Monday, August 30, 2021

Lake Forest: busy; from space; world’s biggest basket; me and a Chinese ivory carver


Above is yesterday morning’s  tracking map of tropical storms just before Ida came ashore.  There were five.

I saw headlines this morning about Louisiana suffering Ida’s wrath.  If you’ve been reading this journal for a while you know that Ida is not a person but an insentient natural phenomenon which is incapable of wrath.  Sigh.  Sometimes I feel this is a losing battle.  






Here is a screen shot of a site that provides a live view of the Earth from the International Space Station.  In fact as it states on the screen the view is not always live if transmission is lost or the station is on Earth’s night side.  Nevertheless that this is possible is amazing.  I have bookmarked the site and check it frequently.  I thank James for the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEIk7gwjgIM



From my San Diego friends, Susan and Howard, who are driving through the Midwest on their way to leaf peep in New England for the first time, comes a link to the World’s Biggest Basket.  I present it to you in my ongoing efforts at broadening your education.  I had no idea that such a marvel exists, though I probably should have, much less that it is so near.  However tempting,  I am not planning a visit.

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10658




I continue to go back to the main site and make minor corrections from time to time.  There is no set pattern to this and I am aware that the changes I make will not likely be noticed by anyone else.  I am sometimes surprised by how much I got right when I was young.  Here is the penultimate paragraph of STORM PASSAGE.

In Auckland, Suzanne and I attended an exhibit of Chinese art. One of the objects was a figure holding aloft thirty-two concentric spheres, only the outer half dozen of which were visible, all carved from a single piece of ivory. The satisfaction of the artist upon completing carving all thirty-two spheres and knowing that each—even the innermost which would never be seen—was perfect, is the same as that of a man who completes a solo circumnavigation, who fulfills any dream, even though no one else knows.

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Lake Forest: mistaken identity: rapid intensification; warned


Yesterday I received in the mail unsolicited congratulations from Fisher Investments.  Perhaps I need to add that this was addressed to me personally, not to “present occupant”.  I quote:

Congratulations are in order.  It takes skill, perseverance and savvy to be counted among the wealthiest Americans.  To have out-saved and out-invested your peers speaks to the kind of individual you are. 

My cover is blown.  Instead of a simple—well, perhaps complex—sailor who lives happily for months in a small sailboat crossing oceans without indoor plumping or heating or air-conditioning or refrigeration, I am revealed as among the wealthiest Americans.  Drat.

I do not know who Fisher Investments has me confused with.

It is true that I am among the wealthiest Americans in the two ways that count most:  I can get by with little and I have now had for almost fifty years control of my own time. But I don’t think that is what Fisher Investments has in mind.



In the image above of this morning’s world wind map you see hurricanes Ida heading for Louisiana and Nora heading for the Sea of Cortez.  The difference between ‘i’ and ‘n’ shows how far ahead the Eastern Pacific is this year.

Ida is presently a category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 85 miles per hour/74 knots.  She is expected to rapidly intensify in the next twenty-four hours into a category 3 storm with winds above 110 miles per hour/96 knots.  As I have noted here before rapid intensification formerly rare has become common.  The forecast of this intensification has come too late for those along the Louisiana coast, which was hit hard by two storms last year, to evacuate. 

Rapid intensification will not be relevant to me when I move in a little over two weeks from the tornado zone to the hurricane zone.  Once in Hilton Head I will not evacuate whatever the storm.  If I survive, I will be prepared to live without assistance as I do at sea for a month or two.



A few days ago I was researching anchorages in the Bahamas to which I am planning to sail this winter. In doing so I read that the CDC has just added the Bahamas to the list of countries where non-essential travel should be avoided and that the Bahamian Prime Minister has put a COVID curfew in place.  I am vaccinated.  I will get a booster shot when and if available.  But I don’t want the hassle of having to deal with perfectly reasonable COVID restrictions.  I wasn’t going to sail to the Bahamas until January at the earliest and much may change by then.  We’ll see.



