Greetings from Brickwrecks

My Tuesday morning involved emptying a still-packed box of games in the garage, which turned out to have lots of Wizkids' Pirates constructable card game pieces, including many assembled little ships that I forgot we had and was excited to see though some of them are missing their flags. I also did some reading (City of Stardust, which reminds me in some ways of The Night Circus) and looked up a bunch of articles trying to ascertain whether the squirrel from last night's Orioles game was okay (the Tigers staff gave a half-assed "our understanding is that the squirrel was in fine health" but no details about where it was released or anything meaningful). 

We took a walk and ate tacos, after which my DS9 group watched the great Garak episode "Improbable Cause" ("never tell the same lie twice"). Now we're watching the end of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast; I like seeing things we saw when we were in Belfast (the Titanic shipyard, Derry Girls mural), but the plot makes no sense (why didn't [redacted]'s cop husband help cover up the accident instead of going along with the insane fake-body plot). Here's Mystic Seaport's Brickwrecks exhibit, including top-heavy Vasa, Franklin's Arctic expedition, the Titanic, and actual Legos washed up on Cornwall beaches from the Tokio Express container shipwreck:

Greetings from Belfast

We woke up to rain on Monday that continued for most of the day, which was not a problem at all in the afternoon since we were mostly indoors at the massive Titanic Belfast museum, but made things slippery in the morning walking on the Causeway Coast! After a big breakfast at the Da Vinci Hotel, we drove to Magheracross to see White Rocks Beach and the views below, then went to Dunluce Castle -- the inspiration for C.S. Lewis's Cair Paravel in the Narnia books -- with dramatic open ruins overlooking spectacular rock formations and many cormorants at this time of year. 

Then we went to the Giant's Causeway, a bucket list place for me since I first learned of its existence: tens of thousands of interlocking basalt columns created by an ancient volcanic eruption, leading up into the hills and down into the ocean. Though the columns are the same shapes as the ones at Devil's Tower and Reynisfjara Beach, there is really nothing else in the world like the Giant's Causeway and though the rocks were slippery from all the rain, it was absolutely spectacular to see. We ended up eating lunch in the visitor center cafe, which had curried chick pea rolls. 

We drove to Belfast past the last remaining White Star Line vessel, the SS Nomadic, to visit Titanic Belfast, which is right next to the slipways where the ship was designed and built. The museum is excellent, with artifacts, a multi-level ride through a reproduction of the shipyard, reproductions of rooms and equipment on board, and displays about the sinking and the recovery, but it also comprehensively covers the design, building, and fitting-out of the ship, and I found it very sad: we all know about the loss of the passengers and crew, but there was a lot of loss among the builders too. 

It was raining again when we left the museum, so we didn't walk the full docks. Instead we took a walk around C.S. Lewis Square, which has murals and statues pertaining to Narnia and to Lewis's life as an Ulsterman, plus we drove by places he had lived and gone to school. By then we were hungry and still wet, so we went and had dinner at the Beechlawn Hotel, whose restaurant had a wedding -- lots of people in very fancy clothes, including the bride -- plus a 21st birthday party, a Sweet 16 party, and several other large family groups; we were surprised until we found out how good the food was.

Poem for Thursday and Top It Titanic

The Titanic 

By Aleister Crowley 

Forth flashed the serpent streak of steel,

Consummate crown of man's device;

Down crashed upon an immobile

And brainless barrier of ice.

Courage!

The grey gods shoot a laughing lip: -

Let not faith founder with the ship!

We reel before the blows of fate;

Our stout souls stagger at the shock.

Oh! there is Something ultimate

Fixed faster than the living rock.

Courage!

Catastrophe beyond belief

Harden our hearts to fear and grief!

The gods upon the Titans shower

Their high intolerable scorn;

But no god knoweth in what hour

A new Prometheus may be born.

Courage!

Man to his doom goes driving down;

A crown of thorns is still a crown!      

No power of nature shall withstand

At last the spirit of mankind:

It is not built upon the sand;

It is not wastrel to the wind.

Courage!

Disaster and destruction tend

To taller triumph in the end.

-------- 

I did morning chores while watching the Mariners play the Yankees, a game that started at 9:30 in the morning on this coast...unfortunately, the Mariners didn't score a single run, though at least the Orioles beat the White Sox much later in the day on an infield fly rule interference call that I still don't understand. We went out at lunchtime to get Blazing Bagels and some things at Whole Foods, came home to get some work done, then walked to the park and out on the dock, where the turtles were celebrating World Turtle Day and the ducklings were following their mom. 

I talked to most of my Thursday night chat group (one was traveling), then we watched this week's two episodes of Hacks, which were excellent, as this whole season has been. Now we're watching X-Men '97, in which Magneto is extremely hot and the world is unfortunately familiar. These are pictures from the windows of Top It Yogurt Shoppe in Snohomish, replicas of the stained glass windows in the first class smoking room aboard the RMS Titanic, which also has a full size replica of the largest recovered part of the ship's hull and some display artifacts from the ship and salvage:

Poem for Thursday and Shipwreck Artifacts

Winter Leafage
By Edith Matilda Thomas

Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree,
Clad in its robings of the summer past,
Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast.
It will not pay the season’s rightful fee,—
It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free;
But like some palsied miser all aghast,
Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last,
It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee.
A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone;
A faithless tree, that never feels how spring
Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn,
And recompense for all despoilment bring!
Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn,
With failing hands to their vain semblance cling!

