Meanwhile, reading:
- Jim Brosnan, "The Long Season", the first of the baseball diaries, and a fine book. Helps that I had a complete set of 1959 Topps cards, so I knew the players on every team
- Julian Stockwin, Thomas Kydd series: "yet another" Royal Navy series set 1793 - 1815. Unusual in that Stockwin centers on the complexity of keeping a sailing ship floating. Also that Kydd starts as a pressed "landsman", learns his seamanship, and, by the third novel, is a commissioned lieutenant. The description of a hurricane hitting a 3,000 ton ship-of-the-line reminds me of my Dad's stories of surviving Typhoon Cobra off the Phillipines in 1944...except that Dad's ship was a 10,000 ton escort carrier, steel hulled and oil driven. Even in 1944, the hull was "oil canning" and aircraft were breaking loose, threatening to punch a hole through the ship. Kydd has a similar problem, but with a loose 32-pound long gun, rather than a loose dive-bomber.
- "Moby Dick". I Moby and "Walden" every ten years...this is a Moby year. Ten years is long enough that I've forgotten details and learned enough to understand more.