The Agrinautica

   Okay am I to adjudge from the lack of comments that no one else finds this as amusing as I do? Well I'm amused and will carry on regardless.

   The town square is half dust, half puddle—an architectural afterthought caught between half-ruined stucco façades, sun-bleached fruit crates, and a rusted water tower scrawled with names no one claims. Overhead, laundry flaps lazily from wire to wire, and a dead moth floats belly-up in a puddle. The Nimrod is nowhere in sight.
   Rafael Panza stands at the edge of it all. His capybara, Sancho, stands beside him, blinking thoughtfully at a nearby cantaloupe. No sign of a ship. Not even a landing strut.
   Nearby, a largish redheaded man with a round head like a jack o lantern and a boyish grin is deep in conversation with a slim, rumpled man in a faded waistcoat. The redhead is all freckled mischief and kinetic shrugging.
   “I’m telling you,” says Rousseau, rubbing his temples. “She looked normal in the profile. I mean okay she was a bit green and her teeth looked a bit sharp but I assumed it was a filter. Girls are always using filters. We agreed to meet at that new romantic Alderaanian restaurant.”
   “And then she was a goblin,” says Ben, delighted.
   “Not metaphorically. A literal goblin. Yellow eyes. Fangs. Small purse.”
   “But was she cute?”
   “Well, kind of menacingly cute, but a dating profile is a sort of social contract and she violated it! And somehow bamboozled me into signing up for a starship!”
   Rafael steps closer, drawn in. “Excuse me. You were recruited by a goblin?”
   Rousseau nods in embarrassment.
   “I think she came for me too,” Rafael says. “Do either of you know where the ship is?”
   Ben’s eyes twinkle with trouble. “Oh sure. You’ll want to head down the alley where the bricks smell like glue. Past the man with the violin case but no violin. Look for a closed door that’s slightly ajar in concept but not in form. Knock three times on the pipe that isn’t connected to anything, and when you hear the sound of a walnut cracking, say the word taxonomy. Then wait.”
   Rafael just blinks.
   Ben beams. “If a woman with an eel on her shoulder offers you tea, say no. That part’s important.”
   “Lies corrode the social contract Ben” Rousseau replies stiffly. ”And didn’t your pranking get you signed up?”
   Ben raises both palms. “Somehow she convinced me, actually got me to think it was my idea, to impersonate a SpaceFleet officer to play a prank on my friend Mick. Had to sign some paperwork of course, and next thing I know I had been tricked into signing on. She said I was ‘culturally compliant with improvisational tasks’ and ‘emotionally desensitized to unnecessary paperwork,’ which—fair. So yeah, I’m crew now. Not sure when we leave. Or how.”
   Rousseau sighs. “Look, the captain is over there." He points to a group across the square.
   “Ask for Captain Kirk,” Ben calls out as Rafael walks away.
   Ahead, near the shade of a flickering old-style viewscreen kiosk, four figures stand deep in argument. They're clad in varying interpretations of the Spacefleet uniform, with the posture of people who were trained to give lectures, not follow orders.
   Socrates, bare-chested beneath his uniform coat, speaks with a bellyful of emphasis.
   Aristotle, sharp-bearded and squinting, gestures with a half-eaten sandwich.
   Plato, wearing a robe and mirrored sunglasses, is carving shapes into the dirt with a stick.
   And Diogenes, lean and sun-withered, sits half-splayed under the kiosk bench, throwing dried peas at pigeons.
   A yellow stray dog lies beside Diogenes, head on its paws, ears flicking in the shade.
   “A hot dog,” Aristotle counters, “is by nature telic—it seeks its own completion. The bun encloses, but does not define.”
   “Is not a sandwich merely a conceptual vehicle?” Socrates is saying
   “It is a sandwich,” says Plato flatly. “But it is a sandwich within the ideal realm.”
   “I’m not saying a hot dog is not a sandwich,” Aristotle argues. “I’m saying it is a liminal food-object that resists binarism.”
   “It doesn’t matter,” says Diogenes. “I’ve eaten both from the same dumpster. They taste the same when you’re free.”
   Rafael stops, Sancho sniffing the dog’s tail. “Excuse me... I was told to speak to Captain Kirk?”
   The philosophers fall silent.
   The dog lifts its head.
   “Yes,” Diogenes says simply. “That’s him.”
   The dog wags once.
   Rafael looks down at it, unsure. “He’s in charge?”
   Diogenes nods. “Well he thinks so and who are we to judge?”
   Rafael glances at the others. Socrates shrugs. Plato scratches the dog’s ear reverently.
   The dog wags its tail once.
   “I was told to join the Nimrod,” Rafael says, cautious now.
   “Ah,” says Plato. “Then you’re one of us.”
   “So… who actually commands the Nimrod?” Rafael asks.
   Diogenes stands, brushing off crumbs. “Command is a fiction. Leadership is a burden. But I do hold the keys.”
   “Do you know where the ship is?”
   They look at each other.
   Diogenes (looking into the distance thoughtfully): “We were too busy asking why, we hadn’t thought to ask where.”
   Socrates (genuinely): “We have determined, through dialectic, where the ship is not. This, I think, is a start.”
   Aristotle (consulting a notebook): “Given its function is to convey officers through space, we can infer it is wherever that function is presently not being enacted. Which… includes here.”
   Plato (gesturing vaguely to the horizon): “We are searching for the Form of the ship. Its shadows are many, but its true berth eludes us.”
   Diogenes (to no one in particular): “Someone mentioned a windmill, but they were unreliable.”
   Rafael (pauses, then): “The person or the windmill?”
   Diogenes (smirks slightly, tosses a pebble at a passing drone): “Yes.”
   Rafael: “…So none of you know.”
   Socrates: “Knowing that we do not know is, in fact, the beginning of knowledge.”
   Diogenes chuckles. The dog barks once.
   Just then, Plato points past the plaza. “There—Ensign Leila N’dere. She remains from the previous crew. She knows.”
   Rafael jogs after her, Sancho trotting loyally behind. The square fades behind him as he catches up to a short woman with an aura of quiet composure about her. Her braids are wound back in a tight, utilitarian crown. She holds a small, pistachio ice cream in one hand, and a digital tablet in the other.
   “Excuse me,” Rafael says, out of breath. “Are you with the Nimrod?”
   “Yes” she says without stopping, “I’m returning to the ship. I wanted fish fingers, which at home are just pieces of chicken,” she complains in a precise and lyrical kenyan accent, but the vendor here gave me actual fingers of some ki–” she sees Sancho and stops. “What is that ... that--” she looks at Rafael, eyes narrowing, gauging how she can describe Sancho without offending Rafael overly much. “… rodent of unusual size?”
   “Sancho. He’s... harmless.”
   She frowns and sighs and continues walking.
   “Why isn’t it parked at the city’s main SpaceFleet landing pad?” Rafael asks.
   “That spot’s allocated to the USS Oversight,” Leila replies dryly.
   “But that ship left months ago.”
   Leila takes a solemn lick of her ice cream. “The allocation remains.”
   Rafael blinks. “That’s absurd.”
   “Compared to other things,” she says. “It’s relatively minor.”
   They walk on, Sancho waddling contentedly behind. Rafael glances back once toward the philosophers, still mid-debate. Diogenes has fallen asleep. Captain Kirk the dog is licking his own foot.
   Rafael is not sure what kind of story he’s walked into.
   But it’s too late now.

   This past May 14th, I turned 43, and my grandfather died at 98.



