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aTLANTIC ISLANDS TRIP

TUESDAY, MARCH 19: Wake at 5:05AM with a dream, and debate jerking off to the extent of putting the rubber bands and scarf next to my bed, but I go to sleep again, wake briefly at 6:35AM and debate getting up, since I've now had my eight hours sleep, but fall BACK to sleep and wake with a jolt at 8:05AM: did I actually sleep THROUGH a wake-up call? Dress and get out to passengers milling in the hall outside the still-closed-off dining area. The morning coffee has been put out and toast is being made like crazy, but there's not enough seating space for everyone. I ask Dolores if there was a wake-up call, and she nods wearily at me and says, "No, they're all still asleep." Astounding! Tony goes with a silent "humph" to binoculate at the railing until the problem is solved. I pee, look out at the blinding sun on the almost-flat sea, and finally about 8:15AM the doors have been slid apart and everyone sits down to dry cereal, the only food present. I have the last of the corn flakes as others sit by confidently waiting for the hot oatmeal. As I finish the cereal I see scrambled eggs coming out of the kitchen, so I take four slices of toast for our table (Rita says that she'll make the toast tomorrow), get scrambled eggs, and then Rose is sitting waiting patiently for the bacon to come out, but when it does, I'm quite finished, so return to the cabin about 8:45AM to sort out my next batch of ten-days' pills, and get up to room 407 to find that the camcorder is acting even MORE strangely: Put the tape in, and it whirrs and immediately comes back out! This happens a few more times, and I observe, "The signals are blinking, which means the battery is low." Jules insists his battery is charged, but lets me come down and pick up the battery-plate and another tape, just in case. WITH the battery plate the OLD tape doesn't go down and stay, but the tape I brought up DOES stay down. He keeps insisting I should PUSH the lid down, but I say that I have to be sure the tape is STAYING down before I'll close the manual lid on it. Then he tries pushing the body in the wrong place, saying that it isn't important where you push it. His stubbornness and blindness is beginning to get on my nerves, as is his all-present hand on my shoulders, squeezing intimately whenever I'm in his range. But once the tape stays down, the signals keep blinking and the moisture-signal returns. He notices DIAGONAL scan-lines on the screen AFTER the bit of static, and I don't recall that from before, and later in my room they even CHANGE when I manually change the focus of the camera-end! More funny things happen, but I finally rewind the tape with GREAT effort and leave it open, still hooked to the power-source (which I do hope does it good), and we agree I should try Rose's hair-dryer once again, insisting that I can't do any harm to the circuitry with heat. Andy announces his talk for 9:30, then for 9:35, and finally starts at 9:40 with descriptions of one- and two-hole blowholes, the seven classes of Rorquals and the 79-perhaps species of Cetaceans, which includes dolphins and killers. He lives on the St. Lawrence just east of the Saguenay River, where the deep bottom of the fjord-like St. Lawrence gets shallower. The sei is the SECOND-largest whale, getting up to seventy feet and seventy tons. The SPERM whale is the only one with FORWARD-pointing spout-blow. Whales BEACH to HELP their WOUNDED companions to breathe when the wounded individual seeks a beach on which to rest while he can still breathe, in order to heal himself. He tells of the snorkeler who keeps being helped to the surface: he sounds JUST like a whale in distress---and these are mostly TOOTHED whales, not the baleen whales. Bob passes with the walking, head bobbing, and even the vocal (last night) mannerisms that make it CLEAR he's trying to imitate a younger Jackie Gleason, which is budding mustache makes clearer, too. Finish this by 11:40AM, the announcement made at 11AM that Tristan can be seen on the horizon! Still no chance to watch the dolphin-tape from yesterday! Out on the deck with Andy until 12:05, then in for macaroni-and-cheese lunch (with shells rather than macaroni) and fruit-cake in melted-ice-cream dessert until 12:20, and then I get the videotape and play it for Sheila ("Seymour just isn't interested," says Sheila sadly), the Goodings, Dolores, and Ruth, but Bill later says HIS tapes didn't come out as well as MINE, so he must have seen bits of it. I'm satisfied enough. Take photos of nearing Tristan until picture number 6:23, and Simon talks about Tristan till 3PM. He speaks of THEIR speaking of "the Houside Warld," and only Simon has been there in 1984 and Diane in 1988. After the evacuation, 7/63 200 voted to return, while in 1965, 50 LEFT, mostly GLASSES, who seem to be slightly discriminated against by the current "rules," the Repettos. St. Helena's 5,500 people are called the MOST subsidized per-capita population in the WORLD, and its governor RULES the dependencies of Tristan and Ascension, even though St. Helena, like Tristan, doesn't have an airfield. Then down to use the hair-dryer Rose kindly brought to the meeting, and I start testing with NEW tape 26, thinking I might have ruined tape 25, but STILL nonsense happening: on VTR or OFF, pushing in the cassette only causes it to be EJECTED (but maybe that's even in the manual!). On CAMERA, it goes down and settles. On REW, the counter is slow while the rewinding is FAST. At 4PM, STILL the moisture symbol on eject, but it does OFF after the tape IS ejected. Bill calls a sighting of dolphins or whales at 9PM direction, but everyone rushes out with their cameras to find nothing. I talk with Bill and an ever-more-pleasant Alan, but Andy is more and more weird, looking at me ALL the time I'm near. Back to the camera, after pissing FAIRLY pale-yellow after days of intense yellow: maybe because I had two glasses of tap water for the first time in memory, but my throat feels a bit sore, EVERYONE seems to be coughing or complaining of a cold coming or going. On VTR, hit PLAY and the moisture-symbol blinks! At 4:05PM I just PUT the AC on, and the moisture-symbol comes on. But NOW date/time no longer SPEEDS through choices but SETS PROPERLY, so there's STILL improvement, but the things keep BLINKING as if it's DAMP, though I've gone through FOUR cycles with the dryer ALREADY. Katie announces Happy Hour at 5, barbecue at 6PM, and something (maybe Bill on Tristan?) at 7PM. It's now 4:30 and I'm wondering whether I should find Diane for more Scrabble? All caught up with my notes, even feeling WARM with the temperature EXACTLY 70 degrees when taking photos of Tristan. Start wearing tee-shirts soon? Had to try FOUR times to start the lap-top, so JUST IN CASE, I archive NOTEBOK3 twice with 33% left to fill, and now it's down to 27% free. GOING FAST! To deck 5 to find Tristan filling my viewfinder, except for the clouded top. STAY on deck as we get closer and closer, until rounding a corner there is the Settlement, with four little ships and one larger one at the dock, and I take videos and snapshots again and again as the sunset makes light and color change, and then at 6 down to find remaining snacks of crackers and salmon, prosciutto, and three different kinds of dips. Take the cameras back and decide to treat Katie, but when I say, "Half and half, and put one for yourself on my bill," she replies, "I was treating you this evening," and what can I say? Sit and talk for a bit, then go up on deck to film the glowing embers of the barbecue vat, and sit and CONSIDER myself just offshore Tristan da Cunha, ME, MYSELF, looking at the last shards of sunset and smelling the barbecue smoke and counting the 60-odd lights for the 150-odd houses for the 300-odd people, and finally Kevin says that we'll eat in about 20 minutes at 7:30. Some like the Samsons and the Kahlbaums, tramp down the stairs with plates to get their steaks rare, others, like me, fill up their plates on the potato salad, cole slaw, and bean salad with beer that starts the meal cold, and when they come up with stairs with steaks, fish, chicken, sausage, hot dogs, and sauerkraut, I'm ready to dig in. Finish, relieved that it's NOT going to rain, and down to dither that I don't like being up there, then return for a last glass of white wine and a futile search for the signup-sheet for the 2000-foot base walk tomorrow. Should also record that I stepped into the anchor-hole, and I'm not looking forward to taking my pants off to see the damage I did to the inside of my left thigh. Finish typing this at 8:55PM, fully intending to go to bed. Bed at 9:18PM, ACHY; am I getting a COLD? At 10:30PM I wake and TAKE Vitamins A and C and garlic, peeing, and then putting vaseline in my nose.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20: 2:30AM: Woke at 2:10AM to record a nightmare, and then switched to this: took Coradec for my sore throat: is this turning, in real life, into some kind of nightmare where I have some terrible disease on this trip? At least I still feel that I'll be well enough today to tackle the 2000-foot climb up to the base of Tristan, simply for the photos, but how will I feel in 6 hours. The boat's engines are turning on and off: are we in some kind of storm that forces us to keep our heads into the wind? Back to bed at 2:30AM. Wake again at 6:30, blankets wet with sweat: just the ambient humidity or am I fighting off something? Get up and join Olivia, Rita, Glen, and a few others with tea, talking until breakfast of oatmeal, french toast and blueberry syrup, and a slice of bacon and a slice of rather nice ham, ending at 8:25AM. We're told that seven Tristanian officials have come on board (with the mail for St. Helena, says Diane forebodingly), so the surf can't be THAT bad, but we're told that the barometer is now steady, but there's a bit of bad stuff coming in from the northeast, so we won't be leaving for awhile. Sign the Tristan RELEASE at 8:35AM. I win Scrabble 310-304 just in time for Bob's talk on "The Race to the South Pole" from 9:20 to 10:35. US: Wilk's officers TOLD to sabotage him so THEY wouldn't look bad for having said NO to Antarctic exploration (he was the first to say "This is a continent, not merely islands connected by ice."): he was court-martialed and his work was ignored. Ross reaches 78 degrees south, in 1840, best until 1900. Argentina in 1904 starts the first polar station on the Peninsula, still maintained. 12/14/11: Amundsen and 83 dogs (down to 11 after eating most of them) reach pole after 57 days. 1/18/12: Scott man-hauls to pole and dies. 1925-1939: 13 British expeditions almost each year. 1933: Byrd's "Little America." 1934: Byrd "Alone." 1935: Germany flies over Queen Maud's 300,000 square miles. 1946-47: 1400 American men with Byrd. 1957-59: International Geophysical Year, 67 nations, Antarctic Treaty for all south of 60 degrees, Amundsen-Scott base at pole. 1962-72: Nuclear power plant, ending by shipping 390,000 cubic feet of rock back to US with nuclear contamination. 1965: Grytvikan, last whaling station, closed, though whaling continues from factory ships. 1965 Lindblad starts tour to Antarctica. 1991(?) Bob Zolnerzak enters MacMurdo Sound! Then I fantasize that Simon has left for Tristan, but he's on the 6th deck, pointing out in-coming squalls, holding court, laughing at my jokes. Olivia and I think about NOT getting on at all. Look over island, feeling relatively removed, as last night I tried to INVOLVE myself by INSISTING: HERE I AM, sitting on a ship outside Tristan da Cunha, ME, alive, NOW, HERE! 11:50AM: NOW date will flash but not SET, and so does TIME. Backward? Is it too HUMID? Now at 11:45AM Bill makes an announcement that lunch is on the ship, during which he'll "address us about plans for going ashore." Obviously, none of us can wait: Simon said that Pat, in particular, was DESPERATE to go ashore. The announced order is 3,4,1,2, so I might even squeeze into the first zodiac---WHY can't they have the longboats sent after us? WHY can't they divide the passengers into "fit" and "not so fit" and send boats accordingly? WHY is my throat so sore; and WHY is everyone on the ship coughing and recovering from something or other? Leave off for now, wondering WHY, when there's a blank after a period or end-punctuation, the word is STILL carried over to the next line? Maybe they can't put a down-arrow after a space? At 12:30 they announce that we're GOING! 