Catching up with the crabs…
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Greetings from the Crab Planet!

The summer has passed in a blur. The Crab family made it out to visit their freshwater cousins in New Hampshire & Maine a couple of times, but mostly we’ve been busy here in Vermont:

  • 6+ humongous pine trees taken down & given to Jeremiah, our friendly neighborhood contractor, for his wood boiler
  • 3 cords of firewood stacked
  • 2 chimneys & wood stoves cleaned
  • 5 gallons of hard cider fermenting (going for 10 gallons this year)
  • 2 exterior doors replaced
  • 1 horrible hallway stripped & painted
  • 1 roll of insulation added in the attic
  • 1 deck stairway repaired

Enough to make this hermit crab long for the days when he carried his house on his back! Fortunately, there were a few moments of R&R in the mix:

  • 1 M-Audio Radium 49 MIDI keyboard set-up & rocked-out on
  • 1 new Native Instruments soft-synth (Mikro-Prism) added to Reaktor 5
  • 5 acting roles inhabited (playwright, gangster, maitre’d, dermatologist, Irish sports trainer)
  • 2 new Svetlana power tubes added to my Fender Blues Deluxe
  • 1 awesome engineering design program (Creo Elements Direct Modeling Express) installed for my light-saber project
  • 1 new poem composed, for my father who is 80 years young this year
  • 1 new punk rock song composed: “Blood from a Stone”
  • new versions of “Here Comes the Sun” & “Ramble On” figured-out on guitar
  • 1 martial arts tournament attended with my son, Liam, who’s studying Tae Kwon Do 
  • 1 theatrical gala attended at Main Street Arts in Saxton’s River, “The Zeem Dream” featuring my daughter, Emery
  • 1 agricultural fair attended in Tunbridge, Vermont
  • 1 new rooster, “Apollo,” added to our flock
  • 2 new guinea pigs, “Jasmine” & “Juniper”
  • 1 new post (forthcoming, on sea monsters) composed for the NewsBank blog

My karate sensei, Master John W. Mason, student of Gogen Yamaguchi and founder of the Che-Lu style, passed away in June, in Kentucky. He was a prince of a man. I’m leaning towards continuing my studies at Alao, a small kung fu studio in Rutland (Snatch the coral from my claw, crab-hopper…)

I’m planning an author event with our local library & elementary school & The Book Nook, in Ludlow, Vermont. Still have to get out to Northshire Books in Manchester, and sign-up for next year’s “Bookstock” in Woodstock, Vermont. 

Soccer season will blend into ski season before we know it. Got a few story ideas to work on over the winter. Hoping for fall colors, kind powder snow, and a sweet maple sugaring season!

Crabious

Crème du Crab in Vacationland
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Back home in the Green Mountains after 789 miles touring Maine. Great conversations, wonderful people, honey from Albion & a bobcat in Brewer. Great to visit with family & friends, and an uncle & aunt I hadn’t seen for 20 years came down from Birch Harbor for the last night of the tour! The crabs are already making plans to return–the whoopie pies from the Franciscan Friars’ Bakery in Bangor (next to the Briar Patch bookstore) are divinely inspired & perhaps habit-forming…

Jacklynn draws a crabiosaurus in Waterville

Olcott catches them all in Belfast.

Belfast & Moosehead & Octopus Railroad

Rock Crab at Beyond the Sea, Belfast

Le Tour de Crab
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Crabs on wheels this week as we hit the road to host signing events in the Weathervane restaurants in Maine. Lovely weather, great conversations with Ann Carmichael from Kennebooks and Barbara Kelly from USM, but quiet… too quiet. Waterville tonight, Belfast tomorrow Beyond the Sea. Rain is forecast, maybe the shops & restaurants will fill up!

Crabs sighted in Sanford

 

Vacation is here!
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Pictures from the release of Crustacean 

Vacation at the Children’s Museum of NH–

Marty shows the graphic evolution of crabs--Exhibit A. Legless stage of Seniorificus Bathingcrabbia.

We'd like to think the museum staff painted the room especially for us...

The crab family looks for a seaside resort...

Brian & Marty met for the first time Saturday.

An octopus and friend were spotted near the yellow submarine.

Take a walk on the crabby side!

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Crabs--unleashed! [Photo courtesy of Debra Wentworth


Big sounds for small hands
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Here at Crab Central, I’ve set the Way-Back Machine to 1972. My age was approaching double-digits. There were commemorative moon-landing tchotchkes at the gas station. The ghost of Jimi Hendrix was playing “Purple Haze” on WHEB-FM out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And my older brother showed me the changes to The Beatles’ “Day Tripper” on the purple guitar which would soon be stolen from his apartment.

That purple guitar was brutal to play. Things didn’t improve much when I got a Les Paul copy from Montgomery Wards. It was a treasure straight out of the Christmas Dreams book. It smelled like varnish, sounded lo-fi anemic, and my parents were saints to buy it. Playing it demanded that I beat my hands on my nightstand until they didn’t hurt anymore, and I still couldn’t get the sounds in my head out into the world.