 

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Lake Forest: handheld AIS; weather phtotographs; good; prob; cross training

From time to time I am asked about AIS—Automatic Identification System.  I have replied that I think it is a good idea, but that I have not equipped GANNET with it because it adds too much complexity and requires too much power for the little boat. Yesterday I came across an ad for a relatively new iCom handheld VHF radio with integrated AIS.  I am going to ask for one for my birthday.

https://www.icomjapan.com/lineup/products/IC-M94D/



This morning I happened across entries in the 2021 Weather Photographer of the Year contest.  Some are spectacular.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/weather-photographer-of-the-year-competition-2021-05nct6jhx



As I have pointed out before those fools who refuse to be vaccinated endanger not only themselves but others and cost all of us money due to unnecessary hospitalizations that we all pay for through taxes and higher insurance premiums.  Now insurance companies and some businesses are doing something about it.  Delta Airlines has not mandated that all employees be vaccinated, but it is going to start charging the unvaccinated a $200 a month surcharge to remain in the company’s health care system.  Good.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/covid-costs-billions-so-delta-to-charge-unvaxxed-airline-workers-200-month/



It is apparent that many, perhaps most people have the attention span of a gnat, which may be an insult to gnats.  So we have Nat Geo and A. Fib and far too many others.  Yesterday I came across in a magazine article  “No prob.” written by a staff writer who found typing ‘no problem’ too exhausting.



I am rereading Erik Larsen’s THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY after finishing a superior trilogy by Derek Robinson about the RAF in WWI.  As you may know THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY is about a serial killer who was active during the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.  There were an unusual number of remarkable men in Chicago then, many of them architects.

Here is a paragraph from the book that I consider cross-training.  



Monday, August 23, 2021

Lake Forest: cava; next; half price; life and death


Although I have spent considerable time in Spain, mostly in boats along the south coast, I did not know of cava until David wrote me about it.  Cava has been called Spanish champagne, but cannot legally be any longer.  Only wine produced in the Champagne region of France is champagne.  But both wines are produced by fermentation in the bottle and in that differ from Italian prosecco which is fermented in vats.  On Saturday while seeking cachaca we also sought and found cava, bought a bottle, and as you can see above enjoyed it last evening in the back yard with salmon and corn grilled by Carol and a salad.  It was very enjoyable.  Even excellent.  Particularly at around $10 a bottle.  We will enjoy more cava and thank David.





 



Above is part of this morning’s Earth Wind Map.  (Sorry Southern Hemisphere, but it is our hurricane season now.)

Over hyped Henri is gone.  Looking east of the Caribbean islands is the beginning of a swirl that might be next, though the National Hurricane Center does not think development is likely.  The mass of clouds in the southern Caribbean has possibilities.  And of most interest is the tight circle in the Pacific just south of the Baja Peninsula.  Thus far the Eastern Pacific has been much more active than the Atlantic.  There has been one storm after another.  That one is Marty.  There they mostly just wander west and don’t make landfall and are forgotten; but in completing my first circumnavigation in EGREGIOUS on the passage from Papeete, Tahiti, to San Diego, at this time of year in 1976, I sailed through one.  I don’t recall its name.




This morning Carol and I had joint routine examinations by our ophthalmologist.  I suggested that because for me he had only to examine one eye, I should get half price.  He did not buy it.








This comes from Dieter.  I thank him.  While I prefer tillers to wheels, I certainly agree with the sentiment.



Saturday, August 21, 2021

Lake Forest: wonder; $48.60; caipirinha rediscovered; planks; $49.99


 Mark is a successful tech entrepreneur.  And also a runner, cyclist, sailor, father and husband.  When I met him in person several years ago he had sold two start-ups.  I do not know if the number is greater now, but two, about which he was quite modest, is enough.  He drove down from Madison, Wisconsin, one day to have lunch with me and gave me a great compliment.  He said as he was driving he was thinking he was on his way to meet the Steve Jobs of sailing.  I don’t know that it is deserved, but it is memorable.

During the pandemic Mark studied and wrote about wonder, the wonder that is common in children and usually lost in adults.  Wonder that is lost and shouldn’t be about aspects of our lives we take for granted.  He sent me some of his writings and I included part of at least one in the journal about the first military convoy across the U.S. not long after WWI led by the then obscure Dwight Eisenhower.  

Mark has now completed his project, at least for now, and is offering a free newsletter with episodes to be sent at regular intervals.  I have signed up and look forward to what he will make me aware of.

I must say that I have not completely lost my sense of wonder.  Yesterday I responded to friend who was listening to Ravel’s ‘Rapsodie Espagnole’ that I have a performance of it on my iPhone along with more than 700 albums of music and more than 500 books and all the charts covering GANNET’s circumnavigation, in a device about the size of a deck of cards that fits in my pocket.   The young take this for granted, but I continue to be amazed.