4:50PM: One could write a book about the landing in Tristan! The first boat DID get off about 1:10, the second, with me aboard, about 1:35, with the announcement that the last boat would return at 4:30. I was so wet, and the packet that contained the stamps was so wet, that I returned to the zodiac at 3:30 and came directly back, yet with the detour that bilge was running out of the rear of the boat, which we PROVED was in the exact position to fill the zodiac, and when we were getting away from that, it went RIGHT across my back. But there was the lunacy of Freda who let the postmistress like and place EACH of the 30 stamps for the 30 postcards she had brought her; the simplicity of the girl who COULD NOT understand that I wanted each stamp twice; the chatter of Irina, cooing "P'ajahlsta!" when Bill ordered her to put down her umbrella in the zodiac, and then her shrill commentary for the rest of the trip across; the grunge of each garden with its flowers, tarred path leading to it, yucca-fence around it, and chickens or geese scratching in it; the simplicity of cement block covered with whitewash, the inability to find the Post Office from the signs, my sadness at not going into the Cafe (but then I entered no pub in Port Stanley, either), the fact I didn't go to the potato patch, the fact that it rained the ENTIRE time, letting up for only a MOMENT when I sneaked a panorama with the videocamera--the pleasant smiles when I said "Hello" from everyone but the smallest children; the pettiness of the officials (which Diane modified to the ENTIRE community, voting as a majority) in keeping Simon (for saying the women drank sherry too much) off not only Tristan but ALSO Nightingale, where we're due to dock tomorrow. The fog from the cliffs, the lava piles as fences, the boats strung along the lawns, the just-past dahlias drooping over the white-painted fences, the dark faces of the older people and their short greeting, the wall-eyed woman knitting in the church, the ugly spinster selling her knit-goods in the museum that explained trachyate as silica and sodium oxide enriched rocks from the volcano, and Seymour's insistence that the volcano at the bottom HAD no crater, so there was nothing to see when you went in that direction. The three who wanted the zodiac to return them and their volumes of supplies to their 25-foot yachts in which they'd traveled from Buenos Aires, the sexiness of the doctor in our zodiac with his almost lashless intense blue eyes over an exceedingly square chin and thin legs in leather-like raingear that accentuated a wormily-filled crotch. Much more, but now it's 5PM and I'll be out to listen to other tales of the group, including poor Ann grousing that she couldn't bend her knee to go over the back, but that she COULD have gone ashore had they offered her the option of the gangway. I had to change all my clothes, wearing the blue jeans from the first time since they were cleaned, and probably the landing tomorrow will put an end to the green shirt and blue trousers so I can get THEM cleaned on the NEXT long stretch before St. Helena. But at least THIS part of the voyage HAS been completed successfully! When I dig out the camcorder from my bag, I'm mortified to find that I've LOST her EYEPIECE! It must be lying on some sidewalk on Tristan da Cunha! She takes the news VERY well, and they're VERY patient with the tremendously discolored distant shots of Tristan and the sunset, but then Jules brings down his bit of unloading the zodiacs this afternoon at the gangway, and mine seem better by comparison. Seems NO one went all the way to the potato patches: it was raining so hard when they got halfway there they turned back, though Jenny thought she saw ME in my red rainsuit on the far hill. Diane tells the COMMUNITY side of Simon's ban (adding that he's ALSO banned from St. Helena, which even DIANE thinks is a bit petty), saying that the ENTIRE COUNCIL met and said he wasn't to be allowed back. When I asked how they KNEW he was coming at the time, she looked blank and said she didn't know! I forgot to check the organ in the church, Olivia found out nothing about the 8th family on the island, whether the Petersons or the Pattersons; and no one saw the endemic Tristan Thrush or Starchy. The snack for today is tinned butter cookies, which I have about five of and STILL feel hungry. NOW it looks calmer and clearer at 6PM than it did all day, though the sunset is totally hidden by clouds. Tomorrow is scheduled Nightingale Island at 7AM, but we have to pick up two guides first (and Simon isn't allowed THERE, either, even though there are no PEOPLE there. Diane assures me there's never any trouble landing at St. Helena, so the difficult landings have ALL been made! With all the excitement today, I've hardly thought about WHERE I am in the trip, absorbed with the moment-to-moment happenings, buying the Tristan stamps for $2 per SET, the covers for $8 each (one of which goes to Louise's lover), the 24 postcards from Tristan that I'll write and stamp and mail from St. Helena or Ascension, and it seems that bearing down on the arthritic joints has made them slightly better, though it might be the warmer weather. Now at 6:20PM the sea looks almost TOTALLY calm: ironic: calm now, calm yesterday, but never calm when we actually try to LAND. Again, not to stretch limits, I stop at the same line 11 of page 11, this file AGAIN coming to the limit of 98%. Continuing WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, in NOTEBOK4, now at 6:30PM 3/20/96. Read OC for a while until I get tired, then prepare for dinner and find I can go back to reading somewhat refreshed. In for vegetable-macaroni soup, five-finger fish which is quite dense (someone says "like halibut, but not so oily") and I think like tuna in its density and dryness, but tastier of sole, squash which is better with butter, and rice, with a tasty dessert of pears in plum sauce which might just be a port wine. Back to read and fuss until 10:05PM, to bed.

THURSDAY, MARCH 21: 5AM: Just finished typing the dream that started at 4:05AM this morning in DREAM pages 8-9, and come here to relate what happened after I woke from the dream. My cock was so hard that I lay lazily brushing the edges of my cock head with all five fingers of my left hand, and the vibrations of the pulsating ships' engines contributed to a feeling of an aura around my fingertips that made my cock head extraordinarily sensitive, so that I felt I merely had to cup my fingertips a millimeter from my penis and still evoke the most intense sexual frisson. After about five minutes of this I started compressing the base of my cock with my right hand, continuing the delicate brushing of the more-sensitive edges of my cock head with the fingertips that now felt they themselves were delicate llama's-wool tips, or even coated with the lightest film of glistening oil to lubricate the touch as not to irritate but only tease and arouse. After another five or ten minutes, I was so confident of my erection that I got up to get the rubber bands and the scarf, and returned to continue the finger-tease for a few minutes until I was completely hard, and then put on the quadruple-red tourniquet, followed quickly by the triple-yellow of the shortest, and that seemed to achieve the perfect constriction of the base of my cock so that my fingertips seemed capable of rousing my prostate to the ultimate frenzy without altering the lightest-possible brushings with those fingertips. About 4:25, however, I felt that I wanted to increase the level of stimulation, knowing that I'd reached only about levels 3 or 4 with the cock head, and slowly began increasing shaft-jerks with my right hand. I tried the scarf, but that seemed too crude for the delicacy of my current position. I stretched out my legs and this increased the urgency, yet I could sway and rock the cock back and forth with ultimate engorgement without coming to the brink, so I brought it to levels 7 or 8 and put the remaining two rubber bands lightly around the shaft and began rocking my cock left and right, forward and back, and the motions increased the levels to 9 or 10 while still not pushing too close to the brink to retract in pleasure. This continued for a few moments of breathless time, until I felt that I could increase even farther, and compressed my stomach and raised my pelvis so that I could study the shininess of my cock head and the relief of my veins and arteries in the shaft of my penis. With a smooth upward surge of feeling, not really considering each accentuating moment, I moved the cock back and forth until my balls tightened to the upcoming spasm, and small drops of semen curled out of the tip of my cock and rolled down the complex slope of my cock head to drop onto my belly, and my entire sexual being convulsed in an intense though somehow gentle orgasm that felt complete with only the lightest pulls from the rubber bands, and when I released them and with two fingers compressed the shaft of my cock just under my cock head, the pressures and pleasures increased, as did the flow of semen, dropping again and again onto my lower torso, while the shaft of my cock clenched again and again and again, and I didn't even think to count the seconds or the spasms or the effusions of semen, which came so slowly that none actually spurted beyond the tip, but the intensity of the pleasure was so complete that I lay without moving for a few more seconds, enjoying this orgasm with inevitable comparisons to Nabokov's in "Lolita," where he describes the "longest, most intense orgasm ever enjoyed by man or beast," as nearly as I can remember the words and I'll be curious to see how close I came (hehe) to his actual expression (haha). Checked by my watch that it was now 4:30, so I'd been in a wonderful state for 10 or 15 minutes, and I licked up the semen and removed first the triple band and then the quadruple band, none giving much trouble and my cock still feeling enormously fulfilled. With the rubber bands and scarf at my side, the lamp at the head of the bed showing my dwindling erection, I thought of the PLACE of this: Tristan da Cunha, and I was sorry that I wasn't outdoors somewhere, depositing particles of me on the actual terrain, but I consoled myself with the fact (aside from the obvious impossibility of separating myself for a long enough time from all my fellow passengers on Tristan or Nightingale) that some fractions of my ejaculate would evaporate into the air and be carried throughout the ship and into the adjoining atmosphere, there to remain, even to the fewest atoms, for all time. I thought of the rest of the ship involving itself in unwonted sexual frenzy without knowing why, between the magic hours of 4:15AM and 4:30AM on March 21, 1996. The Equinox, and two days past the New Moon, and on the morning of my having attained ONE of the ultimates the world offers in travel: setting foot on Tristan da Cunha, regardless of the rain, the confusion of paths, the absence of the men on Nightingale (where I hope they remain to be photographed today!), the "unworthiness" of any of the individuals passed to even be TEMPTED to photograph without making fun of the dark wizenedness of the old men, the stupidity of the faces of the children, the lines of work and pain on the faces of the middle-aged women. Then I thought in somewhat more detail of the fantasy I'd had before that the reasonably attractive younger men of Tristan enjoyed their isolated existence, and celebrated it with lengthy gay orgies of unsuspected passion, reveling in their isolation with hours and days of priapic pleasures. And I saw my interaction with the bright-eyed, clearly intelligent, yet somehow "not meshing" young girl in the Post Office as an elaborate sexual interlude: in my ordering two sets of every single postage stamp, I was somehow ordering a complex yet appealing sexual ritual that her obedience was compelled to carry out, yet her unawakened sophistication couldn't quite grasp the intricacies of the detailing, but her rearing (hoho) had trained her to listen, observe, and remain obedient through the most tortuous ritualistic orgasmic preparations, and her intent concentration proved her onanistic willlingness to follow any prescriptions, however concatenated, which would lead to our mutual satisfactions. These thoughts held in mind, I got out of bed at 4:40AM and started by typing out the dream, first, and then these thoughts, bringing me now to 5:25AM, awake over an hour, scarf draped over my naked shoulders to protect my cold-symptomed body from the chill downdraft of the ventilator above me, as the ship rocks back and forth and the voluptuous vibrations continue from below my feet, and I now feel an increasing weariness: I've gotten out both the dream and the orgasm, both the sensations and the thoughts, and, exhausted now both seminally and conceptually, I can finish these notes and return to the warmth of my bed, happy that I'd had enough accumulated sleep to spend this time in orgasm and writing, and prepared to sleep again at 5:35AM, to begin the day somewhat later, yet no less accomplished and complete. Pee copiously both before and a bit less after writing. Up at 7:25 and out of bed at 7:35 to pee again and hear Tony's "radio voice" seemingly right outside my door, talking on and on and ON! Dress and go out to find we're passing the "potato patches," and try to video but it doesn't work! In later to find it was probably too WET outside! Take a still photo, but it won't show much. Type this bit before 8AM. Breakfast of oatmeal, one pancake with Kero syrup, juice and pills, and since I'm still hungry, the most-left VERY-liquid yogurt. Bill joins us after settling the three (the blondest, with beard, with lightest skin a Glass, says Pat; the darkest, the harbor master who "checked us onto the beach" yesterday on Tristan) Tristanians at a table, even though they've had breakfast. He says that the fisherman are still on Nightingale, and have at times been stranded there as many as 30 days without being able to get back, so they certainly have a cache of food at their "sea-level base which is very easy to get into," though Bill announces a test-zodiac about 10:10AM, and by 10:50 it doesn't appear to have left yet. I see a wonderful angle on Stolzenhoff Island coming up and leave the bridge (whose windows are swept by every dozenth or fourteenth wave) to get the camcorder, but when I return, the sign "Bridge closed for difficult navigation" is up. The captain had been sailing to the southern end of the island, but the islanders specified the north, so Sacha changes direction on the bridge, which produces high beeps, at which Calvin and I look around with some alarm, and he smiles and says, "Changing directions." I put on my rainsuit without pants to try to view, but standing at the rail so wets my trousers that I return to put on the pants. Olivia observes, on the swells on which there are smaller waves on which there are tiny waves, superimposed cats-paws caused by the wind, and she asks if the video camera can capture these, but I said that it's very sensitive to moisture and won't film, so it surely won't film here. We stand and watch, impressed, for a long time. On the horizon long-lived high waves look incredibly like islands. Hundreds of shearwaters swoop and feed among the waves, and some terns even skip-dive, touching and splashing water every ten feet or so for 8-10 times running. But then nothing's happening; Bill and the Islanders appear not to be waiting for the test zodiac anymore, and we wonder how they will even get from our ship back to Tristan this evening! Bill joked about leaving them off in London! Pass Diane's cabin but she's in conversation with Dorothy. Other groups talk in other cabins. Jules corners the blondest islander, surely