Hilton Head Island: hull identification numbers and perhaps issues of more importance

GANNET is still registered in Illinois.  Next year I will no longer have an Illinois mailing address and would like to register her in South Carolina.  However, South Carolina makes this difficult.  The state requires more information than most, including a printed photo or a tracing of the Hull Identification Number.  GANNET is 44 years old.  She has had a half dozen owners and her HIN has been painted over many times, two coats by me.

So I bought a paint remover that is reputed to be safe on fiberglass hulls, and yesterday I biked down, masked the area where the HID is vaguely visible, and painted on the remover.  The canister says it requires several hours to work.  I was concerned that it would work too well and weaken the hull, so I went back after three hours and found it had done little.

I biked down early this morning and applied more.  That I can go back and forth to GANNET in five minutes by bike, ten minutes walking, is one of the great virtues of this condo.

I returned five hours later and found the paint remover had not removed paint.  So I hosed it off and applied sand paper, which is perhaps what I should have done in the first place.  The Hull Identification Number is now visible.  We are due for rain tonight and tomorrow, but when I can I will go down and take the required photograph and GANNET may have a home port, as she has not had in the twelve years I have owned her.

I respect Carol’s desire for privacy.  

You should not be surprised to learn that while I care about those of you who read this regularly, I care more about Carol.

I mention this because I am about to share most of an email I sent to her earlier this evening.  I do so believing that I have not compromised our personal relationship.

I paused because Lester Holt just came on with sensational reports that have no meaning.  NBC may be the least offensive of the network news, but it is still pandering to the mob.

I could write more about that and in fact this recent violence in Israel has caught my attention because it speaks to what we are as a species and that we spin out as some of our species fanatical self-righteous minorities that cause such harm and grief.

Well, there is no solution to that.   Misnamed Homo Sapiens is what it is:   unknowing man.   One can just hope that by chance his or her life is not changed or destroyed by those self-righteous fanatics though hundreds of millions have been.  You and I may have lucked out.

I am sipping my second and last martini and contemplating dessert.  I have two different cookies and ice cream.  An abundance of choices that the vast proportion of those alive on this planet at this minute would envy.   I think the cookies will win out.

Almost all societies drink wine and spirits in some form.  Almost all have their favorite toasts.  Many translate “to your health’, which is certainly good, but my favorite is the Jewish

L’Chaim.

I happened today to be reading a book, 1945, which relates the events of that year by newspaper reports and speeches of the time.  I  just read of the unexpectedly quick collapse of Germany in April of 1945 and of the first Allied troops discovering and entering the concentration camps.  Even I who have read history extensively was shocked by what those troops saw and what the Nazis did in the very last days, butchering thousands at the final moment, often extremely brutally. 

So,

L’Chaim can be translated:  to life.

Perhaps the most fundamental theme of my life has been trying to understand what is going on.  In that I have failed.

All I believe I am certain is that consciousness resists unconsciousness and that DNA seems to impose an imperative that it be blindly projected into the future.

There is no conclusion here.  Our lives are beyond understanding.  Act honorably.  Try to do as little harm to others as possible.  Find what joy you can.  

I have found much joy with you, and I know I will find more.

Love,

Me