The View from the Hermitage, Day 110

As life things have turned out, I shall have the chance to be even more of a hermit later this month. It turns out that we will not be able to live in the basement while the hardwood floors upstairs are refinished. Not wanting to look for a hotel that would accept the family dog and cat, and not wanting to board them, we inquired of younger son and his spouse-equivalent whether we could use their cabin for a week. They live in Richmond City, but own 155 acres north of the city on which currently sits a simple two-bedroom house or cabin. They of course said yes, because that's what families do. It's not clear exactly which week we'll be doing this, maybe the week of the 20th or the next week.

It turns out that using the Internet at the cabin requires driving out to the main road and down it about a mile to a church parking lot. That's also the closest spot at which it's possible to get a cellular signal. If the husband needs Internet access for something major, he can drive back here (it's less than two hours driving) and stay with older son. I expect I will spend much of the day we come back here deleting superfluous emails and otherwise tying up digital loose ends. To be safe, I guess we should plan that one of us will drive to the church every evening just to check for any near or other emergency messages.

Needless to say, I have already created a pile of creative things to take with me. There will, after all, be lots of time that needs filling. A couple of needle felting kits I've neglected. Some fabric ink plus t-shirts and a canvas bag that need embellishing. My new small loom and some yarn that needs weaving. A book to finish and a couple more to start. I will, of course, take too many things, but that is definitely better than not taking enough and having to drive into civilization to buy things I don't really need.

The final plus side of this is that we may not need to rent a pod in which to store our furniture. If we will not be living in the basement, there's a hell of a lot of space down there. We can shift things and get half of the garage empty for things such as a long couch that will not make the curve to go down the stairs to the basement.

Meanwhile, the number of covid-19 cases in Virginia creeps back up. And who knows what this long weekend might spawn. Setting Virginia aside for a moment, I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in a state such as Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, or Texas. I expect my anxiety would be somewhere through the roof and in the clouds even were I hermitting as seriously as possible. No matter what I read or learned, I would likely feel as if virus seeds were wafting in the air all around me just waiting to slip in.

They took three more Confederate statues down in Richmond yesterday. One was of Matthew Fontaine Maury, known as "pathfinder of the seas." Naval ROTC at the University of Virginia resides in Maury Hall; I wonder how long it will be before the powers that be rename that building. The other two statues were cannons erected at the request of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society. The inscription beneath one is "This cannon marks the location of the second line of the Confederate defenses of Richmond." The inscription beneath the other notes that it commemorates "the spot where in 1861 a large earthwork of the inner line of defense was constructed." Upon hearing those inscriptions, older son and the husband suggested that the cannons might have been left there with a line added to each inscription noting that those defenses did not hold. The Confederacy lost. As one of the advisors of HWSNBN noted, history is written by the winners.

Combining the novel coronavirus with the current wave of demonstrations, an article I read yesterday suggested that the demonstrations did not contribute to the surge in covid-19 cases. I find that hard to believe. Evidently, the Memorial Day gatherings did contribute to the surge. If so, I expect that the July 4 gatherings tonight and tomorrow will contribute to their own surges. Lots to look forward to this month.

Speaking of July 4 gatherings, older son has endured nightly fireworks barrages set off by his neighbors. He noted that he's not sure what fireworks they might be planning for the weekend, but yesterday watched as a porta-a-potty was delivered to their yard.

Happy New Year!

I would have a photograph of last night's fireworks except that my iPhone for some reason will connect to the ship's router but not go beyond that to the Interwebs. The photos I took with my camera pale in comparison to the one I took with my phone. You'll just have to take my word for it.

