Some little while ago now, Quilly, Tilden, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba were dining at a restaurant in the town of Friday Harbor (about which you’ll be hearing more in this space, though not today), when we saw this flag flying from one of the eatery’s neighbors.

Standard American flag, we thought. Some patriotic soul is letting his Old Glory fly. Except …

“Isn’t there something wrong with that flag?”

“Looks OK to me … waitaminute, the stars are weird.”

“Yeah. They’re like too regular or something.”

“Very regular. Six rows, eight columns … makes 48.”

“Forty-eight? Well, where’d the other two go? We lose two states and nobody told us?“

As we quickly confirmed, the Union has not lost any states. At least not yet. Some might argue that the country has gained a few, but, the last time YFNA checked, Panic, Confusion, and Insanity had not yet held constitutional conventions, and were therefore not yet eligible to send voting representatives to Congress.

Instead, we realized, that neighbor’s Old Glory was really and truly old. It had flown as the emblem of the American Republic from 1912 to 1959, before either Alaska or Hawai`i were admitted to the Union. When that Union had 48 states.

We never figured out what this person had against Alaska and Hawai`i.

Perhaps he was a jigsaw puzzle fan, and was irritated that, with Alaska and Hawai`i in the mix, you couldn’t complete a puzzle based on the outline of the USA without a whole lot of extra work.

Perhaps he was willing to forsake Alaskan oil if it meant not having to hear about Alaska’s politicians.

Perhaps he’s one of those who is seeking a way – any way – to deny Barack Obama’s legal right to be President.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s simply related to Jennifer.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

He said: Seaweed.

She said: See! Weed!

“What’d she say, dude? Was that something about weed?“

“Yeah, dude. The wet stuff. The kind that goes with the water on your brain. Shut up and listen for once. You want to scare this Quilldancer away? OC might consider that a delete key offense.“

“Urk! OK, dude, OK …”

She said: My roommate is a scientist. He is in love with seaweed. This is what I knew about seaweed before spending this summer in Friday Harbor with O.C. — “It grows in the sea, right?” But now I know a lot more.

She said: This is Bullwhip Kelp. The leaves are at the top. The long cord, or bullwhip, attaches it to the sea floor. Near the top a large Bullwhip is a couple of inches in diameter and with a little judicious knife work, OC can turn one of them into a playable trumpet.

He said: B+. Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana), not Bullwhip Kelp, Indiana. Only found on the Pacific side of North America. The leafy bits are called laminae (you can’t call them “leaves”, that’s a botany card violation), the cord is the stipe that connects the laminae to the holdfast. The whole thing can be 30 feet long. And they’re annuals, all gone by December. My Yamaha plays better.

She said: I’m so glad I don’t have a botany card.

He said: What do you call that thing you got from Sears, then?

“Man, dude, he got her that time!“

“Chill, dude, willya?“

She said: This is Sugar Kelp. It is full of sucrose and has a Japanese cousin named kombu that is made into candy.

He said: Nice work. Though the sweetness doesn’t come from sucrose. This alga grows on both coasts of North America, in western Europe, and Japan. It’s made into other stuff, like soup stock, as well as candy. Though it’s got the scientists in a bit of a lather. It used to be called Laminaria saccharina, but the DNA boys now insist that it be called Saccharina latissima instead. I’m sure the farmers have been yelling at the scientists. They don’t like name changes.

“I don’t care what they call it, dude! I ain’t eatin’ none!”

“Me neither, dude.”

“You agree with me?!?”

“First time for everything. Don’t get used to it, Scarecrow.”

She said: This is Turkish Towel. It is very rough and bumpy. I would not recommend drying with it. It would scratch a bit, and perhaps leave you even wetter then you were to begin with.

