Hilton Head Island: Waco; Idylls; mold; gators

Last evening I watched all three episodes of the new Netflix documentary WACO:  AMERICAN APOCALYPSE.  I did not initially intend to watch all three, but I found it well done and profoundly disturbing, so I continued.  David Koresh was a con man or insane or both, but the government made far too many serious and deadly mistakes and must share the blame.  I suggest you give WACO a try.  You may find it as compelling as did I.

Also compelling in a completely different and enjoyable way is Tennyson’s THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.  I started reading it last week.  I had read parts before but never the whole book length poem.  It is a very great pleasure.  The poetry.  The stories.  An imaginary world and time that one wishes had existed.

I am reading it in a Kindle edition of THE WORKS OF TENNYSON which I bought for 99 cents.  However, you need not spend even that immense sum.  Amazon has a free download of the Kindle edition of the poem.  

The IDYLLS caused me to google Tennyson.  He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for forty-two years,  longer than any other.  He published two books of poetry in his early twenties.  The second met with such criticism that he did not publish again for the next ten years.  That third book included some of his best known poems, “Locksley Hall’, ‘Break.  Break.  Break.’, and ‘Ulysses’, and made his reputation.

Tennyson’s is one of the best Ulysses.  It is an old man’s poem written by a young man.  Tennyson was only thirty-two when it came out.  A great work of the imagination.  I just reread it. It, too, is worth your time.

https://poets.org/poem/ulysses

Yesterday I biked to GANNET armed with bleach, a spray bottle, and a soft brush.  At the dock I filled the spray bottle with equal amounts of bleach and water.  I climbed onto the foredeck, sat down on the forward hatch and sprayed the solution over the two solar panels.  I let it sit for a few minutes.  I scrubbed.  I applied more solution.  I let it sit for a few minutes.  I scrubbed.  I rinsed.  I repeated.

The results are in one way inconclusive and in another quite conclusive.

The stains are still there, though lighter than they were.  I do not believe that anything can still be alive on the solar panels after the onslaughts of the past several days, so perhaps the stains are just stains.

What is conclusive is that I am not going to make any further attempts.  The solar panels are still functioning.  If they cease to, I will replace them.  What is another $1000 to a rich sailor?  Or even to me.

I biked to a supermarket this morning and had a two gator day.  Both were slightly smaller than I.  They were sighted from a distance and in motion.  I was the one in motion.  They were sunning themselves beside ponds a couple of miles apart.