Spooky seas

After mostly clear and occasionally sunny weather, this afternoon the ship was travelling in an eerie mist, with no visibility in any direction. It would have made an excellent setting for a Stephen King story.

Water, water everywhere

And here's today's report from the not-quite Ancient Mariner (who did in fact see several albatrosses today, and shot none.) We're in the middle of the Scotia Sea, and won't get to South Georgia until late Wednesday, so water was really the only thing to photograph today. (Though if you look in the middle of the picture on the left you can see a giant petrel following in the ship's wake and enjoying all the fish and nutrients our engines churn up to the surface. I'll try to get an albatross tomorrow.)

And of course a sunset, because I like sunsets. The sun isn't setting particularly late here, where it's after all early summer, but you can tell how far south we are by its stubborn reluctance to disappear. It sinks slowly, and the red skies linger for hours.

We had our mandatory briefing on the rules for visiting Antarctica and got our boots fitted, and otherwise I read, wrote, ate, and talked to some fellow passengers. The seas aren't so rough that you really notice when you're sitting down (we won't cross the Drake Passage until the end of the trip) but when you stand up and try to walk it's a shock every time. Why is the floor moving?

Sunday bird blogging

I left Santiago early this morning, and flew to Punta Arenas, and then to the improbably named Puerto Williams, a city on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego.

Now I'm on a ship heading to South Georgia, and then the Antarctic Peninsula. A few weeks ago when I was so sick I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do this but here I am, with the familiar soothing sound of the waves outside and that rumbly, rocking motion under my feet.

We were only in Puerto Williams long enough to board the ship and have our safety briefing before sailing, but I already saw three new birds.

This is one of them—the Magellanic cormorant, also known as the rock shag. They were nesting on some old posts in the water near where the ship was anchored. I have a better picture of the adults, but I love that in this one, one of the fledglings (those grayish lumps that look like large dust bunnies are actually baby birds) has a foot poking out of the nest.

Saturday reflections

I took this picture from my hotel room in Santiago, so that's presumably my hotel in the reflection (and a teeny-tiny Kathleen with a camera in there somewhere.)

I have to be on a bus to the airport at 6 am, so I'm glad I scheduled an extra day to just rest up and enjoy the last of the warm weather for a few weeks. I already saw most of what I'd like to see in Santiago when I was here in 2018, so apart from walking to the mall to buy a case for my Copacabana sunglasses, I mostly sat in the beautiful gardens and did as little as possible.

Random things I saw on Copacabana Beach

I didn't really understand the art installation or why it features Elton John, but it made me smile. And I love the platinum hair on those boys—this is apparently a favela style inspired by footballers.

I wasn't kidding about the bikinis

Someone must be buying these or this woman would not be lugging this contraption up and down Copacabana Beach on Christmas Day.

My hero

Today was brilliantly sunny and I had breakfast outside overlooking the water. Unfortunately when I went to put on my sunglasses they were nowhere to be found—I'm guessing they fell out of my bag during the tour yesterday.

And of course everything was closed today, including the hotel gift shop, but it occurred to me that if they have vendors selling bikinis on Copacabana Beach (and they do, although I remain confused about why you would wait until you were already at the beach to buy one) I might be able to find someone selling sunglasses. And I did.

This kind gentleman wanted 200 reals for the glasses (about $31) but accepted 130 when that was all I had. Strolling along the beach immediately became more pleasant, and I was able to spend a few hours by the pool this afternoon as well.

Where I managed to get a sunburn on the tops of my feet because I forgot to apply sunscreen there. It's been a long time since I was outside in a bathing suit.

Chinese Vista

Our tour guide yesterday swore that this overlook in Tijuca National Park is the best view of Rio, better than Sugar Loaf or Christ the Redeemer. I haven't seen the other views yet, but this one was quite impressive even on a gray day.

It's called the Vista Chinesa as a tribute to the Chinese workers who came to Brazil when tea started to be grown here. There's a small pagoda, but honestly I barely noticed it once I saw the view. The water between the trees and the mountains is a lagoon that lies in the middle of the city. Copacabana, where I'm staying, is on the other side of the big mountain.

That's better

The view from the hotel this morning. It's already clouded over again, but at least I got to confirm that Sugar Loaf does actually exist!

A long sleep and a few cups of coffee (plus the improved weather) worked their usual magic and Rio looks much better to me today than it did yesterday.

