Sea Turtles on Vacation

So, I now know more about sea turtles than I ever thought I would--and much more than I need to know.

When we moved into our ocean front house--way down near the end of Oak Island, within walking distance of 'the Point', there was this crazy arrangement on the sand between us and the house just west of us. It was that green garden liners that comes in rolls forming a little runway down to the ocean and a wooden construction about two feet by two feet and 4 inches tall with four pegs with twine between them in a square about a foot by a foot.

We had know idea what it was. I thought it might be one of the games people devise at the beach involving a ball you knocked uphill with a mallet to see who could knock over the most pegs in the fewest strokes--which seemed lamer than the ball roll and sand bag toss games people bring to the beach.

But there was a sign next to it and the first one of us who walked that way on the beach discovered it was a sea turtle egg lay (inside the twine) and a fenced in way to the sea once the eggs hatched.

Last year there were 30 some sea turtle egg nests on Oak Island. This year, there were 110! Sea turtles, like salmon, return to where they were born in lay their eggs. A lot more of the giant creatures came home to Oak Island this year than last. Last year was the first time the Sea Turtle Patrol (a purely volunteer group who watch over the nests) was active. They have a two seat beach vehicle that says "Sea Turtle Patrol" on the side and they have a variety of Sea Turtle Patrol tee shirts. Really kinda cool and fun, but also serious about sea turtle nests.

There are between 80 and 110 eggs in each nest. They find them because the sea turtle mom's make tracks on the beach bigger than your uncle Ed's 1980 Buick would. The Patrol knows when the egg laying season begins and patrols the beaches each morning to find the nests. Then they set up the contraption to make getting to the ocean almost unavoidable for the babies and put up a sign with the laws of North Carolina that levy a $30,000 fine and a year in jail for disturbing a sea turtle nest. God bless the North Carolina legislature for that!

Once the eggs are in the nest it is 55-65 days before the little boogers hatch. The Sea Turtle folks (God bless them too) keeps track and when 55 days has passed, they sit vigil at night at the nests. Bringing beach chairs and their cell phones and tablets, they sit and wait and wait and wait. If they are there when the nest starts exploding, they have a red light to lead the babies down the runway toward the sea and a white light to pretend to be a full moon to get them into the ocean.

They have to swim three days (the turtles, not the Patrol) to hit the Gulf Stream and begin to feed and grow. And 25 years later, those who survive will return to Oak Island to spawn. One woman I talked to from the STP (Sea Turtle Patrol) told me about one in a thousand babies would reach a quarter of century of age and return to lay eggs where they were born. So, of the 22,000 or so sea turtles born this year on Oak Island, about 22 from this year's breeding would return in 2040 to lay eggs. They lay eggs every year after that until they are too old. So the disparity between 30 in 2014 and 110 nests this year means at some point around 1990 a lot more of that batch survived.

The Sea Turtle Patrol is doing all they can to make sure every baby has a fighting chance. For every year before last year, it was much more random how many of them had a chance to survive--some wandered off away from the ocean and died, nests were disturbed by dogs and people, gulls ate them.

They're shells are about the size of a quarter though the legs are disproportionately large. Sherry saw one that hatched ahead of its brood and made it to the ocean.

OK, talking to Sea Turtle Patrol folks all week, I must say I admire them greatly. They could use their time doing something much less noble and good. And I'm rooting for the babies soon to set off from what I've come to think of as 'our nest' and wish them well to the Gulf Stream and for the next quarter century. Just wish I thought I'd bee around in 2040 and be able to welcome them back....who knows...who ever knows about stuff like that?

(Last thought about sea turtles: apparently it depends on the heat of the sand how many females are born. Hotter the sand, more girls. A fear of the STP is that climate change and global warning will make more and more females each year, meaning there will be fewer and fewer males to mate with and that would be the end of the race--the lack of breeding males.

On the human level, I'd just say that females are smarter and more balanced and superior to us men on most every level besides size and strength. If global warming started reducing the breeding males of humans, things would be more stable and sensible for a generation or two--but not good in the long run....)

Home again, home again...

