To everything there is a season ...

It's been a while I know.  Blame it on a bad bout with the flu coupled with a major holiday disappointment within the family.  Also, it seemed this blog had gotten away from its original intended purpose and turned into something of a personal journal, which almost by definition is bound to bore a reader to tears, if not the writer himself.  So, with that in mind, as we on this rock start another voyage around the sun, maybe it became necessary to stop and take a little stock and find that original direction which was simply to be an outlet for writing, an outlet that was not offered on any other platform at the time.  Somehow I let it evolve from that into relating daily experiences and not even expressing those very well.  So, for a while, posts may be few and far between.  Anyone who writes knows sometimes the creative tide ebbs and floods and it has been ebbing for a while, but will come back, it always does.

So, with an ocean metaphor as a transition, some random occurrences came up in the past couple of days, the kinds of things that get that tide turned.

Oh the places you will go

Some time ago I wrote about the ocean storm we experienced aboard the Arctic Tern III several years ago.  That was the maiden voyage for that vessel.  Recently I came across another blog that detailed more recent voyages on that very same sailboat.  A couple of years ago this fellow blogged a trip on her down the West Coast to Cabo.  His account of that voyage is on Captain Howard's Blog here. I left a comment on his blog pointing to my own post about the maiden voyage and, twice now he has added a comment to mine.

The first:

Thanks for that comment Tim, particularly the website/blog_ ’60* North’. Readers; On the left hand side there is a posting on the ‘HMS Bounty’ with an interesting human interest note about one of the crew lost in the Bounty disaster… Claudene Christian.

Err… that would be the blog/website ‘Alaska with Attitude’. My step dad grew up in Alaska so I have provided him with the Link…thanks again for the post, Tim.

Then today came a second one, an update.

I just reread your experience on Arctic Tern III — somewhere between South Africa and the Caribbean at present I think.

That one put a chill through me; the boat is still adventuring and I want to be there.  So it goes.

A left-handed compliment?

In a couple of other older posts I talked about this new Iditarod book coming up in the near future.  An editor is now going through it and unfortunately the publisher has forced her into making serious cuts in the manuscript.  The book post is here.  Another taken from one of the articles I wrote for it is here.  The editor sent an email today suggesting one cut she would like to make in the piece about the musher in that post.  My precious prose?  Oh no!

Now to put this in some context, I am also involved in editing thousands of words out of a manuscript and I do sympathize with the Iditarod editor.  In fact the cut she proposed was fine with me.  It really took nothing away from the main part of the story and if that helps, great.  And after the first shock I went back and read the rest of her email and read something that makes me want to put my board up on a wave of that incoming tide and take the ride.  Here's what she said: "Your stories were very difficult (to cut) because they're so darned good."

I'll take that with a thank you.

So with that for a start to another orbit, it is time to bring up the quality of the effort here and get away from day to day life.  But, I am NOT giving up on the bird pictures.

... and a time for every purpose under heaven.