   He was born in 1927 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where his parents had immigrated from Germany in 1913. He grew up speaking Portuguese and German fluently as native languages and also taught himself English and Spanish. Here are his own autobiographical words:

   "Coming from a comfortable middle class family in pre-World War I East Prussia, my father took mother and his 7-year old son Karl (who became Carlos in Brasil) from a previous marriage to a drastically different, significantly less civilized environment in southern Brasil, where she worked very hard and endured much stress and many indignities while they operated a small hotel in the wild west atmosphere of Passo Fundo, Nonohay and Carazinho, where people carried guns, exactly like we see in our movie westerns.
In southern Brasil (in the state of Rio Grande do Sul), Father worked as a surveyor and eventually they moved to Rio, where he worked at the German-language newspaper (Deutsche Rio-Zeitung) and where I was born. I remember occasionally visiting him in his office. Increasingly intense wartime anti-German passions caused us enormous difficulties, including the closing of my school two years before I would have finished, so that I never graduated from high school. Innocent German citizens were imprisoned on Ilha das Flores (Island of Flowers), exactly like innocent Japanese and Japanese-American citizens were interned in camps in the U.S. during WW II. German ships that happened to be in the harbor were confiscated and Rio’s German Hospital became the Brazilian Air Force Hospital.
Our home in Santa Teresa was invaded and plundered by mobs [because we were German]. I managed to jump down a back wall and run to a small store to phone my brother who called the police, who came and simply stood by the gates to our house, doing nothing to prevent the plundering!
   Father could not find a job, so Mother had to work as a nanny for wealthy countess Modesto Leal, who had three daughters and a spoiled son. Coming home at night, she brought us left-over food from her place of work, such were our circumstances! My brother Carlos had been the personnel manager at a Brasilian airline ("Condor”), but when WW II broke out, he was fired. Carlos then eked out a living by peddling esoteric pharmaceutical drugs. I was fond of my 22 years older (!) half-brother, who was always kind and caring to me."

   And the following is from the start of a clearly autobiographical book he started but sadly didn’t get very far on:

   "In the late forties, Ipanema beach was very uncrowded and considered to be far removed from bustling downtown Rio de Janeiro. If you went there today, you would be hard pressed to imagine that Ipanema was once a quiet, moderately affluent residential suburb of Rio. But this story begins in the idyllic days of that beach, when a colorful group of Friends in their early twenties met at a certain spot on weekends to talk about girls, cars, sports (which usually meant soccer), hiking, hobbies, to play beach volleyball and yes, to take an occasional swim. The group was quite diverse: [various character descriptions illustrating the great ethnic and cultural diversity of the time and place], and myself, born and raised in Rio of German parents. Of course we would ogle the lissome girls in their miniscule tangas and try to engage them in conversation. The girls would congregate in their own groups, and we were forever trying to promote mergers... There were wonderous stories of romantic conquests, many of them probably brazenly embellished. It was a welcome relief after the war years, which had split up friendships among youngsters like myself of a naive, impressionable age.
   The propaganda from both the warring sides was so intense that we often did not know what to believe, until the facts became increasingly clear. l am embarrassed to admit that at war’s end l was ashamed of my parents for the sole reason that they were German, and the Germans had committed the unspeakable atrocities of the holocaust. For a time l didn’t speak to my parents, even though they had done absolutely nothing wrong, quite the contrary – we had a Jewish family living with us as paying guests.
   Eventually it dawned on me that a Zebra cannot wish its stripes away, it will always remain a Zebra, and I, like it or not, l will always remain of German descent, so I should try to make the best of it, to atone, in my individual way, for the sins of my blood brothers. This background partly explains my fascination with the Leica, which I came to regard as a dignified symbol of German craft. It helped me to balance the unconditionally bad image that l had acquired of everything German. Not only the smooth precision of the Leica itself, but especially the extraordinary people behind it – and this is what much of this story is about."

   Rolf bought his first Leica camera on Monday, February 21st, 1949, from the Leica distributor in his home city of Rio de Janeiro. He paid for it in 12 installments. Leica features prominently enough in his life that we need to make a quick detour into photographic history:

   In 1925 the Leica* company invented the first successful production 35mm camera. Or to be very specific, Leica engineer Oskar Barnack did. Rolf denies my father Oscar is named after him but I'm not sure we believe this denial. The ease of use and portability of the Leica camera revolutionized photojournalism, street photography and recreational photography. That famous photo of the Hindenburg burning up? That was taken on a Leica. On any account, Leica, a German company, not only represented some of finest engineering facilitating the burgeoning new art of photography, they also stood out as an example of Germans with ethics: in what has become known as the “Leica Freedom Train” the Leica company hired as many Jewish employees as they could and sent them to the United States to get them out of Germany. To quote wikipedia:

Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States. Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany.
   German "employees" disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier went to Leitz's Manhattan office, where they were helped to find jobs. Each new arrival was given a Leica camera. The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press. The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks until the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, when Germany closed its borders.

   Or to quote his own words again: “I came to the realization that this collection of fine, precise, beautiful instruments constitutes a symbol for me, a symbol that represents my German heritage by means of something good, something that is extremely well made, something that is associated with many wonderful human beings who I feel highly privileged to have met. These symbols counterbalance the heavy burden of guilt that I and many like me perceive as having to bear for being of the same heritage as those who committed unspeakable acts during World War II, acts of which we are constantly reminded and subliminally made to feel responsible for by the media, even though I was far away from those tragic events, having been born and raised in Brasil, never having left that country until many years later. That is why I cling to that symbol of good German craftsmanship, which, coupled with a culture rich in scientists, poets, composers, painters, explorers and philosophers, gives me the inner strength to sustain the faith in my heritage in the face of such powerful deterrents!”
(*technically Leitz Camera Company, but to keep it simple I'm calling them Leica throughout this)

   In probably 1947 (ie when he was 20) he met 34 year old Sheila Tobin at a double blind date where they had each been set up with someone else. Sheila’s father Patrick "Tinc" Tobin had immigrated to Brazil from Ireland (to work on the railroad) and her mother, Elisa Lins Caldas, was of a family whose history in Brazil goes back beyond records.. A cousin’s description of Sheila’s father at this time is “a lovely tall, kind gentle person, I would say a lonely man” [He and Elisa had separated]. Rolf and Sheila were married the next year in 1948. Sheila’s birthday was May 14th, which is my birthday and of course the day Rolf died (on what would have been her 112th birthday)
   Brazil has mandatory military service, which initially he loathed, but then he got transferred to translating English manuals which he actually kind of enjoyed..
   He was then working in a telephone factory when his father-in-law (my great grandfather Patrick Tobin) encouraged him to apply to an American university and then helped him afford the ticket to come to the United States on a student visa to study electrical engineering at Purdue University. It was a 12 day passage on the steamship SS Argentina – arriving in New York in mid winter (Jan 21st, 1952) must have been a severe shock to someone from tropical Brazil. Already of meagre resources and with the exchange rate being very bad he arrived in the states very much with the proverbial “$5 in his pocket.” To pay for university he got another factory job and eventually got a Fulbright scholarship. Just a few months later, in April of that year, Sheila followed with their 16 month year old son Oscar on a Pan Am turboprop DC-6 with a layover in Trinidad. Because this was a more civilized age, the airline issued my dad and his mom both elegant certificates on behalf of “Jupiter Rex” for having crossed the equator - dad’s is framed on the wall above his desk to this day. (I don't have at hand a picture of dad's but here's someone elses)

   Newly immigrated into the States he faced discrimination both for being Brazilian and for being German. And again there was that shame for what Germany had done, but, already a fan of photography in general, the Leica company stood out to him as representing everything good about Germany that he could be proud of (as mentioned above). So he drove fifteen hours from Purdue University in Indiana to visit a Leica factory near Toronto and ask if he could possibly have a tour. The factory director and head of Leica Canada, Günther Leitz, was so impressed he'd driven all that way that he gave him the tour and insisted he stay at his house before driving back. Already a fan of the company and product, he felt like this was the first time anyone had been kind to him since coming to the United States.

   In 1955 he began working at Kodak as an electrical engineer: “A manager came out to the motel where we were staying after we first arrived in Rochester in my ‘42 Dodge and gave me money to pay for food and rent for my family! When I was unhappy with my first job as a development engineer, the company had a program in which you spent two months in each of the major divisions of the company, and you had the opportunity of picking the one that you liked.
   Even though I was an engineer, I liked the lively and creative environment of the International Advertising Division so much that I took a chance of leaving my engineering training behind for the exciting travel and creative field involved in that division.”
He excelled in the marketing division due to his gregarious extroverted nature, language abilities, and genuine passion for cameras and photography.
   He settled with his family in Rochester, upstate NY, where during Kodak's height most of the big buildings in town seemed to belong to Kodak. He was proud to work for Kodak during its golden years. Unfortunately Kodak bet wrong on digital cameras, shelving their early prototypes as they'd challenge their film sales, and when I visited Rochester in 2023 it was a town full of boarded up former Kodak buildings.
   But on any account he lived the whole rest of his life (other than frequent travels) in the house in the beautiful foresty suburb of Irondequoit there where my dad and his brothers grew up.

