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10
Jun 11

Diving day and departing Bermuda

Woke up this morning early — for me, for a cruise — and met the people we would be diving with. Three white guys singing reggae and a local making fun of them. They picked up six people from the cruise ships, five from ours and one from the vessel docked next to it, and told us the waters where we were originally going to dive was too choppy.

So we would dive elsewhere. And, boy, would it be a treat. This is all relative, of course. We didn’t know where we were going and we’re in Bermuda. This is a cruise dive and, thus, all a treat.

Our hosts took us out to the Mari Celeste, a Confederate paddle boat that had completed at least five successful trips running the Union blockade to the southern states.

One day in the late summer of 1864 …

On September 13, 1864, under the command of Captain Sinclair and piloted by Bermudian, John Virgin, with a cargo of “classified merchandise” which included beef, bacon, ammunition and much needed rifles for the war effort, she left port enroute to Wilmington, North Carolina. The Mari Celeste made an unusually fast run through the east end channel and up the south side of the island. First officer Stuart announced some breakers he had spotted ahead, but the local pilot who was steering the vessel replied ” I know every rock here as well as I know my own house.” Within moments, the vessel had slammed hard into the reef. She sank bow first within eight minutes. The ship’s cook, who was the only casualty, had returned to his cabin against orders for some personal belongings and never made it out of the sinking ship.

It is a nice wreck to dive, both paddles are still in good shape. Recent storms have uncovered even more artifacts that the local authorities are inspecting and recovering.

This is in 55 feet of water, and the reefs are nice, with some nice fish inhabitants.

Our second dive was on the reef upon which the Mari Celeste found her fate. There were caves in there, big ones by the way the guides talked, but The Yankee and I just swam over them. (She’s not big on caves.)

Nice dives, but not as good as a dive resort. One of the guys on our boat was the one you have to watch out for — brand new gear and he didn’t yet know how to use it. He kept bumping into everybody. And he was diving while seasick, which is probably as fun as it sounds.

Even still, how lucky to be here, to take those dives, and be able to consider where your next trip might be, one day, even as you’re still in Bermuda.

What a blessed life.

Of course our cruise ship pushed off from Bermuda this evening, so there’s that particular difficulty to consider. We hit a few shops for gifts and baubles and then got back on board in time to point and giggle at the stragglers.

So we are sad. Bermuda is behind us. The ocean is before us. And then New Jersey — which is a fine enough place, but talk about your come-downs.

And now, to cheer us all, pictures of a child celebrating a first birthday on the beach yesterday.

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3
Jun 11

New York, Day 2, Part 2

Friday is here, right here, where you are reading now. And this Friday will add more to what you read about on Wednesday, which is here. Really the whole week, as far as the blog is concerned has become about New York City. We’re spending the week with the in-laws and having a lovely time in Connecticut, but I went camera happy in the city.

Indeed, everything you’ve seen so far has been from my phone. I haven’t even uploaded pictures from my SLR. Which only reminds me how far behind I am in the photo gallery section of the site. I’ll catch up one day. Now, more of Wednesday!

A word on Theodore Roosevelt: I’ve read 2,170 pages on the man (Theodore Rex, The Rise and Wilderness Warrior) not counting the excellent 1912, which is about the campaign between Woodrow Wilson, William Taft, Roosevelt and Eugene Debs. You could say I know a little something about Roosevelt’s ideals of the “vigorous life.”

But I’d never realized the Klingons were his primary voting bloc:

That’s at the Metropolitan Museum, where I did not see a wax statue that looked like Robin Williams. But I did see a recreation of the Easter Island Head. And, yes, when The Yankee took my picture with it I gave it the bunny ears.

They have dinosaurs and other cool fossils at the museum of natural history. You have to pay to enter some of the special exhibits. As we had already paid once, we didn’t desire to do so again. But even in the sections for the cheap people, like me, they have some fine displays.