He said: No, I wouldn’t either. Besides which, it’s awfully small for a towel. Exasperatingly small, even. Which is not why they call it Chondracanthus exasperatus, but that’s good enough for right now. You eat this one too, although not much of it because it’s not something that can be easily farmed or harvested. There are similar algae elsewhere that are easier to get at. It’s a source of carrageenan, which is in all sorts of stuff like …

She said: Hey! That’s in my ice cream!

“That’s in my ice cream?!?”

She said: Wait – is there an echo?

He said: No, I didn’t hear anything.

“Didn’t I tell you to chill, dude?!?”

“Back off, dude! I didn’t know ice cream had slime in it!”

He said: It’s in all sorts of stuff besides ice cream, usually as an emulsifier. And it isn’t slimy.

She said: I didn’t say it was. Somebody say it was slimy?

He said: Not unless you’re talking to yourself and don’t know it.

She said: Well, you answered it. You must be talking to yourself.

He said: I would never do that.

Yo. Dudes. Pipe down!!

“Dude! You got a pipe?! Why didn’t you …?”

Ssshh!!

She said [trying valiantly to educate her audience]: This one made OC frown.

He said: Well, it’s a weed.

She said: Huh? But I thought …

“Huh? But I thought …”

He said: What’re you wrinkling your nose at?

She said: I heard that echo again.

He said: What echo?

She said: Never mind. You going to tell me how come this one’s a weed? I thought they all are?

He said: When I stop wondering about your imaginary friends.

She said: My imaginar …?

He said: It’s a weed ’cause it doesn’t belong here. It came over from Japan and is now all over the place on the Pacific coast of North America and the Atlantic coast of Europe. It’s a sargasso weed, Sargassum muticum.

She said [turning back toward her audience]: He took out his pocket lens (magnifying glass, and yes, he carries it everywhere) and examined the offender closely, then he tossed it onto the dock. That surprised me. He had been carefully returning everything to the water. I asked OC if he was saving that seaweed for some reason. He said he was killing it. He’d kill all the ones of this kind if he could.

She said: This is not a seaweed. It’s a sea grass.

“Dude! There’s hope!!”

She said: OC says it is related to the stuff we mow.

“Damn. Never mind …”

She said: Never mind what?

He said: Getting out your lawn mower. We call this stuff “sea grass” (Zostera marina) because it is a real flowering plant, with pollen and seeds and everything. Though the flowers look more like crab claws than daisies. There aren’t many flowering plants in the sea; the algae have been around lots longer, and didn’t exactly leave a lot of room for posies.

She said: This is Garry. Don’t ask me about its name. I didn’t name it. If I had named it, it would be called Elephant Ear or something like that. When OC was holding this up he was telling me about its sex life. I don’t remember much about it except that it really didn’t sound all that exciting.

He said: Sigh. That’s what all the students say. Everybody tells me “sex sells”, but you’d never know it around here.

“You got that right, dude! I ain’t …”

SSSSHHH!!

She said: Gesundheit!

He said: Thank you. This thing’s not called Garry, it’s called Costaria costata and it’s a close relative of that bull kelp. And the sugar kelp too, for that matter. But, like the bull kelp, it’s only found on the Pacific coast of North America.

She said: Didn’t you tell me it was called “Garry something or other”?

He said: I don’t know the Somethingorothers.

She said: What did you tell me this was called?

He said: You mean Agarum? That’s not what this is. You’ve got to understand that what you think you heard was not what I meant. So there.

She said: Are you admitting that the scientist made a mistake?

He said: We’re having steak?

She said: That’s what I thought.

She said: This is Garry’s brother, Larry.

He said: No, it’s Alaria …

She said: That’s what I said. You never listen to me! Larry is very slick and a sort of a slimy fellow. Thankfully OC didn’t tell me anything about Larry’s sex life. [shudder]

He said: Well, you didn’t want to know about Garry’s, either. Same old same old. Slimeballs get the same treatment as the bulls. Or the sugars. And I suppose you won’t want to know that people eat Alaria, right?

“They do?!? Ewww …”

He said: They do. When you live on rocky islands, you get your vegetables, and your vitamins where …

She said: I didn’t say anything.

