beaver to my parents and thinking about how that might further open James to the possibilities of the universe. Gotta pay him back for all the awesome saunas he hosts!

At around 5:00pm I nosed into the bay and found the public beach just where Gretchen said it would be. My approach felt like some kind of necromancy, a perfect curving course right up to the beach that required no tacking. I was greeted by Jim, local grocery store owner. We chatted for a bit and he handed me a beer. My kind of place, Beaver Island. I asked the locals about camping under Hello World. “It’s probably illegal but no one will bother you,” was the response. Awesome.

Public beach on Beaver Island

That evening I called Gretchen’s people to schedule interviews. I ate a greasy double dinner at the Shamrock and told the Hungarian waitress that I loved her – in her native tongue. I was just kidding, I didn’t really love her but that’s the only phrase my grandmother was able to pass on to me. She was startled, the waitress that is. Afterwards we both fell back into our respective roles and nothing much else happened. I had friendly conversations with my table neighbors, charged batteries and copied files.

My iPhone had a mishap, so I am recalling events from a future perspective, having lost several posts in process. Having left Barnes Park around 10:30 am with it’s sparkling toilets, I made the dash for the end of Grand Traverse Bay and then with a little luck – Beaver Island. I got an encouraging start, then stalled out coming up to Fisherman’s Island Park. The wind was so lame I started for shore, then got encouraged by robot reports of decent south wind of 6 knots or so off Traverse light. I persisted and sure enough got a good few miles under me, getting within site of the cement plant in Charlevoix. It was big and slow to pass by, in hindsight a dark omen. With the wind blowing and my new night lights installed, I thought I could make Beaver even if I sailed into the evening hours. The forecasts were for a wind shift but then steady strong breezes that I could ride north – west or east, I can’t remember.

I started toward Beaver, putting the cement plant on my stern. It dwindled over the next few hours and off in the distance I could make out the weird shimmering phantasms that islands manifest when viewed from 15 miles away. I could see Beaver and so could use both the compass and a visual fix to navigate. Airplanes from Charlevoix flew back and forth on the Beaver run every hour or so, helping to point the way. Then 5 miles or so from Charlevoix, the wind shift began to feel more and more like wind dying. At about 7:30 pm I made the call, turn back, turn back! Becalmed in shipping lanes, with a frost advisory – not a good situation. I spun around and watched the sun drop for another hour as I fitfully creeped back toward that awful cement plant.

A rip roaring sunset with pink beams streaking across the dome of the sky. Hello World going slower, slower… stopped. It’s dusk and I’m paddling for some friendly looking dunes to the west of town about 2-3 miles away. After some confusion, my iPhone charts tell the story, the cement plant is the closest landfall. Now the ominous factor increases – didn’t Jeff mention that there was a nuclear plant up around these parts? Is that actually a nuclear power plant, are those domes containment vessels? Wouldn’t a nuclear power plant look more slick? What is homeland security going to think about a radical with an FBI record paddling a backpack ladened sailboat up to a nuclear power plant in the dead of night?

A boat approaches, cautiously. They come around in a long slow parabola, obviously casing me. Probably doing a night vision scan for weapons of mass destruction, expecting twin hulls filled with thermite or rocket launchers disguised as tripods. Whoever they are I feel unreasonably embarrassed to be naked, windless. A rakish sailboat shorn of all grace and speed, having no good reason to be out fumbling around in the deepening twilight. No I don’t want a tow, probably.

Off my stern, still a good 100 feet away, the pilot leans away from the wheel and asks,

“All good?”

Relieved and slightly sheepish I reply,

“Yeah, just waiting for some wind.”

No more questions or offers of help, he just motors off, as politely as he approached. He didn’t offer a tow. Stubborn and totally screwed to the last, that’s me.

