Gone Fishin' (for Adventure)

Hello. A very short mini Gene Pool today — just an announcement, really. The two pictures above are of Cape Town, South Africa. The one below is of Istanbul, Turkey. Rachel and I are setting off today visit both places, serially, on a brief vacation.

I do not yet know how this is going to affect my writing schedule but, with luck, The Gene Pool will still be hitting your mailboxes regularly if on a somewhat haphazard schedule due to time zone differentials and anticipated occasional unreliable Internet access.

In Cape Town, we’ll be meeting up with Molly and Julien, my daughter and-son-in law, and my two grandchildren, after a 14-hour flight arriving Tuesday.

When Rachel and I visit an unfamiliar place — particularly a city — we tend to arrive only very minimally prepared, for the sake of adventure. Very little research, very little planning, a lot of bumbling around and seeing what awaits. We’re pretty much following that planned lack of a plan here.

In the past, I have taken this to extremes: Many years ago I traveled to Savoonga, a remote Alaskan Eskimo island in the Bering Sea. In prior agreement and collusion with my editor, Tom the Butcher, I did not to do ANY research at ALL. Did not even Google the place.

The working idea was to test a journalism theory that a good reporter and writer can show up anywhere, and turn anything into a compelling magazine story. My gut assumption was that it would wind up.being a gonzo, cartoonish piece about an impossibly wacky place. Tom had done research, and he pretty much knew what I would find, but he didn’t tell me what it was.

This was it, a profoundly tragic story about generational conflict, alcoholism, the merciless march of modernity, and a society of young people who were literally being bored to death. (no paywall on the link.)

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My guess is that whatever I write about South Africa may at least in part reflect the U.S.’s current state of institutional cruelty, racism, xenophobia, jingoism, isolationism and the jettisoning of America’s oldest allies in favor of despots — and how this might affect how people in other countries might treat American tourists. This may be particularly applicable in South Africa, after Donald Trump gracelessly promised White farmers there — who complain about a controversial new law to counteract the lingering effects of apartheid — that they would be welcomed to the U.S. and fast-tracked to citizenship.

About Istanbul I have no expectations, except the furious, frantic colorful ubiquity of bazaars and other open-air markets with tradesmen so persuasive they are said to epitomize the cliche of being able to sell refrigerators to Eskimos. (See my story from Savoonga, which deftly the confronts the shocking truth of the whole Eskimo-refrigerator thing. It happens early in the piece.)

Anyone with knowledge of either of our destinations and who might have advice, concerns, caveats, or tips should feel free to send in Questions and Observations here. (I won’t see your thoughts until I am in place, so you won’t disrupt our planned chaotic bumble.)

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Below, we enter an abbreviated version of the Q and A portion of the Gene Pool, where I will answer questions that came in before midnight Sunday.

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Q: Got a humor question. The supposed last words of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, spoken to his doctor, were: "You are always wanting me to give up things; what is it I ought to give up?" And then he died.

Now that's funny, unless, I suppose, you were friend or kin to Sir Ernest. What I'm in two minds about is whether it becomes funnier if you know that his doctor had time to reply, "Chiefly alcohol, boss."

A: It is much funnier, and it checks out. I didn’t know of this, and it has now become my third favorite “last words.” Number one is this, by Civil War Union general John Sedgwick. At Spotsylvania, Sedgwick’s small corps of men were taking sporadic fire from Confederate sharpshooters. When Sedgwick briefly emerged from cover to handle a problem, his staff officer warned him it was dangerous.

He laughed and said, “Why they couldn’t hit an elephant at this dis—” His last line.

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And number two is health book publisher J.I. Rodale, 72, who in 1971 was a guest on the Dick Cavett show, bragging of this health regimen and saying “I never felt better in my life.” Then he began to snore loudly. Then he keeled over from a fatal heart attack.

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Q: This is cute, but there is no way I’m getting through the next four years on one beer a day. — Sean Clinchy

A: Agreed.

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Q: Regarding Bezos and billionaires prostrating themselves before Trump, it recalls the closing line of the Declaration of Independence, signed by some of the richest men in America (Benjamin Franklin may have been one of the richest men in the world). That's where the signers "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" to pursue the cause of freedom. Our current crop is sacrificing their honor in hopes of preserving their fortunes, and freedom be damned.

(And as a sidelight, how will Trump celebrate next year the 250th anniversary of a document that proclaims "all men are created equal," a sentiment he clearly does not believe.)

– Gary Blankenship

A: Well put, Gary. Did you notice that Trump actually recently asked his aides to move the original Declaration of Independence into the Oval Office? What a bloated boor.

Someone speculated online that he wanted to sign it:

Okay, that’s it for the day. I’ll be back at you as soon as I can.