Andy's Gone

ANDREW WYETH
DEAD AT 91

Helga, Christina, Walt, Ben, Karl; immortalized

egg yolks immortalized too

.. He was plagued with "wrong-time-ism." A bit of representation in a world of abstraction. This made him a target of critics and a hero to everyman and college rebels. How dare he paint what he saw? It now seems a grand joke! Blessings be upon his soul.
.. Maybe it's always dreary in New England, maybe not, but Wyeth captured the light of the best fishing days.
.. The bugs know this, the fish know this, the neighbours know this; only the people who make calendars and illustrate fishing books ignore this.
.. It's a simple equation: dreary day=fishy day. We mentioned this just last October and summoned "Christina's World" to illustrate the point.
.. We remember Andy, Helga, Walt, Ben, Karl, and the paintings that capture the light.
.. Be it a bedroom, a coot hunter, or a lobsterman's dory the signature style is distinctive - even the critics admit it. The mature style developed right after his father's death and was persistent over 50 years.
.. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Smithsonian Magazine have notes about his passing. Less eloquent but more fun is a piece about his granddaughter's insights in The Seattle Times a couple of year's back.
.. We're not nearly so eloquent or impassioned, however, Wyeth's pictures are a delight: need we say it - speak for themselves.
.. If you happen to be a Wyeth aficionado the subjects become intimate friends, protagonists, neighbours, and characters. The places become as familiar as your own kitchen. You can become fascinated with the ordinary.
.. Helga fascinated us, along with the rest of the country, in the 80's. Did painters still paint nudes? Did they do it in secret? What went on? Prurient interests fueled a sort of Helga mania. The critics loved it. Scholars doted on it.
.. The neighbours winked and acknowledged that painters were people too. It was fun. We caught fish and called them Helga.
.. We are still in a world that loves the abstract. The best fishing place, the best fly, the best fighting fish, the most spectacular venue, the most exotic trip, the finest wine, the rod with best action, are all abstractions employed to enhance a fictive experience of the mind.
.. Wyeth celebrated the mundane. He reminded us of the day-to-day world. No escapism, no meaning in blotches and swirls, no denial of what was just next door and around the corner: just the mundane - Hallelujah!
.. The top of a chest, the landscape outside the window, the house next door, a neighbour, an old car, a baker and caregiver, all are available to the rest of us. No "BEST" just the rest.
.. We can associate with this. Our fish are mundane, normal, accessible, and next door. Our tackle is pedestrian and utilitarian, some of it older than we are: it works. It's familiar and friendly and has seen many days when a calendar photographer would stay home.
.. We don't idolize our gear, we see no exaltation in a pleasurable pastime, and we acknowledge that our sport represents a pleasant and rather mundane bit of the universe. But we enjoy it.
.. The spirituality of the mundane is too often overlooked. The vibrancy of the neighbourhood is reduced to oblivion by the promise of adventure, in exotic and unvisited places. We always seem to forget that there's no place like home.
.. The emotionalism, spiritualism, and abstractions evoked by some critics and Wyeth himself is cerebral.
.. It's a meaning of the moment, and requires more than the viewing of the images. It requires that you know about Christina or Helga, or Walt. It requires that the viewer enter the neighbourhood and become familiar with Wyeth's home.
.. It requires that you evoke the time and place that is . . . Here & Now. A snapshot is just that, and Wyeth's are evocative. A history is written in a home; yours, ours, and his.
.. Wyeth enjoyed his home. He enjoyed his neighbours and neighbourhood and let us see it - warts and all.

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AHW TIME in Yellowstone

HAVE A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR

TIME WARNER IS WATCHING

AHW To The Rescue

who'd 'a known?

.. After some rest & refreshments; and whilst reviewing blog statistics for the past year, a note of concern slowly crept into our Psyche.
.. TIME, (the magazine - and all of its corporate power,) is watching us! And, not afraid to show it.
.. Of the last 100, or so, visitors from around the world: visitor # 14,402 this year was a spy from the legitimate media. They were probably looking to see if we did right by their person of the year.
.. Additional snooping in the statistics showed that there was an unseemly number of referrals from AHW. Using all of our powers of investigative reporting we sneaky-footed to the "BLACK DOMAIN" and discovered that verily there was another blog worthy of note. A blog that, indeed would probably qualify for the cover.
.. Not wanting to offend Mr. Richard D. Parsons ** a talented lawyer, or others in the Hallowed Halls of the legitimate press, we have emended our post about fly fishing blogs.
..The magazine cover should really have featured a representative blog of sterling quality, innovative reporting, blinding insight, herculean prose, and mass appeal.
..To correct this error we show below the way TIME should have done it!

AHW TIME
We should'a stolen a fish for the cover.

**Before joining Time Warner, Mr. Parsons was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dime Bancorp, Inc., one of the largest thrift institutions in the United States. Previously, he was the managing partner of the New York law firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. Prior to that, he held various positions in state and federal government, as counsel for Nelson Rockefeller and as a senior White House aide under President Gerald Ford. Mr. Parsons received his undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii and his legal training at Union University's Albany Law School.

BLOG OF THE YEAR

CONGRATULATIONS TO US ALL
We Blog When We Don't Fish
we fish when we don't blog
and work if we have to
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..This could have been a more productive journey into the maw of steelheading. It has however, produced more computer time than usual. And, truth be told, the fishing realm of the blogsphere is of a far higher quality than most of the rest of it.
.. The posts, from frivolous to fantastic, display a level of humor, erudition, curiosity, and diversity not shown in the majority of the mundane blogs in existence. We should be proud.
.. From the personal through the professional to the crass commercial there is a ring of authenticity in our bloogging that reveals an honest and sincere interest in our chosen pastimes - Blogging & Fishing.
.. Even the most cranky of the bulletin boards shows a surprising continuity of subject matter and insight into our souls. They are an interesting form of combat as well as information sharing.
.. The generally unselfish nature of the tone and presentation in fishing blogs is refreshing. Compared to "MY (ego) SPACE" or other first person deliveries, the fish blogs - (even if written in the first person) - are more frequently information based and delivered as a service.
.. Happily, our bloggers are also surprisingly talented and deliver entertainment as well as information. Waxing poetic is not to be left aside, and it is notable that the authentic voice that our community speaks with seldom engenders meaningless rants or diatribes.
.. Feel free to copy the Time Cover above and place your own blog in it - YOU DESERVE IT! {Special thanks to Karmasoup.org for the "Typewriter Full Of Fishies" image.}

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.. Before we return to the easy chair and some warm Brie & Brandy a bit of fish reporting is in order.
.. The wonderfully wet coastal weather has provided challenging situations for the stalwart steelheader. The sage fisher folks have retreated to the shorter coastal streams that clear more quickly - no names, you know them well, some even have sea-run cutts. Most of the bars have been blown out, and the breaks in the deluges provide excellent fishing. Even the chromies know enough not to brave the silt and seals. We'll be heading to the Smith, Gualala, and maybe even further south next week. Just look for the fishmobile.
.. The amazing volume of water that has been dumped in the last two weeks raised the Deschutes, Snake, Clearwater & Grand Ronde variously to as much as 3' overnight. The combined bed load and suspended load of these rivers guarantee that next year's anglers will find significantly different rivers next spring and summer.

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As a parting thought, (borrowed from Gary Gao,) EMBRACE THE BLUR
.