putting his hands on his shoulders too often. Simon holds forth, Tony's voice can be heard over all, Freda suits up to go on deck, George asks if I noticed they closed the water-tight doors all over the front of the ship, Rita ventures outdoors, Olivia comes back in. I return to take off the raincoat, but even the rainpants are too much, so I take those off too, leaving only the boots and the black turtleneck on for "preparedness," since zodiac 4 is FIRST if we ever actually get off. The ship labors to stay in place, and the wind seems so strong that the zodiac would be blown AWAY from the island instead of motor toward it. Will take OC into the dining room and try to read, now at 10:57AM. At 11:15AM Bill announces that we won't be going ashore and will be returning to Tristan to possibly give people who hadn't gone ashore yesterday a chance to go ashore. I keep reading, then get up for lunch of noodles (yellow and green) with cheese on top, and I actually have a piece of bread and butter before the tiny tasty cake with sauce made from cranberries (as opposed to cranberry sauce!), then the boat starts rocking back and forth as the captain starts circumnavigating Nightingale. I get down to the side deck and take LOTS of footage of GREAT waves from the side of the ship, even following Great Shearwaters through the waves and maybe even catching a Storm Petrel (who "walks" on the waters as it flies). Maybe this will be my "30s" footage, with the excuse that the bridge had to be closed because of inclement weather (which, in a sense, it WAS), and I had to take this shop AWAY from it. Catch the dim outline of part of Tristan about 3PM, and anchor about 3:30, but the waves are so severe NO one is going ashore except the three islanders who had heart medicine and supplies to take to their buddies on Nightingale, and we could see their boats and huts on the FAR side of the island from the possible docking area. Diane says to ask Bill if I can come ashore to look for the missing camcorder eyepiece, but I don't have the nerve: what would he have to tell the passengers that DIDN'T get to return to Tristan? Finally I settle on describing the spot to Ian, who appears to take it seriously (he IS a sweetie), but doesn't find it. Diane and I play three games, I win 2-1, and she leaves about 7PM to get ready for dinner. I take a shower, starting to make a shower-day list, coming out 3/3, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21; for 4-4-3-4-3 days. Nice I've planned for STANDING-STILL nights! Throat sore and I'm coughing a few times, particularly on the bridge where the smoking really GOT to me. Pare my toenails after showering and put everything away (except the bag of towels the cleanup man left on my bench). Catch up with this by 7:58PM, Bill announcing dinner about 8:05PM by my watch. Everyone seems to be angry about staying HERE overnight, but no one seems to be verbally doing anything about it. Conclusion seems to be that we're on a ship that's faster than the itinerary was made for, and Diane complains that the company just isn't HONEST with us, NOT telling us WHY (or every story DIFFERS) they changed the ship, but then she resorts to blaming Mr. Blythe, he who if most people knew was in charge of the company would not have joined the cruise. Personal interactions galore? Sit with Tony and Jenny, Pat (who really doesn't care for ANYONE), Diane and Olivia, and we three last talk about opera most of the time, whiling away the good but too-much onion and pickled beet salad, veal milanese with three fried boiled potatoes and awful pea-corn (if not succotash, pea-tash?). Then Bill goes into a LONG explanation about the day, Graham raves about the thousands of Great Shearwaters and Prions, and even Bob talks of weather forecasting and Andy of furseals. Bill saw a shark in the water, and Tristan gets hammerheads! Irina comes out and raises her eyebrows as we're still talking at 9:20PM. Finish and brush my teeth meticulously, preparing for the storm they say will occur if the winds shift, and by definition they WILL shift around Tristan, and that STILL we're lucky we didn't leave or we'd be tossing about all night. But things are vibrating: I shift my ladder and some of it stops, and the computer accounts for more (under the desk for it tonight!), and behind me I hear the porthole singing to itself. Now 10PM when I stop, and tomorrow starts five scheduled days at sea for St. Helena which, if true, will be the longest sea-time YET, but everyone is assuming we'll do THAT in four days, too. Tired, yet I drank tea: will that alter my good sleeping habits (except for dreams) of the past few nights? Can't tell WHEN I'll get to my books, but more people ARE reading more: Calvin and Dolores in their cabin, the Yanofskis in theirs, and Tucker with his. SO tired, and SO good to stop! Bed at 10:05PM, with a really annoying THUMPING in the bed from the engines, even though we're not moving. I suppose it "feels better" when we're actually GOING someplace and the bed trembles, but not when we're STANDING STILL. As usual for the past few days, I seem to fall IMMEDIATELY asleep.

FRIDAY, MARCH 22: 7:55AM: START the day, but got to SHIT! Do so before breakfast of oatmeal, bacon and eggs, tomato juice and pills, and two slices of toast, talking of Pat's finding that the Tristan volcano had no caldera or steam vents, and Sheila's and my idea that now we're in LESS danger of having no hope in case of shipwreck or fire at sea. Reports that the QE2 is leaving South Africa today bound for St. Helena, and that she might pass us, possibly close to St. Helena, is a charming idea. Woke at 1:15AM, again at 3:20 to take vitamin C and pee, then at 5:15 to record dream recorded on DREAM page, then at 7:15 to think of being about 1/3 through the trip, through the most uncertain Southern part, and contemplate OTHER "ocean" trips: through many of the wonderful islands of the Indian Ocean of which I've touched none, more of the incredible Pacific Islands I've liked so much, and, to complete the list again, at the end, an icebreaker tour of the Arctic Islands for a climax. AND then I think of geography in general, and Simon's CD-ROM geography courses in particular, wondering if I could somehow index or work for his company---and wonder if news of its going public has reached him. Then I think of the index I wanted to do for the Internet, and the spiders that made that outmoded, in a sense, but then thought of an "Internet Index on CD-ROM" for the best-used sites, but there'd be a lot of them. Maybe a "Geography of WEB Sites" or WEBOGRAPHY? But there's STILL more to Internet than the WEB: the MOOs and MUDs and their topics, the Usenet topics should be included also. What would that be called? Intography? Internetography? Doesn't quite make the grade. (Oh, the call to breakfast this morning was at about 7:50AM, with the notice that there's a RAINBOW over Tristan, which I photographed, as I shot two versions of the island receding into the southern mists of the Atlantic.) What "ography" starts with "t"? Write down Internetypography, but that's too much of a mouthful, and shorten it for a moment to Intergraphy, then have the brilliant thought of adding an "o": INTEROGRAPHY, which has echoes of "interrogate" for asking questions of Internet geography as well as BIOgraphy: the history of succession of sites as a STUDY of the growth and development of the Internet. Think to ask Simon for a "private business talk" in which I present this in a FORMAL manner. Might THIS be the "new opening" that Pope was predicting? Andy makes announcement of his Whales II talk at 9:30, so I get out my pen and pad to take notes. Ship goes through a BIG roll and my computer shows NO sign of ANY movement on the table, so I think I'll just LEAVE it on the desktop until (or IF) things get REALLY hairy (by which time everyone will be lying in their beds ANYWAY!). Note a modification to INTERBIOGRAPHY on my note-sheet and finish this up by 9:28AM. Andy's already started at the DOT of 9:30 when I get in at 9:32AM he's reviewing previous talks on whales. Bowhead baleen up to 14 feet long! Toothed whales MALES are larger; baleen whales FEMALES are larger. Blues and finbacks are interbreeding with hybrid FERTILE offspring. See my SWEATER on yesterday's Scrabble chair (and I'd FORGOTTEN to pick it up, and sea is so rough that I turn OFF the computer when I merely leave the room, actually worrying that an extra-large roll might night bring down my heavy "Penguin Book of International Gay Writing" crashing down on my open lap-top). 400 individual blue whales use the St. Lawrence. First and second SPERM whales found upstream for the first time in 13 years. This goes to 10:50AM with questions, and Andy actually praised my type of questions. Then checked with Graham to find that the "barbecue bird" was a white-bellied storm petrel, NOT what I'd recorded elsewhere. Talk to Simon from 10:50 to 11:20 and then sit around reading yesterday's news until lunch at 12 of a buffet of pizza (I get two pepperoni slices, one with bacon, one not, and get back to table to find Dolores being served cheese-less chicken and salmon slices, so I finish with one of each of them, the salmon not being very good, but, like seeing Nightingale Island without landing on it, it's better to have TRIED it than NOT to have tried it. Dessert was a sweet cracker in melted ice cream. Lots of water with the salty cheese and pepperoni. Back to the room to work on "Interogy" file from 12:30-1:35, then catch up with this at 1:50PM, having more or less decided to take Ian's class, if only to hear Simon's latest repartee. He was rather charming telling of his first trip to "North America, which I'd always been VERY EAGER to see." Talking, of course, of his "girl friend" waiting for him in Canada, he told of himself as an eager 17-year-old sailing from London to Montreal on the Empress of Britain, thrilling at the sight of Cape Perce lighthouse as his first sight of the continent, hitchhiking across to Vancouver---getting one ride from Lake Superior to the west coast, then down via San Francisco to Mexico City, then up to Oklahoma City (I think), where a white Cadillac stopped for him, asked where he was going, and was FLOWN in some guy's PLANE to Teeterboro Airport, which reminded him of the story when he was camping by the side of an airfield on the west coast of Greenland when a plane stopped and asked what he was doing there, and gave him a flight ACROSS Greenland, to Iceland, Dublin, and finally to London. Great adventures! Andy said that Bill's already been on a cruise boat that circumnavigated the Indian Ocean, which was one of my NEXT ideas. Waves still pretty bad though Simon predicted that the hemispheric storm systems would be passed by our ship by the end of today. I'm still getting along on the fifth day of half-pills of Bonine, having gone down to one from two after the first 4-5 days. So I'm probably STILL averaging somewhat over one pill per day, and I have no good idea how many of THEM I have as opposed to outdated Dramamine and other preventives. No sight of queasiness yet, thank goodness! Only Dorothy, Ann, Freda, and Simon arrive for Ian's class, and Diane, knitting, says she isn't going, but don't let her influence me. But she knows I'd told her last time that was probably my last, so I asked if she wanted to play Scrabble, and she did, suggesting we sit at one of the dining tables. I get the board at 2:05PM and sit out of sight of Ian, though we can hear the amused comments as Tanya points out things, parts of the body, and, as I said to John, "Sexual activities." Raisin cookies arrive as the snack at 4PM, and I have three eventually, starting with two given me by Katie, drunk with tea prepared for me by Diane. George startles everyone, himself included, by being caught off-guard by a wave and slamming across the room to smash his coffee cup against the door just behind me. Thank goodness he wasn't hurt in the least, he insisted. Stand outside and watch the waves for a bit, then gather for Bob's talk on Discovery of the Atlantic Islands from 5PM to 6:05. He doesn't have a pointer, so I borrow my book-shelf battery-bracer which works well for him, better than a rolled-up poster. He says that Phoenicians probably went around Africa; that in 1415 Portugal "discovered" the found-before Canaries, the same in 1420 for Madeira, 1427 for the Azores, 1456 for Cape Verde Islands, and then in 1501 they "really" found Ascension, in 1502 St. Helena, and in 1506 Tristan da Cunha. How Bob manages to drag this out to 6:05, no one can tell. Back to my room to return my shelf-prop against my battery, read the brochure about St. Helena, and finish this to 6:50PM, 70 minutes to dinner, rocking of the boat POSSIBLY somewhat less now, but still making full-steam DUE north. Have no trouble reading OC this evening, maybe due to the stimulation of the sea air over the waves, which appear REMARKABLY high in the rear of the ship, until dinnertime. In at 8 for COLD scallops around a little bagel-shaped rusk going by the name of Coquille St. Jaques, and then Chicken Cordon Bleu with VERY salty ham wrapped around chicken breast and breaded; highly seasoned bean salad, and two green turds which were supposed to be spinach mousse, but could have fooled any ballplayers on earth. Simon had had two large drinks and talked with enthusiasm of our meeting for food at the Savoy on Spring in Soho while we talked business, and then we chatted of indexing, where I'd like to live, when I moved to New York (he suggested I was 45 or 46, and I smiled), and I confessed 1957, so unless he was VERY drunk he must know I'm at LEAST in my late 50s. Ice cream over the usual melange of stewed fruit: cherries, blackberries, blueberries, ended the meal, and the announcement of having traveled 3032 km. from Ushuaia was followed by the fact that we have 1100 km to go to St. Helena, meaning that we HAVE covered 120 km in 10 hours! Back to read, having read a total of 83 pages of OC today, a nice bit to average in, and get this out to finish at 10:05PM. Try, but can't shit. Take 4 vitamin C and garlic, and bed at 10:20PM, late!

