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Up Up Away! Helicopter Ride


Camden Maine is an unusual Maine town. Situated on the Penobscot Bay, it has a marvelous harbor, full of magnificent boats. The Camden Opera house hosts many performing artists, as well as Town Meetings, and is just nearby French & Brawn, a traditional grocer with excellent meat, Zoot Coffee, and other businesses to serve the Urban Rigor of Maine Life, -all beneath the wonderful hiking tails of The Camden Hills, and the beautiful fresh water ponds beyond. I've lived here for 23 years, but never been any higher than Ragged Mountain, Bald Mountain, Mount Battie, Megunticock Mountain, and Bald Rock. All of these are seen in silouette as one rounds the Owls Head point on boat, or returns from Vinalhaven on the ferry, or even seen in the distance from Monhegan Island. So I decide this year to get ew perspective on the land and water of these parts by helicopter.

Ben Magro, Coastal Helicopters, took me up for a familiarization with copter angles. I asked him to pick me up at Rokes Peony Farm, a geothermal house site I developed in Camden Maine (listed by Annie Higbee here) and he did! Kate Jackson, the Midcoast's foremost listings realtor, happened-by, and we chatted. Suddenly a copter flew over head, and as she is used to pointing out eagles and big birds, thought it of interest. 'Look! But wait! It's coming back!' Yes inded it did, to get me, and landed in our lap. I grabbed my cell phone video camera Nokia N75, and said 'Bye Bye,' jumped into the copter and, hold my breath, elevated. Very cool. I then flew out of my farm house site, out over Camden, which I missed that on video from sheer terror and exhilaration, out over Penobscot Bay and the islands to Vinalhaven and over the fishing village (home of Robert Indiana), then heading north, back over Fox Island Thoroughfare and North Haven, then over water to Ethan Emory's new house, on 700 Acre Island, and back to home base in Belfast with a few thrills. Ayway, enjoy, pretty straightforward, cell video, nothing more than a record, 13.5 minutes.


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Video #1093, back



bb's Video Press: Videos are the way to present information, community identification, poetic expression, and as well, revelation. Common uses of video are meant to entertain in the mass consumption fashion of Hollywood (Los Angeles) or television production (New York). The pre-emptive power of American Culture is firmly based on these sources. All video expression is an emulation of these ways of visualizing and capturing the minds of people everywhere. Contemporeality here, is bb's recognition of a development in video coinciding with computer communication technologies, primarily advanced by capabilities in the Apple Computer and the webcam, the demise of religious text and expectation, for as we now know, the emergence of a true American Spirituality (The American Spirituality Community). This was identified in the 19th century by the Concord writers, Emerson and Thoreau, but never gathered as a community of thought until now. As such is seen by the expression of world view in the unique individual, flipping the pyramid of authority, to the needs expressed by the people, for ALL PEOPLES everywhere: X.