Around 9:30 pm, a wind arrives, bringing me in, drawing me towards – the ominous complex. My destiny is to sleep next to this mighty grumbling monster, whatever it is. I drive in towards the lights of town tacking experimentally to see if I can somehow make those dunes. Nope, there’s no escape. On the last tack, I’m driving in to heaven knows what, a couple hundred yards or so from concrete towers and domes. Suddenly bumping on shallow rocks, I dive for the rudder release, the boat slews around while I’m busy and then there are huge rocks, dead ahead. I spin the boat around and away from collision more by force of will than anything, and we run gently aground. It’s not a beach, just big rocks guarding a marsh. A condo or commercial building with a few lit windows broods over the scene. The only option is to anchor and get into my sleeping bags and quick, it’s damn cold. I’ll never get the wetsuit off in time to pee, so I just let go right there. Baptism. I vow to at rinse it and me before getting into dry cloths. I jump off and drag the boat into deeper waters for anchor. The water feels toasty, a bad sign. The temperature of my extremities must be below the water temperature, 65F or so? Gotta move quick and get warm. Wish I had read Gretchen’s post about this very topic instead of just scanning it. What follows is a series of tedious but essential boat shut down proceedures, executed mostly in the dark and talking to myself encouragingly the whole time.

Finally – sails down and stowed and me on up the trampoline rinsed, dressed and ready to shut down. I get in the sleeping bags slightly damp from yesterdays dew and strip off my socks and bottoms. I have the over confident notion that I’ll keep them in the bag and dry them with my body heat, but nix that after my stone frozen feet make it clear that I’ve got to focus all my body heat on me. I close the bags’ drawskins until there’s only a snorkle opening for oxygen. It’s 11:00 pm. I drift off to the hum of american industry.

The candle is optimally situated. The bowl of quinoa porridge with collard greens and button mushrooms steams in the foreground, illuminated enough so that one may design a fortunate arrangement of tasty morsels on one’s spoon. In the background, in fact wrapped around and above the cozy bowl of porridge – everywhere the bowl is not – stars. I am eating at the edge of the cosmos tonight.

Polite waves lap at the sand not more than 4 feet from my booties. It’s 10:10 or rather 22:10, 2:10 utc.

My neighbors at Barnes Park campground are snug in their pop up campers or tents, each with thier own version of Hello World parked nearby. Are we sharing the same night, or am I alone in the theater of stars, gateway to the universe?

Before bed, I visit the glistening facilities at the campground. Is this cheating?

Brisk north wind of 15 knots with gusts up to 25! Then there were the waves, crest to trough 4-5 ft at times. Sail up and over, big splash, do it again. After about 14 miles of tacking nw and ne to move 9 miles north, I was ready for a break and a rope check.

After running long vectors across the entire bay, I moved close to the east shore. The low dunes I’d spotted couldn’t be identified with the iPhone, but they looked remote and cottage free. As I approached I picked out sunbathers. A friendly chap named Gerry helped pull up the cat and informed me that there was a campsite above the beach, $25 for powered sites or $21 for unpowered. So much for remote.

A staff member at Barnes, Dillon, later told me I could stay on the beach as long as I wanted. I’ve decided to wait for the wind to slow and change direction from north to south as forecast. Plenty of nice folks here. Mark and Kathy of Onekema left me a care package.

Harvesting the sun to charge batteries and catch up on blogging.

Draining the hulls - a lot of water came out, maybe that's why the boat seemed sluggish in the big wind.

My bare back is covered with fruit flies, a delicious tingle like static electricity.

That’s this mornings update from the nitrogen accumulator, otherwise known as the dungomatic, TM. I’d anchored on a pretty wild beach and so was amazed to see them (feel them) in such profusion, but of course they have a life beyond humans. Aside from the surreal Groucho quip, this was my first positive fruit fly association. Another reason to get with nature – erotic encounters with wildlife.

Anchored on Old Mission Peninsula western edge, and a special moment on the dungomatic.