You can check out Mark’s website and if you wish sign up for the newsletters here.  I expect you will find them entertaining and informative and wonder expanding.

https://becausewonder.com/



While I was doing my weight workout Thursday my phone rang.  Usually I would not have answered it, but I was expecting calls from the office of the beautiful skin cancer doctor and a bike shop where my bike is being serviced, so I stopped and answered.  It was from the skin cancer doctor’s office.  I had thought she sent only one slice of me to be biopsied, but she sent four.  Three were benign, one pre-cancerous, which means that I only have to go in to have it sprayed with liquid nitrogen again.  In making that appointment I became free to book my flight back to the lower flatlands.  I like Lake Forest and enjoy being with Carol, but I am getting restless and miss being on the coast and near GANNET.  And who would want to miss the height of the hurricane season?

So I googled flights from Chicago to Savannah.  Non-stops from Chicago to Hilton Head end on Labor Day.  I booked a basic economy ticket on United on Monday, September 13, for $41.  When the extra taxes are added the total comes to $48.60.  That is for a distance of just short of 1000 miles.  Lake Forest to O’Hare and Savannah Airport to our condo on Hilton Head are both 25-30 miles and both will cost more than the flight.



If you have ever been to Brazil and are not a teetotaler you know the pleasure of caipirinhas, the national drink made with cachaca, limes and sugar. 

An article on the BBC News site a few days ago about cachaca, seen by myself and Larry, reminded me of the drink.

Cachaca is made from fermented sugarcane juice, which differentiates it from rum which is made from molasses.

According to the BBC article cachaca is the third most wildly produced spirit in the world after vodka and China’s baijiu.  I goggled ‘baijiu’ and learned that it comes from fermented sorghum or rice.

This morning we found a few bottles of cachaca at a large liquor store and this evening I made us caipirinhas as seen in the photo above.  They are simple, delightful, and bring back memories of Brazil to those of us who have been there and I expect desire to go for those who haven’t.

As my continuing ongoing public service I provide a link to a recipe.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/caipirinha-recipe-759290

I changed some details.  

We couldn’t find our muddler.  Presumably it is in Hilton Head.  So I muddled with an ice cream scoop.

We didn’t have any sugar, so I bought some powdered sugar, but I used only a single teaspoon. Neither of us likes sweet drinks and one teaspoon was enough for our tastes.

I made our first with three ounces of cachaca, the second, which is currently beside me, with two.


Here in Lake Forest I do my usual push-up, crunch, knee bend work out on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.  Somehow during the move from Evanston our weights went missing.  As far as we can tell nothing else did.  Although I am reluctant to add stuff here that will only have to be thrown out, I missed my weight workouts and bought another set of 10 pound dumbbells from Amazon and am doing my usual weight workout on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  But I chanced across an article about planks and have added them before and after the weight workout.  I am in the plank position while doing push-ups, but more can’t hurt.  Goggling resulted in a wide variation of opinion of how long to hold a plank.  One scientist states that his research demonstrates that there is no advantage beyond doing three 10 second planks at intervals.  Others suggest 60 seconds.  On my first attempt I went to 120 seconds and got bored.  Now I start the weight workout with a 60 second plank and end it with three 10 second planks.  I don’t know that it makes any difference, but my aged body still wants to be used and I feel virtuous.



Having driven to the huge liquor store several miles away, we shopped at a different supermarket near it.  While there I noticed 10 year Laphroaig for $49.99 a bottle.  This is the best price I have seen since before the Trump tariffs.  Unfortunately I had just bought a bottle at the liquor store for $64.99.

L’Chaim.







Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Lake Forest: suburbanite; rewriting and a new article; skin; headless hatter; Hitler’s bath tub


Neither Carol nor I have had a back yard since we became adults.  We have variously lived in apartments, condos and boats.  In Lake Forest we have one.  Grass, a towering oak tree, lawn chairs, the small gas grill that lived on the balcony in Evanston.  The entire suburban dream, and for the past several evenings we have been enjoying it.  Drinks and dinner in the back yard.  An unexpected, innocent and temporary pleasure.  Soon winter will come and even sooner I will be back in Hilton Head.  It seems wise at any age to enjoy what you can when you can, but particularly for an almost octogenarian.  I try.



Rereading ‘A Slice of Life’ took me back to my main site where I also reread the Introduction and the Requiem.  In doing so I made slight revisions.  I also found that one of my articles, “The End of Being” was not on the articles page and have included it.  For those of you who have read GANNET’s passage log there will be nothing new, though it is repackaged.  I will post another recent article after it is published.  

