Jun 10 2008
Jun 10 2008
Because, You Know, It Easily Could
This post, from The Ethicurean (who’d have thought x-posting from there would land on this blog?), pretty much sums up my closely-held belief that, when the virus takes us, we will have had it coming. Bluefin tuna finally extinct: “Well worth it,” say sushi fans.
Note: It’s satire. But not by much.
Jun 09 2008
Divesting — The Big Sell-Off
I just ran across this post in my feed reader, from Trent at The Simple Dollar:
I wish I’d had this nifty set of guidelines when I first started divesting prior to the move onboard. But, hopefully it’ll be helpful for someone else out there reading this and preparing to make the big move…
Jun 05 2008
Way to go, Zac!
OK, this is hands-down ubercool. I mean, uber, ubercool. Zac Sunderland is organizing a circumnavigation, on his boat, the Intrepid, an Islander 36. (Surely that fact will at least goad Zen into commenting. =) . Check out his website and the NPR interview with him. The interview is pretty lame, frankly, since the interviewer is kind of clueless. They keep emphasizing his age, over and over and over. And asking goofball questions about what he’s going to do “when he grows up”.
Um, hello, has no one figured out that Zac is demonstrating more maturity than 90% of the “adults” I’m acquainted with? His mom, Marianne, says
Some people really focus on his age, as if suddenly in 18 months he is going to be more capable. Maturity and age, they don’t always go together in a black-and-white fashion.
A few of her other comments to the media just crack me up. I wonder what they’re thinking? Well, scratch that, the language makes it clear. Most people are thinking fear. There’s a lot of fear, worry, angst, and drama, in the language the interviewers in all the media are using on Zac and his family. Someone has also apparently reported the Sunderlands to CPS for “allowing” Zac to do this. (One of these days, I’ll finish my tirade about how messed up Americans’ abilities to appropriately assess risk are…). Although I really like how the Yahoo! sports blog article started out:
Exploration. It’s one of the founding tenets of advanced Western society, but the furthest us coddled modern people ever get is, say, a cab around a big city, or a flight to a safe, sanitized European tourist trap. Few of us still foster that pinnacle of human curiosity. Most of us just stay put.
Isn’t that the sad, sad truth? I also really liked a comment a friend of the family made on a Yahoo!Answers page:
So you can certainly say that I’m a bit biased and very pro-Sunderland. However, I want to say that I’m so tired of hearing milk-toast parents say “I wouldn’t let my child…”. What a depressing lack of imagination! No wonder so many kids turn to drugs and alcohol and become pathetic underachievers. I know many teens and older adults, who never achieve one third of their potential. They just plod along from day to day wishing good fortune would fall from the sky in front of them, but work for it? Try a different approach? Never! As for child abuse, we all know what that is: the denial of essential comforts and needs by the adult responsible for their upbringing. Why not teach children to excel in their lives and let them know they are loved and supported positively, rather than suppress their dreams and lock them in boxes?
He continues on:
If something happens to Zac, I’ll be devastated by the loss of such a fine example of youth and the loss of a lifetime friend, but I’ll be glad to know that he dared to be better, sought to do more than the mundane. Yes, the sea is treacherous, but so are cities and so are highways. No mother seems to think twice about letting her children attend a party with multiple perils, a high school filled with drugs, sex, treachery and misinformation, nor to allow driving the perilous highways and freeways at 70+MPH in a car that can kill them in the blink of an eye, because the same parents most likely have taught that behavior to their kids by being drug and sex abusers themselves. Probably the same parents were underachievers themselves, who were pigeon-holed by their parents before them.
I wonder why no one has thought to just say “wow, Marianne (and Laurence), you guys have done a bang-up job in providing a great environment in which a young man like that can grow! Can’t wait to see what the six other Sunderlands grow up to be like!” (They are a family of seven children. Seven! And a boat family! HA!)
The gallery photos on Zac’s site make me smile; babies on boats speak to me, currently.
I guess what makes me just so unbelievably stoked about this story is that, well, Zac is demonstrating everything that I was hoping for when we set out to raise boat kids. He’s been doing real, practical, hands-on skillful work since he was a small child. He is doing something he loves. He is capable of visualizing a goal, and working like a longshoreman to make it happen. He is educated, in any practical sense of the word. After 16 years in, on, and around boats, he is someone who is competent to sail around the world.
Zac is writing a book, naturally. And you can bet I’ll be buying the first copy I can lay my hands on, for bedtime reading for the boyos.
Jun 04 2008
Thinking Roz
If you guys aren’t familiar with Roz Savage, go check her out here.
