Whale Watching

So, yesterday Janice and I got to whale-watch, sort of, off Point Depoe, through the new binoculars she bought. Here's the little poem I made out of the experience:

I saw a whale

exhale

No flukes, no breech,

no sleek black back

Just a puff of breath

Twelve feet high

Three miles away.

They said at the whale-watching center that it'd been a good day: fifty-eight sightings. But there's not much to be seen from shore when the whales swim by three to five miles off. We'll have to try the whale-watching-from-a-boat thing in Gray's Harbor again if we can this spring

--JDR

just finished: A LION CALLED CHRISTIAN by Anthony Burke & Jn Rendall [1971 & 2009]

just began: THE PTEROSAURS FROM DEEP TIME by David M. Unwin (no relation) [2006]

UPDATE (Sunday March 28th):

After we got back and I had a chance to go online and check out the local news, I found out why we didn't see much at Depoe Bay -- the whales had come up to Elliott Bay instead!

At least one of them had. A good-sized grey whale rounded West Seattle on Saturday, spending several hours in fairly shallow off Alki Beach (to the delight of locals enjoying a day outside) before moving on to near the mouth of the Duwamish -- which further upstream is the same Green River that flows near (say half a mile from) our place. It was last seen last night near Salty's, where we go on special occasions for Seattle's best brunch with Wolf & Shelly and/or Jeff & Kate.

I imagine this is a young whale taking a break on its migration north. Finding a nice quiet bay, it slipped in and poked around a bit hoping to find some nom. There are some shrimp in the Sound, but not a lot I think, so I doubt he'll stay long. Still, an exciting event for all whale-lovers in the area, esp. those fortunate enough to see it for themselves.

Here's a link to the news story and a photo or two of the whale himself:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/199782.asp

--JDR

Petting the Shark

So, today Janice and I petted a shark (two sharks, actually. they were adorable*). We also got to see some bat mantas (beautiful creatures, and apparently v. gregarious).

That same afternoon, we got to hold and pet a baby leopard (appropriately enough, since they'd been leopard sharks that morning). And also pet a skunk (which took a fascination with my watchband and chewed on it a while. We also got chuffed at, repeatedly, by a v. friendly tiger, and I got smelled or nibbled at by two donkeys, a llama, an emu, a wallaby, and almost an ostrich (Janice pulled me back, worried about a repeat of The Parrot Incident). Plus, we got mobbed by a mixed herd of small deer, goats, rams, and peacocks when we entered, feed-the-animal cups in hands (the place we were visiting uses ice cream cones as cup, so the animals eat the container as well as the pet feed).

Here's hoping we have luck with the whale watching tomorrow . . .

--JDR

*and apparently more easy-going than housecats. the guide told us that they originally put six fish in the shark tank to be eaten. But when the sharks realized they got fed even without catching the live fish, they started leaving the live fish they shared the tank with alone. Try that trick with well-fed housecats and a room full of little birds, and the outcome wd be less pleasant (for the birds).

MORE TREES

So, the last few days I've been offline, staying at a B&B in Ferndale -- "The Shaw House", a fine old place built in 1854, about the same time my home town was incorporated.

Since last posting, I've found out the body I saw being carried up from the Smith River was a rescue, not the retrieval of a corpse (that'd rather been bothering me the last few days).

I've seen what was once the world's tallest tree, the Dyerville Giant, until nineteen years ago when the domino effect (a misguided botch of a foreign policy back in my youth, but a reality in the world of tall trees) knocked it over. A slender new trunk is sprouting up from the (massive) roots, so let's hope it succeeds and survives.

I've found out that redwoods have astonishing vitality, maybe more than any other tree. I've walked through trees with hollows, including some with the center entirely burned out (like the 'Chimney Tree'); the remaining semi-circle of bark still putting out new branches and needles and carries on living. Trees that have fallen over sometimes turn surviving branches that now happen to point up into new trunks. Trees cut down can grow a circle of new trunks out of the stump, so that when the last of the original trees finally rots away you get what is called a "cathedral tree" of separate but linked trees. Trees that lose their tops put out a radius of new branches to form a platform-like crown (which they've recently discovered has its own ecosystem). Small trees may sprout, grow to twenty or thirty feet, and then wait centuries for a neighboring giant to fall before shooting up to replace them when their chance finally comes. Truly amazing trees.

