Have I mentioned the wracking of nerves that is the Everglades Challenge Experience for Shore Crew?

No, we shore-folk aren't taking red-tide flavored breakers over the bow. No, we aren't sitting in our damp sport clothes for days at a time (I speak for myself anyhow). Neither are we watching for flotsam, marine life, and poorly-driven powerboats.

Nevertheless. 

While waiting for team Spawn to reboot their malingering SPOT personal locator this afternoon, I channeled my nervous energy to good: I washed and refueled the van, I vacuumed, I pressed the reload button several dozen times. I texted and e-mailed Moresailesed and resisted the temptation to leave a frustrated voice-mail about CHECKING the dang SPOT.

I knew they had their hands full. I knew they THOUGHT the SPOT was working.

I knew they were cheerfully squeezing as much speed from the wind as they could, knowing that the conditions are liable to turn flat and light overnight. 

​Nevertheless. 

When one of the other shoreside crews called to inquire my opinion about how many half-gallons of ice cream were recommended to help her through the week,  I said, I didn't know, I only purchase pints at a time. [On reflection, it was a  brace of pints today, which––Huh!––adds up to a half-gallon. Never considered that math before. Answer: one per day, I guess.] ​

This is not the time to keel over from starvation.  

I jest only a bit.

I hope my water-bound Spawnsters have snarfed many pieces of cold fried chicken, homemade chocolate bar, and savory chunks of home-dried beef jerky.  

​Neither sailor is especially food-motivated, but they too have a smorgasbord of things to tempt them. Jelly beans, dried whole tiny bananas (monkey guns, baby!), jars of trail mix, banana bread, a stash of strawberry-yogurt-covered pretzels. 

Of course, I cannot make those sailors of mine do anything from here on shore. Not eat, not check the dang SPOT,  nothing.

We can but watch and wait and keep fingers crossed.

Here's their SPOT link, which seems to have had a revivifying nap and is back to work.

The WaterTribe website has been working for approximately 15 minutes over the course of the past 6 hours by my reckoning. 

And so it goes. 

In light of past years' performance, I anticipate a few cri de coeur about the failings of SPOT as a personal locator, but new year clean slate, right?  The personal locator is how the tracking maps keep track of the 100+ adventurers.  So, while sometimes the locater maps are slow, sometimes it's the personal locators corking the bottle. 

The SPOT is a hockey-puck sized piece of kit that promises to ping a satellite every 20 minutes or so. It also has a couple of buttons for specific messages ("We're OK!" "We're in trouble, but we're safe," and of course the panic button that calls the Coast Guard). It's proven finicky.

​Yes, we have heard that GARMIN makes a superior product with far nicer interfaces and reliability. Had we the option ten years ago, we would have chosen differently.

The SPOT hasn't failed, really, but it's disappointed me by not performing as I hope.  We weren't ready to invest in yet another piece of expensive electronica for Spawn, so we'll be SPOTTING again this year. 

Here's a link to that website. It follows Spawn only.

How long will the adventure last?  
I have an entire country-western song bemoaning that exact question. It's already playing in my head.

The short answer: we hope the gang starts arriving in Key Largo on Sunday evening, but the awards ceremony and official end of the time limit is the following Saturday. It's really anyone's guess.

​Knock wood. 

With less than a week until the WaterTribe is set to push off the beach for the Everglades Challenge, it's now all about the weather.  

Every year, it's the same backing-and-forthing with my favorite skipper and his gang.  What will the future hold? Will there be a cold front and a line of disturbed weather, or will a high pressure stall over us. Will it be the dreaded easterly? Or more exactly: WHEN will the cold front roar through, and WHEN will the dreaded easterly kick up. 

Each sailor seems to have a personal preference: Sailflow. Predict Wind.  Windy or Wunderground. NOAA avionic or the local weather.

My opinion, and soothsayers will confirm, predictions are only as good as the memory holding them...because que sera, baby, sera.  

As usual, the WaterTribe concors d'elegance will be open on Friday afternoon, March 3 at the beach at Fort DeSoto, for those who want to check out all the dreamers' machines.  

The variety and diversity of ideas in action on the beach boggles the imagination.  People approach the challenge from such different places and with such novel solutions!

I recommend taking the afternoon to soak in the enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, between 2.4Meter races, Flying Scot events, Merlin, Moth Midwinters, AND the upcoming Challenge, our house is humming with activity. 

It's command central for the annual big pile-up of survival gear. Checklists and girthy blue Ikea bags full of waterproof duffles have begun multiplying. Floorspace is starting to close in.  