I was introduced to Roz’s site, her journey, and her rowing, by my rowing coach for Califa (the whaleboat team I was part of in Vallejo). Katherine rowed with Roz on a trireme in Greece. You can go to Roz’s site and read up on what she’s about and why, for yourself. I’ll wait.
Back now? Cool. I am absolutely intrigued by Roz. I am reminded of a quote from the late David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, who said, “Thank God for the extremists; they make the rest of us seem so reasonable.” Roz is that for me. If you consider the American Suburban Lifestyle to be one extreme, the adventure my family’s on seems to be the far opposite. But if you then add in someone like Roz, what we’re doing seems utterly tame.
Notice a theme lately? We’re tame; there’s a lot more extreme things going on in the world.
Anyway, back to Roz. She’s blogging daily, and she’s an inspiration for anyone who’s stuck in a mousejockey rut. Go check her out, and consider donating your daily latte budget to her amazing effort.
May 27 2008
Marina BBQ Triumph
The Big Marina BBQ (which we were trying to hold quarterly, and haven’t managed since being pregnant has knocked my productivity off) was yesterday. The Marina provides standard burgers-n-dogs and that stuff, and we ask everyone to contribute something, potluck. Blessedly, this Marina is full of Foodies, so we usually end up with some yummy goodness. And yesterday’s triumph was Jose’s pineapple stuff.
I haven’t had much in the way of cravings this pregnancy, but I stood there and scarfed down three custom-made plates of this stuff, all with Jose lecturing me on the medicinal benefits of what he was feeding me. It was really neat.
I‘d had the mango variation before, but this beat it hands-down.
Fresh pineapple, carved into chunks
Drench in fresh-squeezed lime juice
Salt lightly
Cover in crushed cayenne pepper (ideally, you crush the dried peppers yourself, in a mortar and pestle, while the audience watches)
Eat. Yum.
Now if only I could track him down for his guacamole recipe, I’d be a happy girl. Maybe for the next BBQ…
Other than the food, the weather sucked (hello, what’s up with people shivering this time of year? And gee, more than an hour of sunshine might have been nice), but the conversations were fabulous. It’s amazing the fascinating people you run into, and the interesting things they know, or don’t know but are willing to learn. I had my eyes opened on more than one topic, and left the day feeling pretty stoked about the people who live around me.
Thanks to Jason and Marc, who execute the ideas I dream up, Thomas, who sees to everything all the time and even came in on his day off, Don, whose motivation this really is, Beverly, who hung out all day and helped me not only sort the Dreaded Box of Supplies, but also kept things moving, Andy, who volunteered Grill Expertise, and anyone else who schlepped, hauled, grilled, purchased, cleaned, arranged, and otherwise handled the details. Y’all rock! Let’s do it again in a month or two, eh? I’m thinking marinated shrimp next time, instead of burgers n dogs. Whaddya say?
May 23 2008
An End to Ballast Invaders
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7392072.stm
I thought this was fascinating. They’ve figured out that if you microwave ballast water, you kill everything in it, thus ending the tyrrany of Dreissena polymorpha and Mnemiopsis leidyi.
But I gotta say, as stoked as I am at this development and what it means for the integrity of ecosystems… it certainly makes me more nervous about the appliance in my galley…
May 21 2008
Diesel goes up, up, up
Just when you thought it was safe to not research alternative propulsion for your boat, along comes this:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org//display/web/2008/05/16/diesel/
Neato, huh? Up almost 60 percent in the past 12 months, the article says. Now if that isn’t motivation to start looking at electrical, or at least severely reducing your motorsailing, I don’t know what is.
May 19 2008
Big Sea Level Rise
http://www.deeperblue.net/newsfull.php/1848
Amongst the non-mainstream news sources I adore is Deeper Blue, a site that focuses on news relevant to divers. This headline, “Big Sea Level Rise Forecasted” wasn’t a surprise, but it was depressing.
Here in the US, we’re still debating stuff like this… is it us, is it global, blah blah blah. It’s pathetic and embarassing, frankly. Especially when the rest of the world is not only talking about it as a given, but recognizing and publicizing that in fact, the rise is going to be bigger than predicted, people are already suffering for it, and it’s just going to get worse.
Learning to exist on a warmer, wetter world, is going to be critical, and it’s happening faster than the US media and government are willing to admit. Pay attention…
May 01 2008
Google Ocean
Jonathan sent me a link this morning that made my whole day.
Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans
Man! Does it *get* any cooler than that? I don’t think so.
The tool–for now called Google Ocean, the sources say, though that name could change–is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping applications. People will be able to see the underwater topography, called bathymetry; search for particular spots or attractions; and navigate through the digital environment by zooming and panning. (The tool, however, is not to be confused with the “Google Ocean” project by France-based Magic Instinct Software that uses Google Earth as a visualization tool for marine data.)