Christmas Day!

It's December 25th on the Amazon, 82 degrees, humid, breezy (at least on deck).  Saw some cute kids dancing around the disco-lit tree in the lounge last night.  Another of the families on board with small children was gathered in one of the lounges, around an artificial tree, opening gifts this morning as I walked to breakfast. Several passengers are wearing Santa hats (or reindeer antlers), and I am sporting the Christmas-lightbulb earrings Pat gave me years ago. (No, they don't light up.) The intraship television station that charts our progress (latitude, longitude, course, speed, with a little map -- pretty interesting) is playing secular tunes: at the moment, it's John Denver doing "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk This Christmas." 

Well, nothing's perfect.  :  )

High Seas, Trois

I should actually be doing the numbers in Portugese, as we are en route to Brazil, but I don't know any numbers in Portugese.  And since my counting in French is pretty limited too, I may have to change the way that I title posts!

Spent yesterday (was it just yesterday??) in port at Bridgetown, Barbados.  We found a cabbie, David, (or he found us) who squired us around, first to the Barbados Museum, housed in an old army prison, a well-done set of displays on the history, flora and fauna of the island. The setting itself is pretty impressive:  a hollow square surrounding a lush, shady courtyard, deep overhangs and shuttered windows that make even the non-air-conditioned rooms pretty comfortable. (Displays are climate controlled, though.) After reading about the architecture and rationale for "chattel houses" (chattel meaning simply "movable property or belongings"), we then SAW chattel houses as we drove through town. They have a steeply pitched roof to shed rain, symmetric door and window placement, and, frequently, a rear flat-roofed shed. A second (or third) unit can be added as the family's fortunes (and numbers) expand.

The drive through town was something of an adventure in itself, as David is a driver after my own heart -- frequent mostly-friendly honking, passing on curves, impatience with traffic. You go, David! 

At  our next stop, the Mount Gay rum tour, we walked through the history of the rum industry (and thus a big part of the island's) with about a dozen other tourists and our very personable guide, who admitted up front that an important goal of the tour was to ensure that we all purchased rum before leaving, and then proceeded to charm and educate us all.  (And we did indeed buy our quota of spirits.) You are allowed one six-pack or two bottles per person, per port, and the crew checks you in when you reboard the ship. Before sugar cane cultivation cranked up in Barbados and other Caribbean islands, the average British citizen consumed about as much sugar PER YEAR as is in one can of modern Coke. The islands, and slave labor, allowed that to rise and fortunes to be made in Britain, France, Portugal and Spain.

When we rejoined David after the rum tour, he had news from the hospital: his fiance had delivered their baby girl, Aria.  We look forward to Ms. Aria Williams being Prime Minister of Barbados in about thirty years  :  )

David then took us to a "local" place to eat, which was pretty near downtown and your basic down-home lunch counter kind of place, but with rice & peas and flying fish on the day's menu.  The plate also had an inch-thick triangle of some softish, pale yellow, somewhat fibrous, ahh, stuff. It tasted pretty good, but we have no clue what it was. (The flying fish was mild.) (And not flying at the moment.)

Then we moseyed back toward the port, carrying, unfortunately, our heavy rum, and made a variety of other purchases along the way (but I can't tell you what b/c some of you readers -- assuming there are any -- may be getting them as gifts).    More soon.    Another 24 hours or so to the equator! ! ! 

High Seas, Duex

Spent today (well, most of today) on St. Bart's, a small and somewhat vertical Francophone island populated by quite wealthy folk. We "tendered" to shore, which means that 60 or so people at a time take a small boat, like a ferry only faster. Then our group of 15 walked a few yards down the dock to our catamaran (which I now know is a double-hulled sailboat, the one that has "trampoline" canvas decks slung in the bow between the hulls. You know, those boats that look like they are riding on two parallel cigars.) Our captain was a faux-fierce French type, ably assisted by his 6-year-old son ("his name is Sailor") and wife Anique. (That's how I'm spelling it, and I'm sticking to it.)  All were tanned and friendly and helpful. We sailed around the end of the island to a beach -- I'm blanking on the name -- and anchored; then almost everyone snorkeled for about an hour. Then we lounged in the sun and sailed back to  port. 

This is possibly the most perfect experience I've ever had on a December day. Baby-blue skies, puffy clouds, turquoise water, gleaming white sand.... Violet, green and tiger-striped fishes below us. Silence, except for a few splashes and that Darth Vader breathing sound that you get in from the snorkel. Not to mention that our captain offered me his personal "noodle" when I asked for one 

Lunch in a bistro across from the docks ("la salade de poulet avec exotic fruits"), and tendering back to the ship. My skin is glowing with a faint sunburn, and the salt is washed off. Oh it was lovely.

I did take a bunch of pictures today, but Bibb uploaded them to his computer and I'll have to get them. (Don't try to "share" anything electronic with this man.)

We've met a few blowhards and spoiled travelers, folks who seem to have a hard time putting up with any inconvenience or discomfort, but have met many more nice folks. Our assigned seating for the four "formal" dinners put us with a sister and brother from Canada; he's still there, and she now lives in Louisville, KY. We also met (over dinner tonight) a woman who's just starting her EDD in elementary special ed.  Bob the piano guy. The Jennifers.  Couple having a long vacation before his knee surgery makes them immobile for a bit.  

High Seas, One

From aboard the MV Explorer, somewhere east and south of Puerto Rico, entering the Caribbean.