   His wife my grandmother (“Daddysmum”) unfortunately died of breast cancer in 1990 and I regret that I barely knew her, as I was then only 8 and had only traveled to see them in New York a few times. Fortunately I got to spend more time with “Dad-dad,” especially in 1997 when I lived with him in Ireland for awhile. I remember him for being deeply knowledgeable about all things camera, very friendly with everyone, and inclined to sometimes be downright goofy.

   Meanwhile back in camera news, the Leica company went bankrupt or nearly so at some point, due possibly also to the change in the market brought on by digital cameras, and sold off any historical cameras they had. Later, reconstituted under new ownership (no longer the Leitz family) the company wanted to have a museum at their HQ and began to look around, and who happened to have one of the biggest and best collections of Leicas of note? My grandfather who had been collecting them all these years for mere love of them. That famous photo of the Hindenburg burning up? He had that camera. I don't mean the same model, I mean that camera. So now there's a Fricke Collection at the Leica Museum. Curious for an outside perspective I asked ChatGPT about the Fricke Collection and it says thus:

Yes, the Leica Museum at Leitz Park in Wetzlar, Germany, features items from the renowned Rolf Fricke Collection. Rolf Fricke, a Brazilian collector of German origin and a founding member of the Leica Historical Society of America (LHSA), amassed an extensive collection of Leica cameras and related equipment. His collection is considered one of the most significant private Leica collections ever assembled.
   The museum showcases a range of rare and historically significant Leica items from Fricke's collection, including early prototypes like the UR-Leica, design studies, and limited-edition models. These exhibits provide visitors with a comprehensive look into Leica's rich history and technological advancements

   (Regarding this collection, from an email from him to a Leica executive: “I would like you to understand that my collection is a powerful symbol to me, not a frivolity nor a materialistic investment. As a matter of fact, one could say that, in terms of money, it is worth zero to me, because I cannot bear to sell it, as it has so many priceless human connections.”)

   Most recently, when I visited in 2023 he was still living alone and driving himself around (at 96!). We went to one of his favorite restaurants, Monte Alban Mexican Grill, where the whole staff, all from various South American countries, greeted him with genuine enthusiasm – I don’t mean the formulaic greetings every customer receives, I mean they cheerfully exclaimed across the room at the sight of him, greeted him with the kisses-on-both-cheeks, fawned over him like he was their own dear abuelo, waitresses assigned to the other end of the restaurant came by to say hi, a waitress who was already off duty and in her street clothes came to greet him, the manager came out from back. He exchanged witty repartee with them all and harmless charming flirtations with the senoritas.
   I thoroughly enjoyed this last visit. As I wrote at the time: “My grandfather got up to bid us goodbye [at 5:30am!] and was surprisingly wakeful and bright eyed and bushy tailed. While saying goodbye I was acutely aware that he being 96 this could very well, odds probably more than likely, that it might be the last time I see him alive.” Which it turned out to be.
   And so his story of a lifetime pursuing his noble passion of cameras and of enriching the lives of everyone he came in contact with comes to its conclusion.

   He is survived by his three sons, seven grandsons, six great grandchilden, and his lasting contributions to photographic history.


I swear he didn't usually have that mustache.


This, like the above picture, is not taken at a museum, but his house! Busts of important people in camera history: (from front to back) Oskar Barnack, inventor of the Leica camera; Ernst Leitz I, who gave the fledgling microscope manufacturing company his name; his son Ernst Leitz II; who made the risky decision in 1924 to place the then very unconventional Leica camera in production at a time of serious economic depression; his son Ernst Leitz III, on whose watch the company went broke. (And in the flesh, my illustrious grandfather)

   So I was recently playing around with ChatGPT since it's been updated since I last played around with it a bit. While I'm in general horrified about the implications of people using ChatGPT to create content, I wanted to explore its capabilities. It's interesting because while it can create a pretty good little short story on demand, thinking about what said output is _missing_ and trying to push it to improve that is an interesting exercise that probably benefits the human writer.
   To make its answers not just pollyanna imaginings without context, I'd kept all my previous questions to it in one chat and told it directly to reference previous topics as much as possible. I had recently been asking it about the philosophies of various philosophers so they featured prominently which I really liked.

   We'll skip the first few stories which involved Socrates, Diogenes, and some other characters in ancient Greece trying to thwart Eloncles, a musk merchant (see what I did there? ChatGPT, otherwise insightful, refuses to make any connections) attempting to import various products with dire biosecurity consequences (I told you its based significantly on previous conversations I'd had with it). Originally "a squirrel farmer" was a background character and then I suggested the already introduced scheming merchant was dealing in musk from these squirrels. In the last iteration before we travel to space the musk had taken on some interesting properties akin to the Spice Melange of Frank Herbert's Dune series. Anyway the following results I think are entertaining and ultimately had me laughing to hard I had tears in my eyes.

   We'll begin wherein I've asked it to put noted philosopher, founder of "cynism" Diogenes, in the "unwinnable situation" from Star Trek, the Kobayashi Maru scenario. I'll make occasional changes to its version with [] brackets.

( Philosophers In Space )

   On May 29th, 2024, on a remote forest road in northern Florida, an aberrant honey bee specimen was intercepted at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services [FDACS] AG Station 9B. This specimen, identified as a worker, had a single compound eye, described previously as the “Cyclops” phenotype.(1)

   The specimen was found in a tractor trailer originating from Kingsville, Canada carrying a shipment of assorted agricultural items. The specimen was found deceased on tomato fruit (Solanum lycopersicum L.) within the shipment. It remains unknown what caused the death of the aberrant specimen and whether or not other bees were present. Upon close inspection, the compound eye abnormality was sent to the Division of Plant Industry within the [FDACS] for further examination. Apart from the unusual, conjoined eyes and a smaller head, this worker honey bee appeared to be typical (Figure 1) with no other abnormalities detected.

   Unusual morphological abnormalities in honey bees have been reported previously, including an abnormality of the compound eye designated as a “Cyclops” phenotype.(2) Whether or not the eyes are functional is unclear. Some reports described the afflicted specimens engaging in activity such as foraging,(5) and others described the specimen as disoriented.(3) The Cyclops bee reported herein was found in a shipment of tomato fruit, suggesting the bee retained some capacity to forage.

[Paper continues on to dissection and measurement notes]

   The above is a (slightly paraphrased to smooth over scientific awkward writing style) excerpt from "A Morphological Description of 'Cyclops' Honey Bee" by Epperson et al 2025.

   But this is not the first such "aberrant specimen" found. The first cyclops bee on record as far as I've found is from 1868, (if you want to contribute to science and can read French you can tell me what that says, since I can't cut paste it into google translate and my french isn't up to reading pages of scientific writing). Another relatively early description is delightfully creepy:

During an experiment on labor division in a bee colony, a daily marking of newly emerged bees with color-dots on the thorax or abdomen was undertaken. [On] August 4, 1930 ... one of these bees attracted my attention by its unusual manner of locomotion. It moved slowly as all young bees do, but backwards instead of forward, in a manner characteristic of crayfish. Taking the specimen in my hand I noticed its extremely narrow face. An examination under the binocular microscope revealed the fact that I was dealing with a freak bee, a bee with only one compound eye. ... In the laboratory the specimen continued to march backwards and ate in a normal manner the droplets of honey which I offered it from the tip of a toothpick. I could not make it crawl forward even though I placed the honey a short distance in front of its head.(2)

   Writing in 1948 Dr Mykola Haydak writes “Because of the small number of these monstrosities there was no opportunity to observe their behavior. However, Eckert (1937) reported that the monstrosities of a similar type found in a colony in California behaved as normal bees.” and that referenced Eckert 1937 is itself titled quite simply titled “Honeybee Monstrosities” and lists some other specimens that honey bees no doubt whisper about at sleepovers to terrify eachother.

