from Bangor, Maine: Moby Dick

We entertained ourselves during the long drive from eastern Nova Scotia by listening to the first few chapters of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Our day of whale-watching got us inspired. I also downloaded the Gregory Peck movie, which we can watch on the iPad — maybe tomorrow night — but getting a taste of the original words — the documentary, really, about 19th century whaling out of Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts — is more interesting to us now than when we were sophomores in high school.

Here’s a confession: we haven’t watched Moby Dick sooner because we’ve been catching up on episodes of BRAVO’s Work of Art reality TV series about trying to sift out the “next great artist” from a hodgepodge of contestants (from the people who brought us Project Runway). I downloaded the episodes from iTunes to iPad. As hokey as it sounds, it’s given us a lot of great conversations about “what is art?”