Complete overcast. Cool and dank in the Great Cabin to which I may be confined all day. Actually this is a safe place. Safest of all would be to provision for six or so months and sail the oceans. However, I am going to do just the opposite and get on an airplane with a bunch of possibly diseased strangers and fly to Chicago. As always mentally I am ready to move to the next place at least a week before scheduled to do so and it seems prudent to get the flight over with sooner than later and I most definitely do not want to get stuck here. I want to be with Carol. United is not imposing change fees to tickets, so I fly this Sunday instead of March 24.
Assuming I survive the snake plague and the world is somewhat normal, I expect I’ll be back on GANNET in May or June to have her towed east, just in time for the hurricane season. And yes, Virginia, the world is full of risks.
I have learned from past mistakes and will leave some Laphroaig and tequila on board for my return. Maybe even some gin, but I cannot guarantee that. I will also pack my sleeping bags in waterproof bags.
I believe that while serious, the reaction to this snake virus is disproportionate due to the media and the Internet. The herd panics easily and has stampeded. The death rate from this seems to be less than 3% and may be much lower because of unreported cases. More than a half million die each year from malaria, but of course most of them are black African children under age 5 and don’t register on Western consciousness. None of them have Facebook or Twitter accounts and so don’t count.
So I will take reasonable precautions, but beyond that I am going to go on living until I don’t.
“The death of an old man is never a tragedy.” It seems that was said by the movie director Robert Altman. I am an old man.
I currently read two poems a day each by Thomas Hardy and Pablo Neruda. I enjoy Neruda, but I prefer Hardy. Yesterday I came across ‘The Convergence of the Twain’, a previously unknown to me poem by Hardy about the TITANIC.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47266/the-convergence-of-the-twain
Live on and seek joy even in the Apocalypse.