I've visited a strange cemetery in continuous use for more than a century and a half, set on a hillside, with most 'graves' being family plots entirely covered by huge concrete slabs. Here too was the other 'Shaw House': the mausoleum for the Shaw family, including the builder of our B&B.

I walked more than 10,000 steps today alone, according to my pedometer, even more than yesterday.

I found out you can have yellow violets; they grow wild around the feet of the redwood giants (along with ferns, what looks like shamrocks but are apparently 'redwood sorrel', and others -- there are apparently a lot of huckleberries growing up in the crowns 300+ feet up). Fortunately, I was able to save the old poem with a little work:

Roses are red

Violets are yellow

If you'll be my gal

I'll be your fella.

--John R.

Today, Cats and Trees

Today I saw some of the world's tallest trees and a living relative of the Saber Toothed Tiger (or Saber Toothed Cat, as it's known today). I saw an actual living clone for the first time, and her kitten. I walked on a beach (briefly), and ate things that are definitely not on the diet. In short, a day for big cats, big trees, and big oceans.*

Vacations are a Good Thing.

--JDR

current books: THE WILD TREES and DEMONS AND MONSTERS (ed. Rick Riordan)

*not that there are any other kind, really.

A Tolkienian Echo

So, I continue to make my way slowly through listening to the complete THE FAERIE QUEENE as an audiobook, and having now arrived at the mid-point of Book III was struck by a parallel to a scene in Tolkien. In this passage, Belphoebe the huntress has come across Arthur's squire, Timias, who's suffering from a serious arrow wound. And taking off his mail, here's how she treats his injury (I've modernized the spelling a bit to make things easier):

Into the woods thenceforth in haste she went,

To seek for herbs, that might him remedy;

For she of herbs had great intendiment,

Taught of the Nymph, which from her infancy

Her nourished had in true Nobility:

There, whether it divine Tobacco were,

Or Panacea, of Polygony,

She found, and brought it to her patient dear

Who all this while lay bleeding out his hart-blood near.

The sovereign weed betwixt two marbles plain

She pounded small, and did in pieces bruise,

And then atween her lily hands twain

Into his wound the juice thereof did scruze [squeeze?]

And round about, as she could well it use,

The flesh therewith she suppled and did steep

To abate all spasm, and soak the swelling bruise,

And after having searched the intuse deep

She with her scarf did bind the wound from cold to keep.

--FQ, Bk III, Canto V, stanzas 32 & 33

--according to the notes in my edition [Penguin Classics, ed. Th. P. Roche Jr, 1987 rpt of 1978 ed], this passage marks the first use in English literature of the word TOBACCO,* the plant having only been introduced to England (by Raleigh) six years earlier, in 1584. I've seen some speculation that athelas might be a relative of tobacco, which makes the parallel all the more interesting, whether Tolkien was deliberately echoing this scene or, perhaps, incorporating an iconic moment well known in myth and epic into his tale.

Hard to say. I know that what once seemed to me a clear borrowing from Spenser on Tolkien's behalf got less so the more you look into it. At first, Spenser's use of TANAQUILL for The Faerie Queene herself's name looks a good candidate as the source for Tolkien's TANIQUETIL for the great mountain of Faery -- except that 'Tanaquil' turns out to be a real person, the most famous Etruscan Queen of Rome, wife of one of the Tarquins. So that Tolkien, being a good classicist, cd just as easily have taken inspiration from antiquity as from Spenser's tale. In any case, a parallel worth noting.

