Kickstarter

Dear Friends,

My first full-length piece on the arctic, Sled Dog, has been aired by Living on Earth. The fieldwork for this essay was conducted in the traditional Inuit community of Arviat, just below the Arctic Circle on the NW shore of Hudson Bay.  You can see a photo of the dog team, read the essay, and hear my reading of it at www.MarkSethLender.com. If you scroll down, you will also find a piece I just did for Living on Earth's sound feature, EarthEar.  It's the full-length recording of an Inuit throat song called The Love Song and was also made in Arviat.  

Upcoming on Living on Earth are pieces on Polar Bear, Beluga Whale, and a number of sound recordings.  And none of this work would have been possible without your generous support.

As you know, my house was heavily damaged by Tropical Storm Irene.  Two hours ago, after 5 1/2 months of unlimited aggravation, the flood claim was settled.  Now begins at least a year of reconstruction.  That will be the easy part, and my attention now fully returns to what I really care about. 

All of your names have been posted to my website.  Those of you still owed premiums, I'll have them for you soon.  I'll be posting a gallery of photographs from Hudson Bay, probably over the weekend.  Please check in towards Wednesday of this coming week.  The gallery images will be  for sale and will be 40% off the listed price for my Kickstarter backers.  If you are due a photograph as your premium, just pick the photo or photos you like and I'll have them printed for you.  Although the premium was for a Fuji print, I've upgraded to Giclee process (using archival paper and 95 year inks). I think you'll be much happier with the result.  I want you to have something of real value.

 As always, you can contact me through MarkSethLender.com. Again, many thanks. 

 - Mark Seth Lender

To those of your still waiting for some of your rewards, apologies.  I returned literally into the teeth of Hurricane Irene.  Suffice it to say, there is about 12 feet less of the house than there used to be.  All the predictable and un-pretty fights with my flood insurance company are under way, plus dealings with contractors and engineers and adjusters and how to get the heat back up before the first freeze and the endless dilemmas of what to do now. But I am slowly working my way back toward daylight and you’ll be hearing from me very soon. 

Again, thank you all for your interest and support.  Much more to follow.]

When you go to a place you have never been, when there is no one to talk to, to ask, to advise you, apprehension is inchoate.  It is neither rational nor irrational.  It is a state, like solid or plasma and as in these depending on conditions of pressure, of heat or the lack of it, of inherent chemistry the state will change. Because you will change. Or, familiarity itself will alter perception even if everything even at the ending is as it was at the beginning.

It is they say dangerous work: The wild; the life.  No heart, they say. Sans souci. Boundless ferocity.  But here I am. Back. Intact. No bears or humans killed or injured in the process and the only thing utterly destroyed?  Every preconception that I had. 

On the Connecticut Coast (again), Mark Seth Lender

[I am hard at work on the radio segments promised from this expedition and  - mirabile dictu – I’ve been invited back to Arviat to watch the bears go out onto the pack ice in November. Needless to say, I’m going. I’ve started work on a new book on the polar bear and this next part will feed into that (pun intended). Certainly, the Big White One will cooperate as he usually does, and there will be lots more material for Living on Earth.  I also have a great number of photographs to edit for prints, cards, and slide shows.  Over the next few months, I’ll be posting excerpts and photos to my website:

http://marksethlender.com/  

Please sign up to the RSS feed. 

If you prefer you can “Like” my Facebook site:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mark-Seth-Lender-WriterProducer/113646802033842

Or send a “Friend” request to my personal Facebook site found by searching “Mark Seth Lender”

Finally, this week Living on Earth is airing an interview our anchor Bruce conducted with me by phone from Arviat.  You can listen on your local Public Radio station or online:

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00038&segmentID=9

What I like Al Bear is the Whiteness of his hair,

And he doesn’t seem to care how close I stand.

He doesn’t rise to greet me –

‘Cause he knows that he can eat me –

I hope his dinner wasn’t made of Spam.

And I hope his breakfast isn’t who I am.

© 2011 Mark Seth Lender (All Rights Reserved)