The Hammock Papers: sledding

Showing posts with label sledding. Show all posts

05 January 2025

Scream.

Remember, when you make a run, to keep your hands and feet in it all times, then let out a scream and don't be afraid to give 'er!

19 January 2024

Scream.

Let out a scream and don't be afraid to give 'er!

08 January 2023

Building.

Wyeth, N.C., Children with Sleds on Snowy Hill, (Kuerner's Hill, Coasting), 1915

DAD'S SLED

He built it with used two by fours

scrap metal for runners.

He always saved spare parts

and cast off material.

We might use that someday

he would say and, sure enough,

one day when ice and snow came,

the Bailey Hill beckoned.

I stood beside him

in the cold basement as he framed

a sled from a design

tucked away in his memory.

I helped by holding the wood

in place as he nailed it tight,

then tacked on the runners.

We rode that sled every day

the cold lasted, screaming with delight

flying downhill in homemade ecstasy.

But today I remember the making

of the sled. It is in building

that his genius lay, and how I marvel

at his ability to make happiness

out of things left over, used

and otherwise abandoned.

Ken Hada

22 December 2022

23 December 2020

Sledding.

Testing sledding skills on The Cresta Run in 1948 ...

And today ...

IMPORTANT! Remember Geddy's advice and "don't be a hero" (trust me) ...

26 March 2020

13 January 2019

Advice.

Winter advice from Geddy Lee ...

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

Oscar Wilde

29 December 2018

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

01 December 2017

30 December 2016

Winter.

I'm Geddy Lee ... and I love winter.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."