Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Lee Newberry's LiveJournal:

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Friday, July 25th, 2008
9:09 pm	Anticipation This time next week I will be in the desert. This is a funny time of year for me. Long lazy nights and an itch to run out into that late warm twilight. The Oregon Country Faire was pretty amazing. I have a lot of photos up on my flickr site. ( Here's a journal entry I made in the thick of it: ) It took me a week to recombobulate from that. And no sooner have I settled in at home than I find myself packing to go again. My life is a little crazy. This year's burn is going to be weird and wonderful. I'm looking forward to stepping on that pie crust, to smelling that clean dry air, to running with my eyes closed and watching something big and burning fly from a trebuchet. I'm looking forward to building that magical, evanescent city. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
1:38 pm	Settling In Rain falls softly on my roof. Spring is late this year - the sun is seen only in flashes between breaks in the cloud layer. The sky is blindingly grey in more hues than that austere color ought to contain. Last night I saw the stars for the first time in two weeks. Beautiful. Life continues apace. The past two weeks have been full. -Reuniting with friends, -Cleaning house, -Tallship sailing (the Hawaiian Chieftain and Lady Washington are in town), -Seeing plays, -Job hunting, -Cooking (notable for someone who doesn't cook for half the year), -Dirty work for the Oregon Country Faire, -Ramping up for Burning Man, -Planning out the next year. Yes. Professionally, I've got a handshake agreement to be a staff carpenter at one of the more established theaters in town. This makes me very, very happy. Also, I worked my first Union call a few days ago - setting up and breaking down the Kanye West show that came through town. It went well. Kanye West has the biggest ego I've ever witnessed in person. Very entertaining. Life continues to be rich and surprising. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 26th, 2008
11:48 am	Safe And Sound At Home Again ...Let The Waters Roar, Jack. I'm back home in Portland. It always amazes me that so much color and life can be fit into a place that sees the sun so rarely. The past few weeks have been good to me. I spent some needed time with family in the bay. Then there was a week of hedonism and kittens in Santa Cruz. I have the best friends ever. I got home five days ago. They have been filled with reunions and cleaning. My priorities have shifted recently. Sharpened. I'm going through my belongings and tossing a bunch of stuff I've been holding onto because I thought I should have it. Kibble, someone once called it. I'm putting in an application to the stagehands union, local 28. (Noah, you can lord it over me when I've actually collected a paycheck from them.) We had a rare sunny day on Saturday. It was glorious, like a Michelangelo painting in light and time. I spent an enjoyable few hours painting a giant sunflower onto a neighborhood intersection. (See first statement) I'm feeling about as well balanced as I've ever been. Credit the intersection of hardship, philosophy and love, in that order. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
9:03 am	Back In The World I jumped off the Lynx on Monday. I'm in the bay area right now resting and regaining my equilibrium. The last four months have been pretty hard on my psyche, so this will take a few days. ( Warning: Rumination Ahead ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
9:16 pm	New Photos I've got the best of my last two rolls of photos up: http://flickr.com/photos/scuppers/ I think I've hit the bounds of what can be done with a plastic camera. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 21st, 2008
2:20 pm	Rise And Shine Due to the life choices I've made and the things I commit to in the name of living fully, I sometimes wake up stunned and surprised to still be alive. These moments fill me with a deep happiness beyond simple relief - I look around and realize that I've become a little better at understanding the beautiful, twisted world I live in, that I have discovered harmony where I saw only noise and fury, that I have widened the spectrum of human experience I can assimilate. This morning was one of those mornings. We spent 48 hours transiting from Oxnard, CA to Morro Bay. Right in the middle of the transit lies Point Conceptiont, just north of Santa Barbara; the worst place in California for weather. We sailed around it. No motor, just 4,000 square feet of canvas driving us upwind as we tacked our way through the weather wrapping around the point. I was sick as a dog. For most of the transit I stood at the helm or on lookout trying to keep down sips of water before collapsing into my bunk between watches. The boat sailed beautifully, heeled over until seawater sloshed through the gunports, going eight knots with the nose pointed 40 degrees from the eye of the wind. 1812 technology all the way. This tour has been pretty difficult for me. I feel like I've climbed the steepest rise, the single most difficult bit. It won't get easier from here, but I'll be better equipped to meet the challenges. At the moment I get to spend ten days in Morro Bay, fixing up the boat and taking people sailing. It's really pretty here and the people are friendly. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 7th, 2008