He said: Did too. You ewwwed at me. I didn’t think you did that.

She said: You’re hearing things.

He said: Now you’re blaming your imaginary friends on me. Sheesh.

She said [trying to ignore his nonsense]: This is Mike. He is a cousin of Larry’s and Garry’s.

He said: No. He’s Turkish.

“Turkish? Where?!?”

“Dude, just shut up. You’ve already made a hash of this conversation, don’t make it any worse. Remember: Command-X.“

“That’s Control-X, dude. How many times …???”

“… does your Vista crash in an hour? It’s a sight to behold, dude.”

She said: Oh, he’s related to the towel? I thought he looked far too different to be a brother. But Mike, Larry and Garry have got to be related because they have all these very un-seaweedy names. (Unseaweedy is a word, right?)

He said: No, that’s unseaworthy. And so’s your logic. Garry and Larry are brown. Mike’s red. In this world, color matters.

She said: So, seaweeds are prejudiced?

He said: Well, I wouldn’t go looking for any orange offspring. You’d be disappointed.

She said: This is Mara. Definitely a relative of Larry’s.

He said: Actually, you’re right. About the relationship, that is, though the name is Desmarestia, and yes I see how you got Mara out of that. Though we didn’t think that Desmarestia was related to the kelps (bull, sugar, etc.), back when I was the age of the Du … er, the students in the class.

“Did he say bullsugar, dude?”

“No, dude, but he might drop you in it any time now.”

She said: Didn’t you tell me that this seaweed manufactures acid?

“Acid? Acid?!? How long you gonna keep holding out on me, OC?? You gonna tell me how to grow this stuff?”

He said: It sure does. Sulfuric acid. I wouldn’t try getting high on it. It’s there to …

She said: Getting high? Who are you talking to??

He said: You. And those imaginary friends of yours. I’m beginning to worry about you. Anyway, the sulfuric acid is there to keep animals from eating this stuff. Sea urchin teeth will literally dissolve if they try to chew on Desmarestia.

She said: Speaking of “dissolved”, if they’re my imaginary friends, why are you talking to them?

He said: I should have known. You always try to blame everything on me. Class dismissed. I’m going to the library.

She said (under her breath as he left the dock): Famous scientist has imaginary friends. I can see the headlines now …

He said: Who said they were my friends?

She said: What?

He said: Nothing …

“Well, dude, that was a fine piece of work. What the hell got into you, anyway?”

“Dude, they were pickin’ on me. Imaginary? Imaginary?? I ain’t flippin’ imaginary!”

“No, dude, you’re virtual. In fact, you’re such a good emulation, you’re virtually an idiot. You damned near fried OC’s hard drive, that’s for sure.”

“Not to mention messing up his connectivity.”

“Yeah, dude. I wouldn’t mention that if I were you.”

It was a rainy Sunday morning. San Juan Island, Washington doesn’t get many cool, damp, gloomy Sunday mornings during August, and this one seemed to have taken even the wildlife off guard.

In the hour after dawn, a young buck deer, its antlers mere buttons, had pressed itself against the windows of our living room, trying to stay dry. It quivered but stood its ground while Quilly approached, to mere inches and a pane of glass away from its overworked snout. It was unwilling to forsake its haven and its chance to browse, from it, the sprouts of the madrone stumps that dotted the slope below our apartment. By mid-morning, however, even that buck had sought better shelter under the douglas firs, and the landscape was left to the fog and mist.

Weather changes in the Puget Sound region are rarely as dramatic as they are further East, with their sharp-edged fronts and drenching, wind-driven downpours driven off by wedges of chilled blue skies. Nevertheless, when the sun finally fought its way through the low clouds early that afternoon, it was as if a computer graphics guru had just restored, at a stroke, all the colors to a grayscale image of a still life.

For still it was, as if the wind itself had caught its breath at the sight of the freshly-illumined landscape.