   This is just an abbreviated summary of an article I just wrote for the Australasian Beekeeper. In writing it I had some more general thoughts on cyclopes. A singular cyclops is of course a cyclops. Plural can either be cyclopses (boring and awk) or cyclopes, which I adopted. I found even the papers trying to be serious couldn't avoid using a word for "cyclops like," for which they used either cyclopean or cycloptic. But most shockingly, there seems to be no collective noun for a group/herd/mob/clan of cyclops! I had fun brainstorming this topic and came up with the following options:
• a Spectacle of cyclopes (my favorite, though it would seem best suited to a pair of cyclopes
• an Ocular of cyclopes
• an Optimism of cyclopes
• a Cycle of cyclopes
• a Cyclone of cyclopes
• a Cycosis of cyclopes
• an Eyefull of cyclopes
• a Somebody (or Everybody) of cyclopes (get it, get it??)

   Or any other suggestions???

Meanwhile, when applying for Australian citizenship, it of course asks about other citizenships you may have, and I noticed in the drop down menu "Bouvet Island" which I'd never heard of, so I googled it, and its a desolate island near Antarctica which sometimes has up to six scientists for a few months. As a territory of Norway even if someone _was_ born there they'd be a Norwegian citizen. I always think it's really weird that these things get included in these lists. I bet Trump has specific tariffs on it too.

   I don't mean to teach your grandmother to suck eggs but... I think I had a revelation about a funny phrase hiding in plain sight.

   "I'm not going to teach your grandmother to suck eggs" or more generically "I'm not here to teach you to suck eggs" is a phrase I think I'd heard before in the states but its much more common here in Australia, being used all the time any time you're referencing a desire not teach people what they obviously already know.
   This morning I thought to myself what does that even mean, so I looked it up. The explanation on wikipedia mirrors exactly what's found on various websites:

The origins of the phrase are not clear. The Oxford English Dictionary and others suggest that it comes from a translation in 1707, by J. Stevens, of Francisco de Quevedo (Spanish author):[2] "You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs".[3][4] A record from 1859 implies common usage by that time.[5] Most likely the meaning of the idiom derives from the fact that before the advent of modern dentistry (and modern dental prostheses) many elderly people (grandparents) had very bad teeth, or no teeth, so that the simplest way for them to eat protein was to poke a pinhole in the shell of a raw egg and suck out the contents; therefore, a grandmother was usually already a practiced expert on sucking eggs and did not need anyone to show her how to do it.

   Okay, that's kind of weird but not super exciting. But here's the thing. You think about that for half a second it makes no sense. Raw eggs are disgusting is it really likely old people used to relish them? -- and if they did, it's obviously quite simple to crack one into a bowl or a cup rather than carefully punch a hole and suck it out. Really I think that explanation is someone's wild speculation and they speculated wrong.
   I think there's two keys to a more interesting explanation. It very clearly originated from Spanish. Why would this phrase have to come from Spanish? Especially if English grandmothers are the ones sucking eggs? And I think its noteworthy that it's not grandfathers, only grandmothers, and here's why...

   Just the other day I was sitting with Cristina watching a Venezuelan podcast in Spanish with English subtitles. And something like "that monkey shaved that mama egg" came across and I was like "um Cristina, WTF." Turns out it was bunch of slang words that happened to come together in the sentence and the key here is that in Venezuelan "huevo" / egg is slang for "penis." I don't know how widespread this is, my Ecuadorian friend says she only knows it meaning "balls."
   But anyway, that brings us to me theory. I think it's IMMINENTLY more plausble that 18th century Spanish writers were making a "yo mama" joke saying "I don't need to teach your grandmother how to suck dick" and the English just took the literal translation and ran with it. I think that makes heaps more sense than it ever being a common of grandmothers to crave raw egg so much they'd take eggs and jab a hole in them (with a knife?) rather than break them into cup.

   And so to this day people are still announcing to whole rooms of people that they won't teach them to suck egg ehehehe.

   In a similar vein, it also makes me giggle when stuffy conservative old Australian men say they're tired by saying "well I'm buggered" (which of course means sodomized).

July 16th 2014, Conakry, Guinea - In the early hours of morning I listen to the patter of rain on the windows and the ululating call to prayer reverberating around the city in the dark pre-dawn hours. My back aches, my nose is running, I have a sore throat, a general feeling of fatigue. What are the initial symptoms of ebola, you might idly wonder? Well they are an achey back, a running nose, a sore throat, a general feeling of fatigue...
   I lie there contemplating this until 7, whereupon it's time to drag myself out of bed and pack for my flight out of the country. If they even let me leave the country?? The flight is a full 14 hours away at 9pm but This is Africa and you can't be too careful. I've been told The Organization will pick me up at 8:00 to take me to their office nearer the airport.
   I sit in the hotel restaurant listlessly picking at my croissants and eggs. 8:30 rolls past. 9:00. 9:30. Every half hour I text the Organization staff to ask where they are and strangely they are always "almost there!" I wish I could be in bed, not sitting in this uncomfortable stuffy little dining area. As the morning grows stale the heat and humidity ratchet up uncomfortably.

   At 11 the driver finally arrives, to take me on the bumpy ride through the steaming city to the Organization's offices, where I can feel sick and uncomfortable in a more corporate setting.
   At 17:00 the driver takes me to the airport. He parks and says goodbye as I get my luggage and make my way the short distance to the terminal entrance.
   "You have to pay to bring your luggage into the terminal" the weedy staffmember at the door tells me with a smile like I've made a mistake he's kindly redirecting me about.
   I laugh like it's a funny joke and try to go around him but he blocks my path, a smile still plastered to his face. I'm in no mood for this. Fortunately my driver hasn't left yet, I turn on my heel to return to my driver explain what's happening, while he's barating the driver I walk on through. I've found in Nigeria people in positions such as him often "jokingly" pitch for a bribe but easily laugh it off when you just laugh, but this is not the first time here in Guinea I've found they have a bit of a harder edge about it.

   Just inside the terminal, staffmembers in white medical coats flank the entrance hall watching everyone entering. I do my best not to look sick. I'm sure I don't have ebola but getting quarantined in Guinea on suspicion of having it sounds like the best way to get it. I make it around the corner before having another coughing fit. Fortunately no one seems to be paying attention to me. I sit by the gate trying not to blow my nose too often and/or look too sick.
   Finally I'm able to board the plane. I breath of a sigh of relief as we lift off. Until this moment I'd been preoccupied with escaping Guinea, my innate optimism assuring me that _I_ surely am not the next victim of the worst ebola outbreak in history, despite being at ground zero of it. But now, safely on a flight jetting away from all that, this small idea in the back of my head gets a little bit bigger, what if I am about to become Europe's "Patient Zero??"


July 17th, Göteborg, Sweden - After being miserable on flights for nearly 18 hours, Conakry to Paris to Frankfurt to Göteborg, I've finally arrived at my destination, tired sick, miserable, possibly spreading infectious viroids like some evil Johnny Appleseed to doom millions, but on the plus side there were giant pretzels in the Frankfurt airport.
   Between airports in Europe there's no passport control, in fact they just briefly look at the ticket without even asking for an ID. The guy at the currency exchange in Goteborg is chatty though, he'd spent some time in Australia and asks me where I just came from. I say "Guinea, West Africa," as blithely as I can, hoping he hasn't seen any news about the ebola outbreak and isn't about to connect the dots with my obviously runny nose and sound some kind of alarm, fortunately he does not.
   If Guinea is 3rd world, and the USA is 1st world, European cities like Göteborg must be 0th, the smooth clean high tech access to public transportation is on a whole other level from the US. After an hour on buses I arrive at my destination, the Eriksberg district of town, once an area of commercial docks and shipyards its now full of trendy cafes, hip loft apartments, ubiquitous fit and successful joggers along the riverside boardwalk. And soon my destination is in sight as some tall masts loom over the buildings. The Swedish Indiaman Gotheborg

   As I stop to take the picture that should be to the right here, a proud local starts telling me about the ship -- a replica of a historical Swedish ship launched in the 1730s that made three journeys to China and back, a journey that could be so lucrative at that time that each journey ended up being a sizeable percentage of the Swedish GNP. As for my impressions, the ship is quite a bit bigger than the other ships I've sailed on, with masts towering 54 meters (15 stories) above the water.