The ship did New Year's Eve up right in Tromso last night. Rather than two dinner seatings for four-course meals, they did one seating for a five-course one. The crew well, the ones not cooking or serving dinner, ate and mingled with the masses. The ship then stayed in port for several hours longer than usual so that we could see the fireworks which turned out to be pretty darn incredible. The husband and I pre-gamed it watching individual fireworks set off all around the city. At one point we were joined by a German who had the same somewhat warped sense of humor that the husband and I do. A good time was had by all,

The part of the city we could see sat at the bottom of a fairly steep mountain up which runs a cable car. We could see teeny lights which ended up being the flashlights of people setting up some sort of flames (super luminarias?) that when lit spelled out 2018. As midnight approached, there were more and more fireworks sent up from the town at the foot of the mountain. At midnight, the official fireworks started at the top of the mountain. The last fireworks we saw were in Hue, Vietnam, in 2012. I actually think these were better. It definitely helped that they appeared as the crown to all the fireworks being set off below. As the fireworks went off, the 2018 on the mountainside became 2019. Those who had not already finished their champagne did so, various hugs were exchanged, and we all, or at least the husband and I, stumbled off to our cabins.

One of the plusses of a small ship and a small number of passengers is that you get familiar with the crew. I never knew who the crew member in charge of the hotel aspect of the voyage was on the ship we took in 2015. I never recognized any of the serving staff, or even the activity director. We've chatted this time with quite a few crew members. Last night, I exchanged New Year's hugs with the bartender, who would not surprise me at all if he asked what was in my wallet. And on New Year's Eve Eve, because we were passing the Trollfjord, they served mulled berry juice with or without alcohol and fish soup out on the flag deck. Both juice and soup were excellent (yes, I got mine with alcohol), and it was fun to kid around with the hotel manager and the other crew member helping with serving.

I realized that I could set one of the options on my Apple Watch to be the sunrise-sunset times of wherever I might be. Right now, it reads as "SUN DOWN ALL DAY." In that vein, here is yesterday's shot under the noonday sun.

And here is today's.

Later today, we will get to what may be our farthest north, 71 degrees, 2.28 minutes North (27 degrees, 51.17 minutes East, if you're interested in the other dimension). While there was snow on the ground in Tromso, none fell while we were there. Further north, there is more snow, both on the ground and in the air. The snow in the air was falling sideways, but not fast enough to be a blizzard (that's using the western definition rather than the eastern one of "hell of a lot of snow" one). There was an excursion to a monument sitting at the northernmost point in mainland Europe. Some 40 passengers went. We had no interest in spending almost $200 to visit an outdoor monument in the night-time dark. We did take a short walk into the town center; only a grocery store was open given that New Year's holiday. The falling snow was very powdery. Returning to the ship, we each dropped for a snow angel.

A couple of hours have passed, and no evidence of those angels remains. Mother Nature wins again!

When we leave Honningsvag, where we are currently docked, we will be in open waters until early tomorrow morning. For our two bouts of weather, I have taken sea-sickness pills, eaten ginger candy or chewed ginger gum, and slept. I am not sure which helps the most, though the ginger candy or gum is what I think quiets my stomach enough that I can fall asleep. Blaine appears not to be bothered, though he has taken the pills when I have. Does this mean I would not sail on this ship again? Heck no! I'd much prefer this small ship to one of the big ones even with the no-stabilizer aspect.

Possibly because of the small number of passengers, the activities director announced yesterday morning that small groups of passengers would be permitted to visit the bridge, something that is usually a huge no-no. I immediately ran down to the reception area to sign up. The husband was just waking up then and somehow missed the announcement. As one might expect, the lack of stabilizers makes the ship harder to sail. The captain said that he could move onto one of the larger, stabilizer-equipped ships in the fleet with no problem, but a captain of one of those ships could not easily move to this smaller ship. There are segments of our course that have been sailed since the coastal ships started in 1893. There are other segments that have changed. They still have the capability to do a depth sounding from the bridge, but never need to given that the information is now readily available. The path to becoming a captain has changed over the years. The captain said that as he came up the ranks, he served in various able-bodied seamen positions before going to school for the technical training to captain a ship. Today, the classes come before the experience.

The husband and I recently learned that the U.S. Naval Academy for several years stopped teaching the students celestial navigation but had recently re-introduced it into the curriculum. I asked that captain whether he had been trained in celestial navigation. He said that while that was part of the training, using it was never needed due to today's GPS. Famous last words? I certainly hope not!