I changed a single word in the last sentence of “The End of Being”.

Formerly it read:  Full understanding will come in time.

Now it reads:  Full understanding might come in time.

One word.  A significant difference.


https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/end_of_being.html



I have long accepted the science that we are all Africans.  You may recall a Simon and Garfunkel song, “Under African Skies.”  Sometimes in southern Africa I have looked up at the sky and felt oddly at home.  Still I learned a great deal from a video link that James sent me to a lecture by Nina Jablonski, a professor at Penn State:  The Evolution and Meaning of Human Skin Color.  To oversimplify, skin has evolved to block partially UV rays from the sun which can cause skin cancer, as I well know, and birth defects, but which are also necessary for our bodies to produce essential Vitamin D.  I did not know that concepts of race were originated by two philosophers, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, in the 18th Century, neither of whom traveled outside their own small communities and relied on second and third hand and worse information.  

The video is a little over an hour long.  You may not be interested but I found it well worth my time.  I thank James.

https://youtu.be/sc4OFcT5m1Y 



I am presently reading DUEL WITH THE DEVIL a non-fiction book about a murder in New York City in 1799.  I find a quote from Christopher Colles, who is described as a hapless inventor, amusing.  He said after one of his ingenious projects to bring clean water to the city was wrecked by British soldiers during the Revolutionary War, “Had I been brought up a hatter, people would have come into the world without heads.”



I had not heard of Lee Miller until Michael brought her to my attention.  I thank him.

She was a fashion model who became an outstanding war photographer during WW2.  That is she in the photograph at the top bathing in Hitler’s bathtub just after the war in Europe ended.

I have googled her and viewed many of her photographs.  Some are brutal as is their subject matter.  She was one of the first into the concentration camps.  I have also found some videos about her.  Carol and I watched one last evening.  Her photographs are worth seeing.


Friday, August 13, 2021

Lake Forest: sliced; the inexplicable Ulysses; primed


 I am a patchwork of bandaids and scabs.  Yesterday I went to the beautiful skin cancer specialist.  Alas, she was as expected masked which hid some of her beauty, but she is a very fine doctor.  As usual she froze some spots, scraped others and took one bit for biopsy.

The visit caused me to reread ‘A Slice of Life’ which I rather enjoyed.  The title, which is far superior to my original, was provided by Steve Earley.

        Once not so long ago there was a sailor who crossed oceans alone in small boats.  He did this for many, many years and became a legend.

        He found purity and joy alone in what he called the monastery of the sea and loved sailing toward the setting sun or toward the dawn.

        When as a young man he departed on his first voyage, three tantalizing sirens kissed him good-bye and waved until he disappeared over the horizon and then, as sirens often do, forgot him.

        He suffered hardships, not eagerly but inevitably.  Sometimes he starved.  Twice he almost died of thirst.    He learned that thirst is much worse than hunger.  Eight times he survived the great storms that are called hurricanes and cyclones.

        People often told him he was brave because he made voyages that not only had no one else ever made, but that no one else had even thought of.

        He did not consider himself brave.  He did not fear the sea and he knew that men do not conquer the sea or mountains, they only transit them.  Still he was at home at sea as few others have ever been.

        He did fear thirst.

        After every voyage he made a pilgrimage to a beautiful sorceress.  Wise men told him he must do this and so he did.

        The sorceress dwelt in a high tower beside a lake so vast some called it an inland sea.  That lake was deceptive, sometimes as turquoise as the Caribbean, sometimes as black as the North Sea in a gale.

        The sorceress had coal black hair, a friendly smile, and a gay laugh. 

        Each time the sailor visited her she sliced small pieces of flesh from him.  Though the pieces were small, they did not grow back and over the decades they added up.  Each time the sailor returned to the sea he was smaller.

        The sailor lived far longer than anyone expected, including himself, and though he grew old he kept crossing oceans.  Sometimes he wondered at this.  He did not believe in the gods and never asked them to protect him. 

        Finally when he was very, very old, he sailed his small boat into port and made his customary way to the sorceress’s lair.

        The sorceress did not age.  She was still beautiful.  Her hair still jet black.  Her smile still friendly.  Her laughter still gay.  She welcomed him and cut the tiny remnant he had become into three pieces and he vanished.