SATURDAY, MARCH 23: Wake a 3:15, boat still rocking, then at 5:30 with the memory of an OUTRAGEOUS opera-performance, which I get up and transcribe until 5:55, then spend 15 minutes finding out why the DREAM-pages seem to take up so little space, finding only ONE extra page-break, and renumber the DREAM page-list. Then get THIS out and finish at 6:15AM, lifting the porthole cover to see WHITE fluffy clouds, lit pink by the sun from the other side of the ship, floating majestically in a BLUE sky over a CALM blue-black sea! Decide to stay awake, now at 6:20AM, and see who's FIRST to the early morning coffee at 6:30, figuring that 10:20PM to 5:30AM is 7:10, quite enough for someone who's been getting an average of 9-10 hours (excluding waking periods) for the past week. Pee in the sink and dress. WHAT? Sounds like Tony! The dining room is still closed, so I go up to the bridge, passing Glen on the stairs, and look out in the mild day at the mild waters, almost birdless. The dining room is open by 6:40, with Glen, then Alan, then Pam as customers, and we all sit and chat until 8, when the door opens for breakfast of oatmeal, hard-boiled eggs and toast and bacon, and tomato juice and pills. Back to deck 6 to find that Graham's two birds have increased to four: two "conspiculata" with white glasses, one not, and one distant white plover. Down for a French film on "Napoleon on the Isle of St. Helena" with a commentary written by Chateaubriand which Simon says must be the worst 45-minutes of film he's ever seen, and which has his last words "tete d'armee", rather than that followed by "Josephine." When that's over at 10:15 I start reading Julia Blackburn's "The Emperor's Last Island," noting the following passages: P.132M: "Napoleon mutters that this puppy (Gourgaud) loves him like a woman, but he is not a woman, he has not a woman's cunt and all he wishes for is to be left alone." Before, Gourgaud "describes dancing with a woman who first treads on his foot and then farts." P.155T: "Vignali kept watch over the corpse, and I suppose that at some moment during his long vigil it was he who managed to remove the Emperor's penis and testicles so that he could keep them as holy and sacred relics. Vignali later gave the testicles away and they eventually found their way to that museum in southern France, but he kept the mummified penis and it was only sold after his own death. It was first acquired by an American publisher and book collector; then in 1968 it appeared at the Christie's auction of the Vignali Collection of Napoleonica, and again in a Paris auction room in 1977 when it was sold to a private buyer for the reputed sum of 7,000 francs." P.181B: after N's death his attendants were "taking from it a number of intimate souvenirs by which the Emperor could be remembered, later, when this was all over." P.185T: "The sexual organs are extremely small, something which he thinks might help to explain the absence of sexual desire which the deceased had shown throughout the time of his captivity." So it was THERE, then!? Pause for lunch from 12-12:45 for beef (no gravy) on bread (with added mustard and HP sauce), and whipped cream and jello. Read more, then the boat drill 1:30-1:40, and I finish reading the book and typing this by 2:10PM, ready to take Scrabble in for us to play during Ian's Russian lesson. But Diane's not there, nor is Olivia, so I'm back to my room to lie down and take a nap until 3:55, getting my blue pants all white-flecked with sheet-lint. In to find Diane deep in conversation with Andy (I've decided that the reason he turns me off so much is that he embodies so clearly which I do NOT like about myself: dark hair over white beard, too-fat body, introverted, un-self-confident, sure that people are looking at him negatively), so I chat with Rita until the muffins arrive, but limit myself to one, give the book to Olivia as she leaves, and back to my room to read OC from 4:25PM to 5, when I listen to awfuler Bob on the Atlantic Ocean, which covers 20% of the earth's surface. The two main gyres meet at 8 degrees north. 85 million cubic miles of water, average depth 12,000 feet, greatest depth at Porto Rico trench and South Sandwich trench at 27.500 feet. Narrowest from Brazil to Africa is 1669 miles. Atlantic drains FOUR TIMES more land than does the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Bio-remain OOZE can be 11,000 feet thick. "Climates dir(ectly/dra)matically affect ocean," Bob spooners. Sargasso Sea harbors sea turtles, flying fish, and sea eels. Probable FOGS off west coast of Africa. This goes (he got us there with a promise he'd be over at 5:30) until 5:45, at which time I go outside to see the sun lighting up fairly high clouds on their undersides, and there's a sliver of a moon sailing high above bright Venus, and the horizon clouds shift from gray to bloody bandages as the sun sets about 6:05PM, and I watch the waves and the hillocks of swells against the flat horizon, and toward the end glimpse a glint of what may be lightning from distant northwest storms. Shift from leg to leg, feeling vaguely horny as dark lower clouds attain phallic and gismic shapes, and wonder again what sex with the slim intense Russian doctor would be like---Shto eta? for all kinds of wonderful appurtenances. Gets darker and chillier and close the loud door behind me (hope it doesn't slam during my sleeping!) at 6:40, catching up with this until 6:55, ignoring the call for Happy Hour, and get back to OC, still slightly chilly in the air conditioning which they turned on this morning, telling us to keep all our doors and portholes closed. Forgot to mention that Bill said that NEXT boat drill, in warmer water, would actually involve getting INTO the lifeboats and going for a short spin! Something NEW! Let's just hope the QE2 isn't in St. Helena the same day WE are! (But the next morning I check with Jules, who knows that the QE2 is bound for RIO, and will NOT stop at St. Helena.) OC is actually getting INVOLVING for the first time, and I reluctantly put it down (though the NOTES have stupidly revealed that the "single gentleman" is the grandfather's BROTHER, although maybe we were supposed to have known that, since Nell's BROTHER seems to know who the "single gentleman" is) for dinner. The pea soup is quite thin, though good, and the roast beef BORDERS on the edible, being too tough, variably cooked, with NO juice and NO carbon to give it contrasting interest. In addition, I have THREE vegetables, the first ever: small potato cubes that Dolores orders a side of for herself, corn that starts a discussion (well, the CORN doesn't start the discussion, WE start the discussion) a corn's origins and ability to be popped, and strings of red beet which are almost as hard to manipulate as the linguini with the vegetarian dinner. Varying sizes of what some call billberry tarts are passed out, so tart that I actually sprinkle sugar so that my facial mask doesn't wince---which reminds me, for the past few days I've noticed a tiny tic under my left eye. Could it be 1) negligible and will vanish, 2) connected to the ship's engine's vibrations under my bed and will vanish as the ship's engines will vanish, or 3) a nervous manifestation that will vanish as the cause of the nervous manifestation vanishes. The wrap-up is short; we seem to have made 300 nautical miles yesterday, and I get back to the cabin at 8:55 to change the louvers on the air-vents, which closes off the draught of cold air on my neck which means I don't have to wear my scarf in my cabin while reading (and I pass the information to Diane the next morning, who thanks me effusively for it)(also reminds me that I found that the doors on the cabins in the john DO have an "occupied" indicator, so now I just have to look for the trace of RED, rather than rattling the door---and, another synchrony, this morning I leave my cabin to see Dolores standing in front of the women's shower with a towel. "Is there a line?" I ask. "I don't know," she says, "I can't tell if I hear noises in there or from the men's shower next door." "Are you sure the door is locked?" And she tries it again and it OPENS). But the coolness (and maybe my afternoon nap) enables me to finish reading 173 pages of OC today, reading to 10:25PM, another lateness milestone. Bed at 10:40PM, thinking only a bit before falling asleep.

SUNDAY, MARCH 24: Wake at 2:20AM to pee, and again at 5:30, glancing out the porthole I left uncovered to see what looks like clouds which would obstruct the sunrise. Wake again at 6:35 and lie thinking about what we've seen, what we've yet to see, and how I seem to be missing any ZING that usually happens sometime during a trip: this has no real ZEST, except for the moments BEFORE I dropped my videocamera on Albatross Island, and some clear moments of just plain happiness last night as I watched the sun set behind clouds and saw an enormous Venus just below the scrape of a moon that blurred into rainbows as it passed behind clouds. (And I've very aware I have a solid lines of right- hand arrows, thinking I might as well finish out this SCREEN, since it's but ONE line more at this point to FILL the screen.) Up at 7:15 and don't bother to put on underwear before having a decent shit, and revert to blue jeans and a Galapagos T-shirt to welcome the summer and the upcoming Capricorn Tropic about midnight tonight. Olivia and Alan are butting heads about America's altruism versus stupidity in supporting foreign dictators and sending aid to suffering populations without remedying the genocides that threaten even MORE war. I have some mint tea, then oatmeal and one pancake and two glasses of juice for breakfast, and back at 8:25 (everyone seems to be eating FASTER and FASTER, and I'm usually the last one finished at lunch and dinner) to catch up with this. Then probably to OC until Andy's talk on Whales III at 9:30AM, and close this at 8:47AM. I detour to deck 6 to find LOTS of sunbathers and NO fish (on deck and in the water, respectively) until 9AM, THEN down to OC until 9:30, when Andy talks for 95 minutes for his last whale lecture, with FABULOUS stories of putting his hand into the water and being "lipped" by a beluga, and showing great slides of a dolphin SUSPENDED about 8 feet out of the water, and informing us that toothed whales (like belugas) take ONE prey at a time and their neck-bones are NOT fused to give them pursuing capabilities. Northern minke whales have a white band on their upper flippers. I ask if anyone's done research on electric fields around any of the captive dolphins, and he says he knows of none; then I mention the beluga that had a sense of humor that drove mothers wild by producing an ERECTION that all the kids asked about and the mothers had no idea what to say. Andy was amused, but didn't ask for copies of the slides. Catch up with this at 11:20AM, quite unexciting outside: uniform cloud cover, calm waters, no birds, no fish of any kind (even though flying fish were reported about the ship the day before yesterday). Mentioned to Bill comments from passengers that dinner earlier than 8PM would be appreciated, but he said this was the first time he'd heard anything; I should tell others to tell HIM, not just grouse to the table. Back to OC. Lunch was delayed, and Simon said that Kevin had a pinched nerve which resulted from a fall downstairs a number of months ago, but it had been recently acting up in a very painful manner and the sous-chef was doing the cooking. Bob came up, to everyone's envy, with two peanut butter sandwiches he'd made for himself at breakfast. The "spinach quiche" was more like a moussaka with layers of burnt cheese between the very tender and tasty spinach, interspersed with curds of cream and maybe egg. I guess there was dessert, but I've forgotten what it was. Back to read, then to the dining room to find Diane knitting and I suggested Scrabble, so we played through Ian's Russian lesson, Tanya again participating, and the group seemed to be having a good time. 4PM snack produced enormously intense semi-sweet chocolate brownies loaded with walnuts and covered with powdered sugar, all served almost too hot to touch, and I had two and a half, but sadly the bottom was a jumble of crumbled remains which I guess had to be thrown out, or else eaten by the staff and crew. I win all three games, and back to the cabin to get the pointer for Bob's talk at 5 on the French Revolution. His talks are more notable for his malapropisms than his information: he came up with "egotolitarianism" in place of egalitarian, and at one point said "shortly after, in the preceding years---" The only memorable statement at 5:50PM was that in 1804 Napoleon was crowned emperor, ending the French Revolution. Simon, when I was talking about living one year every hundred years, was reminded of "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Borges' Ficciones, and he gave me the book, which contained nine stories in "The Garden of Forking Paths," and ten in "Artifices." I devoured most of the entire book before dinner, but observed that I was remembering very little, and consoled myself by thinking that his style was to start so relaxedly that I started anticipating "the twist" from the start, but usually, if and when it came, it didn't quite add up to the impact I wanted it to have. I guess I wanted each of his stories to be a classic gem of incredible imagination or insight, as his reputation has led one to expect. At 7:55PM dinner is announced "in 15 minutes," but when I get in at 8:05 there are already appetizers of gorgonzola toasts at other places. I mention slyly that they seem to have found a use for their moldy bread, but no one laughs. The rock Cornish game hen is surprisingly large, quite tender, and very tasty, with a small side of mixed vegetables, and dessert was a very fluffy pastry like a gossamer cheesecake with a warm berry sauce. Ian mentions that the kitchen was serving whatever it could, since we didn't get the expected food orders from Tristan, which explained why we were having so much stewed fruit. And might explain the slight exasperation of Irina whenever someone asks for "more" or anything, whether brown sugar, milk, or oatmeal. But the next morning I bring up the question of what happens to all the unused bacon, and Rita sadly admits that there's always a terrible amount of waste from cruise ships. Shiela insists that the movie tonight be "The River Wild," so I resign myself to continued unbrushed teeth. When Ian goes to put in the tape, there's no VCR! He searches (saying the Captain had promised to have it back by 8PM, so at least he seemed to have known where it WAS) and comes up with it about 9:30, and Meryl Streep is so uglily mannered, David Straithorn is so gloomily unpleasant, Kevin Bacon is such an amoral colorless villain and his friend a piggish thug---and the kid and dog so stereotyped---that I end with the evaluation that the RIVER was great but the MOVIE was awful. It goes off in the middle and there seemed to be a short in the TV that produced a picture only after the 10th or 15th push. That ends at 11:25, having kept everyone's attention, and I get to bed at 11:35PM, undoubtedly the latest.