After clawing my way out of Grand Traverse Bay for the better part of the afternoon, I decided to turn right and check out the tip of Old Mission Penninsula for overnight potential. It looked quite picturesque with seagulls and herons decorating verdant shoals and a white lighthouse. These are of course hints about the nature of the place as regards to sailboats, the tip of Old Mission is quite shallow and rocky. I swooped around the eastern shoal and ventured into a bay that only waterbirds and catamarans dare to enter. I bumped and clunked to the beach and landed. I didn’t much like vibe I got from the odd ducks (people)I saw pacing the beach, nor was the locale remote enough for camping. After consulting my iphone charts, (the new iphone with working GPS, yeah!), I decided to scrape and squeal back out and reconnoiter the western edge of the peninsula. I checked the western shoals on the way out, but their stony and flora entangled flanks were not ideal for pulling up a cat, though the birds seemed to dig them. Rounding them I found a very wild shore with a little island nearby, an appealing setup. It was far too shallow to land Hello World, so I opted to anchor and sleep on the trampoline, a first.

Looking north from Old Mission anchorage

The bustling urban mileau fades ever so slowly into a haze of jet exhaust and wood smoke. Bows angling toward the arctic, I slither forward on an occassional puff of wind. 30+ miles before I can clear Grand Traverse Bay, with a bit more breeze I might make it before dark.

I’ve been at Jeff’s the first and last two nights with a visit to Crystal Lake in between to see the boy. When I wasn’t tuning the travel kit I was asking folks if they’d ever seen any sustainable civilizations. Busy 5 days.

I’ve got Steve Zilliax’s bike with me on the off chance I get to Canada and can give it back. It’s slung a little close to the waterline but I’ve since had a brainstorm for raising it up. I must be getting close to Hello World’s max cargo capacity.

Just before I left I visited a cwazy mofo whose refurbing a big cat (40ft?) for ocean travel, powered by kite. Seems like a lot of boat for one dude, he could have a rack of bikes!

I’d like to say that it was all part of the master plan, so maybe I will. I arrived in Traverse City just in time for the Maritime Heritage Alliance’s Michigan Schooner Festival, a (near) zero waste event. Around and about the festival I had some intriguing conversations. Future artifacts, predictions and portents.

Pete Bentley and Captain Tom Kelly of the Schoolship Inland Seas.

Ray Minervini and the Grand Traverse Commons

Caught some excellent interviews at the Schooner Festival yesterday with Tom Kelly, Master of the Inland Seas, Ray Minervinni of Grand Traverse Commons, Andy Gale from Bay Area Recycling for Charities and Tanya and Chris from Homegrown.

Hello World at anchor with majestic schooners in the background. Camera pulls back...

... and she's surrounded by smokers (motorboats). This shot is all about the ironic contrast between sail and smoke, please ignore the sunbathers - they have nothing to do with this shot... though perhaps one might find a striking resonance between svelte female anatomy and the sleek geometry of Hello World, or notice how nicely these women would both fit on the trampoline. Other than that, lounging bikini clad hotties are not relevant to this purely documentary moment illustrating an ironic contrast between a small footprint approach and... oh, whatever.

I borrowed Jeff’s car and returned to Crystal Lake last night for some quality time with Mr Boy and to pick up a few items. Heading back to Hello World tonight. Look for a Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning departure from Traverse City.

At the home of Jeff Gibbs, friend and advisor. Mentor even, feisty ally and occasional pain in the ass. He’s offering me a base of operations for reorganization and resupply here in Traverse City.

I’m off to the Schooner Festival to see if there is something fragment of the SC there. More soon!

Stuck, stuck, stuck this morning from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. When will I learn to turn on the radio?