That’s some evil looking turtle ancestor, isn’t it? Both museums, the Met and the Museum of Natural History have some great displays. You could spend a day in each, maybe. We tried to do in two in afternoon.

No one likes going to museums with me. I want to read every sign.

Other stuff: How was your lunch yesterday? I only ask because this was our view:

We sent Wendy home today. Said she had a good time, but was ready to be home where things moved more slowly. We had waffles with John, who is a family friend that retired early to, he said, make waffles (and Photoshop jokes). His waffles were worth the wait. After seeing John we dropped Wendy off at the airport spent our afternoon around the house. My mother-in-law showed me her grandmother’s camera:

She let me take it apart. It has everything you need except the 2.5 x 4.25 film. The optics are still pretty good, but the aperture might need work. The camera was released in 1906 and was in production through 1937. She thinks, based on family history, that it is one of the earlier years. That camera may be 100 years old and it still makes the fabled Kodak sound.

Finally: this is a panorama I shot of Grand Central Station. I’ve been playing with this app for a while now and I think I’ve almost got it figured out. Give it a whirl.

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29
May 11

Conference Day

Not much here today as we spent most of the day in sessions or business meetings or various other exciting aspects of summer academia. The Yankee had two presentations, the one of which I saw was, naturally, awesome. I had to present in one session. The topic has some interest to it and we received some nice conversation over the work. That study is going places.

So, pretty much the full day was spent in one hotel meeting room or another. Here’s the view from our room:

That is World Trade Center East, with an inlet from the Boston Harbor behind it. You can see a lot of sailboats from there. Sixteen floors, eight elevators and completed in 2000. The architects are a firm that have built hospitals and campus buildings across a great swath of the country. One of their buildings, in fact, is a library at UAB, where The Yankee and I did our master’s degrees. Small world, huh?

We got out of the conference just in time to see the sun go down over the city’s skyline.

We walked from the hotel to the T, and then rode out to the aquarium where we met Wendy — we’d left her all alone and she didn’t get lost all day in her travels — for dinner at Legal’s. We must go here every visit, The Yankee insists. Pretty good stuff. We sat on the patio, listening to the horns of ferries and other ships as they came in for the evening.

Wendy had her first ever taste of New England clam chowder and proclaimed it delicious. Later, two people drove by and asked her for directions. This only happens to Wendy. As soon as she opens her mouth, though, the southern accent pours forth and the lost people realize their error. They’ll be getting no directional help. For the rest of the night we offered fake directions.

“Just go down yonder into the holler. Keep on that road a piece. Turn left by the old Miller barn and drive on that gravel road a spell. You’ll get to it directly.”

This sculpture is near our hotel, and is an unsettling image to walk past, even without context. It is the heads bowed and the horse’s neck stretched in defiance, or mourning, depending on how you feel at the moment. Even more so is the second horse, which is holding a different posture. Just to see the thing takes a little getting used to.

Andrzej Pitynski’s sculpture was on display at the popular Boston Common for years, but people didn’t like looking at it there, apparently. Freedom is fine to celebrate in Boston if it is the American Revolution, but don’t bother us with those Polish partisan fighters who battled the Nazis and the communists during World War II. Is that the problem? I’m clearly not up-to-date on the apparently heated opinions of this sculpture, but these folks are.

Here’s a piece on Pitynski, detailing his work, his inspiration, his family ties to the characters he sculpted and the world during the time of this project. Poland, where this was intended to go, was not that welcoming of such an homage in 1980, so this work somehow found its way to Boston. It got moved around a bit and finally put in storage for a few years. It has been by the World Trade Center since 2006.

Tomorrow: we catch a train for Connecticut.

books / history / iPhone / links / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Mar 11

Jabber jabber jibber

I took this picture in a parking lot the other night. The more I think of it the more troubled by the implications of the language. The video may be recorded? It may be recorded 24 hours? Which 24 hours? Are they in sequence? Are just the first 24 hours recorded? Are they pressing record at whim?