   I step aboard as the crew is having their end of day muster. They're mostly Swedish plus a German and Netherlander, but their working language is English. I don't let on that I can speak some Swedish, I'd rather surprise them later than disappoint them with my rusty Swedish. Jonas the bosun gives me a tour.
   The first deck below the upper deck is literally the cannon deck, looking mostly authentic and lined with cannons. The deck below that is compartmentalized with watertight bulkheads and includes a big commercial galley (kitchen), and the forecastle where the crew sleeps. There are some bunks along the walls but they're all taken so I'll have to string up a hammock -- a very traditionally nautical method of sleeping I've never actually done aboardship before. Especially as, in the traditional manner, one fixes the hammock to the ringbolts provided via one's own knotwork, one must be confident in one's abilities! And below that is the thoroughly modern-looking engineering deck.
   I join some crewmembers in a grocery run a short walk ashore, and we all work together to make a dinner of taco fixings, though I'm feeling very fatigued and unwell. As soon as we're done with dinner I string up my hammock and go to sleep.



Friday July 18th - In my delirium I apparently mis-heard what time the morning muster was, and thought it was at 6:55 instead of 7:55 so I have ample time to sit in the pleasant morning light of the aft cabin, looking at my buttered bread (certainly not up for anything more complicated) without an appetite, and wonder if I really might have ebola. Maybe now that I'm in Sweden I should go see a doctor. I picture the doctor's office quickly emptying as I explain I want to be checked out for ebola. At least being quarantined here would be infinitely more comfortable than in Guinea.
   I spend the morning up in the rigging tarring. What is called "stockholm tar" in America is just called "tar" here. Extracted from pine logs, it has to be kept hot so one has to keep refilling one's pot from a pot on a stove on the dock and then scrambling aloft to where one is working, painting the fragrant (in a truly delightful pine-y sense) hot tar onto the rigging. Working aloft with tar is fun (really), and on a beautiful ship like this on a beautiful morning like this normally I'd consider myself to be living the dream ... I feel fatigued and unwell and count down the minutes until fika, the 9am coffee break, and then till lunch at noon. It being a Friday, after lunch we just clean the vessel and then finish around 14:00, we'll be off till Monday.

Saturday, July 19th - Waking up at 8:00, I'm actually feeling better. This was before I learned that tropical diseases are often cyclical in their symptoms. I stroll around the pleasant gentrified neighborhood, and enjoy a cup of delicious coffee and the kind of pastry I dream about at a cafe along the riverbank, served by an attractive blonde Swedish girl with casual pigtails.
   I join the German volunteer, a timid young man named Jonathon, in visiting the islands off the coast outside the mouth of the Gota river -- the area known as Kattegat.
   We buy a ferry pass at a local little convenience store, and boarded a ferry near our nautical home. The ferry stopped at the first island, which consisted of low green hills and little houses, but a number of people, especially with bicycles, disembarked and cycled out of sight over a hill. Jonathon looked at each other and shrugged, and waited to the next island.
   The next island was named Köpstadsö, we look at each other, shrug again and disembark this time. It's a beautiful sunny summer day, in the waters of the Kattegat around us sailboats are lazily tacking about and motorboats are buzzing by with bikini-clad women dangling their feet off the front. I admire some sailboats (funny story, two weeks later in urgent care when asked if I could identify various shapes on a vision chart I'd say "oh no I can't tell if that's a cutter or a sloop!").
   There's a bunch of wheelbarrows on the dock by the ferry landing which we quickly realize is what people who actually live on the island use to take their groceries from the ferry to their houses since there's no cars on the island. We split up, he, a "musical therapy" major, wants to sit in contiplative thought for a few hours, maybe compose poems or something, while I want to explore quaint forest paths and little coves. So we agree to meet again in two hours and I explore the quaint forest paths and little coves of the island. It's a delightful little arcadia.
   Two hours later we catch another ferry to the larger island of Styrsö. Arriving there at Styrsö town I look at a map, see a church ("kyrka") ruin on a map and decide to go there. This time Jonathon comes with me, along a nice footpath through the forest.We arrive at the site of the kyrka ruin in an immersive quiet contemplative setting of lapping water, rolling green hillocks, forest, islands, and the occasional bleeding of sheep. There isn't much to see of the ruin itself but a vague rectangular outline in the ground. Jonathon wants to sit a bit and write some more, so I do a bit more exploring, and take this photo from atop a nearby hillock:



   But it's 20:30 and the sun is near setting, so we hurry along a path through the middle of the island back to the ferry dock. The evening sun streams sideways through the trees and it's quite beautiful. I know we were running late for the nine something ferry but am also keen not to let ferry-catching-neurosis ruin my enjoyment of this beautiful place. We definitely missed that ferry but there's another one around 10:00, so once back by the ferry dock I sit at a bar with bad service and order a beer, while Jonathon went off to watch the sunset from somewhere quiet and contemplative.



   Even after 22:00 it's pleasant on the open air top deck of the ferry - a perfect evening. The sun has finally set and the sky glows a sherbet orange. There are still a few sailboats blithely enjoying the conditions, and on the horizon, silhouetted against the orange glow, giant windmills slowly turn. I feel refreshed from a day of feeling better and enjoying zen-like idyllic little islands.. but will the feeling last?



(spoiler alert: no)

Tuesday, June 1st, 2014 - The insistent alarm-clock buzzing of my phone is entirely drowned out by the soothing crashing-whisper of the pounding rain. Fortunately the surreal ululations of the call to prayer catch my somnolent mind's attention and I drift close enough to consciousness to remember I need to be ready for an early departure! I scramble to get dressed and throw everything in my bags, and then go down to the hotel's small restaurant to see if I can eat anything while I await the Organization's landcruiser. I needn't have stressed, it's an hour late of course. I sit in the hotel's small restaurant taking my time with delicious croissants. I probably won't have internet where I'm going so I make the most of this possible last opportunity to be online. The TV mounted high on the wall shows doctors in head-to-toe protective gear moving bodies on gurneys, and shows a graph with a curve exponentially rising -- the local ebola epidemic. "Completely out of control" they're saying. This is concerning but I feel perhaps strangely unafraid, with that it won't happen to me confidence. Besides, I have a really good immune system, if there's a 20% chance to survive it surely that'll be me.
   By the time the Organization's white landcruiser arrives, the sun has come out and warmed the puddles up to a steamy ferment. "Sorry, our normal driver died on Saturday."
   The other volunteer, an older woman named Edie, and I throw our bags in the car and begin the agonizingly slow slog out of the city of Conakry. The city is built along a narrow peninsula and our hotel having been near the tip of it, we need to cross the entire city to get to the interior. The traffic is bumper-to-bumper the entire way, with steaming potholes so big we pass one car that appears to be stuck in one so deep its driving wheels are off the pavement leaving it helpless like an upturned beetle. Water spouts off roof gutters, cascades down walls, fountains out of horizontal drain pipes and flows down the roadways like the entire city is a water feature, all accompanied by a fetid biological smell that leaves one's fevered imagination just picturing amoebas multiplying by the millions in every bit of mouldering water, and, further, as if one could forget it for a moment, that deadly biological infections could be anywhere out there very readily to be encountered. And wait, who has a fevered imagination??
   I'm only too glad to leave the city behind, though from here we're just plunging deeper into a place strangely distant from everything familiar -- wifi, internet, dependable electricity ... medical attention, prompt evac...
   We're suddenly out of the city into the embrace of the mainland, as the steep forested sides of a valley on either side of us blots out the phone signal. The highway --this seems to be the only one-- is in surprisingly good condition outside the capital, apparently a recent construction snaking its way into the interior, though portions are still under construction requiring us to randomly drive sections of bare dirt the forces of vehicular traffic have shaped into rippling waves of dirt.
   We pass steep green hills and forests of palms and jungley trees. Steam rises from the thatched roofs of huts in little hamlet clusters, though more often the little towns the road passes through consist mainly of cinderblock walls and corrugated metal roofs. In the center of the largest of these towns grand old colonial buildings slowly decay with green algae eating away at their stately collonades and grass growing on their shingle roofs.
   At a place known only as "Kilometer 36" we stop at The Organization's Country Director's family compound. It was a pleasant leafy place with the canopies of tall trees providing dappled shade both within the compound and without. Inside several of the Director's children run around, and in the flurry of meeting people it's hard to keep track but I'm pretty sure several of the adult women we meet are the director's multiple wives ranging in age from his fiftyish to mid twenties. We also meet Baro, a stolid but very kindly looking man with a pronounced limp, who was apparently the country director of the Organization in neighboring Mali until he recently had to come here due to instability there (incidentally, within a month Guinea's Peace Corps volunteers would be evacuated from Guinea to Mali). The Country Director and Baro both throw their bags in the car and join us as we continue the journey.
   "What's that drink they're selling in every village?" I ask
   "Hm?" the Country Director asks
   "Those bottles of red liquid being sold on tables by the road everywhere, see like those"
   "Oh, that's petrol!"