Poised to enter Grand Traverse Bay after an excellent night under the clay cliffs of Northport’s big lake shores, I packed and launched. Nevermind that there was hardly a puff of wind – I had a schedule to keep. Kicking back on the trampoline, I lollygagged, loafed and waited for the wind to stir. After a couple of hours creeping north and getting some annoying texts from Jeff Gibbs in Traverse City such as…

“Are u really going to make it today?”

and

“From the tip of the leelanau to tc is equal to two thirds or more of the distance you’ve already sailed in six days?”

I tuned into the NOAA report and heard that there were east winds of 6 knots at Traverse light, just a couple miles north of my dead calm position. So where was MY wind? I began to paddle out of the land shadow…

Riding a northeast wind past Cat head Point, I passed Traverse light and turned south.  The rest of the afternoon and the better part of the evening was spent running with the wind, surfing.

I fired an update to Jeff predicting a landing at 8:00 pm, then at 7:00 pm moved my ETA to 9:00 pm. My actual arrival turned out to be 10:00 pm. Approaching Traverse City took forever. At sunset I still couldn’t see any landmarks, buildings even lights – just low hills funneling into haze. All the while surfing like crazy, bob sledding down trenches and half pipes of water. Finally lights appeared, but to my old flatscreen eyes they were just sodium colored star bursts in patterns that may or may not have suggested familiar features. The starbursts resolved slowly with much tacking to and fro, standing rigging clanging in the now fitful wind. To anyone watching us from shore, Hello World and I must have seemed dark specter slightly out of control in the blustery twilight.

Using the giant candy cane / fake lighthouse / massive power tower near where I believed to be second street, I landed tentatively just west of West End Beach and walked Hello World to where I saw some other boats anchored. I perched her on the beach and ran in check the proximity of the volleyball courts. I had hit it pretty nearly. I called Jeff and asked him to come for me in 30 minutes, while I offloaded and set an anchor. Took me more like 45 minutes but Jeff was a sport about it all, eventhough I had my wires crossed as to where I would meet him. We finally found each other and went back to his place for an epic bowl of pasta and sauce.

From 10:00 am – 10:00 pm, a trip and personal record of 33.95 miles.

This morning I borrowed his bike to check out the boat and scarf a breakfast burrito from the local organic food joint, just across the street from West End Beach!

It was late in the day when we approached Northport’s clay cliffs, reminiscent of crumbling citadels. Several spots looked agreeable and unpopulated from the water, but I decided to chase down a couple walking north along the beach and get the skinny. We had to tack repeatedly to catch up to them.

“Ok to camp around here?”, I shouted, after a brief introduction.

“Sure, there’s nice sand that way,” the fellow replied, pointing south.

Hello World and I spun around and found a lovely little roost, just before sunset.

looking east

looking west

Some images are beyond documentation. A tent glowing with a single candle under a star scattered sky. Goodnight from Northport, Michigan.

After all of Kai’s stories about crossing the Pacific in Desire and almost being run over by robot controlled cruise ships, I finally got a taste. Having caught a lovely wind after leaving North Manitou Island, I was making deligtful progress east-ish towards Northport. The sun was shining and all was right with the world… except for that low throbbing. Must be a freighter around somewhere. Far to the north I could see a motorboat or maybe a sailboat cruising, but then something clicked. Low throbbing of big engines, only one boat in sight – what is that boat?

My neighbor to the north, where's that low throbbing coming from?

I wondered how I might get a magnified view and then I remembered the Vixia’s digital zoom. I had stumbled upon it while playfully spying on my neighbors at Crescent City, thinking they might get naked and go swimming. I grabbed the Vixia, activated the digital zoom and pointed it at my new neighbor. There, glowing in the afternoon sun was the giant bow of a freighter. I couldn’t see the port or starboard side of the ship, just this massive gleaming bow that appeared to be several stories high.

Thinking to myself, “If all I can see it the front of the ship and I can’t see either side at all, that means… it’s heading right at me.”

