Looking For Bullwinkle

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Martine at Manchester/Boston Airport with Moose Sculpture

Wildlife tourism tends to be a bit tricky, because most wildlife is not terribly interested in interacting with humans. We had no problem seeing the Magellanic penguins in Argentina last November, mainly because penguins by nature just look at us quizzically until we make a threatening move toward them. And then the beaks come into play. We easily saw over 100,000 of the cute avians at their Punta Tombo mating grounds in coastal Chubut province.

On the other hand, we have had no luck with puffins or moose. We went to Orkney in Scotland to see the puffins in 1997, but they weren’t there yet. Then I went by myself to their Vestmannaeyjar Islands breeding grounds in September 2001, but they were just leaving.

Moose are a different matter altogether. They do not migrate, which I suppose is a blessing as they are so very large (nine feet or so). One could see them if one gets up early enough or late enough. The problem is that we always look for them around noon, when they are safely ensconced in their forest fastness digesting their last meal. At the B&B we were staying at in Chéticamp, Nova Scotia, a whole moose family walked past the picture window of the dining room around 7 am the day before we arrived. But they did not stage a repeat performance the next two days, even though I was up early looking for them, having been pledged to wake Martine up if I saw any. Nothing doing!

In 2008, we had visited a wildlife park at Shubenacadie in Nova Scotia, where there was (allegedly) a moose in an enclosure. If he was there, he was hiding around the back of the pen, where we were not allowed to walk because (supposedly) they were working on the walkway. So once again, nothing doing.

We actually did see a moose two years ago at Glacier National Park in Montana, but it was from the rear and from about a quarter of a mile away. It had just drunk some water from Fishercap Lake and was headed back into the woods. I photographed the beast with my 7X zoom:

Distant View of Moose

Well, there’s always next year!

Poking Fun At Apple

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MAD Magazine Parody of Famous New Yorker Cover

Over the years, I have tended to regard Apple Computer fanboys as members of some sort of odd cult. Since Steve Jobs’s demise, the world’s largest computer company has run into some (relatively) hard times. Most recently, its release of Apple Maps has caused just derision in the marketplace. But when MAD magazine parodied the famous Manhattan-centric Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover, I could barely keep from guffawing.

The closer you look at it, the more it resembles something some hapless grade schooler would devise—one who had no knowledge of U.S. or world geography.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

It Will Never Be Easy

Sir Winston Churchill

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events… incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations.—Sir Winston Churchill

Where Lobster Is King

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Maine lobster license plate

The most pleasant surprise of our recent vacation was my discovery of North Atlantic shellfish, particularly lobster, crab, clams, shrimp, and mussels—but particularly lobster. Whenever I had eaten lobster or shrimp caught is warm Pacific waters, I started feeling a scratchy throat that would last for several hours. In Maine and Maritime Canada, however, that was not the case. Martine and I sat down to seafood feasts at least once a day, and sometimes more.

Why I could not eat California lobster and why North Atlantic lobster from Maine and Nova Scotia was so succulent, I cannot guess.

The standard option was something called a lobster roll. This reached its most Lucullan proportions at the Main Street Market & Grill in Bar Harbor, Maine. Inside a sesame seed bun was a several inches thick congeries of lobster pieces, mostly from the claw. There was minimal mayo and other garnishes to detract from the experience.

Throughout the area, the clam chowder was a standout. We also tried lobster bisque (good) and lobster stew (which is a soup, and outstanding), mussels, crab rolls, and other shellfish menu items. What neither Martine nor I know how to do is to perform surgery on a lobster or crab carapace and hoist out all the tasty bits using a dazzling array of tools. No matter: It’s the meat we were after.

On the mad dash from Bar Harbor back to the airport at Manchester, New Hampshire, we detoured to Kennebunkport, Maine, and had our last fling at Mabel’s Lobster Claw, having to pass the famous Clam Shack because they had no indoor seating, and we were in the middle of a rainstorm. That detour cost us dear, as it seems that every stretch of road was under repair, and fat men in raincoats stood by like so many Paddington Bears in their yellow slickers while we fumed away in traffic.

When I saw how much Martine enjoyed lobster, I decided to make a slight change in our itinerary so that we could visit a lobster museum and hatchery in Bar Harbor called the Oceanarium. (I would provide a link, but their website appears to be having problems.) We spent two hours learning about how lobsters are hatched and trapped; and then we were off to the Main Street Market & Grill to have ourselves some.

Note: Regarding my last post, I finally got in touch with my physician, who prescribed some additional antibiotics and some Advair and Albuterol to keep the asthma down. It seems to be working, such that last night I managed to sleep for ten and a half hours—my first good sleep for two weeks.