On the train down to the doctor’s office I finished reading MY DEAREST JULIA, the wartime letters written by Ulysses S. Grant to his wife, Julia, although in the first part, mostly dating from the Mexican War of 1846-48, she was his fiancé not his wife.  The second part consists of letters sent during the Civil War.  What is inexplicable is that they were written seemingly by two completely different men.


Grant was born in 1822.  During the Mexican War he was a young love sick lieutenant.  That is all.  Nothing more.  The letters are filled with longing that he and Julia get married, with doubts of her love, and questions about her father’s attitude toward her marrying Grant.  Grant’s father was a prosperous self-man business man.  Julia’s father was also prosperous.  Both men doubted that Grant would ever amount to much and until the Civil War they were right.


Part 2 we suddenly have the Grant of history.  Only a year or so before the war he had failed at everything he attempted and was reduced to selling firewood on street corners of Saint Louis.


I greatly admire Grant who among other accomplishments wrote what is widely considered to be the finest presidential memoir.  I have read those memoirs and biographies of him.  He was the right man in the right place at the right time.  Perhaps there are always Grants among us, men and women, who never are.




Today’s NASA Earth Observatory site carries an image showing that as we move toward the height of the season the Atlantic Ocean is primed to support and sustain hurricanes.


https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148689/oceans-primed-for-peak-of-hurricane-season




With the heat here this past week, a few mornings ago I biked to the beach before breakfast.  There were a few other people about also taking advantage of the relative coolness, but mostly the beach was quiet and deserted and serene.  By the time I walked to the end and back and biked home, the day was becoming too hot.










Monday, August 9, 2021

Lake Forest: Blackbeard’s head; pornstar; collapse


 

i recently read BLACK FLAGS, BLUE WATERS:  THE HISTORY OF AMERICA’S MOST NOTORIOUS PIRATES and learned a good many things I did not know, among them that some American pirates ventured as far as the east coast of Africa and the Red Sea where they preyed upon ships carrying Muslim Haj pilgrims from India to Mecca and back.

While I grew up in the Midwest and find myself there at this moment, until recently I thought of myself as a California sailor, but I mostly sailed from California and not along the coast.  Even before moving to Hilton Head I had sailed more of the east coast than the west, up and down from Florida to Maine twice and so I know the waters in which the pirates operated.

Most of the pirates preferred to avoid violence which even if they were successful was likely to result in injuries to their crew and damage to their ship.  They normally took prizes by a show of superior force and intimidation.

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, never engaged in actual combat until the attack that led to his death when an expedition sent from Virginia to track him down found him at Ocracoke Island on what is now North Carolina’s Outer Banks. 

Robert Maynard, the leader of the expedition, hung Teach’s head from the bowsprit of his ship and sailed back to port on the James River with it still there.  Later the head was placed on a pike beside the river as a warning.  

A few of the pirates were deranged sadists.  I will not trouble you with details of their atrocities.  But one of the worst tortures I read of in the book and had not previously known was ‘pressing’. I quote from the book:  He was placed in a shallow pit in a field, with a wooden door laid upon his chest, and then rocks were piled on the door.  Slowly, the weight crushed the life out of him, but still he did not utter a word.  Finally, after nearly two days of this agonizing torture, Giles Corey took his last breath.

What I find interesting is that the men who performed this atrocity were not pirates, but the good citizens of Boston on a man who refused to enter a plea in a court case.



I could have titled this entry ‘things I did not know’.  Where Blackbeard died above.  What a purlin is.

http://smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com/2021/08/purlins-straps-and-screws.html

And until I happened upon an article about favorite cocktails by state and country, I had never heard of a pornstar martini, much less known that according to one source it is the world’s favorite.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/the-most-popular-cocktail-in-every-state-mapped

I occasionally enjoy sangria, though I wouldn’t consider it a cocktail, but most of these drinks are risible.  If you really want to drink, drink.  I take my Laphroaig neat and my martinis are gin, vermouth at a ratio of 5-1 and an olive.  Pornstars are not in my future.  Or my past.



Several of you sent me links to recent articles about the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream.  I think I may have made reference to this in the past, but here is a more current link.

https://www.livescience.com/gulf-stream-close-to-collapse

Today you may have seen articles about the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/ipcc-report-un-climate-report-delivers-starkest-warning-yet.html

The problem is quite simple:  There are too damn many of us.

Consider ‘Last Born’.

