Asakiyume mita

One of the best things about going to Logan Airport (Boston's international airport) is getting to visit with these creatures of the ocean, set in the floor:







Those are just some--there are more.

This journey, I took the time to read the artist's plaque. They are by Jane Goldman, and the title of the overall work is Atlantic Journey



Apparently it was completed the year we returned to the United States from England: 1998. We'd been in and out of Logan many times before that, but now I can't imagine a journey there that doesn't involve visiting with these guys. (Though actually, any time we're not going to terminal E, the international departures and arrivals terminal, I guess we don't see them ... but almost all our travels involve terminal E, so.)

The title is great, because most people who leave or arrive from that terminal are, in fact, engaged in an Atlantic journey. (Not us when we're heading toward Japan or Timor-Leste, BUT OTHERWISE YES.)

Do you remember the snowy owl I posted about, the one that was rescued and being taken to a rehabilitator? I saw a follow-up story, and she's doing *great*. She had been so weak she couldn't stand and wasn't keeping food down, and now she's putting away many mice and small critters a day. They expect they'll be able to release her in the spring.

I had some year-end thoughts, but if I write them up, they'll go in a different post. Have some more floor sea creatures, under the cut.

( This isn't even all of them! )

We didn't set out with any plan do anything like a boat tour, and when we saw a brochure in a visitors' center somewhere, featuring a puffin wearing a captain's hat and a promise of seeing puffins, we thought it would be fun, but still it wasn't something we were actually planning on doing.



( conversation, legends, and bird information under the cut )

My attempts at photographing puffins, razorsbills, bald eagles, black guillmonts ("white wing patches, and sexy red legs" was how Ian taught us to recognize them), and cormorants hanging their wings to drain and dry were hopeless, so I'll post a couple of the Van Schaiks' own photos:

puffins!


razorbills




... and share my sketch of some seals instead. The scribbled note says "Mark said, when I said that they have dog faces, that his dad said the males have dog faces and the females have horse faces."



¹ I can't find any corroboration for this legend elsewhere, and I may have mangled it--but anyway, it makes a good story. (The closest thing I find is the remarks of John MacGregor, published in 1828, remarking about fishermen on the other side of Cape Breton, that they

are Acadian French, who live by pursuing cod, herring, and seal fisheries, together with wrecking; at which last occupation, in consequence of the frequent shipwrecks about the entrance of the Gulf during the spring and fall, for several years, they are as expert as the Bermudians, or the people of the Bahamas.

(But first: saw on Twitter that protestors shut down highways in Boston and New York City for Mike Brown. Good. As one person on Twitter said, "The unrest is sacred, holy, and necessary.")

Some time ago, mnfaure sent me a sea heart--a floating seed of the Entada gigas vine, which grows in the Caribbean (also Central America, northern South America, and Africa). The seeds from the Caribbean and Central America can float along ocean currents and arrive on Gulf Coast shores. On this day in Pen Pal, Em's brother finds one (a detail that only entered the story thanks to another friend of mine, 88greenthumb, who first told me about them.)

Here's mine (thank you, mnfaure).



It has two little holes in it, which let you see it's hollow inside:



In the past, they were made into snuffboxes and lockets; I'm going to make mine into a container for a tiny letter.

Yesterday I neglected to post what happened on August 25 in Pen Pal, so I will tell you today. Kaya's memories took a dark turn:

I won’t write more just now. I don’t like recalling those next hours and days. If I start to, the memories spring to life too real, too vivid.

. . . On a more pleasant note, what is your favorite lunar body of water?

Here is a handy list to choose from. I think I like the Sea of Vapors and the Ocean of Storms. The lakes are also good: there is a Lake of Autumn, and for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, a Lake of Spring, and also lakes of perseverance and forgetfulness. There is a Marsh of Epidemics and a Bay of Rainbows.


Crop of this photo, by Olga Gladysheva