We (John and Sherry and Bern and I) got up before 5 a.m. today to drive to Myrtle Beach, turn in the car and fly to New York. We had a limo driven by Tom that got us to New Haven at 1 p.m. I'd arranged with the kennel to come pick up our dog even though they close at noon on Saturday. So, we did that and were home by 2:30. That's two Saturdays in a row I've gotten up at 5--we had a 9 a.m. flight down to the South last week. Since I'll children were infants, I've never gotten up that early twice in 8 days!

Bern got a text from Mimi and Tim, who closed up the house and flew out of Raleigh--that their plane had been delayed 3 hours and they were looking for an earlier flight. Still don't know if they're home in Brooklyn yet and it's 5 pm.

So, I'll be writing blogs about vacation for a few days now. Lots of great stuff being with five of the people I love most in the world. And the turtle eggs...more on that to come.

(Rick Perry pulled out, drat! Take one of the clowns out of the car. Won't be as much fun with the Rickster and his propensity to have three things to say and only remember two...)

People still read without anything new. Thanks for your patience. I thought I knew how to get to my blog from someone else's computer. But I needed a Google password, which I was told I changed only 11 months ago and I have no idea what it might be. Everyone at the beach had at least two devises and I had none. Just living in a time I haven't caught up to....

More later.

Going away

Tomorrow John and Sherry and Bern and I fly to Myrtle Beach and drive to Oak Island. Tim and Mimi will fly to Raleigh and meet us at the beach.

I won't take a computer, but someone will. And using my sign on "https//www.blogger.come/blogger.g?blogID=213513006486328170&pli-1#editor/target=post;postID=8350558451557932234 I'll try to blog from the beach.

Is that a ridiculous address or what?

We'll see.

Sun and sand and salt water and seafood for me!

Kim Davis misses the point

So, Kim Davis, the Kentucky official who refused to issue marriage licenses to anyone since she, because of her Christian faith, could not issue a license to a same sex couple, is in jail

Good enough.

And those like Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz who are defending and making her to be a saint have got to get a grip.

I would have admired her in a weird way if she had resigned her job as country clerk and made a statement about her faith. Well enough, she couldn't do her job and keep her faith. I can respect that. But her job was to issue marriage licenses for the state of Kentucky and same-sex couples can now marry in the US, anywhere, including Kentucky, which, last I heard was still a state.

Imagine a General in the US Army/Navy/Air Force/ Marines refusing to obey an order because of 'their faith! Imagine a 7th Day Adventist or Jew or Muslim who was a mail carrier refusing to deliver mail on their holy day.

If your job challenges your faith, quit your job. It's that simple. But if you are someone who is supposed to carry out the law of the land in a county in Kentucky, either do it or quit.

Good for her she's in jail.

This has nothing to do with religious liberty. It has to do with what the Supreme Court says the Constitution says. And those 'constitution spouting Republicans' who are defending Kim Davis might want to ponder if they really believe in the Constitution at all....

A day and then paradise

Tomorrow we'll get ready to go to Oak Island.,

We'll take the dog to Holiday Pet Lodge in Wallingford (if you live anywhere near Wallingford you should kennel your pets there--wonderful, even for bad dog Bela). Then we'll come home and pack (packing in front of Bela is anxiety producing for us all). Zoe from next door will look after the cat and bird and hopefully bring over her little sister who is the age of our twin granddaughters to love on the cat. Eva is her name.

We have to be in New Haven, at our friend, John's house at 7 for the limousine to Leguardia for the less than two hour flight to Myrtle Beach, SC. Me and Bern and John and Sherrie, another friend will be on that flight.

To be a second driver on the car John rented--huge and cumbersome I think--I had to join Costco. Is this any way to run an airline?

We always drove, but it put two days on the trip and wore us out both ways. And last year John's car broke down on the Jersey Turnpike and I rode with the tow truck driver to New Haven to get my car and go to get the dog. (Getting the dog is always an issue. Bern loves the beast....) Meanwhile, a friend of John came to get them.

Mimi and Tim will fly to Raleigh and get to Oak Island around 4--later than us.

This is what we do every year on the week of Labor Day. John and Sherry and Bern and I get to Oak Island and Mimi and Tim arrive too and we spend a week reading and eating and loving each other and drinking a lot of wine and beer (Tim and Mimi and I mostly).