10:16 pm	Incomunicado Hey all, The boat is in Oxnard, CA. We still haven't found winter. My cell phone took a swim a little awhile ago, and internet access is scarce here. I am thus hard to contact right now. This will hopefully change soon. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 16th, 2008
8:58 pm	The Grind We're back in Oceanside, CA. It's pretty here. Miles of beach, clear days, and temperate heat. They know not of your winter here. Things are pretty difficult on the boat. The Lynx is a boat that demands a well-tuned, aggressive crew. The current crew is not. This vexes the captain and bosun, and the whole crew is going through a phase of hard work and character building, with a daily reminder from the chain of command that we aren't up to par. It's frustrating and necessary. It also makes everything else I do in life feel easy and relaxing. So that's where I am right now. Working really hard, learning a lot, expanding my capabilities. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
8:47 pm	Ramping Up It's been a really lopsided week. Most of it has been pretty relaxed. On wednesday, however, we took a film crew out into some moderately heavy offshore weather. It started at 15 knots of wind, clear skies and 2 foot swells. Over the course of ten hours, it built into 35 knot winds, 6 foot swells and pounding rain. We sailed the whole time, heeling until the rails were almost under water. The Lynx is a fine, weatherly boat, capable of blazing along at 10 knots while pointing 30 degrees from the eye of the wind. It was the hardest I've ever sailed a boat. The captain, mate and bosun were having a great time. I was terrified. It was a benchmark day - I hadn't realized just how much my seamanship had atrophied after seven months on land. It's days like that one that steel my resolve to push my own boundaries, to open myself to the full range of human experience. The rest of the week was easy. Fair winds, low seas, enjoyable duty. San Diego is a pretty port with a skyscraper park near the waterfront that sounds some really nice echoes when we shoot the guns at it. I'm spending my spare time practicing knots, studying the finer points of our curriculum and working my way through an excellent book called Seamanship In The Age Of Sail. I may someday get tired of subsuming myself into my work. That won't be for awhile. Oh, and a couple nights ago, the captain treated us all to a night at the San Diego symphony. The San Diego philharmonic and the London philharmonic played Beethoven's fifth symphony to a sold out audience. It was strange and beautiful. (I've put some new photos on my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scuppers/) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 5th, 2008
8:19 pm	It's my fifth day on the Lynx and I'm settling in well. The first couple days were shaky - jet lag + long days + transit = metabolic suckerpunch. A twelve hour night of sleep cured that. Now I find myself deep in the business of learning a new boat. It's grand. There are a lot of challenges, usual and unusual. Spending months ashore between tours means rebuilding muscle every time, while working a new boat (and a schooner at at that) means having to constantly reevaluate the way I look at rigging, sailing, and seamanship. My world is rapidly shrinking to the dimensions of the boat, plus whatever port we happen to be in. My attention focuses accordingly. In life on shore there is a great deal of wasted time and space. Driving, television, shopping, untended gardens, attics, basements. A lot is ignored. Not so on a boat. Every bit of space has a use, every moment of the working day is used. It makes for a fine environment in which to push oneself to learn rapidly, to put forth a great deal of useful effort and to overcome one's own foibles, shortcomings and blind spots. I'm not a terribly disciplined person in my daily life so I enjoy this opportunity to grow and improve myself in ways that I am not normally inclined. I had missed the rhythm of the boats, the steady supporting schedule of day sails and maintenance and mealtimes that the crew comes to rest on like a well-laid keel. I had missed also the feeling of camaraderie, of coordination and mutual understanding that develops amongst a crew. The trials and discoveries come fresh every day. I will write more as I observe more. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
5:18 pm	Where I'm At and Where I'll Be [A lot has happened since I last wrote here. All the things in my last post have transpired and then some. I'm not given to broadcasting the minutae of my life, which is one reason I tell people I'm a terrible correspondant. For the past six months my life has not chrystalized in a way that allows me to say "this is where I am". A friend recently asked me what I was up to. My response formed the germ of this post.] Mexico is warm, humid, and very tasty. I'm in a seaside town called Manzanillo where my grandma lives. I'm here for christmas, which is done differently in this part of the world. Christmas eve is the big day, with presents and fireworks and music and the midnight mass, while Christmas day is spent in a collecive hangover. In a couple days I'll go to Guadalajara with my uncle. He's a schoolteacher there, the kind of man whose brain whirls with the effort of connecting