How strange is that? I have never thought of myself as the sort of person who goes on a cruise. (But then, who are they, and why am I not?) But here we are, and this is not a typical cruise or even at all a "cruise," as it is marketed by the Semester at Sea folk, who sponsor between-semester trips as well, as a "voyage of discovery." We're going to Brazil and up the Amazon -- excuse me, I meant UP THE AMAZON!!! -- and then back to Florida, stopping at half a dozen islands along the way. 

What have I discovered so far? Well, when I first saw our ship -- not a "boat" -- I said something like "wow, that's really big." It still seems large to me, as it has 7 decks to navigate and carries over 700 passengers and 200+ crew. But I've learned that it's not that large, as cruise vessels go and, more importantly, that the ocean is a whole heckuva lot bigger, as it can toss this baby about pretty easily. So my first discovery was "wow, the ocean is really big."

My second, on our first night out from port (Nassau), was that being seasick is no fun at all. I hurled pretty copiously, took a pill being dispensed right & left by the ship's doctor, and felt better very quickly. More pitching and lurching in the last couple of days, but I feel okay now. Maybe that rough initial period of acclimation really worked. (She said optimistically.)

We get to our first island port tomorrow, St. Bart's. More soon about the colors of the water, wave spray, jellyfish sightings, our fellow travellers, etc  etc.

Finally, Sarah Palin!

I fell off the blogosphere for quite a while and thus have only been consuming, not contributing to, the several million words per day devoted to the Alaska governor. In the primaries I voted for Senator Clinton, a smart, articulate, savvy female. (Yes, she had baggage, which included Bill, but I was excited to vote for her.) Far from being a PUMA, though, I then became an Obama fan. When I first heard of Sarah Palin -- when McCain nominated her -- I was not, however, tempted to support her just because she has the same internal plumbing I do.

Some reasons not to support her were obvious right away:
* First, she's a Republican, which as far as I'm concerned pretty much makes her a man in drag.
* Second, she's anti-choice.
* Third, she put on, for the campaign, an exaggerated folksy accent which is entirely absent in her old broadcast footage. I can code-switch with the best of them, but when a candidate changes in this way to this extent, it says "I don't respect the American public" loud and clear.

And on further acquaintance, other reasons quickly manifested themselves:

* She's a total wingnut.

* She can read a teleprompter (which IS a skill) but cannot create sentences.

* Her campaign deliberately appealed to lowest common denominator fears.

And now -- will she go away? Will she become a broadcaster for Faux News? Will she be -- as hinted at by her product placement at the RepubGovs meeting today -- the new face of the GOP? Or will the Republicans be, rightly, embarrassed by her? 

It's a bit like watching a train wreck; I desperately want never to see or hear her again, and yet I can't immediately dial or surf away from the stories about her.  I cringe when I hear her tortured syntax, but ... schadenfreude lives.  

A more serious discussion of the same topic by Andrew Sullivan, cited on Salon, today. At least I'm not alone.

Veterans' Day

I have somewhat mixed feelings about Veterans' Day. My dad and uncles served in WWII; my brother and husband narrowly escaped serving in Vietnam. Since I'm female and was 'way too old by the time our military became all-volunteer, I never thought seriously about whether I would be drafted or choose to serve.  If I had children, would I want them to volunteer? Probably not, I confess.

I respect those who have served their country in the military -- and those who serve in other ways, though military service is the most all-consuming and often the most dangerous. But I know that many veterans have mixed feelings about their own military memories and about how their service is seen by others. How could you NOT have nightmares about marching into a concentration camp, near the end of WWII? How could you NOT wonder about the men you perhaps killed? I respect the humanity of those mixed feelings, too. But I don't always -- particularly in the last few years -- respect the motives of those who send our military into action.  The common flag-waving rhetoric of "protecting America" does not recognize the complexity of soldiers' bravery, loyalty, and yes doubts, nor the machinations of those who command them.     

We are now losing the WWII generation, men and women, daily. My dad is gone. My mother who waited for him and wrote V-mail is gone. My in-laws are gone. Men of that generation were not expected to talk about their feelings, so they came home (the ones who did) and got on with things in their own ways. They didn't tell war stories with any relish.  My dad only talked about the war very late in his life, and then usually fairly "safe" stories.

I learned today that there is ONE surviving Lumbee WWII veteran; I'm hoping that one of my classes can do an oral history project, interviewing Robeson County vets. We maintain ourselves through our stories; we need to listen to what these men and women have to say to us, if they are ready to say it.

Post-Election Wahoo

Man oh man -- it's been an intense few months, during which I have (obviously) not been blogging. A quick catch-up:  I did NOT have my students write blogs, in part b/c we've had some technology meltdowns on my campus -- long rant barely restrained here.  I HAVE been, as usual, insanely busy this fall, perhaps even more insanely busy than usual.  I had been told that the pace is stepped up, rather than down, post-tenure, and that seems to be correct, but, all things considered, things are going well. Spouse & I traveled to two weddings this fall, one in Wisconsin and one in Maryland, so that added some catching-up time as well.  I DID follow the '08 elections fairly obsessively and worked the polls on election day.

And WOW. In the month before November 4th I was reading Salon and CNN online all the friggin' time, afraid to be too optimistic; the Rethuglicans could always pull a fast one. Even the night of the 4th, it just didn't seem real.  (It almost still doesn't.) But I am so so SO excited and happy about Obama's election.  Nah, he's not "the one" (or "that one") or a miracle worker or even King Arthur. But I'm so proud of us.  And so glad that we once again have a President who is SMART. Graceful. Articulate. Worthy of our respect. 

*sigh*  Life is good.