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/lastborn.html

Unless our species demonstrates considerably more intelligence than my reading of history and experience of life leads me to expect, homo sapiens is going to be a self-solving problem.


Thursday, August 5, 2021

Lake Forest: 10 miles; Irish sailing commentary; some quotes

I biked 10 miles yesterday.  While 10 miles is nothing, it was for me.  I have not biked that far for decades.

About twenty years ago something went wrong with my right knee.  This was while we still lived in Boston.  After biking about 3 miles it began to be painful and to swell, so I didn’t bike more than 3 miles.

In Hilton Head I have to bike 3.5 to 4 miles to get to a supermarket.  Tentatively I tried and found I could do so, there and back, without pain, although there was a shopping break in between.

A bike path runs through Lake Forest beside the commuter train track.  I googled and found it is part of a bike trail that runs from north of here all the way through Chicago.  So yesterday I decided to try to ride 10 miles, figuring if I got in trouble Carol whose office is not far away could come and get me.  

The path is well surfaced and not crowded and quite pleasant.  The train tracks on one side and a major street on the other are mostly hidden by trees and foliage.  I rode north 4.5 miles where the path crosses to the other side of the street.  Not wanting to do that, I turned around and rode a half mile past the Lake Forest village center, then home.  In all 10. 6 miles and not a twinge.  

I never knew what was wrong with my knee.  Whatever it was, even old bodies sometimes heal themselves.



From Jack comes a link to a video of an Irish commentary on a sailboat race.  In the title it is called hilarious and it is.  I thank him.  After watching it this morning I was laughing and Carol came from another room to see what was so funny.

While there are amusing parts all along, the best is at the very end.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iz1de7Lwyw


  


One of the recent offerings from BookBud was THE 1001 SMARTEST THINGS EVER SAID.  I bought it assuming it would be filled with my words, but, alas, it was published almost twenty years ago and isn’t.  I am confident that any subsequent edition will rectify that egregious error.

The book is divided into six sections and I have completed the first:  ‘Love and Death and some of what happens in between’.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes from that section.  Warning:  You will be subject to more as I read more.

To succeed in life you need two things:  ignorance and confidence.—Mark Twain

Do not go where the path may lead, go where there is no path and leave a trail.—Ralph Waldo Emerson             

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.—Henrik ibsen  (You knew I’d like that one.)

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.—Voltaire

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this:  man’s being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone.—Blaise Pascal

Make voyages!  Attempt them…there’s nothing else.—Tennessee Williams

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.—Susan Ertz 

Monday, August 2, 2021

Lake Forest: the unflat lands; Machiavelli on calms and storms; Tallulah Bankhead on diaries


 

Yesterday Caro and I bicycled a mile and a half to the beach, partially though a small park and mostly beside mansions. Lake Forest is among the wealthiest towns in the country.  Somewhere between number 10 and 30, depending on which metrics are used. Carol had told me that the beach itself is reached by a long set of steps.  Somehow this is no longer the upper flatland.  Elevation has crept in, but I don’t know where.  It still seems all flat when you drive or take the train from Evanston the twenty miles north to here.  As you can see the beach is a long way down.  I counted and it is 118 stairs.  I had no idea.


The beach is a half mile long, but broken into segments by breakwaters.  There is even a Lake Forest Yacht Club with boats GANNET size and smaller, all on trailers out of the water.  There is a ramp and a crane.  Most Moore 24s raced on the west coast are sailed dry and hoisted in and out routinely.  GANNET had an eye attached to a keel bolt directly beneath the companionway for that, but I removed it.




Wind from the NE was refreshing, but was creating waves that had the beach closed to swimming, something we weren’t planning on doing anyway.  A lot of people walking, sitting, sunbathing.  The beach is free to Lake Forest residents.  $25 for non-residents.  Keep the riff-raff out.



I just finished rereading THE PRINCE for the first time since college.  Machiavelli thought most people vulgar and untrustworthy.  Shocking.  He was also quite politically incorrect about women.  Were he writing today Internet vigilantes would have been outraged and all over him, but then having already stated what he thought of most people, he wouldn’t have cared.

In writing about how some Princes lose their dominions through being unprepared for change, he wrote:  It is human nature when the sea is calm not to think of storms.



Also politically incorrect is a quote by Tallulah Bankhead, of whom I expect few younger than I have ever heard, from THE ASSASSIN’S CLOAK:  Only good girls keep diaries.  Bad girls don’t have the time.