"One a day in Tampa Bay"

My nephew Michael is back from Iraq, so he and Jackie got married again. The first wedding was in Plymouth MA; the second was in St Pete Beach, FL. Y'all know how I feel about Florida, but I must say I had a blast. I saw a bit of the old Florida, a place with no Yankee or Russian accents. Cracker Florida. They are few and furtive: one can find Them still. They might be working for a gypsy roofer, crewing a shrimp boat, or stealing each other's wheels. Carl Hiassen and John D. McDonald have chronicled Cracker hi-jinks in fiction. Good stuff for those who prefer armchair encounters.


Mrs RR and I ate at one of Their eatin' places;Ted Peters' Famous Smoked Fish in nearby South Pasadena. It was a very good lunch. We had the mahi-mahi,smoked perfectly (not too dry), German potato salad and coleslaw. We used just lemon juice,no need for a salsa or such. The waitress slipped us a sample (Eddie Murphy was right: white people give each other things) of the smoked fish spread; it would make a tasty appetizer or sandwich. Alas, we were flying so we had to pass on the spread.


We saw pelicans, a treat. I enjoy watching them fly a loose sine wave a foot off the water, tuck a wing down and under, like those early defective Fokker Dr1's, and plop gracelessly onto the water. They come up with a fish 'bout every time. It was stingray mating season, so the front desk had handouts warning beach fans. The trick is to shuffle, rather than step the usual way in the shallows. The pain from a stingray sticking is intense, I heard.

St Pete Beach does not have the gamey elegance of Key West; it maintains a light sprinkling of cracker houses and first wave seaside resorts. Ours, the Grand Plaza Hotel, was comfortable and accomodating. Along Gulf Boulevard Street ( apparently named by the FL Department of Redundancy Department) there are still wee houses amongst the looming hotels and condos. I have an interest in vernacular architecture, and Florida still has some unique and interesting buildings.

A complex of buildings we visited in Sarasota was interesting: John Ringling's house Ca d'Zan, "the last of the Gilded Age mansions", and the museum built to house his art collection. And what a collection: Rubens, Velazquez, Titian, and Tintoretto, not to mention the El Grecos. We also re-visited, after 20 years, the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg. Dali proved "art is what you can get away with" years before Warhol said it: he became the artwork.

Milling around waiting for the wedding to start, I asked one of the wedding consultants how many weddings they do on the beach. I was told four a day. A much more joyous occasion than the "one a day in Tampa Bay" phrase I learned many years ago. The phrase came about because of the frequency of crashes at nearby McDill Field of young Lieutenants flying the then-new B-26 bomber. Things got so bad Congress bestirred itself from the usual idleness to hold hearings on the matter. They discovered what happens when you combine inadequately trained pilots with one very hot ride. The B-26 had to land at higher speeds than other twin-engined aircraft; hence, 'hot'. The 'Marauder' ( 6 ft. was added to the wing on B models after the hearings-- it helped) had high wing loading (98 lb/sq.ft.): it had a bomb bay as big as a B-17. Add in fuel weight and two big Pratt and Whitney's and you can see where the 98 pounds comes from. The B-26 had a rough start; it proved to be the 'safest' American twin with the lowest loss rate. The bulk of the aircraft were scrapped after the war.

The pelicans, thankfully, are still on Tampa Bay and the Gulf. They squat on poles, sine wave over the water, and catch fish. After the 'bustle bustle' of the wedding, it is good to sit quietly with the Missus,watching Pelicans backlit by the sun sinking into the Gulf.

Two Passions

Ex-pres. Bush stepped into his retirement ranch house, kicked aside a chicken, sat down and wept. He wept because he had dodged a mejor Dum-dum bullet, larger than the unravelling of the White-Man-Devil-Medicine financial web or the Iraq monkey trap. He fell to his knees on the cool dirt floor and thanked Christ his plan to tie millions of Americans' retirement to the stock market, instead of that socialist traitor-founded Social Security stuff, failed.

J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, as performed by the Richmond Symphony, with two, count 'em, two choruses filled the air from my radio last night. Regardless of one's religious thoughts, it is great music. It was sung in English last night, a mid-brow solution . My German is non-existent beyond bitte and danke; the translation enhanced understanding of what was going on with all those different voices. Mark Russell Smith conducted and offered many helpful insights during the intermission. I am not a musicologist, so I lack the right words to describe music beyond gut reaction, a rookie crutch.

Over the mountain through the land of Mud Men to the river .

Stopped by to clean up; St. Patrick's day is always exciting around The Shebeen.

Magic Mountain has been removed from the Shelfari widget, left, as I finished reading it. The thing was a wen on the page. I read a chapter or two a night,as I did with Vanity Fair years ago. A rinse in the river of words before lights out. The book has a nice heft. A new translation by John E. Woods, it seemed to flow better than the earlier Lowe-Porter translation; though some sections of text were very similar. I enjoyed every degree of fever, Mann's speculations on time, and the realist style of the novel. Dr. Faustus is out in a new translation by Woods.

I will have to buy it myself, as the whack to public libraries referred to in an earlier screed has landed. Just in time for increased use by job hunters, computer users, and readers. I do not know about other grid coordinates in the Old Dominion, but in our 914 sq.mile service area, relatives of prisoners MUST make an appointment online to schedule a visit. Now let us think about this a minnit, Deputy Bubba. Given the backgrounds of those in jail, do y'all really think there is a computer at home for Grandma to schedule a visit to her grandson? Can you say "Guan-tan-amo, USA"? The library is the place many families of those in prison turn to; we have the statistical and anecdotal proof.

Idiot regulations like the above make me look forward to my rinse in the river. I'm casting about for the next Big Read; maybe another run through Mark Twain's works. There was a pen "warmed in Hell". He appreciated, respected, and knew, as only a River Pilot can, The River.

Interesting Times update!

The graveyard shift for scarecrow is filled--as of this evening, another brother-in-law is unemployed. He is/was an insurance actuary. We can train him to make truck tire sandals for his sideline.

"May you live in interesting times."

A cup of coffee cost more than a share of GM last Thursday ($1.89 vs. $1.61). These are heady times, omybrothersandsisters, heady times. A woman in CA had 8 babies: Octomom, the media call her. Ann Coulter, harpy of the Right, must have another book out. She's all over the TV, waving her skinny arms, raving about liberals and how FDR was a traitor. Rush Limbaugh screeches "top o' the world, Ma! top o' the world, GOP!" from atop an empty oil tank. His new , legal , prescription must be working. Lucky bastard, in his own little world; he's happy, sucking on his Havanas and gibbering.

The Missus and I are planning our Victory Garden.Less grass to mow. I can hire my unemployed neighbor to be a scarecrow and my unemployed brother-in-law will take swing shift;graveyard shift is still open.

There are still some interesting things going on , if my daily saunters through the Web are any indication. Here's a man who built a 1/3 scale Spitfire Mk.IX. Amazing; he talks of building 1/3 scale working Merlin and Griffon engines. We shall see on that one.

Smaller and lower power will be the key in future appliances. Nanotechnology firms are building the foundation needed before the incredible things found in K.Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation, read many years ago, can come to fruition. A 12 year old boy works on increasing the efficiency of solar cells by their absorption of UV light along with visible light. My professional duties this week have required me to read up on 2D barcodes (think vertical arraying of information) and 3D scanners and printers.

It is an amazing world.