Is this a deterrent? Would the bad guys take a chance?

Turns out if you stand there in the parking lot considering this message the staff begins to eye you suspiciously.

Auburn friends will enjoy the best Twitter meme ever. Everyone else will probably find it stupid, even if they can relate to some of the experiences there. Even still, just the names and the shared parts of the culture made for some hysterical reading today.

Less fun:

MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Gov. Robert Bentley said today he would cut the state’s General Fund budget by 15 percent once the Legislature passes pending supplemental appropriations to several key agencies.

And Bentley said the condition of the $1.6 billion fund is so bad that he expects to have to prorate the 2012 budget that begins on Oct. 1 anywhere from 15 percent to 45 percent.

[…]

Bentley compared the state’s General Fund to a person who is addicted to OxyContin and is going through a withdrawal period.

“Some times you get DTs like an alcoholic and that’s what we’re going through in the state of Alabama now,” he said. “We going through DTs, but you know what? You’ve got a doctor in charge.”

That’s our new governor. He was a dermatologist in his previous career. These little jokes are going to get old, fast.

And on the local level, there is even more bad economic fun.

I finished Robert Remini’s The House: The History of the House of Representatives at lunch. Fine book, considering that it had to cover so much ground of what is sometimes a dry topic. Here’s the summary I put on Twitter:

The House was founded. It was good, then bad and then ominous. Then it was good again. Then there was Newt Gingrich, Clinton, 9-11. The End.

This evening I started reading Eugen Sledge’s With The Old Breed. Sledge was an Auburn man, from Mobile. He fought in two of the most brutal battles of the Pacific before he turned 21, enrolled at Auburn after the war and had a long and successful career as a professor at the University of Montevallo. The HBO miniseries, The Pacific, was based in part on his book. Just a few pages in, but it is a universally well-received book. I’ll let you know.

Best video of the day? Glad you asked.

Finally, where were you 30 years ago today? I don’t remember that as it happened, but you might. Watching the contemporary television coverage is fascinating.

history / iPhone / Monday / photo — 1 Comment
8
Mar 11

Trust in the gummi bears

Picked these up the other day for The Yankee. She likes them for her longer bike rides. I think I’ve eaten most of them.

So I looked it up, so boastful is Haribo, of their claim to be the original. Turns out they are. Haribo is German, was founded in 1920. Hans Riegel Sr. died either during, or in, World War II. Haven’t yet found a conclusive answer. His son, Hans Jr., is one of the richest men in Germany.

They came to the United States in the 1980s and were popular almost immediately. Haribo has factories all over Germany, but this particular bag was made in Turkey. And it turns out they are thought of as the original.

The slogan on the bag says “Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo,” which sounds a bit Wonka-ish. Translations from other countries are worse. In Bulgaria, they run the government via cult of personality apparently, “With Haribo we are happy, Haribo we love.” Things are much better in Hungary “Kids and grown-ups are in a good mood – sweet is life Haribo.” The old Danish slogan — “Open up for something good, open up for Haribo – it’s good.” — has thankfully been re-written as “Haribo… it’s good.”

So beware the gummis, apparently.

The Haribo Wikipedia page is very perfunctory about this. “Haribo is accused of using Jewish forced labor in its factories during World War II but denies it.” There is the briefest mention in a Time piece from 2000:

Haribo, makers of the jelly bear candy sold around the world, was named in the German parliament as having used forced labor, a charge it denies. It says of the fund that “under the cover of alleged solidarity the thesis of collective guilt is being brought up again. There is no doubt about the suffering that existed but that cannot be righted now.”

At the writing of that Time story that sort of stance was more the rule than exception. Since then, 6,500 companies contributed to the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future fund, totaling 5.2 billion euros.

That’s a lot of gummi bears.

Elsewhere, just doing research for my dissertation. Nothing to see here. Move along.