Things can go swimmingly for so long that they seem to be proof you will make it. Success by sunk cost! Then, smack in the middle of a shouted discussion about politics, alcoholism, and past lovers, you run aground at full speed off some unnamed headland. Is that not always the way? […]
“I didn’t think I’d learn so much,” my friend Chris said. We had been in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) all day, headed from Southport, North Carolina, toward Belhaven Marina, up the Pungo River in North Carolina. Our first four days up the East Coast from Florida had been offshore. This was our […]
People have been saying they would have liked to go on this trip, or wish we would pick them up in Charleston, or they tell me good-naturedly they are jealous, etc. Believe me, I understand. It is an opportunity of a lifetime, and it is my great good fortune to know Chris, […]
My friend Chris is good at fixing mechanical things, which is good because he has a tendency to poke at them to see if they will continue to work, even if they are vital. As he learns the navigation system on his new boat he likes to poke at the screens to […]
I think we can say scientifically that the universe perks up when we approach new ventures. The data is in. The universe gets interested. You gotta be careful out there. Before I left for this trip, I was rushing around but paused to eat some dry stir-fry on the couch while watching […]
A friend texted recently to say he had bought a new yacht. Ok, I said. He asked if I would like to help him transit it from Fort Pierce, Florida, to his home port of Havre de Grace, Maryland, a trip of about a thousand miles up the East Coast, in the […]
Craig L. Symonds’s The US Navy: A Concise History (Oxford UP 2016) is a book that in its brevity (116 pages), simple texture, and insights could have been written only by a master of the subject. Symonds is emeritus at the US Naval Academy and was a visiting professor at the US Naval War […]
Some people go to Vegas. I gamble on florists, who must keep their stock impeccably fresh by leaving lovely flowers in the Dumpster for me to find. Tacky, yes. But there is never any goop or crud in their Dumpsters, just lovely long stems, a few slimy or blackened but most still crisp […]
Matthew Korbfort called me when he was still Matthew Stenfort. I answered the phone in mild amazement. Matthew was in his early twenties and, like everyone his age I knew, he never called anyone. He had never called me. If he was not so young, I would have been full of dread that […]
Back in 2021 I wrote a piece about First Lieutenant Amy Nickles, an American army nurse from Georgia who was awarded the Bronze Star in World War Two and saw as much or more of the European Theater as famed writer Ernie Pyle. I became interested in her because I could find […]
