Fun With Stormpulse and Hurricanes

Posted on June 20, 2011June 20, 2011 by Varg

Stormpulse.com is a very fun tool for geeking out on Hurricanes, just wanted to share some great finds…

1994 Hurricane John
He lasted 31-days, strengthened into a CAT 5, had a 7,165 mile path from Mexico to Alaska around Hawaii and is one of the only storms to ever qualify as a hurricane and a typhoon.

1967 Hurricane Doria
I would have hated to be a resident of Virginia Beach as this crazy-ass storm made up her mind. I’m not an expert but there can’t be that many storms to make landfall from the northeast. When I first looked at her path I thought she formed in the mid Atlantic and dissipated off the East Coast of Florida but it was actually the other way around.

2005 Hurricane Vince
I guess everybody around here was too busy recovering from Katrina but Vince was weird in that he formed further east than any known hurricane and in water that was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. It is thought to be the only hurricane to ever hit the Iberian Peninsula of Portugal and Spain.

1955 Hurricane Connie, 1955 Hurricane Diane, 1955 Hurricane Ione
Basically, it sucked to be a resident of the Greater Wilmington area of North Carolina that summer. They were hit with Hurricanes Connie on August 11, five days later by Diane on the 17th and then Hurricane Ione a month later. Two Cat 2s and a Cat 1 which makes a Cat 5 if it only worked like that.

1960 Hurricane Donna
Holy Crap. Look at this path of destruction. Donna made three landfalls and remained a very strong storm never reaching below Cat 2 from the time it hit the Keys and then worked her way through Florida, up the east coast through Virginia and into New York and Connecticut.

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Rejoice!

I say that a lot. I sign many pieces with it. I do this because I believe our lives are a true happenstance. A brilliant occurence from nothingness. We are so rare. We are so unlikely. And simply being born isn’t enough. From there we must survive, endure. So each morning, after our Sun departs and is reborn again. Please, for the sake of your ancestors and the Universe in general, hoist that cup of joe up and say, “Rejoice.”

Ours is a soulful existence. No matter how many McMansions, polyester fabrics, auto-tunes, modified foods and social networks we surround ourselves with, we are all still native, passionate beings made of ancient matter. We are organic and we have soul.

Wood also has a warm, soulful quality. Wood has a memory. It retains smells, traumas, events. It even has a calendar. This is why I have chosen it as my medium, for its old soul. I like to think the wood in my work is in its third incarnation. First a tree, then a home and now art. If you have a room that needs a little soul, get a piece. A room can never have enough soul.

My inspiration and subject matter comes from many sources, among them: Humanism, old ballads, trickster tales, flora and fauna, science, myths and folklore, stringed instruments, brass bands, amber spirits, lady vocalists, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some of my pieces are there just to make a short, simple statement about what’s important in life. Some are more diffuse and abstract in meaning. A personal drama, an enduring line from a poem or novel, a poignant song lyric, the legacy of an important person, a fleeting thought … these are the subjects of my art.

I use hearts often because they are a very abstract way of depicting the human soul without also employing the very subjective human form. The symbolic heart is an apt representation for a person’s experience and essence. A body can immediatly conjure happiness, sorrow, youth, age, anger, bliss. These emotions can get in the way. Sometimes it’s simply about the experience.

I am the son of a sailor and a social worker, the grandson of a gypsy, a dancer and a nurse. I spent my youth moving from port city to port city, watching a lot of road go by and reading World Book Encyclopedia. After my parents settled down on the Gulf Coast, I was a miscreant youth, destroying cars and taking the wrongs things too seriously and the right things not serious enough. Eventually I began replacing my imagination with experience.

I will use any salvaged wood but prefer swamp cypress and longleaf heartwood pine.

I despise waste. Particularly the waste of organic matter. Trees are magnificent. They were here before we arrived and they’ll be around after we are gone. I’m making an effort to save as much wood as possible. Creating art is fun too. But beyond communicating with folks, but beyond making money ad providing for myself, beyond rescuing flooded parts, beyond reveling in the ethereal aroma of heartpine that hasn’t seen the light of day in 400 years, beyond all that, I am trying to make a simple comment on waste.