everything he knows with everything else. He lives in a gorgeous house that may or may not be haunted. On the 30th I fly back to Portland. The 31st will be spent unpacking, repacking, setting my affairs in order, saying goodbye to friends, and dancing until the small hours. Early on the morning of the first I'll catch a plane to San Diego and jump aboard the 1812 privateer schooner Lynx, at which point the real fun begins. I've signed on as the education officer, which is equal parts deckhand, teacher and cat herder. I'll be on the boat as she slowly climbs the coast until until May; we'll be somewhere in the San Francisco bay by then. I go to the boats to grow. It's a conscoius, daily process of improving every part of my thought and action as I work myself into exhaustion every single day for three to six months. What seems impossibly difficult one month becomes routine the next. Every challenge I overcome brings me to another. The brutal, exhilirating physicality of it makes the lessons solid and meaningful. I go to the boats to teach. Most people hate my job. I introduce hundreds of schoolkids to the boat every day and I mediate their interaction with it. I work the necessary logistics, making sure every kid gets to spend time experiencing everything we're prepared to share with them. I teach the teachers, ensuring the consistent quality and richness of the educational program. I get to plant the idea in every kid's head that the world is much larger and more engaging than their classroom. Our schools are filled with kids who can't sit still, who learn by doing, and who are highly incompatible with the office worker's metaskills that the school system is designed to impart. I don't just give them a field trip to make history class a little more relevant. I introduce them to a whole new method of learning and interacting with the outside world. Every idea I communicate has a physical analogue on the boat and they all get put in the kids' hands. You'd be surprised how many ADD kids get real sharp when abstract symbols are put away in favor of concrete reality. And that's where I'm at right now; relaxing, memorizing the education program for the Lynx, and looking forward to four or five months of very difficult and rewarding work. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 2nd, 2007
12:38 pm	Sporadic Update For anybody out there keeping track, I got off the boat in mid-May (there's a story there, but I'm not gonna tell it now). Upon arriving home in Portland, I jumped right into a sound and light board operator gig at the Artist's Repertory Theater, one of the more well-established houses in town. The show was Orson's Shadow, a historical piece about the time Orson Wells and Laurence Olivier collaborated on a production of Ianesco's Rhinocerous. They hated the play and each other. Hilarity ensued. Also in the play is Vivian Leigh, Olivier's manic depressive nymphomaniac of a wife who played Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the wind. She comes in at the end of each act, filps out and chews up scenery. Really, the whole thing is like a good episode of Frasier crossed with Inside The Actor's Studio with a side of Jerry Springer. It was a hoot. That ended yesterday. Right now, I'm waiting for my ride to the fourth of July festivities on the playa. I'm going out there for ten days to party my ass off and do prefab for burning man. Then I'm heading out to central Oregon to work the Oregon Country Fair. Then it's back home to catch my breath for a couple of days before working SOAK, the Oregon burner regional. Then back home again for ten days and right back out to the desert on August 3rd to help build Black Rock City. It's going to be an interesting month. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
10:09 pm	Sick, Tired and Strangely Happy We rolled into San Francisco a couple days ago. It's been a really tiring week, and we've all got the plague. I knew there's be days like this when I signed on. Somehow, every day brings moments that defy my expectations and make this really worthwhile. Mostly it's the people. I'm surrounded by amazing, giving, goofy people and not even the blackest mood can survive half an hour with them. So, all complaints about the rough nature of my work aside, I'm really happy here. I try to convey this in words, but pictures help. Here's the first roll. ( Warning: Photo Dump ) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
9:01 pm	Back In The Swing It's February 22nd and I'm in Morro Bay, sitting in the aft cabin and listening to the soft rain hit the weather deck above me. It's going to be a quiet day. We pulled into this port yesterday after a 22 hour transit from Ventura. It was one of the smoothest ocean transits I've ever experienced. I was on the 4-8 watch (i.e. the sunrise-sunset watch), my favorite. ... The rain just picked up to great gusting gouts that smack the rig and make us heel over a couple of degrees. Crewmembers of both boats have jumped into fowlies and are running on deck, laughing and shouting. We haven't been rained on in several weeks and it was starting to feel weird. Today will be a slow day spent belowdecks, patching clothes, mending gear, doing paperwork. (Note: this was written this morning. Since then, it cleared up for a few hours - just long enough to do the grand arrival and public tours. The weather likes us here.) ... Here are