Perhaps because Spawn is more or less turnkey at this point, (aside from some tidying and refreshing), my sweet skipper has been able to sail with fellow WaterTribesfolk.

He and Andy "Andyman" Hayward sea-trialed the Dovekie, a generously-beamed creature that was first sailed by a cheerful Kiwi team a few Challenges back.  

Andyman will again hit the beach with Nate "Natedog" Vilardebo; spousal hopes are high that this will be a less dramatic year for team Dovekie.

Mr. Linton came back considerably wind-blown after a morning with Dave "DeSea" Clement on the Prindle 19. A catamaran will do that to a person.

​DeSea will be competing as a trio this year, with teammates Chris "CCock" Growcock and Ed "SailEd" Ruark. They are also hoping for low drama/high fun.  

​
Crossing fingers and knocking wood. 

If past performance is any kind of predictor, this month will slip under our keel like the tidal surge at Fundy.

​Hang on!

​I embraced vintage. ​
​
There was a gorgeous Pendleton plaid suit, an old Chanel number from a garage sale, a handful of thrifted cashmere sweaters. I wore my riding boots with skirts, sported stacks of fake pearls from my grandmother, and sometimes I put together outfits that swooped past the line of "costume or not?" with joyous abandon.

Today, fashion historian Morgan Donner might call my choices "history bounding." Or as the cool kiddies put it: #Historybounding
​

Still and all, fallible me at 21 or 22 saw a tourist descending the escalator to the tracks in Grand Central Station on sultry August day and was struck DOWN with want.  She was wearing exactly the item of clothing I coveted. Of all of the many MANY desirable commodities available in the big city, I wanted what she had. 

A full, pale, ankle-length skirt with an antique, Edwardian vibe.

That skirt! Lacking that kooky booty seen with late Victorian bustles, this item of mere clothing managed to be curvy but straight, with a sensible, workable air.  I thought it made the wearer look interesting and self-confident. It was perfection.

I looked high and low for that skirt. For actual decades. Chasing an ideal.

And even after I had been sewing stuff for ages ——I'm on my third sewing machine, for the love of Captain Pete Obvious! —— it only came me to this year: "Yo! Self! Why not make that skirt yer own dang self?"

​And so, dear Reader, I am. 

After a rush of creative energy, snipping of threads and hacking my way through historical methods of pattern-drafting, I have what I have longed for: a long skirt with pockets deep enough to double for a handbag.

A few of my YouTube mentors: Bernadette Banner, Morgan Donner, Rebecca at Pocket Full of Poseys, Ora Lin, and Marika at Enchanted Rose Costumes. 

I made one walking skirt from denim. I'm making another from a single thrifted yard of pretty plaid wool and the remains of –– as God is my witness –– velvet curtain panels from Ikea. 

And under the skirts, a wealth of swirly, swishy petticoats in flannel and cotton lawn.

Really, Planters Peanuts? This is the new packaging.

​https://www.killingussoftly4.org/

A few years ago, I read a book with a title something like this. The Book of Dead Days?  

​The story did not stick with me, but I've adopted the phrase as a description of the time between the midwinter holidays and New Year's.​

It's a week for not getting work done. A week to kindle up some fire against the dark and then sit poking the fire with a stick.

But I did mean to share the results of a recent photo safari. It's seasonable to the odd week. ​

Here's hoping for a bright new year.

While perambulating recently, I was stopped in my tracks by the oddest, most erudite of graffiti.

Strictly speaking, since the message was not written by hand (graph-itti) it might be called a poster or one of those bills nobody wants others to post. Whatever the actual medium, when slapped onto a garage door, the message is both mysterious and unsettling.

A citizen in the 21st Century, I turned immediately to the inter webs. 

I will not deny that my first thought was that it was some sort of political code. And perhaps it is...one that might encourage deescalation. I mean, really: people are CHEERING that an 82-year-old got his head bashed in by a home intruder?

Well anyhoo, the formula I known as Euler's Identity. Which sounds like a spy story, but that name is pronounced "Oiler's". So, less international-operative let us say, and more rogue garage-mechanical. 

And, she re-phrased with laser-like focus, it's commonly considered the most beautiful of mathematical equations.  (I wonder if they have an annual contest with capes and crowns and airbrushed tans).  

​It's been likened to a Shakespearean sonnet, and my favorite starry-eyed quote about the formula is that it "is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it and it must be the truth."  