MONDAY, MARCH 25: 1AM and 2:50AM produce dreams that I record from the latter time until 3:10AM, and then I'm awake again at 6:20AM to pee, looking out to see spots of water on the porthole and gray cloudy skies, and I don't feel like getting up to sunrise watch anyway. Yesterday the ONLY person on the ship to see birds was Andy, and he tentatively identified three birds in two species. Lay thinking rather morosely about the trip and all the time left, getting more and more annoyed by the engine's vibration in my particular cabin, and doze off to be awakened by the 7:30 call for breakfast, at which I dress and put the cabin to order, and shit the second satisfying morning shit at 7:45AM, glad to be in THAT rut again. Coughing seems to improve then get worse again. Olivia's comment about "incurable tuberculosis" again floats through my mind. I never seem to have a fever, but don't ever feel particularly chipper. Put on underwear and socks first thing today, more dressed than yesterday, though officially we went through the Tropic of Capricorn at 4AM and are now officially in the tropics. Breakfast from 8:05AM of oatmeal, scrambled eggs and one piece of toast that seems to have short-changed others at Rita's table, but Jules came back with three pieces which were eaten in the end, so I didn't have the LAST piece by any means. Trudy glanced at me strangely when she passed my glassless visage in the hall this morning. I'm feeling more and more distant from most of the passengers: only Seymour's constant idiotic smile of greeting, Shiela's constant commenting, and Olivia's sunniness are enduring; Tony seems to pass at a haughty remove whenever I come close, and Jules' hands on my shoulders are an unwelcome truism. I think we all WILL miss Simon's caustic wit when he leaves on Sunday. Left breakfast "for my busy day" at 8:30 and finish up with this at 9:05, left with time before Andy's 9:30 talk, and I guess I MUST brush my teeth! Feel virtuous having done that, and then to Photography III, which he starts by saying "Flash not used enough." TTL (through the lens) camera AUTOMATICALLY sets camera for VARIED flash INSTANTLY. Andy uses six plant sticks and black velour and a tripod for small-nature studies. He's through by 10:30 and I get my camera and go to the bridge. The South 30s, by default, must be the Tristan bird-filled storm-waves, and I'm surprised that we've already passed into 21 degrees south by 10:30AM, and take picture #9:02 with NO birds and cloud-darknesses on water. Joe says there are flying fish in the water, small iridescent fish compared with larger darker ones in Pacific, but I seen none in high daylight. One of the Russian crew members quite burned red already. At least it's not raining for the two outdoor barbecues scheduled for today's meals. Finish this at 11:15, ready to take OC climax in cooler public rooms. Will eventually have to OPEN the vents that I closed on my air-conditioning lamp. Read INTO the final chapter of OC when the barbecued hamburgs and franks come in from the too-windy outside about 12:10PM, and I have a beer with the hamburg that tastes only of charcoal, mustard, ketchup, and HP sauce, and the frank with mustard and ketchup with cold sauerkraut atop it; and surprised when quarter-glasses of champagne are passed around (I drink my first one before the toast) to toast our crossing of the Tropic of "Cancercorn." Then DO finish OC, with the amazing climax that Master Humphrey is the Single Gentleman, as Simon comes over to retrieve "Ficciones" and say he IS in the phonebook, lives on the top two floors at the corner of Broadway and Warren, and will write to Bouley that his wife did NOT throw up three times when his son treated them there, and will even invite me along if possible. I make the joke that HE did not give me HIS card, but he assures me he wants to see me again, and I even drop the solitary hairpin of Charles "and his lover" wanting to buy a building and seeing the cellars in which the Manhattan Project was begun. Now at 2PM I'm ready to go onto yet another NOTEBOK section, FIVE halfway through ship-trip. Continuing MONDAY, MARCH 25, in NOTEBOK5, now at 2:05PM 3/25/96. Pleasantly muzzy from champagne, but decide to start reading another book: Ibsen's Plays. Take it to the sixth deck, one of the Russians mistaken for Bob on a lounge in a peppermint-stripe skimpy suit, and read one act for an hour until 3, when the wind is just too strong to be stood much longer; maybe I have a bit of sunburn? The water is calm, there are no birds, and as much as I watch, I see no flying fish whatsoever. Down at 3 to find Diane, suggest Scrabble, and we play two games, which I win, interrupted by tea snacks from tins, Jacob's cookies, not the most satisfying. Then at 5 Graham starts his second talk on seabirds, giving me only the additional information that that diving bird in the Galapagos was a gannet, the largest seabird in the northern oceans. He goes on and on, incredibly, to 6:25PM, tiring everyone out, and by which time it's COMPLETELY dark outside; when I peer out my porthole there's only the LEAST bit of light separating the dark sky from the dark clouds on the horizon. At least tomorrow we'll be anchored off St. Helena, and this SECOND LONGEST continuous spate at sea will be over. Feel that I have to take another crap, and maybe I'll have to get my four-day shower after that. Do both of those, and just as I finish combing my hair at 7:10 comes the call for cocktails on the BOW. Out in shoes and T-shirt to find few of anyone, and simply white wine to drink. Then there's a good Russian fish soup, tasting strongly of lemon and holding large firm hunks of white fish flesh, with a few bones. Tell Irina that it's very good. Then take two kinds of cole slaw with the pirogi, sadly cold and rather dense, but not bad tasting. Kevin and the blonde Russian cook are smoking away above the charcoal protected from the wind by a blanket. I have another glass of wine and chat with Olivia and Diane, and most tourists sit and most Russians stand and each talks with their own group. Ivan, the KGB/owner's representative, serves the soup and "hosts" the affair, and after a bit the Captain comes down and sequesters himself in a corner (invaded only by Seymour) abetted by his handsome sidekick. Notice the thin-hipped doctor talking earnestly with Andy, slender but sadly not sexy-legged in red shorts. Could all the pictures of his girlfriend be SUCH a turnoff for me? Ian comes past as someone brings up the shashlik, and someone serves me two chunks of meat and then protests "Ruki!" and helps me to a wedge of onions. The meat is done enough, tough, but slightly tasty and the onions ARE good. Tanya sits between Armand and Bob and looks sad. At last about 8:10PM the pork chops and beef come up, and I grab a pork chop and eat it as quickly as I can, and then having had about four glasses of white and three glasses of red wine, I make my escape, having the ineluctable feeling that the Russian pop-music is going to be replaced by the equivalent of "pass the broom" where the tourists will be compelled to interact with the Russians, and I'll just feel terribly self-conscious and wish I'd have acted on my previous impulse to GO. At 8:25PM I'm back in my room, noting that I feared an upcoming socialization and fraternization. Finish "Ghosts" at 9:10PM and put everything away ready for bed. Take the pills, fill the pillbox for tomorrow morning, and at 9:20 finish this, sorry that I haven't at least progressed to another page, but that's all there is to say so far about this evening: Venus is behind the clouds, the moon is about to set, the sea is still smooth, and I'd gotten less sleep last night than many nights before; possibly there'll be a sunrise worth watching tomorrow, even if it IS more 5AM than 6AM, since we're moving east of GMT any time now. Will pee in the sink, fearful of meeting anyone cheerful in the hallway. Debated taking NO Bonine tomorrow, but still put a half-pill in; maybe none the NEXT day at St. Helena. Simon loved my paraphrase of life: nasty, British, and short! Now 9:25PM. While undressing for bed I glance as my pile of daily schedules and grab my pants again to dash out and pick up the day-sheet, and Olivia and Alan are sitting in the chat area talking about politics, so I guess the barbecue must be officially over. Get into bed earliest at 9:40PM.

TUESDAY, MARCH 26: Wake at 3:50AM with a rather strong top-left-center headache and pee. Then wake again when my watch says 3:55, but there's a rim of light around my porthole, and surprisingly the sun is ahead (just out of sight) and LEFT of the ship. The whee-o whee-o whee-o of "Twilight Zone" almost goes off in my head. But it's turned out that my watch has stopped, and I hope the breakfast announcement is on time THIS morning. It is, my restarted watch says 4:30 when the 7:30 announcement comes, so the 3:55 wakeup was really at 6:55AM! Dress and pee in the sink (dress in the sink?) and get out to put my teacup down on the SECOND table, and when Rose comes over, I make sure it's free, since I see Paul and Caroline coming toward the table and I don't want to break up three couples. Rose says, "Come to join the good-looking people, eh?" which is rather sweet. The Kahlbaums are quite garrulous, telling about their 7-day cruise up the Hudson to Albany, stopping at hotels every night and being followed by a bus with their luggage which would be in their hotels before them. Then he talks of a yacht-ride that goes to midnight when they're washed ashore at the Goulds and have to take the subway late at night in their bathing suits to get back home to get to his ship through the Panama Canal on his way back to Hawaii when he was 20, talking about staying with the family of friends in Panama whose house, with moat and drawbridge, lived ABOVE the Presidential Palace, and they had to fend off each set of insurgents who tried to get THEIR house from which to attack the Palace below! Interesting life, almost worth having to stay out of the sun from having had so much when they were children in Hawaii. The talk goes on longer, and some of the tablecloths are cleared away as I leave at 8:40AM, having had Bran Flakes which I've had enough of for the trip, and a rather moister, eggier French toast, good under the berry syrup and a pat of butter between the two slices. Pills with tomato juice. Zodiac group 4 is scheduled for the engine room tour ("It's better organized than this mess up here," observed Paul this morning) at 3PM, and they verified it would be best to save post cards for Ascension Island, which has much better mail service than St. Helena. Rose also talks about ANOTHER St. Helena book, which I think is "The Emperor's Last Island" until she describes some event I don't remember and it turns out she's talking of another book. Guess I gotta get upstairs to take a picture of the 10s, but I can do it AFTER St. Helena, too. Amazing thought that the boat-phase of the trip will be HALF over on the day after tomorrow, and we'll have seen "only" two islands, Tristan and St. Helena. Still a LOT of time, sea, and boredom yet to go! But the Ibsen Plays (IP) are reading better than Dickens. Guess I'll start "Ghosts" before the 9:30AM talk, it being now 9AM. Then decide to read them in chronological order, and begin "Peer Gynt." In for Bob on Napoleon, saying "He was fond of riding (writing) Josephine every day." Napoleon lost over one-half million men in Russia alone, killed over 1.5 million men in his career. "Waterflew." That went on until 10:30, at which time I went to sit behind the shelter of the sixth deck and read IP outside, leaving the wind blow the extraneous words of fellow-passengers away. Lunch was Shepherd's Pie, with leftover hamburg from yesterday's lunch, topped with mashed potatoes, good with a beer, and actually pretty good. Dessert was just a plate of cookies. Back to the room to finish "Peer Gynt," not caring to attend the Russian lesson at 2, and I was feeling quite horny, so I stripped off my pants and underpants, put the latch on the door, and proceeded to a very satisfactory masturbatory session. Rather tired afterwards, but I got out to the 3PM ship-tour early, ran back for my video camera and earplugs, and saw the six-cylinder engine from above and alongside, the desalination plant that produces 10 tons of freshwater per day, though we use 13 tons, about 3 tons for drinking alone. All the controls for lights, engines, water-ballast and balance and stabilization, the helicopter pad installed by a Belgian renter who needed it, spare bushings, ropes, the machine room, and water-storage systems. We ended on the bridge with St. Helena on the radar screen 60 miles away, in the middle of a cloud bank. By then it was 4:05 and I ran downstairs just as the jellyrolls arrived, and Simon got the duty of applying artificial whipped cream, which he loved to make fun of, but which I got more than my share of (Katie berating me for taking a second roll before others got their first, foreshadowing dinner when I got no crayfish tail when others took two, but I'm sure they cooked more like 20 than 30 of them). Diane refused Scrabble because she wanted to look for St. Helena on the horizon, so I followed her up at 4:25 but still saw nothing. Got into a chair but wanted to go higher, so climbed the aft stairway up to level 7 to find a railing, and then went around to the right where the stairway gave onto the roof of what was soon to become the St. Helena bar. Simon announced his 5PM talk, and I got down to listen to his inimitable introduction: "I was interviewing the King of Tonga ---", and then he said the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion in India marked the START of the end of the British Empire. In 1904, Younghusband added Tibet, the last piece. In 1898, they took Port Edward in the North China Sea. In 1930, the FIRST colony GIVEN away was Port Edward. In 1949 Newfoundland "given" to Canada. St. Helena is called Paradise on the Dole. Its only product was hemp for rope (the Navy) and string (the Post Office). Last mill was closed in 1966, and since then everyone has been unemployed save those who work for the government. Ship