some things that have crossed my mind in the last three weeks: I'd forgotten how paralyzing seasickness is. It's not just a general uneasy feeling. It's acute, like getting food poisoning. The lizard part of my brain is telling the rest of me to stop everything and go to sleep -right now-. I'm better at coping than I was last year, but it's still no fun and it impedes my ability to work. Luckily, Admiral Nelson's cure works as well now as it did two hundred years ago - just sit under a tree for a few minutes. I really like teaching. A lot of people don't because it amounts to saying the same damn thing several times a day. I can deal with that. The way I look at is that I live in a rich, amazing world full of wonder and excitement and real depth, and I get to share that sensibility with the kids I teach. I teach sail handling and a lot of good, accurate history, but the idea I convey above all else is that the world we live in is bursting with incredible things to do and discover. All you have to do is look for them. There's something magical about listening to a ten year old complain that everything on the boat looks to big and heavy for him, handing him a line to set a sail that's several times his size, watching him haul it, and seeing the growing realization in his eyes that he is capable of much more than he thought he was as he hauls the sail taut and the wind catches it and it moves the 100 ton boat that he's standing on. Wow. Got a little ahead of myself there. A few old crewmates came to visit a couple nights ago. It was like a family reunion. Shouting and laughing and hugs all around and phone calls to the friends who couldn't make it. I realized that I am part of the family here. There's something wonderful about knowing you can just show up somewhere and be recognized and welcomed and invited to stay for as long as you'd like. When I set foot on the boat three weeks ago, it was like I'd never left. I have a place here, a role I enjoy filling that allows me to better the lives of my crewmates. I still talk in my sleep. My crewmates give me shit about it most mornings. Some things never change. I'll write more and post pictures when I can. If anybody reading this wants to know where I physically am, go to http://www.historicalseaport.org/calendar/calendar.htm - I'm on the Hawaiian Chieftain. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
12:13 pm	Leaving On A Jet Plane I'm sitting in the Portland International Airport, waiting for an airplane that will take me back to the boat I left six and a half months ago. I feel like I'm going home. When I did this a year ago, it was a long shot into the unknown. I was going to work on the boat at the request of a friend, lured with the promise of adventure, if not riches. I had no idea how it was going to turn out. When the captain asked me how long I was staying, I said "as long as you need me." He laughed. I thought it would be a month or so. It turned into five and a half. Those were some of the best, hardest and most significant months of my life. So here I am again, flying south to the land of no winter and calmer seas. It's different this time - I know what I'm getting into, I've signed on for five months and not a day longer, and I'll be walking on the boat as an officer instead of a deckhand. I've come a long way in the last year, but I left the boat knowing that I still had a lot to learn. The challenges will be different this time, but they will be just as constant. I'm in a better position to learn from them now. It feels really good to be going to where I'm expected, wanted, and needed. I have a place on the Hawaiian Chieftain. A home. I'm leaving home and going home at the same time. That makes me really happy. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
9:34 pm	Some Places Never Stop Being Home I just got back from an overdue visit to Santa Cruz. ( It was lovely. ) With all that, it was hard to leave. But it's nice to be back in Portland. Tomorrow, I my librarian neighbor is coming over for tea, crumpets and graphic novels. The next day is Santacon, the sort of demented foolishness that makes Noah call me a future Darwin award. The next day I get to bury a hangover in cookies. I lead an exceedingly charmed life. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 31st, 2006
4:35 pm	One More Day In Civilization It's been two weeks since I got off the boat, and I'm almost feeling rested. Portland is beautiful in the summer; I feel damned lucky to have a home like this to come back to. An awful lot of really cool people live here, and I've spent a lot of time drinking really good beer with them. Also, this is the land of a million well-tended public parks. Not the sad expanses of weed choked grass I grew up with, but actual chunks of forest within city limits. There's a lush mountain eight blocks from my door that I climb up to watch the sun set. Hell yes. When not crashed out, I've been running around provisioning for the burn. My van needed nearly 800 bucks in service. Sonofabitch. Commercial culture becomes a weird and scary thing when I've been away from it for awhile. Every TV commercial is a well-tuned brain bomb, I spend half an hour trying to choose between the 22 kinds of toothpaste available at the grocery store, and supermarket tabloid covers make the hair on my neck stand on end. My brother bought me a subscription to AdBusters awhile back. I used to think they were overstating the case a little, but now I think they've got a point. We've made a pretty noisy world for ourselves. I'm enjoying it, though. All of it. The city is my native environment and I love it here. One more night, one more sunset on Mount Tabor, and then I leave for the desert. I lead a privileged life. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 7th, 2006