The most important thing of all I'd say Tolkien owes Spenser is his example, of writing a serious, sustained, unapologetic work about Faerie and knights and magicians and dragons and enchantments and warrior-maids and steadfast battles of undaunted heroes against unrepentant evil. Shippey seems to think that Spenser wd be anathama to Tolkien because of the allegory; I suspect Tolkien, like myself and most readers, simply enjoy it for the story, ignoring the allegory as much as possible. Most important of all, Spenser's is the last major English author before Tolkien himself to treat Elves w. respect: his Elf-knights are human-sized but better than humans in strength and courage (it's said in praise of The Red-Cross Knight that although human he's as good as an Elf**). So I'd say he was a significant precursor, but whether an influence is an open question.

--John R.

*the OED notes several previous uses -- e.g. in Hakluyt's VOYAGES -- wh. presumably the FQ's present-day editor did not count as "literature".

**Red-Cross turns out to be a human raised as an elf, one of the stolen children who are the other side of the changeling tradition.

"Give Me A Ticket For An Aeroplane"

So, today I heard that Alex Chilton died. And, if you're like most people, you're going "Who?"

This is someone who's work you know without knowing the person who did the work. Back in 1967, when he was the lead singer for those one-hit wonders, The Box Tops, he recorded one of the all-time great rock n roll songs: THE LETTER.* I only learned today that he was just sixteen at the time (even George Harrison was nineteen when the Beatles signed their record deal); there's no way anyone hearing that voice would think the singer a high school student. I think it says a lot that while "The Letter" was remade in a truly great cover version, a lovely sprawling mess by Joe Cocker, even Cocker's best can't beat Chilton's original.

So: a moment not of silence but of putting on the .45 and turning it up loud to celebrate good music and thank those who make it.

Give me a ticket for an aeroplane

Ain't got time to take a fast train

Lonely days are gone

I'm a-going home

My baby just wrote me a letter . . .

R. I. P.

--JDR

*the only other Chilton song I know being "September Gurls", and that only through the Bangle's excellent cover version, on their second album; he became something of a legend in later years for not having hits.

UPDATE (3/19-10):

Gah! As Ed pointed out in the comments (thanks Ed), I spelled Chilton's last name wrong. It's now been corrected. Sorry for the slip.

Update on Veyne: "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast"

re. Veyne's DID THE GREEKS BELIEVE THEIR MYTHS:

Rereading my post of 3/15, I see that I shd have added one important point of Veyne's: his exploration, early on, of the phenomenon that people can (and usually do) believe in contradictory things. I wish that he had made more of this, because I thought this point was the best thing about his book, but he lets it drift into the periphery of his discussion and never really comes back to make it front and center as I think it shd have been.

Examples he cd have used abound -- for example, the Egyptians believed that the sun was Ra riding across the sky. And that it was the eye of Horus. And that it a ball rolled by a celestial dung beetle. And that it was something inerrantly predictable in its movements. And so forth. In short, they had no problem believing what we wd think of as six impossible things before breakfast.*

Not that we're any different. There are plenty of people who believe the world is five billion years old when thinking geologically and five or six thousand years old when thinking Biblically. C. S. Lewis suggested that Adam & Eve might have been the first hominids to cross over the line into what we wd call "human", a way of thinking that combines Biblical literalism ('there really was an Adam & Eve') with scientific discoveries (Lucy lived a long time before the Genesis story can account for). And we pretty much all think of the sun as rising and setting when we know it does no such thing (Shaw has a character in ST. JOAN dismiss Copernicus' theory that the earth goes around the sun with a phrase something along the lines of "the fool. why doesn't he use his eyes"). Basically Veyne is on to something Lovecraft once called "uncorrelated contents": we none of us put the things we think and believe and know together into a single coherent pattern: that's just not how the human mind works. Hence people adopt contradictory positions, like anti-abortion and anti-euthenasia (because all life is sacred) but pro-death penalty and pro-war (because it turns out the sanctity of life is apparently conditional and can be revoked). And so on.

--John R.

*Lewis Carroll, THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, Ch. V.