Now this ship is still pretty far away… but it’s got these throbbing monster motors, and I am maintaining a course close to the wind, not moving very fast. I dropped off my course and put on some speed in an attempt to get past this behemoth.  She came on pretty quick, growing in size at a surprising rate. Eventually, I began to see a sliver of her port side which meant I was out of her path. These big boats are supposed to generate an impressive wake so I kept my speed up. When she finally passed, she wasn’t quite so huge – about 300 feet – but big enough.

Pictures from my camera are a little misleading – the first shot illustrates how close she was when she passed and the second shows our wake crossing her course.

This is how close she actually was. Check out the big water she is making in front and behind.

Notice our 'tire tracks' crossing her course... yikes!

Now, this wasn’t exactly a near miss, right? IMHO, anything closer would have been a near disaster. I had no indication that human beings were running the show – as she passed I honked my horn at her and waved – without response. Maybe they were just unfriendly or were too busy to acknowledge me. Worst case scenario – the crew was playing cards down in the galley and had the whole thing on autopilot, I might have been too small to set off a proximity alarm. What’s are the odds of two boats coming even this close in the middle of the big lake? I think Kai would have called it near miss… fun!

Decided to check out of the Crescent City condo and point the bows at Traverse City. A great start at 10:00, enjoying a steady push north from a south breeze.

Pushed to the north end of North Manitou Island ...

... while eating wild Crescent City apples.

Rounded the north end of the island too close to shore and got caught in dead air, likely a wind shadow from the island. Stuck there for hours, by 2:00 I’d decided it was fate, I had to stay another day.

I anchored and took a swim. Popping out the weather radio, I heard all about the steady 6 knot wind running either north or southwest on northern Lake Michigan. NOAA reports are a little confusing. Maybe it was southwest turning to north in the afternoon. I raised anchor and pushed Hello World to the east coast of the island to grab the wind. It was in fact from the northeast.

So aloha my lover, sister, mother North Manitou. 23 miles to landfall in Cathead point or Grand Traverse Bay. My ideal course heading is approximately 84 degrees or just slightly north of due east, (90 degrees). I am able to hold 110 – 130, so I’ll be hitting land to the south of my goal – Northport with luck but likely Leland. I trust whoever that beach belongs to will be down with me camping there.

North Manitou Island, about 15 miles away

Moving out towards the Manitou Islands from the mainland felt wonderful. These islands have much resonance for me and approaching them while in synchromesh with the wind and a sailboat made me giddy. Long tacks to the NE and NW were needed, but nothing to dramatic. On one of the final NW vectors, I spotted the defunct lighthouse, a familiar site for campers on Manitou Island Transit ferry. It’s sticks up out of nowhere, surrounded by water. If it weren’t so late in the day I would have landed and claimed her for Ladonia.

As we approached, the wind picked up and I had to get on the wire, for the first time loaded with gear! This is Hobie speak for putting on the harness so I can hook into the trapeze wire connected to the mast. This allows me to stand on the very edge of the trampoline and project my body out away from the boat, in order to counter balance wind force and keep Hello World from flipping over. How exquisite to be hanging over the water, skipping into paradise on a sunny day.

look ma, no hands!

Me and North Manitou

blogging beauty

dippin'

Here’s where i tack away from the mainland and run for the island.

Your guide, Dan Kelly

My own little spot of heaven, just south of Sleeping Bear Point. All sorts of interesting things to see just over these low dunes, but no time. Gotta move on, North Manitou Island awaits.

Looking south towards the high dunes

Looking north towards Port Oneida and Glen Arbor ...

... as the dunes begin their rise back to the south

Morning clutter takes some time to pack

Stopped for the night south of Sleeping Bear Dunes Point. Here’s the approach as the sun was setting. The peak at the left of the shot (north)  is about 400 ft high. I beached Hello World even farther to the north where the dune sloped down to about 50 ft. That boat in the shot was still anchored there the next morning.

Here’s the namesake of the entire Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. These images hardly do the dunes justice, they’re huge and… sandy.