My hands got bigger and stronger, and better instruments got more affordable, but there’s still that matter of hand vs. steel & tangled-up fingers. Not every kid will grasp how a minor chord touches a nerve, but they should all have the chance to encounter music one-on-one, to discover how far sound can go, but without the pain. For example, one might use a keyboard rather than something with frets.

Back in the dim mists of time, keyboards all sounded like piano-sorts of things. Strings were hammered or plucked, or there might be a reed or a spinning wheel involved & you could call it an organ. Such contraptions were treated as furniture and priced in gold bullion. And then there were synthesizers, explosions of machinery which resembled things Dr. Strangelove might use to launch missiles in three-part harmony from cornfields in Kansas. Not quite as painful as a guitar, but alternately limited and amorphous. Until you get to something like Kontakt, from Native Instruments.

Kontakt is a computer application used to sample sound, part of a program suite called Komplete 8. It can be used to create any sound you can imagine, but it comes loaded with its own palette of sounds both familiar & exotic. Click, and it’s a grand piano. Another click and it’s a string quartet. Click, and it’s neither–or both. With it you can blithely recreate chords which once frightened churchmen, or tones which would tickle Elmo. It makes crystalline sounds which would reduce Bach & Mozart to tears. It makes angry sounds like a slot machine with indigestion. It has just the right number of buttons & knobs. It’s precision, power, and beauty, but here’s the thing–it’s also perfect for kids.

At the Christian Science mother church in Boston, there’s an organ which is a shrine unto itself. Last time I was there it was surrounded by missionaries & had a direct connection to the music of the spheres. With Kontakt, a six year-old can hold that sound in his or her lap, and layer it with armpit farts if that’s what the occasion calls for. Less velvet rope, more Velvet Underground. This is what we’re playing with at the Rock ‘n Hole Roadshow these days, and the means by which we’re hoping to bring sea sounds to life.

Be vewy, vewy quiet–I’m hunting crab-bits.

Crabious

Crustacean publication–the party!
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ISLANDPORT PRESS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

207.846.3344 books@islandportpress.com

Take a Crustacean Vacation at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. Book release party set for June 2.

DOVER, NH (April, 2012)—Feeling a bit crabby? Then be a little shellfish and join author Brian Benoit and illustrator Marty Kelley to celebrate the release of their new picture book, Crustacean Vacation, on Saturday, June 2, 2 to 4 p.m. at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire, 6 Washington Street in Dover. Special programs, at 2:00 and 2:45, will include a reading of Crustacean Vacation by the author, art activities led by the illustrator, a question and answer period, book signing, and more. There will even be a chance to take a photograph of yourself as an octopus lifeguard, one of the characters from the book. Admission to the museum is $9, free for members.

In addition, a “Crab Walk to a Cure” event will take place at 1 p.m. at the Henry Law Park, in front of the museum. Participants are invited to make a pledge and do a 100-yard crab walk. All proceeds benefit the Jimmy Fund/Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Crab walkers will receive $1 off the museum admission price.

In Crustacean Vacation, a curious family of crabs venture on land to picnic on the beach, play games in a boardwalk arcade, and slide in a water park. This is no ordinary boardwalk. Here, a seagull runs the candy store, a shark manages the tattoo parlor, a seahorse hawks prizes, and yes, the lifeguard is
an octopus. Young readers will delight in the clever rhyming verses paired with wacky and wonderful illustrations from the imagination of acclaimed New Hampshire artist Marty Kelley.

Kelley is the author and illustrator of several children’s books, including Fall Is Not Easy, The Rules, Winter Woes, Summer Stinks, Spring Goes Squish, The Messiest Desk, and Twelve Terrible Things. He has been a second grade teacher, a baker, a cartoonist, a newspaper art director, a drummer in a heavy metal band, a balloon delivery guy, and an animator. Now he visits lots of schools to show students how he creates his books.

Originally from Somersworth, New Hampshire, author Brian Benoit now listens for the roar of the surf deep in the woods of Cavendish, Vermont. His sea creatures were originally conjured up to entertain his brother during family trips on the Maine coast, but have since proven popular with his own children. He shares his life with his wife, Jennifer; daughter, Emery; and son, Liam. Crustacean Vacation is his first children’s book.

The not-for-profit Children’s Museum of New Hampshire is located in the center of Dover and offers two floors of hands-on, interactive exhibits for children from newborn to age 12. Visitors can explore a wide range of interests, from dinosaurs, music and aeronautics to world cultures, art and natural history. Open year-round, the Silver LEED-certified museum specializes in creating memorable family learning experiences and works closely with schools, social service agencies and educators. The museum also
hosts a variety of live performances, workshops, classes and special events. For more information, please visit www.childrens-museum.org.

Islandport Press is a dynamic, award-winning publisher dedicated to stories rooted in the essence and sensibilities of New England. For more information about the book, please call 207-846-3344, visit
www.islandportpress.com or e-mail books@islandportpress.com.