Lake Forest: the need for artificial intelligence; transition; a wasted day; frost and still waters

Eric, who lives in Montreal, wisely keeps a boat in Florida on which he spends the winter.  Yesterday he wrote:  Perhaps you can explain this mystery to me.  This early morning there were two sailboats stranded on a shoal, however well indicated on the nautical charts, and as I write a third has just joined them hoping to pass between the two.  Is this a new way to avoid the drudgery of anchoring?

Artificial Intelligence is needed because obviously our species does not have enough.

A comment was just made on ‘A State of Grace’ video to which I would also like to respond here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3epMf4qGS-Q

The comment:  Gorgeous spot.  I am wondering what it feels like to be back in society after spending a lot of time on the ocean?  Does human civilization seem strange?

My reply:  I have always made the transition easily, but then human civilization always seems strange to me, and now I don’t really experience it much.  I am not much around people.  I get news of the world by reading, not listening to the deliberately anxiety inducing voices on television.  And where we live on Hilton Head Island is isolated from the tourist areas, quiet, serene, and as you can see beautiful.

When I tied GANNET to the Customs dock in San Diego after the passage from Panama, people commented with surprise that I looked as though I had just come in from a day sail; and when I reached Auckland, New Zealand, in March 1976, after five extreme months at sea, I stepped ashore unknown and unnoticed.  After dealing with the authorities, I returned to EGREGIOUS and was restless.  I bailed her bilge as I had been doing every hour night and day for months, then that evening unable to sleep walked up Queen Street.  There was an incline and my legs were weak.  I stopped opposite a shop selling hot dogs called appropriately or ironically, Uncle Sam’s, and started back down.  At a stoplight a woman came up beside me.  I still remember the smell of her perfume.  I had been alone a long time.  Within a few hours chance brought Suzanne to me.

I finished ZEN POEMS OF CHINA AND JAPAN.  Here is the last in the book.

The photo is the view from this apartment toward the east.  Lake Michigan is a mile away.  Snow flurries continue, but there has been only two or three inches accumulation.  So far this winter Chicago has had only half its usual 18” of snow by this date.  The temperature is well below freezing.  19F/-7F.  We go outside.  We have good winter clothes here.  They will not be taken to Hilton Hilton.

Bill Gribble has on his site some beautiful photos of the almost frozen lake on which he sails in southwestern England.

http://scapegoatsanon.blogspot.com/2023/01/scsc-frost-and-still-waters.html