-------- 

I have good news: I don't have any polyps in my large intestine! And even better, with any luck I don't have to drink or even think about Clenpiq for ten years! They even got me in early because someone canceled, though when I saw the facility's number on my phone, I absolutely panicked because I thought they were going to tell me the doctor was sick so they had to postpone the procedure. And I probably lost weight the past two days, because even when I got home, I felt too queasy to eat anything but crackers, chick'n soup, and a little bit of egg salad. 

 I only talked to my high school friends for a few minutes, partly because I couldn't do anything for more than a few minutes and partly because my appointment got moved up. But I felt well enough to watch Lightyear on Disney+ this evening, and I didn't think it was terrible, though I see why it didn't do well at the box office: it's too talky without enough humor for a kids' movie but it definitely IS a kids' movie plot-wise, though awfully dark visually and dramatically. Some of the artifacts (including a possible Blackbeard sword) at the DiscoverSea Museum in Fenwick Island: 

Greetings from Sea Shell City

We are home from the beach, which I am slightly sad about but mostly happy that we got to go at all, given how things looked last week at this time. We took a last walk along the shore in the morning, saw lots of sandpipers for the first time this trip -- they must avoid hours when more people are around -- plus a confused ghost crab, then we packed up and headed out. I had one more stop I wanted to make in Fenwick Island, at Sea Shell City and the DiscoverSea Shipwreck Museum, in both cases looking for Blackbeard souvenirs. There were mostly plastic pirate toys and painted shells in the shop, but the museum has a boarding sword that the Smithsonian said is probably connected to Blackbeard based on the leaves on the handle design, and the guide told us Izzy Hands had family in New Jersey so Blackbeard would raid around Delaware knowing that they had friends to hide them nearby if necessary. 

The Denton park where we had intended to picnic at lunchtime had its main public area closed for repairs to the boat ramp, so instead we stopped at a Burger King for Impossible Burgers and a quick dog walk before heading over the not-too-traffic-laden Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We got home to a big thunderstorm, but we managed to unpack the van and get the laundries started, so that when the rain stopped, we could walk Pepper around the neighborhood -- there were deer and bunnies in evidence too. We ate Adam's leftover birthday Ethiopian food for dinner plus some cake my mother provided -- she took care of our cats while we were away, though the cats tried to convince us they had not been fed and were not pleased we brought the dog back in the house. Now we're watching The Gray Man, which is more enjoyably acted than logically scripted but it's fine for high body count action I guess. A few photos of our day: 

Greetings from Bethany Beach

I have had a delightful, very full beach Saturday starting with a walk on the beach and some swimming after breakfast -- still not many people, plenty of sandpipers, lots of sand crabs, water the same temperature as the air. Then we took a trip down the road to the Seaside Country Store for fudge and crab nuts and to Sea Shell City to visit the DiscoverSea Museum, which was closed last year (we were the only ones in there wearing masks but I got a look at the new displays). After lunch, we drove to Burton Island, known for its big marina, where we took the boardwalks to see the egrets, herons, fiddler crabs, cormorants, and great views of the Indian River Inlet Bridge. 

In the late afternoon we went to visit friends in Bethany Beach, first my mom's good friend Margie and one of her four daughters (I went through school with the oldest, but I've known all of them since I was in elementary school) and saw dolphins from their deck, then my friend Deborah and her husband -- the daughter and son-in-law of my parents' longtime friend Margie and Fred -- whose dog didn't mind that I smelled like the swamp at Burton Island! We decided to have dinner delivered at the hotel and watch the end of the Maryland game (the Terps won) before going out to play Viking Golf and walk on the Fenwick Island Beach looking for ghost crabs -- it was dark enough to see the Milky Way! 

 

 

Fenwick Island Beach at mid-morning  

 

DiscoverSea Museum upstairs at Sea Shell City 

 

 

Burton Island egrets 

 

 

Bethany Beach dolphins... 

 

  

...seen from friends' deck 

 

 

Friends in Sea Colony, where we stayed several times with my kids and parents 

 

 

Dinner picnic inside the hotel 

 

 

Viking Golf (which I did not win!) 

 

Poem for Wednesday and Alexandria Shipwreck

From "The Building of the Ship"
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the ship-yard stood the Master,
With the model of the vessel,
That should laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
Covering many a rood of ground,
Lay the timber piled around;
Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak,
And scattered here and there, with these,
The knarred and crooked cedar knees;
Brought from regions far away,
From Pascagoula's sunny bay,
And the banks of the roaring Roanoke!
Ah! what a wondrous thing it is
To note how many wheels of toil
One thought, one word, can set in motion!
There 's not a ship that sails the ocean,
But every climate, every soil,
Must bring its tribute, great or small,
And help to build the wooden wall!

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It rained all day Tuesday, which I suppose is an improvement on snowing all day but it was cold and gloomy and I'd rather have sun on snow. I did work in the morning, then went to the mall for bubble tea and Pokemon just to walk somewhere not cold and wet. I had to wait to get home because a mail truck and a UPS truck were parked on opposite sides of my cul de sac right next to each other so that no one could turn in.

After dinner we watched The Flash, which was a more interesting Nora episode than most (Groundhog Day scenarios are always fun anyway), then The Gifted, which was good though very violent and had a Terrible Thing happen that I hope does not end up being permanent. The Torpedo Factory houses the Alexandria Archaeology Museum, which in addition to artifacts from homes and shops has parts of a merchant ship unearthed there: