CHAPTER SEVENTY FOUR: TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER – AND POLITICS –AND MORE WEATHER

CHAPTER SEVENTY FOUR:  TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER – AND POLITICS –AND MORE WEATHER

Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar? Or would you rather be in a weeklong gale force wind and thunderstorm, holed up at a marina in Jacksonville Beach?  Hmmm. Let me think about that. Choices, choices.

It’s Day Three of the Low Pressure Area that attacked Florida, and the forecast is for more wind and more rain for the foreseeable future, which is not that foreseeable in the mist and the rain. We’ve switched from shorts and tees to long jeans and sweatshirts. We put a blanket back on the bed, turned off the air conditioner in favor of the heater. And the Admiral made New England clam chowder in honor of the horrific storm. This is all happening in the merry month of May in the inaptly named Sunshine State. Our forward progress to Solomons, Maryland has come to a standstill. Curse you, Florida! Last year it was Tropical Storm Debbie who held us here. This year the no-name, no-end-in-sight wind and rain storm is wreaking havoc on our travel schedule. But in every silver lining, there is a cloud, and we have more than our share today, emitting water non-stop on Slow Motion’s decks. Storms aren’t all bad. They let us sleep in, until practically 7 a.m. They give us time to have a full breakfast of blueberry pancakes or omelets and sausage and bagels. I get to wear my cool raingear and carry the oversized golf umbrella, hoping a mighty gust doesn’t turn it inside out and tear out the ribbing. And I have time to blog about this fierce weather. What? Did you want another blog about the pelicans and the porpoises playfully escorting our sun-washed trawler along the ICW in the bright sun with a cool breeze entering from the portside window? Wasn’t that getting a tad boring? With this storm, at least you get some respite from all that sunshiny blather.

On to the news. Don’t forget to vote next Tuesday, May 7, in the special election in Charleston, South Carolina for your new representative to Congress, Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Put the adulterer on the sidelines for a while. We all need a break from Mr. Sanford. What a jerk! And that’s the nicest thing one can say about him. How about: Liar, Cheater, Unethical, Immoral spender of taxpayers’ dollars on personal pleasure? It is mind boggling that anyone – anyone – would vote for someone of this low character. It’s not about forgiveness. It’s about sanity. Who in her right mind would vote into Congress someone who has a track record of lying, cheating and stealing? All right. I get it. The cynics out there say those are the basic requirements for the job. If so, then it’s time for a change. And the change should start next Tuesday in Charleston. Send an ethical, honest person to Congress, and that may start a trend. At least we would make up for the loss in Congress of Gabby Giffords, someone whose character shines through in her every thought and action. But it would be great to have both Elizabeth and Gabby in Congress at some point. So, all you South Carolinians who stumble upon this Blog, please remember to vote next Tuesday for ECB. You will not regret it.

It’s time to close the prison at Guantanamo. In fact, it’s way past time to do that. So get ‘er done. This means you, Mr. President. This is a campaign promise you must keep.

If you end up in the middle of a long batch of bad weather and need a good book to read, please try Animal Factory. Sandra recommended it to me, and she’s right. It’s an eye opener about the hog factories in North Carolina and the Midwest, the dairy factories in Washington and elsewhere, the chicken factories on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake – and the manure everywhere, megatons of manure seeping into our wells and sending poisonous chemicals into our creeks and rivers. Goodbye Neuse River in North Carolina, once a place where families could fish and swim and boat, now a polluted waterway filled with millions of dead fish every year that opens wounds in the flesh of a person who dares to try to wade in it. The Riverkeeper, Rick Dove, has warned us about this pollution for decades, as he has become sicker and sicker from the bacteria entering the river from the massive hog farms in North Carolina. I hope that when we pass through North Carolina this time I get a chance to meet Rick Dove. What an amazing advocate for clean water and air! He deserves a Nobel Prize. No, he’s not a wild-eyed radical. He’s a rock-ribbed Republican born and raised in North Carolina, who just happens to enjoy nature and certain basic things, like a river to swim and fish in and air you can breathe.

And the rain keeps pouring down. The Admiral returns, soaked, from West Marine. His first word: “F---!” Never one to have any down time, he planned to use this storm to work on another project in our newly revamped flying bridge – a cup holder fit for an Admiral. But foiled again – this West Marine is apparently the worst on the Atlantic Coast. The Admiral reports that they only have Velcro cup holders – yuk. Undaunted, the Admiral wended his way to the Publix nearby and was wowed by the Turkish aisle. He brought home curry ketchup, which he claims is really big in Berlin – on all kinds of wurst. That’s from the German aisle. You guessed it. There is a strong military presence in the Jacksonville area, so there are lots of nationalities represented in the community. Have you ever heard of curry wurst? I lived in Berlin for a year, and I swear I never had a curry wurst. The best wurst I ever had was a bratwurst from a little stand in Wenceslas Square in Prague at midnight in the spring (early June) of 1968 – the “Prague Spring”. This was when the people of Prague overthrew their Russian yokes and became free for the first time since the end of World War Two. These giddy times lasted until the Russian tanks came into Prague in August, 1968 and shot up Wenceslas Square. But before that crushing blow, the people of Prague were high on democracy and couldn’t get enough news from the United States about Eugene McCarthy and the Children’s Crusade for peace and freedom and the White House. Those were the days when anything seemed possible. Those were also the days when the most unspeakable acts were committed against our beloved heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. And men and women and children were dying in Vietnam for no good reason – at least we were never given any reason why our soldiers had to fight, but not win, a war seemingly without end – at least in 1968 there was no end in sight.

It’s time to get back to the rainy day games: Free Cell Solitaire and Spider Solitaire. The Admiral just completed a streak of winning 1000 games of Free Cell Solitaire without a loss. I win about 52% of the time. But the Admiral has the patience to start over, as many times as he has to, until he gets the winning combination. I think these games are pretty good insurance against dementia, but I’m not sure. They do sharpen your mental skills in a limited way, unlike, say, an episode of Housewives of Atlanta. And most of the time, including our stay here at the Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach, we have no television access. So for our amusement we do New York Times Crossword puzzles and computer games. We also make each other laugh a lot – silly stuff. The Admiral has a whole set of imaginary friends, starting with Felicia the Flea, whom he generously feeds crumbs from his plate. I tell him that when he starts talking to Felicia I can see my future now, when he is talking to imaginary friends all the time and I’m trying to get him to remember who I am. The Admiral also has a lot of fun with my sense of direction. Without fail, I refer to the ocean as “to the west” of us. Ah, that’s on the West Coast. You can see why he gets concerned about my ability to navigate for Slow Motion. I haven’t told him this, but often times as we are cruising on the intracoastal waterway I guess which way we are going to turn next – and I am wrong probably 90% of the time. No kidding! That’s just between you and me – no snitching to the Admiral or I’m back to galley slave.

It’s time to make a fresh green salad and enjoy some of the yellow/white sweet corn that has appeared at the markets. The wind continues to knock us about on the dock. The rain keeps falling. And we keep having a good time on this slow moving adventure. Just seeing a bald eagle fly in front of your field of view from one side of the waterway to the other makes it all worthwhile. We saw Old Baldy on Wednesday. That pleasant memory will stay with us for days. I hope you have pleasant memories that linger as well. Thanks for dropping by to read this Rainy Day Blog.