Moving deeper into the pandemic, we patiently shelter in place, waiting for the crisis to pass. Today’s post is dedicated to my valued colleagues and treasured friends, soldiering on in Philadelphia.

Last Wednesday I published the first in a series of daily website blog-posts, of writings and artworks that celebrate personal mobility in pursuit of mindful engagements with history, nature, and the environment. In relation to a finished painting or an essay, this process is no less a work of art than is the tree to the fruit it bears. In a sense, this practice may be ceremonial, acts of reverence, in beholding the world around us. Offered as messages of hope and solidarity, these quotidian posts will continue to appear, until these dark days are behind us.

SUNSET: COLUMBIA RAILROAD BRIDGE. Schuylkill River Sketchbook. 2018

Getting out on the water before work is a Philadelphia tradition that began in the nineteenth century. Many of the first oarsmen were tradesman and clerks working a six-day week. Social diversity is an enduring trait of amateur competitive rowing. Barge club memberships today include CEOs and plumbers, men and women, young and old, as well as people of color.
On page 26 of her book Thomas Eakins: The Heroism of Modern Life, Elizabeth Johns writes:

Rowing had become an art, and Rowers potential heroes. The stroke called for by the delicately balanced boats was . . . a calculated series of movements of body and oar, based on principles of efficiency and grace. So disciplined and comprehensive a leisure did it seem . . . that rowing was a modern reinstitution of the Greek ideal of the union of mental and physical culture.

Popular rowing images celebrate sunshine, pageantry, races, and regattas. Eakin’s painting of Max Schmitt resting on his oars tells a different story, one of solitary endeavor. Measuring each stroke, the body adopts a rhythmic movement as the belly of the scull slices through the water. Riverbanks retreat into the distance, soaring bridges mark your wake. Mind, body, time, and the river, all become one, greeting the day or bidding it farewell.

(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).

Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com