And crossing that landscape were little puffs of gauze. The color and size of dandelion puffs, they were. Except that they wafted up in the motionless air. And as they rose, they flickered, flickered with the beating of frail wings.

Winged ants.

I followed the flight path back down to the ground, to the madrone stumps that had held the attention of that buck deer in the rainy hours of the morning. One of those stumps was now an insectoid helipad, fully invested with winged ants and wingless in urgent motion, anxious to see the honeymoon flights safely launched. The nervous bustle puzzled me. What, in that bucolic scene, could possibly be signalling, to these ants, a need for haste?

Then the feathered monster appeared.

It was a male Dark-Eyed (“Oregon”) Junco, a miniature among birds but a thrashing troll among the now-panicked six-legged debutantes. At first he flapped among the fliers, snatching and grabbing. Then, just as I had earlier with my eyes, he followed the flights down to their source and landed. The carnage was total. Ants vanished into the bill of the beast until all the winged ones were consumed or, dismayed, had retreated below ground. With the clearing of the feasting table, the junco wandered off.

A few minutes later, another madrone stump a few feet away erupted into flying ants. It almost seemed as if that stump had a sentinel, which waited to sound the “All Clear” until after the junco had gone. Once more the sunlit stillness was criss-crossed with gossamer gauze.

Then, suddenly, the slope was alive with dragonflies.

The junco had been clumsy in the air, missing more insects than it captured. But the dragonflies were precision fliers; one would swoop up from behind and below a flapping ant, and pick it out of the sky as neatly and as efficiently as a magnet scoops up iron tacks. Soon there were more predators on the wing than prey. I found myself cheering on the occasional ant that got close to the trees at the edge of the clearing made when the madrones had been cut down, a year or so ago, and to safety. A few of them made it.

The dragonflies were sated, though, before the second ant colony ran dry, and once more the helipad was bustling.

Only to be disrupted by a foraging junco. A female this time, picking off the would-be departures before they got airborne, just as her presumed partner had done. But unlike her partner, she held most of her prey in her beak. It soon was apparent that there was another party to this arrangement. She flitted off to find it, a fluttering, begging mass of brown in the bushes at the bottom of the hill. A fluttering, begging mass of brown that, incongrously, was almost twice her size …

The junco was feeding a baby brown-headed cowbird.

Cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species. The cowbird eggs usually hatch earlier than the eggs that actually belong there, and the young cowbird either kills the other chicks, elbows them out of the nest, or, by grabbing all the food that the parents bring to the nest first, starves them out. Species that are targeted by cowbirds often suffer disastrous declines in numbers, even to the point that they are threatened with extinction. Unless they learn to fight back. Adult juncos will attack any cowbird that they see approaching a junco nest. Other birds will abandon a nest that has a cowbird egg in it, or will destroy the cowbird eggs. Once the egg hatches, however, the cowbird chick becomes a baby like any other, and it must be fed …

The ant supply being finally exhausted, the mother junco and her outsized foster child disappeared into the bushes.

At that moment, a horn sounded. The ferry, with its load of Nigerian oil, Namibian diamonds, Malaysian electronics, Bangladeshi clothing, and well-fed Americans with an obsession for their personal security, was pulling into the dock at Friday Harbor.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Okay, the personal goal for our Friday Harbor vacation was for O.C. and I to get to know each other before I quit my job and changed my entire life irrevocably. That way, if it didn’t work out, I wasn’t left jobless, homeless and hopeless.

Until lunch time yesterday, I thought things were going pretty well, then …. well, judge for yourself:

He: Hi, Love.

Me, standing in the doorway so he can’t get in the house: Hi!

He, hugging me: What’s for lunch?

He tries to enter the house. I don’t move.

Me: You want inside?

He: Well, yeah, if you don’t mind.

Me: Did I tell you today how much I love you?

He, wary: Yeah.