The journey here was mostly smooth, with one unpleasant wrinkle—I'd used miles to upgrade to business class so I could sleep, but it turned out that my seat refused to recline. They've replaced the push-button controls with a touch screen and mine didn't work, despite several attempts to reboot. Finally an intrepid flight attendant got down on the floor with an iPhone flashlight and disconnected enough of the machinery to get the seat flat. Or mostly flat; there was a lump in the middle that wasn't very comfortable, and of course I couldn't raise the seat back in the morning, so had to eat breakfast sitting cross-legged on what was now basically a bench.

I didn't especially enjoy trudging around Copacabana in the rain yesterday afternoon, but I'm looking forward to the Botanical Gardens this afternoon. And there are flocks of frigate birds in the sky!

When my baby, when my baby smiles at me I go to Rio

This time it really is Rio.

De Janeiro.

My-oh-me-oh.

Though that might not be your first guess looking at this picture, taken on Copacabana Beach this afternoon—it looks a lot more like the chilly Northern California beaches of my childhood. I'm here until Friday and it's scheduled to rain every day, but at least, despite appearances, it's not cold.

White (almost) Christmas

Everything does look more Christmasy when the snow is real. (That reindeer, however, looks more like a giant dog.)

Saturday reflections

A car on West 43rd Street.

I was surprised and delighted to wake up to a world covered in snow this morning. It's already disappearing, even though it's well below freezing outside, but I think it still counts as a White Christmas.

Urban poetry

I don't think the reds and greens in this picture have anything to do with Christmas—I think the occupants just have eccentric tastes—but it's appropriate for the beginning of winter, and the week before Christmas.

I'm heading south Sunday night and looking forward to spending a lazy Christmas somewhere warm. I was violently sick with a horrible stomach bug recently and worried I'd have to cancel the trip. I feel fine now, but still feel like I might jinx myself if I say too much.

Sunday bird blogging

Gentoo penguins in Antarctica in 2018. I took several pictures of this group; I loved the way they waited in line to dive into the water,

I'm on vacation; after a rough week recovering from a very nasty stomach virus, I find that all I want to do is lie around, read, and eat the tamales one of my students brought to the party yesterday, with extras for me to take home because she knows I love them.

Sunday bird blogging

Speaking of snow....

This picture of a cardinal is several years old, from the last serious snow I remember in Central Park.

The monochrome months are here

Autumn arrives later and leaves earlier every year now, leaving us in what feels like endless grays and sepias.

Winter has its own beauties, but now that we seldom get snow anymore, it can definitely be monotonous. Brown, brown, brown, brown. Oh, look—gray!

Here are two pictures from Inwood Hill Park last winter, one a little filtered, one not.

Urban poetry

A thoroughly overloaded pickup truck parked by the Zapote market in San José—flashback from the summer of '22.

Flashback: Peru

At Sara Textiles in Chinchero, our guide with her daughter, and showing off one of the bones the weavers use to lift the warp threads on a loom—which she joked came from her ex-husband.

Sunday bird blogging

I think we all need any excuse to smile these days, so here's a tufted titmouse.

Hey, they always work for me.

Saturday reflections

A truck on the Upper West Side.

I had three separate sets of plumbers snaking my drains this week, trying to locate and fix some persistent clogs and leaks in the building. So I was stuck inside, unable to pee, and trying to create class materials while the machines rumbled and my apartment vibrated. It felt like a giant root canal, but without novocain.

When I was heading for the escalators after class today, I ran into two of my former students, then met three more in the lobby. All of them hugged me and told me that they miss me. I hadn't realized how much I needed a hug this week and I got five.

Urban poetry

This view looking down on an intersection in Midtown Manhattan encapsulates so much of what I love about New York: the geometric shapes of the buildings and the lines in the crosswalks, and the amazing patterns of dappled light on the asphalt, reflecting off the buildings above.

Flashback: Polish TV

This is really a flashback. I took this picture off the television in my hotel room in Krakow in 1995—in case it's not obvious, it's the Polish version of Wheel of Fortune.

Flashback: Jersey Shore

The amusement park on the boardwalk at Point Pleasant in 2021, slightly stylized for effect.

The Library Walk

This is one of the plaques in the sidewalk on East 41st Street, leading to Fifth Avenue and the main branch of the New York Public Library. We're witnessing the dangers of ignorance, and gleeful misinformation, right now.

Flashback: Macchu Pichu

Processing and tweaking photos is one of the few tasks I can put my mind to these days, so here are two pictures of a llama at Macchu Pichu that my critical eye for some reason (okay, I see the reasons--imperfect focus, less than ideal composition) deemed not worthy of inclusion on this august blog.

