Log of SV Wendaway

Smiling back in 1957

Did you get the Asian flu? I did, and now I’m glad.

The year was 1957,  Grand Junction, Colorado, and I was nine. My older sister and my parents got sick and sometimes it didn’t seem like there was anybody to take care of me.  I was not very happy.

Too bad I was not able to talk to my terrific doctor, Steve Kurdyak. Steve unfortunately hadn’t been born yet and couldn’t tell me what  he related to me yesterday.

I’d gone to see him about getting the flu vaccine before leaving for Mexico. Unfortunately, the fall roll-out of the latest flu vaccine wouldn’t be available until November.

“But you’ll probably be okay without it,” he said. Continue Reading »

Carl Jung' s crazy adventure

OK, we are now getting ready to leave Vancouver for Guaymas and to start our third season of cruising along the Pacific coast of Mexico. I have a sheet of marine plywood, cut up into chunks so it will fit into my car. I have a new portable espresso machine, some engine parts, and bags and bags of clothing and domestic goods for the Hurricane Jimena victims.

But there is something that I would dearly love to be bringing down, but it’s on backorder.

It is the new Jung book, The Red Book, which is not due to hit the bookstores until next month, according to an article in the New York Times,  Carl Jung and the Holy Grail of the Unconscious.  So my car now has a book-size space to be filled with something else. Perhaps something cheaper, too (Amazon has it on sale for $105.) Continue Reading »

Our adventuresome Black Dog friends

Maybe you read the intriguing NYT article,  Are Your Friends Making You Fat? I have a related question: can your friends make you adventurous?

The basic gist of the article is that a certain “social effect” is at work in our lives, so that clusters of friends appear to “infect each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking”, in the words of contributing NYT writer Clive Thompson. Continue Reading »

The wreck of HMS Association

POOR Cloudesley Shovell.  The admiral was aboard his flagship HMS Association when it ran aground on the treacherous shores of the  Scilly Islands in 1707.  He survived the grounding but when he came onshore, nearly dead,  he wasn’t dead enough for the Scillonians.  They killed him not out of malice or spite, or because he represented a foreign power (the Scilly Islands were then and are still part of the British Isles).   They killed him because they believed British law required it. Continue Reading »