Stewart Dean's Home Page
Stewart Dean
voice: (845) 336-4815, fax: -2649, email: sdean"at"sdean.net,
webpage: www.sdean.net
My physical location: 300 Ulster Landing Road, Kingston, NY 12401,
Etats Unis
....there's a coupla images to download, please be patient....
Stewart Booming & Zooming 
Hello, this is me some 20+ years back, honking across Pamlico Sound (the
bay to the west of Cape Hatteras) on a windsurfer...I was getting along
at around 25 mph. These days, tho, I'm most interested in.....
English Country Dance and its Music
English Country Dance is most like contra or perhaps square dance,
but it has a balletic choreography and elegance to it that others
don't....and absolutely gorgeous music, most of it from the late 1600's
to middle 1800's. It often sounds like a cross between classical and
folk, if you can imagine such a thing.
I play an English concertina for English Country Dance in the
house bands of:
This summer (2010) I participated in CDSS's English Week at Pinewoods, a magical place near Cape Cod, in a week of English Country Dance . My photographs of that are here.
The Craic
The Irish, bless their sometimes joyous souls, have this word in
Gaelic meaning good times, music, dance, song...roistering, outrageous
good times. Mind you, I don't do Irish music much...it
isn't
my talent, but I do go for a craic of my own, my participation
in
music, dance & song. Sitting and merely listening to music like
some
potted plant next to a speaker is not my idea of fun. Going to Folk
Festivals
where there's jamming, dancing, open bands, pub and a cappella sings
is.
In the picture above, I'm playing in the evening processional to the
dance floor at Northern Week at Ashokan. If you've ever hear
Ashokan Farewell, that powerfully nostalgic waltz, you may be
interested to know that, though it was the theme music for Ken Burns'
Civil War PBS documentary, it was NOT written for that
documentary....rather years ago, as a lament for the end of this camp,
which is a sort of magical Brigadoon of music and
dance in the high summer.
I am in hot company...Dave Kaynor, the contra dance fiddle wizard
is on the left, and Bill Matthiesen, of the Waltz Books, on the right playing
banjo.
The best: playing for dance with others, for
others: a concert of grace, flow & harmony.
Would you believe that I had the good fortune to drive and work on
Bugattis as a teenager? Read on.
My current transport is a mildy modified VW GTI VR6 (and amazingly
powerful, smooth, true GT tourer) and a '73 Austin Mini (so much fun to
drive on twisty back roads), currently for sale.
Photography and the various graphic arts
are some of my other interests. I do my photographic work with an
8x10" view camera ala Ansel Adams or Eliot Porter...it's a beautiful
medium but expensive and time consuming....I decided I wanted to have
a life and a family and so do it very little of it lately.
...reduced resolution, but even so 1MB in size. At the time I took it,
we were living in a house on Overlook Mountain above Woodstock, so high
up that we could see over Ohayo Mountain across the valley to the
Ashokan Reservoir
beyond. This image looks down on the Bearsville Flats and the back road
to Mt. Tremper.....and is the sort of view we saw every day. In 1985,
the property (we'd been renting) was sold with 27 acres for $87,500.
For those of you who think that traditional photo-chemical imaging
processes are passe, I'd point out that my camera shoots the
equivalent of a 720 megapixel digital image...while the best digital
cameras shoot an at 6 to 25 megapixels. So it'll be a while yet
before digital electronic imaging can deliver the kind of resolution
and depth of tonality that traditional
photgraphic processes can. Oh, I'll be happy enough when it comes to
pass, because the film and developing costs for one 8"x10" exposure is
$15. Ouch!
But here are some images from the CDSS English Week at Pinewoods with my new Canon 5D MkII 21 megapixel digital SLR camera. Not too shabby.
Years ago, I left the South to escape its politics and 'religion'...now
they'ves metatisized to the nation at large, and an old-time Deep-South
political machine using fraud, fear and lies to subvert America's
democracy. This page is about what I do
in my small way to counter it.
It's a nasty business, much uglier than it need be....the right has
decided to demonize and defame the left. What ever happened to
statesmanship, to commonweal, to consensus, to government that was the
product of the best both sides had to offer (along with the usual
venality and ugly horse-trading)?
But the only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to remain silent. Here's to a return to civility
and happier times....
My Work
Once upon a time, I worked for IBM...that was before its incredible,
never-ending implosion (after each defeat, they shoot more soldiers,
while the generals and staff get medals....at IBM, heads roll up
hill!). I got the axe at the very end of '94...I worked "on the
outside" for a while, but went back as a contractor. Much of the
same silly stuff, tho, as
before, got to work with some great people. In some ways, it was a
relief when my contract ended....this time I found a sys admin job at
Bard, a small
(and rather free-thinking) liberal arts college...MUCH more to my
inclination, and there I am happily ensconced.
© COPYRIGHT 2002, 2009 Stewart Dean. All of my web pages,
photographs and images included, are copyrighted material! You
may NOT copy or use the text, photographs or images without my express
permission.