But today they make me smile.

A foggy day in New York town

A picture of the Hudson from last winter: fog, a ferry, a gull soaring overhead.

Plus you can't even see New Jersey.

American Tune

Harmony always soothes the soul, but this song—written almost fifty years ago—is almost a little too on point for my broken heart right now.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

Urban poetry

I took this photo with my phone while I was waiting for my car to be inspected a few months ago. I love the color and those shadows.

Because we can probably all use a smile today

Fifth Avenue, during my walk home from school yesterday afternoon.

Saturday reflections

A quote I read today from Molly Housh Gordon, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Missouri:

I think humans in Western cultures often need to feel like there is an upward arc to history and some promised arrival, in order for there to be meaning in our lives.

But the place we are going is just around the sun on a miracle of a planet.

And I want to tell you that we are still alive in a world that is so beautiful and so brutal all at once, and always has been.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

It's been a long, long time since I read Candide, and philosophy was never my strong suit, but this advice—tend your own garden, don't pay attention to your neighbors, stay out of politics, accept the world as it is and not as we want it to be—is so alluring today.

I am in shock. I want to retreat and lick my wounds and come out in a year or two. Or never. But I don't think I can do that. I'm afraid that it's going to get very very ugly. I might have the privilege of being able to ignore much of that ugliness. But I won't.

I can't.

Evanescent

Some closeups from a fun art installation at Brookfield Place in New York, where I had lunch with my class on Saturday. It's called Evanescent and was created by Atelier Sisu, a design studio in Sydney.

The young daughter of one of my students informed me that the bubbles were “awesome”. And she was right.

Still lifting her lamp

I posted this on a political blog (Balloon Juice) I follow today, about the ugly rally that took place a few blocks from my apartment last night:

...Something that kept me hopeful through the barrage of ugly news yesterday:

I teach English to adult immigrants. This semester we’ve been learning about American elections, and I’ve been surprised by how interested they are in the history of the Constitution, the various compromises that were made, and the struggles for voting rights. So for our class trip, I took them on a walking tour of Lower Manhattan on Saturday. We visited Hamilton’s grave at Trinity Church, Federal Hall on Wall Street where Washington was sworn in and the first U.S. Congresses met, the plaque marking the building on Maiden Lane where Jefferson used to live and where he, Madison and Hamilton had the famous dinner in “The Room Where it Happens,” Fraunces Tavern where all of them used to eat and which was damaged by a British cannonball during the revolution. Then a ride on the Staten Island Ferry for a good look at the Statue of Liberty.

All of my students have kids, many of them have multiple jobs, and they give up their Saturdays to learn English. They are smart, funny, interesting, curious, and remarkably kind. They are everything that is right about this country, and we could use several million more of them. When I vote this week, I will be voting for many things and many reasons, but I want to give them the country they deserve.

I ended up voting today instead of waiting. Voting, for all of us.

Sunday bird blogging

A few seagulls following in the wake of the Staten Island Ferry yesterday, with the Manhattan skyline in the background.

The warmer than usual temperatures have finally cooled down enough to give us at least one week of perfect October: crisp but not cold, leaves turning, our sidewalk shadows stretching longer as the sun moves south.

Saturday reflections

October skies reflected near the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan today. I took my class on a walking tour to see where some of the history we've been reading about happened. We had a wonderful time, and I am exhausted.

Good exhausted, but exhausted!

Have some flowers

My Covid/flu shots knocked me flat for a few days so I'm just catching up on everything again.

My beautiful laundrette

I liked the worn-out feel of this laundry near the hotel where I stayed my first weekend in Oxford.

This afternoon, I went in to make copies for tomorrow's class, and one of the cleaning staff kindly held the elevator for me. He asked if I was late for my class and I said no, that I was just there to make copies, and he said, “You're a teacher?”

Since I'm decades older than most of the students there, I didn't know why that seemed so unlikely. (Cue imposter syndrome kicking in...)

Later I saw myself in the mirror in the ladies room—jeans, old t-shirt, hair damp and disheveled from the long walk to the Upper East Side—and burst out laughing. Yeah, I wouldn't have taken me for a teacher, either. I do dress better when I'm actually teaching.

Random things I saw in Oxford

Clockwise from top left: a homemade Black Lives Matter sign in the window of a student flat; the tower of University Church on the High Street; an assortment of condoms and tampons in the laundry room at Merton; tourists in the Schools Quad in front of the Old Bodleian.