Me: And have I ever told you how happy I am that you are kind and patient and reasonable?

He, still wary: Yeah.

Suddenly his face clears. He smiles and nods, then he gently nudges me out of the doorway and steps into the house sniffing the air.

He: So, what’dya burn?

Can you believe that? He just automatically assumed that if I wouldn’t let him in the house to eat I must have burnt his lunch. How rude is that?

Monday was a total waste energy wise.  I didn’t sleep well Sunday night, so Monday morning I just drug around the apartment, then in the afternoon I took a three hour nap!  After the nap I pretty well felt human and was ready to start my day — by cooking dinner.  Oops!

After dinner I cleaned up and O.C. went to a night class session.  When he returned we went to the point and O.C. practiced his trumpet for a bit.  The wind had come up and it was very chilly.  He cut his practice session a bit short.

After practice, we went back to the lab.  I was going to help O.C. with one of his experiments, but the equipment wasn’t ready yet so we went home, dished up some ice cream and found our favorite spots in the living room.

While we were savoring ice cream several little taps sounded from our French doors.  I looked up.  No one was there.  The taps came again.  I looked up.  I looked down.

A racoon kit stood on its hind legs with its hands pressed to the glass.  Its nose was working overtime, apparently smelling something it liked — probably the chicken wings we’d had for dinner.  

The baby raccoon was cute and I was excited.  I leaned forward and scooted to the edge of the couch.  The kit looked my way.  Our eyes met, we both froze for a second, then it ran.  By the time O.C. made it to the door, the baby was no where to be seen.

O.C. asked me if I’d like to go on a field trip with his class. I said, “sure,” and tagged along. Turns out he lied to me. We didn’t go to a field at all.

While the class hunted for seaweeds they recognized,

O.C. searched for pop-quiz material ….

and I quite happily went to play in the tide pools.

I encountered alien life forms …

and met a crusty hermit who deigned to emerge from his shell and chat with me.

As the “field trip” came to a close, O.C. paused to skip a few stones and I tried to catch it on film, but wasn’t coordinated enough to snap the shutter at the correct time.

It was a lovely time complete with picnic lunch, blue skies, even bluer seas and warm sunshine.

O.C. played such beautiful music the other night, the moon came down to listen.

Scientists are strange. I know. I live with one. To him everything is an experiment — even dinner.

I made deviled eggs — well, I tried — but the only vinegar in the house was balsamic, and it pretty much over-powered the eggs. O.C. took a bite of one, looked at it askance, then finished it.

Me:  Do you not care for the eggs?

He:  Maybe just a bit too much mustard for my taste.

Me:  Maybe, but I really think it’s the vinegar. All I had was balsamic and it’s just too sharp.

He:  Oh? [Then he picks up another egg and takes a bite.]

Me:  [shocked]  What are you doing? I don’t expect you to eat them if you don’t like them!

He:  I know, but you gave me new data. I wanted to recheck my facts and better understand why I don’t care for them.

[Oookay, folks, I don't know about you, but for me, "I don't like it!" is sufficient enough data to get me to stop eating!]

* * *

I finished writing this post and read it to O.C. He cracked up laughing.

He:  “Touche!”

Me:  May I post it? Do you mind?

He:  [persecuted]   Can I say anything to stop you?

Me:  [laughing]  Well, I didn’t make it up.

He:  I know. More’s the pity. [shakes head then shrugs, resigned] Sure. Post it.

Me:  I adore you.

He:  I love you, too. [very heavy sigh]

Me:  Hey!

He:  [evil giggle]

The other day, Quilly and I were sitting at the dining table in our apartment here at the Friday Harbor Labs, eating lunch and chatting about things, when, out of the blue, milady chuckles and announces “I’m glad people don’t listen in on our conversations. They’d lock us up!”

I tell her, first, “Don’t call me Chuck.”

Then, “Our conversations seem pretty normal to me. OK, every once in awhile, a word like Chloroxybacteria or endosymbiosis or phycobiliprotein pops up, but you handle them all right. Y’know, you’re cute when you roll your eyes at me.”