   In the town we were going to get lunch all the restaurants are closed for Ramadan. We continue.
   After a few hours we enter the town of Mamou.
   "Why are there Xs spray painted on all the buildings and walls by the road?"
   "Oh they plan to expand the road so they'll all be knocked down.
   We leave Edie at a relatively nice hotel just on the outskirts. Before we leave she has already determined that among other things it doesn't appear to have running water. A business development consultant, she's quick to notice all kinds of problems, which of course never get fixed. After deploying me, the Country Director will come back to be her translator, apparently she won't accept anyone less. As we pull away I notice even this nice hotel has Xs painted on its cheery red and yellow outside walls.



   Slowly, ever upward, the road gains altitude and the terrain becomes downright mountainous, dewey clouds blow across the road. Over a ridge we come upon the town of Dalaba, or at least as much of it as can be seen before the further parts of it are shrouded in cloud. I notice that as we've gotten further from the coast there have been fewer people in jeans, especially women, and more people in traditional garb, including women in full body coverings although that is still a minority. I also realize that neither in any of these towns nor the capital have I seen nearly anyone over the age of about 40.
   The country director leaves us here, he will buy bags of rice and catch the Organization's car on the way back. Baro, myself and the driver continue.

   We continue, now descending the mountains. In one small village there's a monument to three Peace Corps volunteers who died in a car crash. We drive through another larger town, Labe, and shortly after we finally turn off the highway and drive through the countryside on rutted dirt roads for half an hour before coming to a wall with a gate in it, which some children run and open for us.
   After Baro and I have disembarked with our bags and the driver has had a stretch, he gets back in the landcruiser and rumbles back out the gate out sight.
   "We had a Peace Corps volunteer" someone helpfully mentions (through Baro's translation) "but he died."

   The village inside the wall is an idyllic little village, small square cinderblock houses with fading paint, corrugated roofs -- there are just a few thatched huts here and there. The common areas are free of the trash I've seen blowing like autumn leaves all about other villages, the ground a clean volcanic gravel. Tall stands of corn grow between houses, and chickens fuss about. There's just enough light for my host, a man named Abdul, to give me a tour. All the crops (corn and cassava mainly, but some other vegetables) are inside the surrounding wall, while outside the goats freely wander and the forest around this particular village is filled with beehives. The village children run from my approach to peer at me around corners, running also to the next corner or stand of corn to continue to curiously follow my progress from a safe distance.
   Abdul himself has the grey hair and lined face of an old man, but the good natured smile of an innocent little boy, which impression is also enhanced by his small stature.



   There is, of course, no electricity. After the initial excitement of arrival dies down and the immediate surrounds have been explored, Baro and I sit on the porch of the house we'll be put up in. Abdul and some other local men join us and chat with Baro, though they are speaking the local language (Pular) and I can't understand. I read my book, "Heart of Darkness," until the light has faded away, and then I just sit in contemplative thought. Lightning flickers silently on the horizon, and Baro makes tea in a metal kettle over a small brazier of red glowing coals -- slowly pouring it out from a height into a cup and then back into the kettle, over and over again. Finally he's satisfied with it and fills a small cup with this concentrated, potent, very sugary tea. There's only one cup so once I've downed it he refills it and offers it to someone else.
   Why do I come out here? To the ends of the earth risking the kind of horrible death it doesn't seem like anyone in their right mind really ought to come anywhere close to risking? Because, well, to me, a life of only suburban strip malls day after day, comfortably watching predictable TV shows in a decorous living room every night, doesn't sound like a life worth living at all.

   It begins to rain heavily, all of us on the porch sit companionably in contemplative silence. Presently the call to prayer breaks out, but slightly tinny -- I realize it's coming from his phone.
   "Come, it's time to break fast" Baro says to me. Umbrellas are handed around and we leave the porch and join men coming from other houses to all troop along the narrow paths between the corn to the village elder's house. The men all do their prayers in the large clear room of the house that I suppose is kept for that purpose and then large bowls of a sweet millet soup are brought by women. The men sit in groups on the floor around the bowls and consume from the communal bowls with ladles. More bowls are brought out with a couscous like dish, a Guinean grain called fonio. Everyone's eating it with their hands so I endeavor to do the same. And, the light being very dim, I only discover by putting my hand in it that there's some kind of gooey stuff in the middle of the plate. Apparently one takes some of the gooey stuff and combines it with the fonio, as well as a pinch of spices from another bowl. I find the growing gooeyness of my fingers rather unsettling and resolve to in the future ask for a spoon. Also, slowly growing in the back of my mind are thoughts about how ebola spreads, by bodily fluids such as, for example, saliva, as I watch a half dozen hands (right hands only) disappearing into mouths and then returning to the same communal bowl.

   We walk back along the paths through the corn, the rain has stopped, the corn stalks dipping. Invigorated by a bit of food now, the men more enthusiastically talk around me on the porch. I had thought the food we'd had earlier was dinner but around 10pm suddenly the women start bringing more big pots of food. In Nigeria, even in electrified villages, food had usually seemed pretty rudimentary, but here, in the dark, without electricity, the village's women had prepared several interesting courses.
   Two kinds of rice, with a sauce made of cassava leaves; a lettuce & tomato salad with balsamic dressing, fried plantains (which I love), and a beef stew. We, about a dozen men, once again eat from communal bowls. Someone has a transistor radio and puts on the live broadcast of the US vs Belgium worldcup game, which comes through tinny and distant connecting our cozy lightless community to this game around the world in Brazil. The US lost.

   I fall asleep to the once-again sound of pounding rain outside, and the call to prayer. This morning we'll begin the training. I wonder how that will go. And looking at my phone, the battery is almost dead. I hope I can find some electricity somewhere.

Person: Do you have any ordinary honey?
Me: This is all ordinary honey
Person: No like, regular honey
Me: This is all regular honey
Person: Like unflavored honey
Me: No flavors have been added to any of this honey
Person: Well like, how do you add the avocado to the avocado honey then?
Me: Bees visit avocado trees sir ::smiling sweetly to disguise my heart that is black as coal::

   It's always a shock to me, perhaps having slipped too deep into the honey to see how it looks from the outside, that people think there's a "normal" "plain" "unflavored" honey. One analogy I use to make the point is asking for "plain" honey is like going to a fruit stand and asking for "the regular fruit." The what?! the seller would understandably exclaim, correctly regarding you as some kind of lunatic. Honey is always something, and that something comes with a wide varieties of colors, flavors and other attributes.

   It's strange really, in teaching marketing to beekeepers, I stress that more information conveys more value. Don't just slap "HONEY" on a label and call it a day. Few people do just that but many stop at adding the word "LOCAL" to honey and calling THAT a day. "Local honey!" But give that same honey a specific location, ideally in an evocative manner ("from the bluegum forests of the north Otways" "from the sugargum plantations of historic Mooleric homestead" (Mountain honey from Sanpiring Village, a proud result of my teaching (:) ) and identify as nearly as you can the predominant floral source (eg "coastal sage," "clover" "Califorina chaparral" ... or if you're in Australia maybe "red gum," "yellow gum" "salmon gum" "rainbow gum" (these are all real trees)), and the perceived value to the customer is significantly increased (especially if you also put it in a glass jar instead of a plastic one, congrats you've doubled its perceived value by now).
   And yet, and yet. I regularly have customers coming in, when I've worked selling honey direct to customers, that seem to really really want "the normal honey." There's this desire to want whatever is just the default.
   I think it might be a panic response to menu anxiety when presented with a panoply of options that overwhelms the ability to make a choice.