Late start today 2 hours and then I’ll check in.

After putting a good amount of distance between me and the starter fluid people, I blew off the idea of reaching Otter Creek. It was surely not far away, but it was getting late and I was ready to stop. I hauled her up on the beach and pitched my tent on the trampoline to pacify any passing rangers.

Up in the morning around 8:00 am, who happens by but Ranger Jim. I greet him and he asks if I know it was it was illegal to camp. I told him I was on my way to North Manitou, that I would have anchored had I not arrived very late, that I had a composting toilet and that the North Manitou ranger told me that it was ok to pull up a boat on the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and camp as long as I was 150 ft from the water, but I figured sleeping on my boat would do less damage than trying to wade into the dune grass in the pitch dark. He replied that the 150 foot rule applied only  to the islands, not to the mainland. He said he was going to give me a break because I was on a boat, but that the other campers were going to get tickets. I thanked him and immediately ratted out the arsonists to the south, he told me he had found their empty cans of starter fluid. We parted on friendly terms.

South of Otter Creek, looking south towards Platte River	My first stew, when I discovered that grain alcohol isn't the ideal fuel.
Looking north towards Otter Creek	The tent. Housekeeping on the Macbook Pro inside while charging batteries with the Brunton Solaris outside.

x
Why do I pump? First morning on the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, lazing in the sun and expounding on earning water. I am made of water, sipping from the shores of a fresh water sea, feeling grateful.

I recorded an iPhone audio snippet of my moolit sail to Otter Creek.

The slight wind continued for what seemed hours. In the dark, I passed chatty smokers anchored by what I guessed to be Platte River. Later and far ahead, a bonfire surged in brightness almost rhythmically. My destination was supposed to be a sort of Benzie ‘Burning Man’ near Otter Creek and I figured that must be it. After a long approach, I was disappointed to find two idiots squirting their campfire with lighter fluid – for fun. I felt as if I was participating in a post apocalyptic moment, and perhaps my passing sobered them – beyond their fire dazzled eyes, a ghost ship near enough to touch and pale with moonlight, passes in utter silence. Urgent whispered voices…

“There’s a sailboat there.”
“What?”
“There’s a sailboat right there”.
“Whoa.”

Maybe their little moment of squandering petroleum was trumped, their boredom pierced and shredded finally by the sublime. Hello World and I certainly felt like a manifestation of the Mystery that night.

Better figure out which one is proper, wouldn’t want to give the impression I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s all about the lingo.

So here we are heading north in the zig zaggy pattern sailors call tacking. I can see Point Betsie and another sailboat with a big spinnaker. I’m about to tack and head right towards the lighthouse.

It’s 4:57 UTC-4 (EST) and it couldn’t be more beautiful out here in the water wilderness. Nibbling on celery and squashed blueberries whilst blogging and steering with my feet. This is one happy boat.

The gps on my 2g iPhone is a little confused and the cost of repair is about the price of a new 3gs. Hmm. Anyway the fabulous charting software provided by my fabulous brother shows my position as somewhere near the south shore of Crystal Lake. My actual position is about 4 miles from Point Betsie NNE, (45 degrees). I’m heading almost due north now, and will tack after this sentence.
Bearing east more or less after a jibe and a pee. I mention peeing only because my new toasty wet suit is a bit tricky to slide get out of, so it’s kind of a major accomplishment.

I’m in the catbird seat now. Heading is amost due east, I’ll pass on by Point Betsie and claw my way right up to tonight’s camp, Otter Creek, where the dang pagans will be throwing a soirée. 6:04 pm EST (UTC-4.)

That’s the lighthouse at PB and below is what artist’s at the Franklin Mint can use for designing the project’s commemorative coin.

Here’s an excerpt with Larry Kinney discussing Harmony Home Construction, recorded on Elberta Beach, a few hours before I launched. Having Larry’s energy around was a huge gift, but to pull off an interview with him too? Bonus!