comes each 12 weeks, and we were told to save our mail for Ascension. He then listed what's left of the British Empire: 1) Gibraltar, forever; 2) Bermuda, 20,000 tour-guides; 3) Montserrat, 5,000 lime-growers; 4) Cayman Islands, banking; 5) British Virgins and Anguilla; 6) Turks and Caicos Islands, wanting to be taken over by Canada for snowbirds; 7) St. Helena, Simon and Diane's favorite; 8) Ascension; 9) Tristan da Cunha, the last two for guarding Napoleon; 10) Falkland Islands; 11) South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands; 12) Pitcairn's four islands; 13) Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where they displaced 2000 islanders to Mauritius to free the island for an American base in exchange for cheap Trident missiles; and 14) Hong Kong, which reverts to China on 6/30/97. Diane starts to talk about St. Helena touring, saying GO to the Castle, the Tomb, Plantation House as well as Longwood and the Main Street, calling the Emerald set in Bronze from the greenery on the volcanic rock. This goes till 6:05, when we rush upstairs to find it quite dark and STILL no sign of St. Helena, until by 7 there's a shape under the clouds, followed by two lights below just about the time the Captain cuts the cord (ah, also got him in bathing trunks on a mast from the rear of the third deck, I hope) for the new bar called St. Helena, and there are wonderful appetizers of prosciuto, Swiss, salmon, and salami and crackers, and free drinks of iced tea, maybe with goodie in it, but I don't think so. Watching Graham videoing the event makes me run down and grab the camcorder and try to get St. Helena under the moon and Venus, but I don't think it'll look very good. Diane gives a running commentary as we close in on the anchoring point offshore Jamestown, fulfilling my prediction that it would be a dead heat between anchor-drop and 8PM dinner. What I'd thought was a scruffy sidelight turned out to be looking straight up Main Street, and she said the town was literally only two buildings wide. Down to dinner at 8:10PM to "surf and turf" which I said should be called Surf OR Turf, since I got steaks and no crayfish tails and some got the opposite, and there was the nasty rumor that some took two tails, but it couldn't have been many; I just hope they're served again, when I'll be at the head of the line. Bill announces that Immigration is scheduled to board at 7AM, so we should be ready to go ashore after breakfast. We'll probably stay all day, have a dry landing at the dock, might need an umbrella for scattered rain during the day, and should take the time to see EVERYTHING on the island; I have that feeling in particular because I keep saying this'll be the last time I'm here. Bill also announces that tomorrow is the MIDDLE day in our trip, and it WILL be day 25, but not the middle for the BOAT part. Again at dinner the Kahlbaum's entertain with travel tales, this time in Africa, and HE was in sugar while HER father was a corporate attorney. Back to the room at 9:10 and finish this at 9:45, looking and feeling very windblown, and the sides of my haircut are beginning to turn a suspicious henna-color: I might end up looking just AWFUL. Take the day-sheet. Get to bed at 10:10AM.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27: 7:02AM: 1AM: Pee and jot down note of dream about catching two kinds of sea creatures that I record at the end of DREAM-10. 5:35AM: Pee and glance out the light-rimmed porthole to see a point of the northwest corner of St. Helena without any distinguishing features, backed by a sky in which clouds may reflect a sun that has not yet risen, but I feel so tired that I don't bother to follow it up: merely close the porthole and go back to bed, where I think I dropped instantly back to sleep. 6:25AM: Wake with the memory of a VERY frustrating dream about compiling a program that prohibits my performing a critical edit that I should have done BEFORE the compilation, and STILL feel tired and not quite rested, yet I DON'T have the energy to take down the copious notes that would enable the recollection of the details of the dream after even an HOUR'S delay, so I drag myself out of bed at 6:35 (too lazy to reinsert the DREAM disk to check to see what time I started the DREAM entry), record DREAM 2), then go back to record DREAM 1), then close that disk out and insert this disk and type this to 7:07AM, STILL not feeling quite awake, yet content that I've done what I SHOULD do; know what I should do SOON (which is do some more Actualism enlightening sessions, since I'm in a pretty DOWN mood recently and want to get back UP pretty quickly, though maybe St. Helena TODAY will help with that), and will now record what OTHER thoughts conflicted my mind this morning. Also content to know the FACT (though not experience the fruits of the actual EXPERIENCE) that I'd gotten more than eight hours sleep last night and it SHOULD be OK that I'm up "so early." Also had clear in my mind that I would ASK Sheila if it would be OK for me to KEEP her camcorder through my two-week trip in Europe, TAKE it back to NYC where I would find a NEW EYEPIECE to make up for the one I left on Tristan, RECORD my tapes (both 8mm AND VCR tapes) from her masters with her machines, MAKE her copies of the entire tape on VCR format, and then send the WHOLE THING back to her in Maryland. Letting her know that I've told her so SOON so that she can THINK about it before the end of the trip, and ANYTHING she said would be FINE with me (though I dearly hope she'll do what I WANT to do, since it WILL make things easier for her, though it'll DENY her the camcorder for a much LONGER period of time---and did I even detect a SLIGHT wish to have the camcorder back during yesterday's engine-room tour when I think I saw her with a STILL camera?). Butt-sore and foot-cold, but I've caught up with ALL my thoughts on this LAST day of the FIRST half of the Marine Expedition part of the trip: from 3/3 to 3/27 is IN FACT the 25th day of a 50 day trip, though only TOMORROW will mark the first half of the BOAT part of the trip, and another week will elapse before I can mark the halfway point of MY entire trip. And now at 7:17AM I'll finish with THIS disk, pee, and get into the rest of the DAY! 7:47AM: Feeling better already! Daily schedule is marked 0845 going ashore in zodiac order 4,1,2,3! Take photos 9:03 and 9:04 of St. Helena in SUNLIGHT! Video the ferry that takes immigration people off about 7:40AM. Back to cabin to change into shirt and slacks from T-shirt and jeans, and look forward to a FULL day on St. Helena, though prepared with umbrella in case of rain. Hey-HO!!! Try blueberry sauce on oatmeal, which starts out looking red and stringy and ends up looking blue and lugubrious, and doesn't taste very good AT ALL. But the sauce on three small pancakes is quite good. Bill describes the going-over and coming back at 5, 7, and 9PM, tells about the island being an hour ahead of us, on GMT, and divides us into two groups: 1&3 and 2&4, raising a howl from Ruth that she's going to be separated from Freda, so Bill says to see him later for switching---the first to tour from 11 to 2, the second from 2 to 5. I figure we get the better deal since most of the shops will be closed at noon on Wednesdays. Race to get my stuff together, finishing charging the camcorder battery, spare rolls of film for both cameras, hat, plastic covers in case of rain, but eschew any jacket for myself: obviously, in the tropics, I won't need a jacket even if I stay in town at dinner until 9PM. Grab a life jacket, which feels strange without the raingear underneath and get out almost first in line. Ian does his usual song and dance about his coordination of names, and lets me on first. In the calm waters the loading goes easily, though there are a few splashes going across to the landing slip. Only concrete steps, the bottom of which is washed by the waves, but most of us get out OK, though someone (Shiela, I think) got grabbed back and forth when the zodiac went one way and the grabbers pulled her another. I race immediately through the customs area, following Dick, surprisingly in front, and stop to take a few pictures at the end of roll 9. Through the picturesque gate, seeing the sign for the post office 200 yards ahead, and Dick turns off to the Castle. See, I thought (but there was only one), two signs for museums I should see later. There IS the Post Office across from the Consulate Hotel, and the woman at an inner desk says "Wait a moment please," and I sympathize with her for the coming rush. I ask for "one of each in two sets," and she complies with wonderful understanding (even to giving me, at the briefest look that night, an extra 1.18 pounds in two stamps in two packets, one pre-made set, but two SOUVENIR SHEETS of a one-pound value). She mentions that THREE ships waited two days in January and couldn't even DOCK, though they managed to get stamps and cards out to the ships. Others come in behind me, including Bob Tucker who just wants something for his grandchildren. I say "I hope it's not more than $50 or $60," and she thinks not, until the end, when it turns out to be $80, which I say is OK, though i AM sorry they don't take credit cards: I'm left with only $124 in American cash. This takes from 9:15 to about 9:45, and then I take a picture of the Consulate Hotel and walk up to the divide, and follow Market Street, looking at the charming facade of Wondervilla and taking the Yanofskis as they stroll in front of it. Past schools with kids playing ball, guest houses with great balcony-views over the town, and gardens arrayed in terraces up the hillside which then changes to what I call yucca but later is called FLAX, which used to be the mainstay crop of the island until 1966, and now it's taken over as a WEED. Up toward the head of the valley, and see a road going off to the right, which I follow to find it heads up to intersect Jacob's Ladder. Climb high enough to get a good view, photographed twice, over the town, and am beginning to get hot and the beginning of a sunburn on my arms. Put on the hat, which once blows away up the road and I think I could follow it on forever, but pick it up after about 10 yards. Back down to town, and spot an electrical shop which might have the little white extension I need, but when I go around back, the gate is locked. A pop-eyed little man that I think might be gay shows up to ask if I need help, and I told him my needs. "Oh, she lives just across the way; I'll call her." He does, but she's not answering. We chat, I talk about being off the ship with a 2PM tour. "Two o'clock?" his eyebrows raise. A few moments leads me to say "Oh, I forgot, WE are on SHIP's time, but YOU are on GMT, so you're an hour ahead of us: it's a THREE o'clock tour." "Then I'll be your driver, my name is Colin," he says brightly, thrusting out his hand. "Bob," I say, putting out my hand. "Colin," he insists," shaking my hand. I say nothing. Back to the center of town about 10:30, pretty tired, and back to the museum, which has lots of good photographs and a free guide I donate $1 for. Look at the sword, the burning of the Rapanui and the explosion of the oil tanker, and pick up a color guide for $3 and a map of Jamestown for $1. When I'm about to leave, she insists that I look at a set of photo albums, and come across a fetching chest in Bombay that I take a shot at. She says she'll be open until 2PM, and I say I might return. Get to the bottom of Main Street without finding what I thought was the second museum, so I go to the edge of town and notice spray coming up on the left. Walk to the end of the "Promenade" and there's dredge output, I guess, mucking up a sort of bridge, but I stoop under a pipe and get into an area of tide pools in which I take pictures of black crabs, small zebrafish, and try for a six-inch green and blue neon-like fish but can't get it. At one point my hat blows off into the brine, so I have an excuse to cool my head. Now it's 11:20 and I decide to have a go at PART of Jacob's Ladder, knowing it's the WORST time of day to do it. Get up about 200 of the 699 steps, take some photos, and get back down, feeling that my legs are sore ENOUGH already. See a zodiac coming from the ship, so I guess lunch is here, so I go toward the pier and see Don and Anne sitting in the shade of the johns, eating. I get a sandwich and a 7-Up, which tastes delicious even though it's not very cold, and then take a SECOND can, saying I counted 72 of them, which Anne remarks "Doesn't include the crew, though." Finish refreshed, irked at Andy sitting next to me trying to crow about having been up AND down Jacob's Ladder. His laugh is truly unpleasant. Walk back to town to continue my tour by going up Napoleon Street, seeing the Salvation Army Headquarters, the St. Helena Poor House established in 1814, and some more charming cottages and more substantial houses, some with great views over the town. Continue up the road into the "desert" behind the town, some substantial estates below the still-level valley, but then about 1PM I'm tired of walking, the side of my right big toe is beginning to feel blister-y, and I just want to get out of the sun; more than that, the battery indicator on the camcorder is down to ONE dash; I'd better start conserving for the second half of the day. Back to the Consulate to sit and chat, get down with Diane to the Handicraft shop which is now closed, and she says that the Consulate has a restaurant (new to her) up in the back which looks quite nice, but she doesn't think we'd need reservations. Join Shiela and Seymour and Pat in looking into the snack shop, but I don't have the right change for a soda. Out to the porch with others waiting for the start of the 2PM tour, and the Kahlbaum's join me in an Appleteaser, refreshing, for just under a dollar. Out to the front at 1:45, knowing that I want to be in FIRST so that I get a window, and we wait, and wait, and wait, and then a woman with a child and a camcorder (who comes with us) says she sees the people at the top of Jacob's Ladder, so they'll be down in about 10 minutes. That stretches out to 20 and 25 minutes, until finally at 2:30 an enormous green