   One thing I've found really helps people make a decision is a good description. Unfortunately, I feel a bit blind when it comes to this. During three years working for the last honey company I worked for I never did come up with any good ways to describe the honeys. They definitely taste different from one another but putting that into words is a very special skill.
   I recently had the opportunity to take a honey sommelier workshop (picture above). With very careful guidance I was able to describe for example Jarrah honey as "smooth thick-viscuous orangey-amber slightly opaque, toffee flavour building to spicy aftertaste." That was my best one (and it helped that the sommelier-teacher spent the most time dwelling on it), my other descriptions were less involved, with blackbutt as "pinky-amber, finely opaque, cinnamon-rum-raisin flavor," wandoo as "hefeweizen pale yellow, extremely viscuous, bit of a warm grass smell, christmassy frosting lactic melon flavor" (!?) and marri as "yellow-sunrise-amber, flowy musky squeaky slightly licorice?" Are you slavering to try it yet?
   I'm not actually sure I'll be able to effectively make use of that as translating my taste impressions to words doesn't seem to come naturally to me, but it was fun and interesting. What I've found DOES work for me is stealing other people's ideas. By which I mean, earlier I spent a summer selling honey at my friend's booth at the Orange County Fairgrounds in California. We had sixteen types of honey (the picture at top), offering everyone that came by taste tests of as many as they could stand until they were honeyed out. I found, if I _asked_ someone to describe the honey they were tasting they would tell me some generic cliche description, but if I just bided my time sooner or later someone would volunteer some absolutely enlightening revelation of a description of a honey. I would then taste the honey and to confirm the brilliance of the description. It was invariably simple, usually one word, not highfalutin and convoluted like the above Jarrah description, that would just strike right at the heart of the matter. When you repeated this one magic word to a customer the moment they put the spoon of the corresponding honey in their mouth, you would see enlightenment dawn upon them in an instant, and they would become very likely to exchange their filthy lucre for a jar of liquid enlightenment.



   In this manner I gathered the following list:
The avocado, a dark rich molassesy honey, was by far the best seller.
My favorite was the cilantro honey, which mainly tastes like licorice for some reason but with a fore and after taste exactly like cilantro.
I also liked the blueberry, which actually tastes a bit of blueberry (and later at home confirmed it is delicious on pancakes),
and the California wildflower from Ventura county that tasted of cinnamon.
Other honeys we had tasted like oranges (NOT the honey from orange trees, which tastes kinda zesty but not like oranges - I no longer recall which one that wasn't oranges tasted like oranges),
What we, in California had labeled "eucalyptus," (which "eucalyptus?" I suppose "the regular one!") was definitely "butterscotch"
The meadowfoam flower definitely makes a distinct bubblegum flavored honey,
and this dark dark ("black as my heart!") buckwheat ("can I have the buckleberry" people would for some reason always ask) which tasted like soysauce.

   The problem is, since I at least find it very tedious to try to come up with a good description on my own, and people don't blurt out enlightenment on cue, how does one get good descriptions? I thought I'd see if I could find them pre-existing on the great wide internets. Let us choose, for no particular reason at all at all, say, cherry, apricot, peach and plum.
   The best peach honey description I can find is certainly flowery but manages to do that thing where it uses a lot of flowery words to say nothing particularly unique and distinct: "Delicate and Fruity: Peach flower honey is known for its gentle, sweet, and fruity flavor, similar to ripe peaches. It has a subtle flowery scent , which adds to its overall flavour. Smooth viscosity: This honey's smooth, viscous viscosity makes it simple to spread and combine into a variety of meals."
   A whole webpage dedicated to cherry honey, and they have this description: "It tends to have a rather liquid consistency and a straw-yellow colour, but can vary from a light amber colour to a darker shade with reddish highlights. Crystallisation occurs slowly, changing its colour to a greyish-white shade. Taste reminiscent of cherry." Seemed promising in the color description but taste "reminiscent of cherry" sounds like a cop-out to me (and in my experience honey rarely tastes like the fruit associated with the flower except a vague aftertaste on the exhalation)
   Plum honey has proved more illusive, it took me to the third page of google search results before I found a page that appeared to have a description of "apple-plum" honey and I guess that'll have to do: "The flavor of this honey is light and refreshing with a fruity aroma that is reminiscent of the blooming apple and plum orchards in spring. It has a light golden color and a smooth texture" - which, again, I really wonder if describing it as the fruit themselves is a potentially inaccurate cheat.
   Apricot also took me to the third page (rife with apricot INFUSED honey which I'll get to in a moment), and even then the best I could find was "Very rare and unique honey variety with unforgettable taste and aroma.Taste: Medium sweet apricot taste with a long aromatic finish" ::eyeroll emoji:: But also one my most successful meads has been an apricot mead (made with the fruit, and "regular" sugargum honey). I called it "equinox mead" because I found myself making it on the day of the winter equinox and it seemed like a nice name. But in a stunning coincidence, one of the descriptions of apricot honey I just came across is "Hunza Delight collects Apricot Honey in the awakening early spring, from the mesmerizing equinox of apricot blossoms." Pure coincidence or are apricots somehow tied to the equinox in our subconscious for some reason?



   One last subject on honey. This above picture. Makes me so mad. Infused honey is a thing. Thats the adding of flavors to honey, after the bees have finished with it. That's not illegal, and it can reportedly be quite good. But even when appropriately labeled as "infused honey" consumers tend to not notice that and end up thinking one or both of two things: (1) that this "orange" flavored honey is actually what honey from orange trees tastes like (sadly for this reason we often have to label genuine real honey from orange trees as "orange blossom" honey to make it clear its not orange-flavor-infused); and (2) they conclude that all honey has had flavors added and thus there must be some mythical bland base honey. And I say "appropriately labeled" but as you can see, the above pictured honey (which isn't from the wilds of the internet but a friend saw in person and sent me the picture because they knew it would make me mad) does not say "infused" on it anywhere, and the "made by bees" seal while cleverly not actually saying so, would seem to _imply_ it's genuine honey. If it weren't that I happen to know strawberry honey is NOT red like that and chocolate honey (which could I suppose theoretically exist, I've seen hives in chocolate plantations in Uganda) is also not brown and not likely to be found here where there are no chocolate plantations, one could easily naively think this must be as "real" as honey gets.


   A more positive question I sometimes get asked by people daunted by honey selection is which is the "best" honey. This is a much better question, but of course it too is unanswerable without knowing their personal taste, but we can get there. Do you know if you prefer a sweeter or more savory honey? Lighter or thicker? Are you putting it on toast or in your tea?
   So what's your favorite honey, and how well can you describe it?

   It poses an interesting problem going through trying to adapt writing you've already written, rather than building something up from scratch. Especially when you suspect what you should be doing is paring it down. But this sentence is already written and you like it! It makes you really think about things. Especially with a travelogue, there's a lot of things that are "interesting" but one must ask, do they advance the plot? I think a description or scene must either advance the plot, or at least contribute to mood. And as to plot, when it's not exactly that the protagonist must find the McGuffin and save the world, I suppose is just that every scene must have some kind of emotional weight. Anyway, I'm not sure everything here meets all those requirements, but I pared it down as much as I could.

   I hoist myself out of the seawater and up the corroded metal ladder. Seven feet above the lapping waves I clamber onto the top of the small concrete platform that sticks out of the sea like a little cork. A metal pole holds a light aloft as a warning to shipping. The turquoise waters of Fethiye Bay sparkle around me, surrounded on three sides by the dusty green sunbaked shores of south-western Turkey, fading to grey on one side and close enough for me to make out ant-like people on the nearer side. Halfway between my perch and the nearest land the 65-foot sailboat Eleutheria rides cheerfully at anchor, and I can see my fellow passengers splashing playfully in the water alongside her, no doubt each with a can of Efes pilsner in one hand.

   As I sit, dripping, basking in the sun, I contemplate with regret that our journey is almost over. Soon the outside world will close in, I’ll have to check my email and my text messages. It’s been a nice four days not thinking about the girl who set the winds blowing in my sails to come to her in Turkey, only to set me adrift here. Out on the water I couldn’t possibly hear from her, so I didn’t have to worry about the immutable tides of her feelings.
Presently I begin to tire of my stylite perch –I can’t stay here forever, my idylls among the aquatic lotophagi had to end sooner or later– and clamber back down the rusty ladder to swim the gauntlet back to the EleutheriaI – the passage of small pleasure boats across my path lends a bit of a frogger-like challenge to it.