Return of an Old Enemy

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At the Eastland Motel, Lubec, Maine

Looks innocuous, doesn’t it? It was here in the easternmost motel in the United States that my old enemy reemerged. Around one o’clock in the morning, I awoke gasping for breath. Martine didn’t hear anything because she habitually sleeps with earplugs. I sprang up in bed and felt an incredible tightness in my lungs. With every breath that I attempted, there was only a hideous whistling sound as my air intake appeared to have shut down.

Finally, after a minute or two thinking that I was going to collapse on the bathroom floor and die with a startled look on my face. (I was there staring at myself in the mirror over the sink with wide, frightened eyes.)

Eventually, after a few choking coughs, the breathing started up again, accompanied by awful wheezing.

The problem had begun a week earlier in Canada. We ran into several days of 100% humidity and intense rainstorms. Although I had had asthma before, it seemed finally to have dissipated in the 1990s. But now I had both a chest infection and a return of the wheezing that used to bedevil me, especially in the more changeable seasons of the year. (Yes, Southern California does have seasons of a sort.)

Finally, on Sunday, September 23, I checked in to the emergency clinic in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. A Canadian physician prescribed a course of antibiotics (Clarithromycin) and prescribed Ventolin for my wheezing. The crisis arrived two days later in Lubec, where we stayed to see Franklin Roosevelt’s famous summer cottage on Campobello Island across the bridge in New Brunswick.

The Ventolin seemed to work, but I was still waking up with a choking series of coughs. Now that I am back in Los Angeles, here I sit at the computer at 2:00 am after having waken up choking. And now my Ventolin is out, and I have to call my physician later in the morning to see what she could prescribe to help me.

In a few minutes, I will stagger back to bed, where I am sleeping in a sitting-up position which helps somewhat. Eventually I will get to sleep, but I will wake up coughing several more times. Curiously, the worst always occurs almost exactly three hours after I’ve gone to bed.

I can hardly wait to get a full night’s sleep again—once I’ve managed to shake this old enemy, if such is possible.

Down Time

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Hopewell Rocks, Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, Canada

This will probably be my last post until the end of September: Martine and I will be heading out on vacation within a couple of days. As I do not own a notebook computer, and as I have qualms about taking something so heavy and so eminently stealable with me on a trip, if I post at all, it will be using whatever computers are available to me. Chances are that any posts I might make during the trip will be unaccompanied by photographs, especially if the computers do not permit me to use my thumb drive.

Not to worry, however: If the past is any predictor, I will return with somewhere between 500 and 1,000 digital photographs taken with my Nikon Coolpix S630. I’ve got the spare batteries and memory cards to flood Yahoo! Flickr with my work.

A quick review of my general destinations, in order: New Hampshire, Vermont, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, and back to New Hampshire. We will be avoiding large cities—mainly because accommodations and food there are too expensive. The largest city along our route is Québec City. We will be staying across the river, a quick ferry ride away, in Lévis.

TV An Ugly Business

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.—Hunter S. Thompson

Series Business

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On one hand, people are not reading as much as they used to. On the other hand, the one part of the publishing business that’s still booming is the Young Adult (YA) series market, as best exemplified by the Harry Potter novels, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, and now The Hunger Games.

Without passing judgment, I think overall it’s a good trend, as it indicates that books do indeed have a future. Some of these series are good (I read all the Potter novels as they came out), and some are probably dreck. (But remember, I’m not naming names here.)

Even among adults, it appears that mysteries, romances, and science-fiction series tend to predominate. Certainly that’s the case for Kindle e-books. Currently on the Kindle best seller list are such series as Fifty Shades, the Hunger Games, Penryn & the End of Days, Bone Secrets, the Century Trilogy, the Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy, Books of Bayern, Songs of Ice and Fire, and Elemental Mysteries.

Now I have been partial to a number of series, most particularly:

  • Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe Books and Saxon Series
  • The Inspector Dalgliesh novels of P. D. James
  • The George Smiley novels of John Le Carré
  • The Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian
  • Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey stories
  • P. G Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels and stories
  • Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels and stories

… and the list goes on—in fact for quite a while—because I guess I’m just as susceptible as YA readers to the power of sequels. When I’ve finished a challenging BAB (that’s technical for Big-Ass Book), I feel like relaxing with something that’s not too challenging and very like something else of the same sort that I’ve read and liked. For instance I’ve just finished seven days of Anatoly Rybakov’s novel Fear, about Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s—to the tune of 686 pages. Before I cut out on my trip, I’m going to want to read something that doesn’t send me dragging through any concentration camps or NKVD interrogation sessions.

Isn’t that funny? I started writing this post with the idea of lambasting Stephenie Meyer and her ilk, but I would have to point the finger of blame at myself for occasionally indulging in light reading. (Not that I avoid books of substance, but rather that I enjoy variety as much as anybody.)

I suppose that if I read nothing but Stephenie Meyer and Harry Potter, I would deserve a sneer from a literary snob such as I picture myself to be. Oh, well, let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

Simplicity, Patience, Compassion

Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.—Lao Tzu