Elberta Beach, the most dazzling jewel in Benzie County’s diadem of wilderness destinations. Granted there are fools who occasionally drive their vehicles on the beach and yes, jetskis buzz by once in awhile. In spite of these insults – glory, beauty, bliss.

Someday even these abuses will end – either by the efforts of the resourceful Elberta Parks and Recreation committee or the utter collapse of civilization. In the meantime, Elberta beach with it’s commanding dunes remains a wide swath of publicly accessible wilds, uncluttered by condo or cottage, forgotten by industry, treated mostly with love and respect by those who visit.

The Village of Elberta begins to hitch it’s destiny to this star with the help of the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy and the owner of the Elberta dunes – the aptly named Sand Products Corporation. The Land Conservancy has almost completed negotiations to protect of a chunk of the dune property and the visionary executives of Sand Products Corporation have already participated in a similar project in Manistee. What a boon for the backwater little town long ago deserted by the masters of capital, it’s residents the vested stewards of this joy magnet, gatekeepers to one of the most vital shorelines in Michigan.

My favorite interface to the Big Lake, Elberta Beach. Gretchen and I both agreed that it was the ideal launch point. Finally after the travail of Betsie Bay, triumph.

JB on the barbie	Over here you fool!	beach that cat
Future Sailors of America
Bailey and Lauren with Milee under wraps	Big old moon

James Barnes (of portage fame), Heidi Mahler and her brother Will Church were all celebrating birthdays that evening, we just grafted the launch onto this gathering. Larry, Patrick and I camped out on the beach under the light of a big old moon. Larry eventually took his multicolored blanket and retreated to the truck. Patrick and I shared party leftovers with the fruit flies the next morning, supplemented by cinnamon pull aparts and coffee from the Trick Dog provided by Larry.

Morning on E beach	Dunes
Me and Lawrence scope out the plan	We just look good	Isn't that Eric Pyne?

It’s 7:00 am UTC-4 or eastern standard time for you lubbers, and this is it finally, with luck. Hello World has lay quietly at anchor all night while multigenerational revelers ran slightly amuck. I’ve got a garage to clean, some dishes to do, files to copy, gear to stow and a couple of bills to grab… Then I’m on the phone with the portage team for pickup. On the big lake by 1:00 pm – doable.

We made it by 5:30 pm – Jim, Bailey, Patrick, Jonathan and myself – the Hello World portage team. Photos below by Patrick Kelly.

x

What’s missing from this set of pix is Hello World at the Elberta put in and Dan paddling into the Sargasso Sea, otherwise known as Betsie Bay where I was alternately becalmed and entangled in weeds while smart asses yelled at me from shore. I ended up paddling out the channel between Frankfort and Elberta, slogging past the breakwater and then with a puff of wind, sailing over to Elberta Beach. The two or three miles from Elberta put in to Elberta beach took almost 2 hours. An auspicious if slightly annoying beginning!

Even a sailboat has an environmental cost. Rebuilding Hello World was intended as a low impact project, not a sustainable project as I defined it a few days ago. Not only was electricity and petroleum poured into the tools, lights and vehicles supporting the repairs, but waste was produced. The steel paint and acetone cans can be recycled and the 30 year old grinder can be dropped off at an electronics recycling box. The big bag of garbage and the vacuum cleaner bags full of fiberglass dust however are destined for the landfill. About 35 lbs of waste was generated to renovate 300 lbs of 30 year old sailboat. About 4 – 6 ounces of fiberglass / mineral dust and and a gallon of VOCs escaped into open air.

Once the entire budget has been tallied I’ll be able to make a wild guess at the carbon cost of the project.

Big Bear makes the point that wind turbine and solar panel factories are powered by coal fired and nuclear power plants and therefor wind and solar power are far from sustainable. Is anything we do sustainable? Do we have any technologies that are in accord with the global life support system?