charabang, seating 18 passengers, pulls down Main Street, turns around the free-parking lane in the middle of the road, and disgorges at the Hotel. I grab the second seat on the right, thanks to Joe's recommendation that we NOT sit in the back, and thankfully Bob Tucker takes the seat next to me. Everyone crowds in and we're off about 2:40, which I think is pretty sad, since a 5:30 USUAL and a 6:10 EXPANDED tour-time would take us to 7:10 LOCAL time, obviously pitch black. But we're up the Napoleon Road, while I take shots off the favored right side down the valley, we pass by the Briars, closed on Wednesdays, and into the hills with colorful trees that Diane said have had to be chopped down to supply leaves to feed the cattle lest they die of starvation in the three months of drought. You couldn't tell a drought from the lush green grasses and hillsides of the interior! Great vistas into adjoining valleys, and the houses with "the perfect crestview" simply continue up and up the hillsides. Finally around the corner at Longview, and we go through a gate and I'm first to photograph the French flag flying unobstructedly over the house. They run to open the doors in front of us, and I note the sign prohibiting camcording. Take shots of the pool table in the first room, the death mask in the second, and the camp-bed in the third. Then there are rows of exhibit halls with photocopies of letters and biographical articles. Buy two postcards (the Post Office had NOTHING about Napoleon---as Diane said, "That was 170 years ago, we're onto better things now.") and get out taking a shot of the exterior when Olivia fortuitously says "There are the holes in the shutters he made," so I include those. Take a few shots from different angles when everyone's back at the car, and we're out to the golf course to pick up a sun-screened Graham who'd gone to see birds. Rain clouds appear to be gathering as we drive up to Napoleon's tomb at 4PM, well past their closing time at 4PM REAL time, but the guy lets us down and again I'm one of the first, the Malones thankfully going behind a tree so I can take an unobstructed photo. It's a nice quiet setting, but I'm SO aware of the rush to get there and the rush to get back, particularly when a couple of raindrops make me remark about bidding for Vern's waterproof jacket, which, actually, he said he'd GIVE me to protect the camera. I said "I can't very well ruin TWO cameras with water!" Starts raining as we get to the car; I reach in to grab my plastic bags, and Colin puts up the huge blue-plastic tonneau cover. But it soon stops, the rainbow which I hope I got on video does NOT come back for a slide, and we're back over INCREDIBLE roads to look at Lot and Lot's Wife and down over Sandy Bay and the plain where the Boers were interned. To the top of the ladder after descending through MILES of "New Country," with old and new houses with GREAT views over the ocean for DOZENS of miles, but sadly it's now DARK, and though I try ONE photo down the stairs, I'm sure it's jostled and blurry at 5:50PM. Down the treacherous road that Rita says she can't bare to look over, stopping many times to allow upclimbing cars to pass, we're finally down to town to let the five of us (Vern said he wanted to go back to the ship and Olivia said she DIDN'T, so I invited her to fill Vern's vacancy) and some few others off, and I rush to the john and then find no one remembers our reservations, but we're told we can sit on the lawn, Olivia having a tonic and I have a (very weak) vodka tonic. Then Shiela orders a shandy, which sounds like a refreshing idea (though no drinks have ice, as the Heart-Shaped Falls had no water, because of the drought), so I have one, and then two. The wahoo is tuna-like and rather tasty under its breading, and I have tartar sauce on it that is very good, unlike Seymour, who has vinegar on BOTH the fish and the chips, which are quite underdone. At the end there's a tasty cheesecake on a graham crust and "brown bread ice cream" which is just chocolate---must remember to ask Diane two questions: "brown bread = chocolate" and tree-name. We're finished about 8PM, enjoying the quiet and the moon coming in and out of clouds, and Andy comes past to report they've been scuba diving with locals, seeing a whale shark, and I resent not having enough time to do BOTH on the island. AND he got to go with the cute Indian with the nicest shape in hairy legs on the trip so far, of which, today, the 25th day, is the halfway point of the TRIP, as tomorrow, the 24th day on the BOAT, is the halfway point of the BOAT trip. Olivia has extra St. Helena pounds (I'd gotten change from the Post Office, which I evened out to "one of each" by getting two postcards from Longwood for 15p each) so SHE pays the 23-and-change pound bill and I add $3 for tip since I had three drinks to most everyone else's one. I then leave the group and wander slowly (and somewhat drunkenly, but I am also VERY tired, it strikes me) down Main Street, looking at the abandoned storefronts, and get through the gate to find the surf rather low, so that it doesn't quite "pound spectacularly" at the seawall. Sit on the bench by the War Memorial, watching a suspicious pair of women, one in a long flowing white dress over sneakers, standing speaking English while looking at the sky (maybe looking for the comet we only hear about the following day), and one lone man that I flushed from his railing-post. But there are lots of cars coming down Main Street and going toward the customs area, and coming back they flash their lights disconcertingly right at me. (Oh, forgot to mention filming the courting doves returning from lunch---MY lunch.) I sit and dream, watching the moon very much brighten all but the thickest clouds, and feel more and more tired, yet content with the day. Start walking slowly toward the steps at 8:35PM, joined quickly by the foursome behind me, and I leave them, talking to some crazed old man who wanted ANY conversation, to go to the steps and see three or four foot-long eel-like fish with pointy snouts jostling each other. On the other side of the quay see what I think to be bunches of leaves from a small tree (though there ARE no trees here on the dock!), but when they swim to join the gar-like fish, they're LIVING: swimming alternately on side, flashing like a pale silver dollar, or upright, where they almost disappear into their thinness. The Rescue boat Captain starts making impatient motions around 9:10PM when the zodiacs haven't arrived yet, and Andy shows up to placate them, and he and a quite drunk Bob go to the moored zodiacs to have the Rescue personnel decide they CAN'T take passengers back to the ship without night-running lights, so we return in the RESCUE boat, quite sturdy, though Bob and Andy, alone in their zodiacs, race back BEFORE us. Get waved to by people on deck at 9:25PM, and I whisper to Olivia, "I hope they're filming us," but it turns out that the 7PM shuttle returned by Rescue boat also. Take pills, look through the stamps and the St. Helena book, and get EXHAUSTED to bed at 10:05PM, hoping to remember the day WELL enough to record it TOMORROW. And I sure DO, taking FOUR additional pages to fill it out!

THURSDAY, MARCH 28: 7:50AM: Just finished recording the two dreams from this morning, which necessitated making a DREAM2 file for the next set. Now I want to continue writing but GOT to take a shit before breakfast! That done, Diane chats endlessly about who she saw and sits across from me, quite accelerating the conversation-pace at THAT table, though I think the others are hoping she WON'T return on any following morning. Oatmeal and scrambled eggs with little burnt edges, two pieces of bacon, and a piece of toast with marmalade and one with peanut butter fill me up after the relative emptiness yesterday. Back to the cabin at 8:45 to work on the journal from yesterday, but don't finish by 9:30 and Bob's talk on Captain Cook from 9:35 to 10:30AM. Cook RTW I: Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde, Rio, Cape Horn, Tahiti (for transit of Venus), Society Islands, both islands of New Zealand, Tasmania, Djakarta, Good Hope, and England from 1768-1771 in the "Endurance." Cook RTW II in the "Resolution" and "Adventure" from 1772-1775, taking two COALERS, as Commander, to Madeira, Capetown, sailing BELOW Bouvet and Kerguelen Islands to CROSS Antarctic Circle on 1/13/1773, New Zealand, Tahiti, pack ice south, Easter Island, Tonga, Norfolk Island, Cape Horn, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, Capetown, England after 16,000 miles! Cook RTW III starts in 1776 to Capetown, New Zealand, Tahiti, Christmas Island, Hawaii, Nootka Sound near Vancouver, Bering Sea (turned back by pack ice, can't look for Northwest Passage from Western side), Hawaii, where he's killed in 1779 when they push him, he falls and bleeds, they find he's NOT the God Mono who showed up at a predicted time in a ship with a white sail, and they kill him in 1779, at the age of 51. Simon says the Oxford Museum has Cook's feather CLOAK of great beauty when he was a god, and that the Royal Maritime Museum at Greenwich has an exhibit on "Blood, Sea, and Ice" until June. THEN they talk about the comet in the southern sky, visible after 9:30PM, which we'll look for tonight. Back to cabin to pee, finding the bed made already so it's too late to turn in laundry at 10:35, and finish this to date at 11:15. The only OTHER activity today is Graham's talk at 5PM, so I guess I'll go onto the bridge for my 10s shot in the lightly clouded skies, and save the viewing of all the videotape until after lunch. Put the postcards in FRONT to remind me to do them before Ascension on Sunday---when everything's closed? The horizon is clouded but still free of birds, though there are lots of whitecaps in the noonday sun when I take photo 10:23 at 14 degrees 14 minutes South, and 7 degrees 34 minutes West. Simon calculates we'll pass the RMS St. Helena about 5PM, coming south on our course northward. He talks of his Military airlift out of Ascension, hoping to go ANOTHER military route which would take him to Antigua ("Where I'd call the wife for the weekend; she'd like that."); there's no REAL civilian traffic to Ascension, but the Royal Air Force publishes prices for citizens with permission. I leave and climb to the sixth deck, with Andy still writing, crotch stuffing his red shorts, Bill reading with his back to the sun, Freda scrunched under the railing, a line of five or six chatterboxes in the shade, and I go down to three to look into the open hatches to below, seeing no one since the crew is at lunch (Sacha, speaking with Simon, was embarrassed to be 3 minutes late on his announcement, which may explain Bob's announcement at 11:50AM that lunch would be in 15 minutes), and surprised to find the lowest decks still WET, with absolutely no one there. Back to get this to date by 11:56AM: better get the book out or I'll be doing this minute by minute! Having the colored pens is rather a KICK: never quite know which I'll be using for which purpose next! My bridge and the cabin feel quite cool; it's warm and humid out; the public areas are about halfway between. Let's see how far to rewind the FIRST videotape next. Put the battery to charge after it runs out rewinding the second tape---and I bet I didn't even SHOW the start of the second tape? No, I guess I did. Lunch is a rather dismal "vegetable stir fry" with a kasha-like grain that makes the whole thing taste like glue. Paul's suggestion of ketchup helps only slightly. Stewed blackberries over a sponge cake for dessert. Kate's passing out soft drinks and tonic water, and I'm tempted for a moment to ask for beer or a tonic, but decide water is fine. Back to rewind the first tape to where I should start: taking the Tristanians back the day we left, and take it into the lunchroom at 12:45 and surprised to see everyone still eating. When I pass Dorothy's table with my camera, she goes Oh-Ah and says she wants to see it, and it seems that Don and Ann make a point of NOT seeing it. Tell the Yanofskis, but poor Seymour sleeps through most of it. Rita comes over grinning and rubbing her hands together, bringing George and Dick with her. Trudy stays after to compliment me, and when I finish setting it up I glance back and there are at least 15 people lined up to watch, including a subdued Ruth. I insist that there'll be lots of dull times, and they all say I should keep on going. Trudy admires the steadiness of my hand, everyone oohs and aahs about the running shots from the Charabang, and I have to admit to SOME good footage. Diane says the Thorntrees are called that on the island, but they're really---and she gives the scientific name. Tape goes for almost an hour, getting back to my room at 1:50 flushed with success! Humid in the dining room, even more humid in the rooms; I guess we're REALLY getting into the tropics. Bill says we plan to get into Ascension early on Saturday and anchor near Boatswainbird Island and zodiac around it for a couple of hours before checking onto the island on Sunday. Simon volunteered to take our mail and mail it on MONDAY from the open Post Office if we need to. He also mentioned meeting the ham in Saddle River to give him a bottle of wine to thank him for letting him talk to his wife yesterday, and he said LUST was doing very nicely, up from an initial offering of 5 to something like 6.35, with which he was very happy. Now 2:12PM and feel too TACKY to do anything useful like write postcards. Have to see if I can OPEN the air vents in my room now! Struggle and sweat to do it, trying a pen-top, the glasses screwdriver, a coin, and finally manage to prize them open again---and after an hour it gets TOO cold, obviously. But it was DONE. Read IP until an announcement about 4:15PM that the HMS St. Helena was passing by just 12 miles from now. Grab BOTH cameras (in two trips) and get up to the deck to record this event, grabbing two cookies from the snack stack outside deck 6, then back to be waylaid by Jules wanting to return my battery charger. So I take it down and decide "What the heck," and hook up MY camcorder. NOW the screen goes into DELIRIA of flashes and lightings. What