Pilot program

Thursday was the day of the whale watch, organized by yrs. truly. That entailed a lot of running around the camp at night, trying to get people to commit one way or the other. In the end, we reserved fifteen slots to get the group discount ($40 instead of $56; $40x15 = $600), but only actually had a dozen people on the boat ($600/12 = $50), which meant a small (but non-negative) discount for everyone.

The boat was a zippy catamaran that thumped over the waves, making walking on deck legitimately tricky. Wind and spray tenderized my cheeks when I stood in the bow, which didn't stop me — it was exhilarating, watching the plain of the sea rush up beneath me, to be knifed into strips and spray by the twin hulls.

We didn't see any great whales, which was more of a disappointment to me, I think, than to the folks who hadn't been on half a dozen whale watches already. But we did see a vigorous pod of pilot whales (with an adorable light-gray calf), as well as seals, a mola mola (giant sunfish), and eider ducks or something else (ha ha!). The lack of great whales meant we all got vouchers for free return trips; some people made use of them the next day (and saw humpbacks), and others (like us) will save them for a future trip.

I also didn't get any particularly memorable photos; the one above is representative of all my whale shots, just a muddle of gray rubber bodies and water. But if you want to see more (including the calf), I will oblige! ( Thar she blows. )

The full set is here.

I also uploaded a few photos from our Wednesday post-Beehive trek with adfamiliares, tapas, and creed_of_hubris up Gorham, but as it was overcast I didn't take many pictures. That set is here. One representative shot from the summit:

C.C. Little saw little (things)

In Saint Saviour's Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor, what looks like a typical Lukan scene in stained glass becomes more interesting when the details start to sink in. There's a cow, sure, and two mice, and...is that DNA? A neuron? Mitosis?

The window is dedicated to C.C. Little, a geneticist from Brookline (where adfamiliares's farmer's market is held). In the course of his life, he founded a research lab in Bar Harbor (shown in the window), became president of the University of Maine and the University of Michigan, and developed the DBA ("dilute, brown, and non-agouti") strain of lab mice; later he became beholden to big tobacco, and denied there was any connection between smoking and cancer. His window at Saint Saviour's is a harmonious (or jarring?) illustration of the synthesis of faith and reason, done in a mixture of traditional stained glass and what looks like Sharpie.

The rest of the church is rich with stained glass, too — 42 windows in all, including ten by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It's a quiet, dim-yet-colorful respite from the assault of tourists and tourist traps in the rest of Bar Harbor. Lessons learned in Rome have turned me into an efficient cataloguer of church goodies — a sample is under the cut, and the rest of the set is on Flickr.

( Click for stained glass sea slugs! )