   As we walk down the sunny dock in busy Fethiye marina my phone begins to ping with four days worth of email and message notifications. I decide not to check it yet. Some of our merry band of passengers are departing for other locations, the two cute Spanish girls invite me to go with them to a hostel at Oludeniz, but there seem to be more things I want to do here, and as cute as they are I’m not in a mood to go chasing random cute girls.
   I spend the day with my erstwhile shipmates, we go to the archeological museum, local market and find some delicious food. I’m less successful at finding a place to stay the night as all the hostels are full, though one allows me to sleep on a couch on their roof.
That night we find one of the streets tucked behind the touristy market to be packed with bars (oddly, one of them had a Route 66 theme), and we sit in the outdoor seating area of a Route 66 themed bar, enjoying the warm summer evening and the sweet smell of hookahs wafting on the breeze, ordering frou-frou cocktails.



Monday, July 22nd
   I can’t put off the weight of the world any more. Waking up to the morning sun and pleasant breeze on my rooftop, I set up my laptop on the table, to check my email (these were the dark ages of 2013, I didn’t have a smartphone yet!). There was indeed an email from Her, but it still seemed to be murky ominous clouds presaging storms, the distant rumble of thunder, tense seas.
   Frowning, I turn my attention to the next local distraction, Saklıkent Gorge. I go down to the main market and get on a dolmuş with “Saklıkent” listed on a placard in the window, along with its other destinations. That wasn’t hard. Everyone else on it is a local Turk, and no one, not even the driver, speaks a word of English.
   After two hours of driving I start to become rather nervous. I know Saklıkent isn’t particularly close to Fethiye but this was getting a bit concerning. My anxiety rises to a level nearing panic until finally we pull into a parking lot surrounded by stalls selling nicknacks, we have arrived!
   To one side the valley ends in a cliff, in which Saklıkent Gorge cuts a narrow slice. I pay the entry fee and enter. In the beginning there are wooden walkways over the river and fine white sand beside it to talk on, sometimes alternating with smooth stones, and shallow chalky blue water. Gradually as I travel further in the water gets deeper and the crowds thin. One must cross waist deep frigid water in places, and further on it is armpit-deep and I transfer my wallet and phone to my breast pockets, holding my camera above my head.
   Splashing through the deep pools and over boulders is fun, though I find myself wishing I had someone to share the adventure with. The deeper into the crevice-like canyon I get, the fewer other people I encounter. In places one has to climb up little waterfalls and slippery smooth rockfaces. Eventually, I climb a very difficult one and never see anyone else after that. Now this is really exciting.
   Finally, several kilometers up the narrow canyon, I arrive at a massive boulder blocking the gorge. On one side the water rushes down in a waterfall, on the other a slimey foul-smelling rope leads up to a narrow crack. I try climbing it several times, I can get some purchase on some knots tied in it, and manage to drag myself up to where the rope disappeares into the crack but then there is nothing above to hold on to and nothing below to push myself up on.
   As a sailor I feel it a point of pride not to be defeated by a rope-climbing obstacle, but after several attempts, I conclude I am too likely to somehow injure myself in a place where help is very very far away. It appears the light is starting to fade anyway.



Tuesday, July 23rd
   Lying in bed is when it haunts you the most. I remember the way she lay there gazing at me that first night in Egypt, her smile serene like a favorable breeze, her brown almond eyes warm like calm inviting waters you wouldn’t mind falling overboard into. That unbreaking steadfast gaze … how I miss those brown gazelle eyes.

   At breakfast I meet some Australian girls. Turkey is rife with Aussies. You run into them on three, four, six month holidays. Europe is so far from Australia that if they go there they’ve usually saved up their money and vacation days to spend a long time.
   One of the girls was kind of cute, they are both friendly. It’s their first day in town, so I show them around a bit, including this delicious place I had discovered for lunch. After lunch they’re going to the beach, the cute one asks if I’m sure I won’t join them, looking perhaps even a bit coy, but I shake my head. I have ghosts to pursue.

   In 1923 Turkey expelled all Christians and deported them to Greece. Previously, 20-25% of the population of Turkey had been Christian, today, as a result of this and the Armenian Genocide, it is 0.3-0.4% of the Turkish population.
   The Greek lights of the town of Telmessos (“city of lights”) were then extinguished, and the city was renamed Fethiye (“conquest”). While Fethiye obviously continues to be a place, the nearby town of Kayaköy was entirely depopulated and remains a ghost town.
   It’s a quick and straightforward dolmuş ride to Kayaköy. I step out onto a quiet cobblestone road, where large olive trees create pools of shade and restauranteurs like trap-door spiders lethargically wait for customers outside their little touristy open-air restaurants. In a semi-circle, like amphitheater seating, the crumbling ruins of Kayaköy lay around us.
   I follow the road up and soon find myself on a narrow cobbled street barely wide enough for a donkey-cart, that hasn’t been maintained since Kayaköy had abruptly ceased being a functional village in 1923. I’ve seen plenty of ruins in my travels, but never such an expansive and recent site. The whole village is here. Roofs gone, grass growing in living rooms, empty doorways, sometimes opening onto nothing where a wooden stairway had once been. Walking up the steep narrow stone road it’s hard not to imagine what it must have been like with villagers carrying goods up and down, dogs lying carelessly in the road, children running around, laundry hung up to dry. It’s no wonder it inspired Louis de Bernières (famous for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) to write Birds Without Wings about exactly that, the final days of this village. Next to a former chapel on a hilltop overlooking the village a red Turkish flag proudly flutters in the breeze.
   At one end of town, there’s a big Greek church, which apparently has some pretty Byzantine-style mosaics on the floor. Its doors are closed with modern metal gates, signs advising it will soon be open as a museum. While the most recent occupation of the village was 1923, some of the buildings, such as at least one of the churches, are as much as 500 years old.



   I return by dolmuş to Fethiye. I stop by a ticket office to buy tickets to visit the Greek island of Rhodes the next day, but am informed there aren’t any ferries that day. My plans a bit flummoxed, I start walking toward the Lycian tombs hewn into the rock behind Fethiye to watch the sunset, I’ve heard there’s lovely view from up there.
   As I walked along the road above the cliff, with the city stretching off below me to my left in the warm twilight glow and tall pine trees on my right, I receive a text message, my first in several weeks.
   “What are you doing?” She asks.
   “Walking to the tombs overlooking Fethiye,” I say, “why?”
   The tombs have these huge monolithic facades with columns, and a door in the middle. So of course one is expecting a huge room on the inside, but within the doorway, there is actually just a closet-sized room the size of the door — and it smells like piss because humanity in general can’t be trusted not to piss on ancient ruins.
   They say one of the tombs belongs to the ancient hero Bellerophon, who traveled across Turkey on the winged horse Pegasus, slew the fire-breathing Chimera, and finally came to rest here. I traveled across Turkey on the Pegasus bus line, roasted hot dogs on the Chimera’s fire, and now here I am, contemplating his tomb.
   “I’ll come to where you are,” she says.
   The sun is setting over the bay, bathing the cliff face in soft pink light and the rooftops below me in an orange glow. There are two tortoises slowly trundling along the hillside in front of the tombs.
   “Nah I’m done looking at the tombs,” I say blithely, as I try to line up a photograph with a tortoise right in front of the tomb. “I was thinking of going to Gallipoli tomorrow, let’s meet there.” It’s about 9 hours by bus south from her in Istanbul, 12 hours north from me.
   “Tomorrow?” she asks. I’m walking back now. Lights are starting to come on in the city below.
   “Yeah I’ll take the overnight bus” I say while looking at the menu of a little restaurant perched precariously above the cliff. They don’t have an English version of their menu, which is one of the best auguries I could ask for endorsing their food. The owner comes out and translates his menu for me, and makes a recommendation. It’s delicious. He won’t accept a tip. “Turkish hospitality!” he insists.
   Lights are twinkling all across the city as I continue my walk, a city of lights below me. And she’s already purchased her ticket to Gallipoli. As unpredictable and uncontrollable as the sea itself, but maybe the tempest has passed.