Sunday, April 30, 2017

Kites a little clearer here--29th April


Charged by 2 snarling dogs while ago

--this in the State Park NO DOGS section. There are miles north toward Cayucos where dogs can go off leash. There's an on-leash area here north of the Rock. Then there is the NO DOGS State area.

I was running strongly, thinking how well I was doing for 81. Then after the attack I went from hale and hearty to slow, weak, and clumsy.

The owners could not control the dogs because they were holding their hands, palms up, filled with sand dollars.

Scary, though, how an old person can go from hearty to wasted in a few moments.

Mobbed Beach today


Kites yesterday, if you can see them


Reading MOBY-DICK 2 Times at Once


Saturday, April 22, 2017

Some people who have died too soon since 2006, leaving out kinfolks except Ben


Henry Binder 1944-2006
James Meriwether 1928-2007
Leo Lemay 1935-2008
Edwin S. Shneidman 1918-2009
Walter E. Bezanson 1912-2011
Donald Yannella 1934-2012
Maurice Sendak 1928-2012
Noel Polk 1943-2012
Joyce Deveau Kennedy 1937-2012
Ben Tindall 1932-2013
Brian Higgins 1944-2015
Charlie Robinson 1941-2016
This is not counting neighbors.
Who else am I just not ready to put down here?
And why is it so hard to keep the order of deaths in mind?

Really Tired of People Who Were Important to Me Dying

Henry Binder 1944-2006
James Meriwether 1928-2007
Donald Yannella 1934-2012
Noel Polk 1943-2012
Joyce Deveau Kennedy 1937-2012
Ben Tindall 1932-2013
Brian Higgins 1944-2015
Charlie Robinson 1941-2016
And others I might add . . . .

Invasion of the Private Beach below Morro Rock


Friday, April 21, 2017

Morro Rock is Still Here


Last Great Colleague in Delaware Gone--Charles E. Robinson

Last October 25 Charlie Robinson sent out a group email saying he had cancer and telling everyone not to contact him again.

I respected his wishes, but yesterday I sent him an email with "You don't have to answer" in the subject line and just saying this:
but you should know we are thinking about you.
Hershel

Today his widow answered. Charlie died 20 November 2016.

So we are mourning, and it's never too late for mourning.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Throngs in down jackets & the Heroic Frank H back running shirtless and barefoot in the ocean

with a newly healing Achilles tendon. This Morro Bay icon was
missing for 3 months. And even Frank admitted that running against the frigid north wind today was not fun


Alison Marie Parker


Everett, Wilburn, Hershel--end of 1952, early 1953--only picture of the 3

The only picture of the 3 of us.

Reading MOBY-DICK in 1957, 60 years ago

It's just now 60 years since I read MOBY-DICK over 11 afternoons while I allowed the pneumo-peritoneum to settle down after being up in the morning at West Contra Costa Junior College. I knew Shakespeare so well after the 5 months of reading the plays over and over the previous year that I could hardly believe a young American could have absorbed Shakespeare as Melville had done. Mr. Pence had let me read the book although he was teaching a course in the late 19th century, and I ignorantly wrote a paper on a blue book not writing on the back of pages until I got to the end and had more to say, so I had to turn it around and keep going. Mr. Pence gave me an A+ and said something in praise. Now here I am, 60 years later, proofreading the new Norton Critical Edition of MOBY-DICK, fifty years after the first one was published. What a world.

Sendak 1991


Cover of the Kraken PIERRE--signed by Maurice Sendak

The things you find in drawers.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Samuel Walker half a century later records a moment of Thomas Sumter's courage

[We] marched to Blackstock there had a battle and defeated the British

General [Thomas] Sumter was wounded in the shoulder. I saw him when he was shot his sword fell out of his right hand and he Caught it with his left before it fell to the ground

How can biographers have written without knowing this?

The blue does not last forever--3 pictures


From halfway there



Buying 5 x 8 cards by the gross is something I did in 1962

I used them for weeks in the fall typing up my dissertation notes.
This was another time.
The first edition of the Norton MD came out in 1967.
I am using one of the 1962 5 x 8s now to mark the page and line of the 2nd edition and the new 3rd edition.
I will leave a clean card for the 4th edition in 10 years . . . . . .

Friday, April 7, 2017

Rain lashing face, sand lashing legs--fun run for someone in his 9th decade

Forceful South wind whipping rain onto face even while it was whipping sand on my legs. Can you see the blowing sand in the first picture?

Someone came out near the Rock with 3 big loud dogs but there was no one on my 2 mile part of the beach.