Sjöröveren

Alas, Red Bess and I will be at the Tall Ships Festival in Duluth, MN 2 weeks prior to your call in Green Bay, with a Royal Navy War of 1812 unit we've hooked up with. But Duluth, being the head of navigation for the Great Lakes, is a long haul, and only 8 ships have committed to making that leg of the tour. Wish we could make it to Green Bay again. We were there the last time you were - 3 years ago? 4? It was over 100 degrees, the festival site was hit by high winds overnight, and if I recall correctly, the Royaliste had some major mechanical crisis while there. Hopes and Prayers that this year will be much more positive in every regard.

I knew a guy in college who hauled all of his stage lighting equipment around in a van labeled "Ace Diaper Service". His vehicle was never broken into.

Actually, quite common to refer to wearing a bicorne the way Yellowbeard is as 'amidships', and wearing it the other way as 'fore and aft.'

Will ye be coming as far as Duluth or Green Bay?

And give cash again in the coming weeks. Cash will help employ Haitians in the rebuilding of their country, and help them bring a sense of structure back into their lives.

Given our common interest in past events in the Caribbean, I want to encourage all of us to do whatever they can to help with disaster relief for the Haitian earthquake. This may be more devastating that the famous Port Royal earthquake of 1692! They're saying that there may be as many as half a million dead, in a country that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Please consider a donation to the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army or other relief organization that you feel could help!

"All that Clysters is not Gold" This is the second "auto-clyster" that I have seen on ebay recently. The other was mid to late 19th Century, if I recall correctly. Love that fleam! I've never seen quite that design before. I had a blacksmith make a similar one for me, but he didn't understand the spiraling, and made it a tight spiral of of several turns rather than a gentle scroll like this one. And it took him several years to do it. Time to find another blacksmith, I think.

Ye wouldn't want to see a picture of me and Red Bess tonight. Staring at a grey sheet of paper would be a close approximation of the excitement level here. It's 1 above zero outside, and getting colder. I'm nursing a ruptured disc in my neck, which has left my left arm a useless painful lump. The kids are downstairs whooping it up on their xbox, while we force ourselves to stay awake until midnight. Red Bess says she'll ring in the new year with milk & cookies. I'm going with Vicodin.

Speaking as someone who has suffered from numerous kidney stones, and was in fact recently "cut for the stone", albeit using 21st Century techniques, I can say that this would hurt like hell! The reference to "the old way" probably refers to making an incision between the fundament and family jewels, and just a bit off the center line, giving relatively easy access to the bladder. Later, the suprapubic method was used, in which the incision was made just above the pubic bone of the pelvis. This method was less likely to render male patients impotent in those dark days before Viagra and Cialis.

Here's a link to "The Map Room", an excellent blog about maps and mapping. It has several links to various discussions about copyright traps. They are apparently quite real. I gather data which is used in map making, but since our clients rely on us to provide accurate data, we don't insert spurious data into our work. I suppose it's up to our clients to do that if they wish.

I just finished reading "Empire of Blue Water", which is an excellent book about Henry Morgan. Pieces of 8 are regularly referred to throughout. Morgan was born in 1635 and died in 1688, so his life bridged between the buccaneer period and the GAoP. So I think you're safe in using pieces of 8 while playing hazard.

Where do you find these books, Mission? I've been trying to find this one and the Woodall book for years, yet you seem to able to pull them off your shelf anytime you want! In your jammies even! I have to befriend someone who lives in Australia, apparently, since both of these are available online via the National Library of Australia, but only to Australians. Damn them and their Vegemite and their idyllic beaches and their mastery at rugby!

For those flying into Chicago for RF 7 (I think it's 7) Feb 4-7 2010, Southwest Airlines has announced a 72 hour sale, going thru sometime this Friday (10/30/09), with fares as low as $25 one way. I can fly round trip from Minneapolis to Chicago for $50, so I am SO THERE! A Caveat - Southwest flies into Midway airport, which is a hell of a long ways from the Westin Chicago North Shore, where the convention will be held, so there will be some transportation costs involved. Maybe if enough of us arrived at Midway at around the same time, we could rent a van and car pool to the hotel?

Happy Birthday, dearie!

I've been coveting the lanterns in M&C since the movie came out, and I've never seen anything even close to it for sale. But I think one could alter an existing lantern with a little research and effort. The window panes, I'm pretty sure, are sheets of mica. I bought some many years ago, and may still have a few sheets somewhere. They came in sheets about 3"x4" and about 1/16" thick. They were easily split into 3-4 thin sheets, thin enough to allow a fair amount of light thru. The finish on the metal is the confusing part. They seem to be blackened. Whether this was from exposure to powder smoke, or whether they were intentionally blackened - a japanned finish maybe - I don't know. They photos seem to show a fair amount of corrosion, so I would guess that 1- the underlying metal is ferrous, and 2- the finish is some kind of enamel paint or other durable waterproof finish. Just a guess.