Living a small life

Living in a marina is an exercise in prioritizing your needs. Most of us, those in humble craft, have access to a small refrigerator of a size common in college dorms. A student would not need much cold storage, since meals are provided by the cafeteria. A denizen of a marina must buy groceries that can keep without refrigeration. The other problem is storage of dry goods. A landsman can commonly be heard using this phrase: "a place for everything, and everything in its place". A harbor resident does not have that luxury if their vessel is not a yacht. There are only so many places one can store things and they, like refrigeration are small enough to exist in the otherwise wasted space in the tiny floating home. Stowage by definition means to store cargo in a manner that provides optimal safety for the ship and its passengers. Like those passengers, stowage must be regarded as movable, for ballast, and temporary. Every day is a dilemma.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CANNABIS-INFUSED SODA, AND OTHER BLESSINGS.

     I started smoking pot in about my 18th year. It was not love at first sight, more of an occasional dalliance. Alcohol had place of honor for a while. At some point it became clear to me that the famous slippery slope to heroin abuse was a rightwing trope. People did not use the word trope at that time, there were more colorful descriptions, bullshit would be one. Since that time, so long ago, we have seen changes in alcohol, and the public houses you can go, "where everybody knows your name". Beer is now, more often made locally, or regionally. Taverns are now pubs, Stewart sandwiches and pickled hard-boiled eggs, have been replaced by bistro food or other edible delights. Wine is much better, and produced in American Viticultural Areas that are not dominated by California. Even distilled spirits are being produced by local craft distilleries.       More recently Marijuana has, in smarter states, been legalized, usually regulated by the same people who regulate fermented
Read more

PINKY: IN MEMORIAM

    On 2:53 AM, March 24, 2022, Pinky Conklin was relieved of the chronic pain that had bedeviled her most of her life. She was 79 years old. I was only with her a few short years, 3 of them where she was reasonably ambulatory, but we had some fun together. When we started our relationship she was living with one of her sons and his wife in Prineville, Oregon. She was 8 blocks from a senior center, but had no public transport to get her there and she walked unstably with a cane. I thought she could get better treatment in Portland, she was trying to get hip replacement, but I lived on my little 27' Bayliner cruiser. I was living the dream I had held in my mind for some four decades. I did not think she could handle the rigors of marina life, but my purchase of the boat, and the necessary costs of maintaining a boat were taxing my resources.       For a while she was able to live with a relative in Tigard. We joined the Tigard Senior Center and she had people to talk with outside of
Read more

IT COULD HAPPEN HERE.

     Recently I was given a task by Professor Wen at Willamette University . She is conducting a study on generations with her class. Since I am of an older generation,  i represent my demographic. My task was to make a presentation of my writing to a small group of students from the class she is teaching. I knew immediately what I would present to her Generations group.      Some years ago in my mid 20's I hitch-hiked to Southern California. On a typical sunny California day I found myself sitting in the well-heeled comfort of Marina Del Rey.  An old man struck up a conversation with me. He was then, around my age now.     He was clearly Jewish, that distinctive nose and the Eastern European accent. He told me a story of escaping Holland in a sailboat regatta of these odd little sabot sailboats. I said little except to draw him out when the story began to lag. He used a phrase when referring to how people dealt with the insult of being occupied by a hostile nation, "small dis
Read more