would happen if I just TOOK tape 23 and tried to PLAY it? So I put on the battery and put it on VTR and pushed PLAY, and it PLAYED! Ran into the dining room with it and it played THERE, but latterly without the sound. Got to see GREAT footage from what my audience called Westpoint Island! Toward the end it REALLY went off in color and synch, but then it turned out the BATTERY had gone dead. So I went back to the cabin and tried with the PLUG, and AGAIN it was showing even MORE footage: great stuff of albatrosses feeding each other! BACK to the dining room to be interrupted by Graham with his 5PM lecture on Bird Migration I. Migration is NEW; ice age COVERED the north. Some followed retreating ice edge. 40% of northern bird species migrate to Africa, about 5 billion (or as he says, five thousand million) birds migrate, and only HALF return. They may fly 3-4 days WITHOUT STOPPING. He's over, at last, at 6:05, and I CONTINUE fussing with the camera: NOW it refuses to go FAST, but sort of LAZILY REVOLVES AT NORMAL TAPE SPEED. This REALLY IS weird. Try it many times, but still the Lithium battery makes the time and prohibits any counter-readings. Sometimes it won't even REWIND, and there are LOTS of new "moisture" signals. But UNCONNECTING and then RECONNECTING power seems a good way to get done WHATEVER I want to do. Finally decide at 7:35PM that I've got to record all these things, and do this until 7:50PM, down to 11% memory remaining, which I might exhaust THIS evening. Rumors that it was raining outside, and the ship seems somewhat rockier at times. I'm totally involved with the camera, having asked Shiela if she'd mind if I took it back HOME to find an eyepiece for her and do the taping FOR her, and of course for myself. She seemed like she'd do it, but I kept insisting she should just think about it before the trip was over. Simon is heard in the background "apologizing" to Graham for not attending his show, just as Graham "apologized" to me for not attending my after-lunch Barred Ground Dove bowing tapes. I shrugged and said, "It was your loss." He again used the joke about the Spotted Flycatcher than only caught Spotted Flies. My too-cold room has its controls lowered, and I have to remember to try to spot the comet tonight, unless it's too cloudy. So I MUST do postcards tomorrow, as I should take a shower. But I feel like doing exactly NOTHING, and my thighs are still complaining about my 200 steps up Jacob's Ladder yesterday. So now to the pork medallion dinner. Paul and Rose keep talking about my camcorder, and Peter keeps asking rather stupid questions. At 8:47PM Bill gives a wrap-up, and Andy describes their scuba adventures, fully accredited, and Bob says the Governor ended the evening at a dinner at the Consulate, so that MUST have been the dress-up affair at the table for 26. Then try Don's lithium battery, and THAT works, but it doesn't help with the inexorable slow-forward of the tape almost anytime. But it's still DIFFERENT and it's still in the nature of an IMPROVEMENT, so I STILL have hope, though maybe Shiela hopes I DON'T get it to work? Charge up the large battery, and we'll see if THAT works now, and I'm about to get to this about 9:30 when I see the notation: Comet. Grab binoculars and go upstairs to find the 2/3 moon shining through about 80% cloud-cover. There's NO real visibility around the horizon, particularly to the south when it's supposed to be. Tony and Olivia are arguing about genetic inheritance, by Tony's nature LOUDLY, so I sit on a surprisingly wet table behind the snack bar to become dimly aware of the younger, shorter cook's assistant against one railing, quickly joined by Tanya, who sort of noses around me and then decides that I'm not who she might want me to be. Can't even sit around and look at the MOON without entering into someone's fantasies. Back to my room just as Jules comes out, and then Emery asks me how the temperature is, and I have to say it's just perfect outside. Try my camcorder AGAIN, and there's no progress, so I decide to leave in on all night since that "moisture" signal INSISTS on coming on, and no longer will it PLAY as it did before. At least the lithium battery makes the day and date and counter work, though the counter is NOT ALWAYS ENGAGED, particularly on rewind, which STILL only comes after a disconnection/reconnection. Finish this at 10:20PM, figuring I've got enough to do tomorrow with the postcards and finishing "The League of Youth" by Ibsen---and the dictionary-speller even accepts Ibsen!! Overdue for a shower, but at least I brushed my teeth today. Hope no enormous dreams this evening prevent me from getting into tomorrow and keeping this up to date, now that I've managed to stretch this out to line 58 of page 10. REDRESS for the g'dam SHEET at 10:30PM, and get to bed at 10:31PM; this line NOT a widow!

FRIDAY, MARCH 29: Up at 4:30AM to pee; cloudy skies. Up at 7:30, shit, sort out the pills, and have breakfast at 8 of oatmeal with BANANA, two slices of french toast, and juice. Then back to the INCREDIBLY frustrating VTR: at one point it even RECORDS the sounds I make when the red-record light is on, but I can't DUPLICATE that now! I think it actually PLAYS the blank tape, which means that it doesn't "know" what the tape's like, even the Hi8 goes OFF at points where the tape has gone bad? MY recorded tape's SOUND goes on and off at PLAY, and for a while it seemed to do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING except display the STBY light and record the PICTURE. Then, ONCE, taking the power off ALSO resets the date and time, which is a pain. Now at 11:35AM I have to advance to NOTBOOK6, probably SAVING the 2% memory remaining (least) to line's end. Continuing FRIDAY, MARCH 29, in NOTEBOK6, now at 11:45AM 3/29/96. Finish the VTR fuss at 9:30 and get to Graham's lecture on Bird Migration II from 9:35 to 10:35AM. Water is a product of FAT metabolism in migrating bird's body. Small birds fly 25 mph, or 2400 miles in 4 days. Back to AGAIN try every possible tape combination, maybe further ruining the recording head by constantly trying to read the water-damaged tape 23, but it seems tape 25 is ALMOST OK except in a section where the Hi8 logo goes off the window, where I suspect the tape's "identification" has been ripped off by the damaged head. And TODAY was the day that I MUST do the postcards and MUST take a shower unless I go over the border to FIVE days between. Now it's 11:50AM and obviously the NEXT main thing to do is have LUNCH. (Never DID shower today!) Lunch is bangers and beans, which would have been nice, except that the "bangers" were the most insipid, undercooked, meager wieners imaginable, and the "beans" were black-eyed peas, rather underdone. Seymour had two bowls of the tomato-macaroni soup, which gamble paid off with a relatively inedible main course. Had to tear the place apart before I found my address list, which was really in the FIRST place I looked, though I didn't look hard enough in detail. Have incidentally found three main "rattlers" in the cabin: the contents or the door of the medicine cabinet (the door can be muffled by stuffing it with towel before closing it), the bunk-ladder which can be shifted about, and the plastic light-fixture in the center of the cabin, which can only be nudged until it judders again. Then I missed the first few minutes of the video on Ascension at 1:15PM, so I had to squeeze into the front between Andy and Joe. The video concentrated with laughable consistency on the faces of laborers doing inconsequential matters, like talking on the telephone, operating earth-moving equipment, or doing incomprehensible things with satellite systems. Emphasis was on the Cable Company and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which Simon was later to describe as more or less fronts for the main STRATEGIC purposes of the island and its installations. Then bite the bullet and at 2:25PM return to the cabin for the writing of 19 postcards to 4PM, hoping to get many of them RETURNED to me, since I don't have enough to send them AND keep a copy for myself. Then get called to the upper deck for peanut-butter crunch snacks which were pretty bad, and a circle of sun-shunners under a canopy that I said looked like a game of "Spin the Bottle." At the front of the deck a group of us looked on, mesmerized, as we sailed toward a preternatural gate in the dark rain clouds though which an empyrean view of fluffy white clouds and powder-blue sky was visible. One wing of the rain clouds was clearly going to intercept our path, and though some said that three minutes of rain wasn't very much, when it started sprinkling I took to the lee side of the snack-room, watching with amusement as the crowd at the front dwindled as the tan wooden deck was peppered with rain, making it black and shiny until the water sank into the wood, when it became matte-black. Then it started in earnest, and the six or seven of us who remained on the deck gathered in a tightening circle. I'd already taken my photos of the following rainbow-fragment and the advancing cloud-gate and wrapped my telephoto lens and camera in a plastic bag. As it rained solidly around us, we watched the canopy fill like a triple-Z bra-cup on two sides of the central supporting rope, occasionally emptying when the ship gave a solid lurch to one side, but only when Katie poked it solidly did a solid veil of yellow water cascade splashingly off. She then used the back of a plastic chair to finish the emptying, by which time most of us were downstairs for the 5PM talk by Simon on Ascension. He describes the Composite Search Organizations (CSOs), the main one in a silver mine on the coast of Hong Kong Island, the second one here, that operated under a Royal Communications HQ of National Securities Agency (NSA) in Britain, like our super-secret National Resources Organization (?)(NRO) under the CIA, listening to world-wide communications of all types, in all languages and varieties of codes, eavesdropping for any secrets that might be used against us, particularly by China, and I get a renewed sense of the lunacy of government in general. He names Ascension "Hell with the fire gone out," since everything below 2000 feet is blackened and charred from its volcanic ancestry, and only in the greenery above have the trees and farm managed to subdue the landscape into "something like Essex." Cables radiate from Ascension as one of the three main transoceanic cable-centers: here, Direction Island in the Cocos-Keeling group in the Indian Ocean, and Fanning Island in Kiribati (pronounced Kira-BAHSS, as Christmas Island is pronounced Kira-sa-BAHSS, or something like it, in what Joe Smith insists is NOT a Japanese joke) in the Pacific. Simon asks Joe's impression of Fanning, and Joe says it's NICE, but not the NICEST. I afterwards ask him his connection, and he'd worked for years with planning, hotels, and tourism in a number of islands starting with Hawaii and including the Tuomotos and Fiji, and he talks with enthusiasm of a four-masted sailing ship that, in January, starts at Fiji, goes to places like Tonga and other "outer" islands, and makes a rare visit to Niue, a place he's been looking to go for years: "You can fly there, but it's terribly expensive, and it's better to go on a boat that's going to a NUMBER of places that are new to me." He doesn't remember the fare on this 80-passenger ship, but he says that freighters are "on the way out," though "they might come back" as a low-weight high-revenue cargo for freighters. He describes about 15 islands in about 30 days, which sounds more nicely concentrated than our trip, which he'd heard through the LifeLong Education Something, whose ad Seymour had during the rainstorm, for only 30 days, leaving out Madeira (so it probably started in the Canaries), coming SOUTH in a repositioning that mirrored ours, in September, for about $1500 more than our rates, excluding airfare. So EVERYONE'S doing it, and soon EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO will have been to these "rare" islands. He recommends a company on the west coast named Zegram, with an 800-number, but he says he'll give me a card and he'll fax the information to me. Simon ends about 5:50 and my chat with Joe ends about 6:15, and when I pass the bar Katie is working on a strawberry daiquiri without lime (which Ian says makes it fizz), and when she offers me a taste I say it's not a strawberry daiquiri, and she goes on the horn and advertises a rum punch 2-for-1 for this evening. She takes the Half-and-half I offered her before, offers me last night's Black Russian (which has Kahlua, not creme de cacao, as I'd suggested; just as Chardonnay, I recall too late, is better replaced by a Pinot Noir, not a Merlot, as I suggested to Bob Tucker, who seems to drink at the bar every night. Graham comes through with his "usual" Pernod, though he insists he doesn't have it EVERY night (no, just the nights I happen to BE there). We all chew on the too-hully popcorn, and at the end Katie admits she didn't make enough, ending with dipping them into a horseradish mix she uses for various Bloody's. I get rather plotzed, feeling vaguely nauseous sitting on a rickety barstool in a rocking bar, and when I get out the evening's pills, I take half a Bonine to let me feel better. The smoked trout with phyllo dough is great, and the veal medallion is tough but tasty with my buttered-up mashed potatoes and a nicely textured broccoli rather than the usual overcooked horror. Warm fruit tart for dessert. Bill crows about the coming zodiac circling of Boatswainbird Island, Graham talks of Bo'sun birds, and Bob gets out his sketches, which are rather childish but presumably good for identifying species. Back to the cabin to grab my binoculars at 9:30PM to see if the comet appears, and it's a beautiful night except for Tony's booming voice which I try to avoid, and then others come to the front railing to disturb me THERE. Nice stars and moon going toward full, but I go back down at 10PM to take the sheet and get to bed at 10:05, the place rather a mess, NOT having showered today, but at least most of the cards are ready for mailing (or Simon) on Ascension Sunday.