Print’s Premature Obituary (long live books!)

I love books. I don’t just mean the stories; I love actual books. I find them bewitching: their weight in my hands, the creak of the spine as they’re opened, the musty smell, the gentle swish of a page turning. I keep hearing that print is dying, which always causes an involuntarily spasm of panic. […]

Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Go Back (to Drinking the) Water….

Christchurch Earthquake Damage

The boil water notice has been lifted! Lake Hawea’s water supply has been expunged of the e-coli nuisance that demanded residents boil water for everything from brushing teeth to washing the succulent summer fruit. (Thanking the gods daily for Central Otago cherries….) The interesting thing about this annoying little exercise (apart from its reminder as […]

Down Under: The Great White Way

Great White Shark

“Shark on!” I drop my forkful of eggs and bolt out of the lounge, pinballing off the carved wooden pillars of the Princess II as the boat rolls gently in the open swells of the southern Indian Ocean. I am desperate for any sighting of the creature that has obsessed me since childhood and lured me to the remote and rugged Neptune Islands, 20 miles off the coast of South Australia: the great white shark.

“Jumbo’s back!” yells Tom Pagano, an American expat living in Melbourne and one of eight passengers on a four-day journey with Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions. When I reach the upper deck, Pagano is grinning. On this ship, the shout of “Shark!” ignites thrill, not panic.

Jumbo, a female more than 17 feet in length and named for the number on her tracking tag, 747, is circling our ship. From where I stand on the upper deck she looks like a bronze airplane, her pectoral fins the wings. Pagano leans over the railing, cup of tea in hand.

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

It’s the line all on board have been waiting to say, from the 1975 movie everyone knows: Jaws. And this ship has a special connection to Jaws. The leader of our expedition, Andrew Fox, had told us how his father, Rodney, worked as a shark adviser on the film’s second unit. Andrew himself saw his first shark at age seven.

“The movie frightened a lot of people out of the water,” Fox told our group when we gathered the first night. “But it also created a large number of people who wanted to see sharks up close. They’re like the last dragons.”

Sound of the Seasons

fat freddys drop

We all have a personal soundtrack. My formative years were spent with Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel, the Eagles. Teenage years were Jane’s Addiction and Alice in Chains. University was Phish. Tom Wait’s Ice Cream Man and Simon and Garfunkel’s Hearts and Bones will always remind me of a trip to […]