fog

A few observations, though today is a day when observation is in fact out of the question:

 

1)      That’s because now that the sea is calm, we’re encased in an astonishingly thick, white fog.

2)      Yesterday and the day before our faculty bird specialist, Professor Doughty, spotted a number of albatrosses, a couple of which came very close to the ship.  These he has now identified, with the help of a student photographer, as black-footed albatrosses and Laysan albatrosses.

3)      Last night Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet on our faculty, gave a reading from his works. These include not only poems but song lyrics, so he interspersed his readings with sound recordings of the songs being performed by his band and also a student-filmed video.

4)      The other night we all went to the crew talent show, a boisterous event filled with good spirit, whoops, and hollers.  The excellence—the efficiency and the generosity—of the ship’s crew is one of the most remarkable features of the voyage.  I’m not sure it can ever be conveyed sufficiently.

5)      Even as I write this, the fog is receding a little.  I say that with slight regret, because the fog has seemed appropriate in a way.  Tomorrow, after all, comes a day we’ve all been long anticipating—at least those of us on the voyage’s administrative team have long anticipated it, since it has muddled every schedule we’ve tried to concoct.  Tomorrow is the day that, because of our crossing the International Date Line, we will experience twice.  It happens to be the seventh birthday of one of the ship’s passengers, and his parents are being very creative about providing him with a celebration worthy of a double birthday without setting unreasonable precedents.