The first time we went to Oak Island, with friends of ours from Virginia Seminary, Bern was pregnant with Josh. He's now 40, just to put Oak Island in perspective. We went with the kids and sometimes a baby sitter and sometimes a friend for each of them, for maybe 18 years. We even bought a house there, on the inlet rather than the beach and rented it instead of staying in it so we could stay on the beach.

Even after the kids wouldn't go, Bern and I went for a year or two. Then didn't any more and went to Block Island instead. Josh and Cathy, pre children, joined us there, as did Mimi and Tim.

Then, 7 or so  years ago, Mimi called and asked where we used to go on long vacations. (We went for three weeks or even a month when they were small.) And we told her.

She and Tim went and when they were back in NYC called and said we'd be going every year together.

And we have.

Our house this year is the most spacious and amazing of all the houses we've stayed in. I can't wait.

Saturday we go, flying on Spirit, which has been a bone of contention for Bern and John and Sherry--but not for me. I stay out of all the money stuff and just go to Oak Island to sit facing the ocean for a week.

I really can't wait--though Bern has been over loving Bela all day, feeling guilty for leaving him.

The last Puli we shared, Finney, went to the Beach with us once, rushed into the waves, was bounced around and never again went near the water. Pulis aren't ocean dogs. He would hate it.

But Bern hates to leave him ever.

That says something wondrous about her as a companion of animals.

My huge bag

I have one of those Stop and Shop bags--the really big ones you buy to be self-righteous and not use plastic or paper--absolutely full of typed (or printed out pages) of stuff I've written.

I can't even approach it. It is terrifying to me. What might I find in it? Where did it come from? Why do I have it?

I pull out a page at a time and remember it not.

This is stuff I poured over, cared about, stuff that mattered to me. And I have no idea what it is and am too intimidated to pour it all out and sort it out and ponder who I was when I wrote all that. There must be 500 pages of writing in that bag.

And I can't bring myself to dump it our and sort through it.

I don't know why.

I'll ponder that and let you know what's there.

I promise, just because that will make me do it.

But not until we come back from Oak Island a week from Saturday...and not that day surely.

Gnostics

I think I know why I'm so "on it" about belief. Two weeks from Friday I'll start teaching a 10 week session at UConn in Waterbury for the Osher Life-time Learning Institute. The class is about the so called 'Gnostic' Christians that we only know about because of a discovery in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1947 of a treasure trove of early Christian writings.

"Gnosticism" is the word people use about those Christians. Interestingly enough that word, as a description was coined in the 16th century and sent back in time to 'label' these Christians.

Church fathers', like Tertullian, used the Greek word 'gnosis'--meaning 'knowledge' to say things about the heretics he saw around him, heretic magnate that he was, but the term didn't exist as a word until 1598 or so.

The so called Gnostic Christians were 'Christians' first and foremost, who simply didn't believe what other Christians did. When the church went from the catacombs to the cathedrals--when Christianity ceased to be against the law of the Roman Empire and became the only accepted religion of the 'Holy' Roman Empire, Christians who had been Christians for generations were driven out and suppressed because they didn't meet the norm of the Nicene Creed.

That creed was written, by the way, to tell people what they couldn't believe rather than telling us what we should believe.

It begins, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth."

Many Christians in the fourth century didn't believe Jesus' "father' was the God of the Old Testament, the creator of heaven and earth. They had no patience with such a fickle, vengeful god and believed the God of Jesus was behind that God.

So they were out and their literature and ways were cast out.

The church is very good at obliterating those who don't toe the line.

And it all had to do with 'belief'. Not with how people lived their lives or what they did in the day to day. "Christians" who couldn't say the Creed simply weren't Christians anymore.

I have many difficulties with 'creeds', but I AM a Christian. Just like the so called Gnostic Christians.

If you met one, they wouldn't have said, "Hi, I'm a Gnostic" since the word wouldn't be in usage for 1200 years or so. They would have said, "Hi, I'm a Christian", and I believe they were, though the Church drove them out and suppressed their thoughts.

That's why I'm 'on it' about belief....

I'm a "Christian", though, for some, I'm no better than a Gnostic because I have trouble with Creeds.