8:55 pm	Winding Up I'm still on the boat. I'm leaving on the 15th. Life is good. I'm tired as hell. We had a massive crew shift a few weeks ago. They made me the ship's steward. It's a bloody hectic job, and fun. We sail every single day. We're in Westport, Washington for the summer. It's a tiny little town with a boardwalk and little else. It's pretty here. I'm living with a crew of awesome people. Life is very good. I kissed the top of a mast the other day. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. I'm really looking forward to going home and hibernating for a week. Then it's on to the desert for two months of awesome. By the way, this is what I look like nowadays: I love working jobs that involve funny clothes. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 20th, 2006
11:13 pm	Shore Leave I'm writing this from a hotel room in Washington, DC. The last three weeks have been exhausting. Short version in list form: -The transit up to Brookings sucked. My foul weather gear failed and I got hypothermia. Again. -Brookings itself was well and truly awesome. -The transit to Coos Bay also sucked, but not as bad. I started thinking of seasickness as situational bulimia. -Coos Bay was a lot of work with a high payoff. Most of our volunteer crew fled early in the week, leaving us at 9, including the cook. -With this crew, we began putting 14 hour maintainence days. The boat got real pretty. We got burnt out. -The captain let up and had us work only 13 hour days which really made all the difference. We also got a couple volunteers in the second week whose levelheadedness and enthusiasm made everything much better. -One night, we got adopted by the local corvette club. I got to ride in a vintage '66 stingray. I re-learned the meaning of acceleration. Then they took us out for pizza. It was fucking awesome. -With a great deal of effort, I got better at my job. -We were visited by a leader and an elder of the Chinook Nation. Awesome guys. We cleansed the boat with cedar boughs they brought. They told stories and stayed on for the transit to Ilawco. -We got a ton of extra crew for transit. Good folks. -I cast off the lines as the boat left the dock for transit. The wind was blowing from the south, and the boat was going to sail a good part of the way up to Ilwaco. Of all the transits to miss, I had to pick the good one. Which brings me to my shore leave. I hopped a ride to Portland, spent a couple days at home seeing friends, running errands and crashing out, and then hopped a plane to Washington DC. My brother graduates college tomorrow and that's not something I'm going to miss. I got to spend the day with him and my folks. I love my family dearly and I don't get to see them enough. The jet lag, however, is kicking my ass. I'll be adjusted just in time for my flight home on monday, and the moment I re-adjust I have to go back on the boat. My crewmates will be surprised to see me almost as tired as I was when I left. Sometines, I forget what it was like to be well-rested. On an introspective note, I'm maturing pretty quick these days. There's a lot going on in my head that I don't put here because I don't know how to articulate it I'm not sure I want it on the interweb. Growth has always been a difficult and wonderful process for me. I have a ton of new photos. I'll post them when I'm back in Portland. Also, I do read the comments y'all write. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I usually don't respond because I tend to read them weeks after the fact. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 29th, 2006
12:48 pm	Burning at both ends. Life on the boat is getting harder. The paying gig has come with a large workload increase and some administrative headaches that I'm still adjusting to. At the same time, we're trying to refurbish the boat while maintaining a regular working schedule seven days a week. This translates into 12 hour days. We're also preparing for a really rough week. On Monday, we begin the transit to Brookings, Oregon, which is looking to be 12-14 hours of beating against 30-40 knot winds and 15 foot swells. We're planning on arriving at O-dark:30 Tuesday morning, opening up for public tours for the next 24 hours, and then heading right back out to sea for another 14-16 hours in order to make Coos Bay by noon Thursday for the grand arrival there. It's going to be hard core. Also, everybody's fighting a nasty throat cold right now, so we're trying to take care of ourselves while we have the luxury of doing so. Transit has its rewards, however. On the way up to Eureka, we had a small pod of porpoises (60 or so) surround the boat and play with us for hours, leaping out of the water dodging in and out of our bow wake, while a couple of whales breached in the distance. At night, we churned through phosphorescence, creating constellations in the water around us. I love my life. It has taught me that the first thing you give up for adventure is comfort. It's a fair trade. (3 Comments |Comment on this)