But wait, she said plaintively, what the Euler's identity DO in the world? Short answer: math stuff that I cannot, for the life of me and the love of light, manage to keep herded up in my brain for long enough to summarize. Dang. We REALLY don't know what it means.

Ah, but wait. Plot thickens: there's Euler's Identity, Euler's Constant, Euler's Four-Square Identity (okay, check this shiznit: double the sum of 4 squared numbers and the result can be expressed as the sum of four squares whaaaaa),  Euler's Number,  Euler's other Number (a cavitation number in fluid dynamics), and Euler's Theory, and, Holy Bologna on a pony –– Euler's Lucky Numbers. Which are, btw, a series of prime numbers that, well, geek.  

​Ooh! electronic music based on it can be seen here.

There's a bit of reentry shock –– whoa, did you know that reentry culture shock is enough of a thing that the State Department has prepared this white paper on it? I am going to say the same applies when returning to the pro-growth, population-exploding, overextended state of Florida. 

Sparkle sparkle.

Where was I? Yeah: coming back to Florida after a summer at the Would-Be Farm. ​The differences are few, in truth, though they shock us: the rate of travel, the volume of humankind, a factor larger of generalized chaos.  

We don't leave our keys in the car.  We look both ways at a roundabout. We schedule our supply runs to avoid the angriest hours. Instead of counting deer crossings, we keep track of how many times we are startled by vehicles weaving through traffic at near-100mph.  (I'm TRYING to watch out for you, motorcycles. Jeesh.)

But the flip side of the reentry shock is the sense of slipping right back into the balmy waters of home: family, fishing, and, naturally, the next sailing challenge.  

The 2.4 Meter boat is about 8 feet long. I have described my favoite skipper's appearance in the diminutive vessel as a man sailing his own boot. Or possibly if Paul Bunyan were sitting in the companionway of a classic racing sloop... 

He's been competing in the boat for a couple of years, primarily in preparation for the 2.4 Meter World Championships. which our home club has the honor of hosting for 2022.  

Never mind that we've been trying to hold the event for several years and have been thwarted by various world events...The regatta will be held November 5-11, 2022!   

I'll be keeping watch from the comfort and familiarity of a chase boat. Himself specifically requested that I devote the boat to him and his modest needs for the regatta. I'm officially the beer-and-sails-boat for Team Linton. 

I keep hoping to find a "conchie" in my family history. That's what conscientious objectors were called, mostly with disdain, by their contemporaries in WWI and WWII.

If your religious beliefs or your individual conscious said, "do not pick up arms and fight," you could end up in jail. Or be executed for cowardice and shirking.

St. Maximilan of Tebessa gets the title as first to suffer this punishment for conscience in modern memory.  Back 200 CE, hell no he won't go was followed by a prompt beheading. Capital punishment for being unwilling to kill –– oh the irony! –– has only recently receded from the world of modern military regulations. 

More proof that we humans aren't actually supportive of outliers from the herd. Or even for folks who exemplify the beliefs we think we hold dearest. Turn the other cheek –– oh no you DON'T.

But so far, I've uncovered garden-variety military ancestors from the start of European settlement in North America:  veterans of the Indian Wars, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812. Survivors and victims of the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both WWI and WWII, et cetera. These are folks who gave time, limbs, life in exchange for their country –– of their idea of the country, right? 

A few during were batting for the other team in the 1770's; and in the 1860's, I trace slave-owners and abolitionists, North and South, Rebs and Yanks in about an even sprinkle across the family tree. Can't choose your ancestors.  

My dad's father, Bompa (for some of the grandchildren it's "Bampa." Weird.) was a genealogy fan. According to my possibly faulty memory, he commissioned a history of the family and then composed his own written narrative about Smiths and Fessendens in that wild northern corner of Pennsylvania.

​ The writing is 100% the way I remember Bompa: it's careful, arch, correct, and as I recall, all of the ancestors were upright good citizens.  For my purposes, it's not much use, as, sadly, the original source material is never cited, and again, as I remember, the professional genealogist's report was lost.

Still, it's a document in and of itself, revealing a certain mid-Century privileged mindset. It's also not terribly accurate (take note, cousins! Bompa's Enoch Smith seems to combine facts from Enoch Jr (1791-1871) and his father Enoch, Sr. (1771-?). Totally understandable, name like Smith.

Anyhow, where are my conchies?  Was their unpopular view a one-way ticket out of our family memory or do we simply have none? My best bucking-the-tide guy so far?  Aaron Augustus Chase, who seems to have had a steely grip on moral north, as least as regards the mining strikes of his day. 
 
But I'll keep looking.