I can’t help it. People have been getting on my case about the big words since when they (the words) were taller than me. Nowadays, I’m taller and wider than most words. I think. Anyway, I don’t see what else can possibly be the matter.

I mean, just last weekend, I was grousing over something that wasn’t happening as fast as I like – it was probably something on the computer, and yes I should be grateful that I have one, but, well, I’ll not take the bandwidth to explain now, OK? – and Quilly counsels:

“Have patience!”

“Honey, if I were the kind of doctor that had patients, I might be able to afford a computer that works!”

Perfectly normal conversation.

Or when we were driving back to the Labs from a Saturday shopping trip, and we see a sign on a house, “Alfred’s Affordable Alterations”.

He: “I’ve never heard of an affordable altercation.”

She: “I’ve never heard of paying for one. They’re free.”

He: “Free?”

She: “Sure. Go to the bar. Have a few drinks. Ask a few questions. You’ll have plenty to choose from.”

He: “But that’s not free.”

She: “Whaddaya mean not free“?

He: “There’s the beer. And the bruises. You been to an emergency room lately? An affordable altercation’s gotta be one that minimizes the injuries. You know, like in the movies, where they use those balsa-wood chairs to break over people’s heads? Looks dramatic but doesn’t draw blood?”

She: “Yeah, that would work. I wonder if Alfred knows he’s running a fight club.”

He: “Uh huh. Me too.”

Straightforward. Surely there’s nothing here out of the ordinary. Is there?

Did you know that a conversation is a gathering of athletic-shoe manufacturers?

Gotta go …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Five foot three, eyes of green,
Tried out for the Quidditch team,
Has anybody seen my girl …?

Ayup. You heard right. Quilly has gone missing. Popped into a bookstore in Friday Harbor early this morning (21 July 2007), hasn’t been seen since.

I will say this about Friday Harbor. It must be about the only place in the English-speaking world that has a bookstore, and there wasn’t a line in front of it all night last night, a line of people desperate for a chance to blow US$32 on the seventh and last Harry Potter book. Place opened up at the usual time (9 AM), Quilly walked in, bought the book, walked away. Normalcy.

Well, almost. There was this couple whom Quilly met on the way out of the shop. The dialogue went something like this. The lady sees the Harry Potter copy under Q’s arm:

“Oh, George, I’ve got to go in! The Potter book is here!!”

“Mabel, we’ve ordered one online. We should have it today or Monday. I’m not shelling out for two copies!”

“I don’t want to buy it, George. I just want to see the last page!!”

[Incidentally - you know all that stuff that usually shows up on the dust jacket of the book, the stuff that usually summarizes the plot, quotes some favorable reviews, all of that? Uh uh. Not on this pile of sacrificed trees, all seven hundred something something pages of it, there ain't. No hints what's happening here, you gotta open the book ...]

At this point Quilly, charitable person that she is, and not yet having crossed into that dimension where Muggles would fear to tread if they had any clue about it, offers to let Mabel see her copy. Which brings a sharp retort from George:

“Don’t encourage her!”

George? I’m with you, pal. ‘Course, any time I get wind of one of these cultural feeding frenzies, like Pound Puppies a few hundred years ago, or the Wii craze last year, or the current Harry Potter insanity, I’m heading the opposite direction. Maybe ’cause I have to get my ears checked. I don’t hear “Gotta have it!” when that’s what everyone’s saying. All I hear is ka-CHING!! ka-CHING!! Loud and clear. And plenty loud and clear enough to know that, hell, that ain’t my cash machine that’s ringing. OK, maybe Rowling was a single mom on welfare when she managed to sell the first Harry Potter book. But I read that, today, she’s a billionaire and ranked 48th on the 100 most powerful celebrities list of 2007. Thanks, honey, but you can point that vacuum cleaner nozzle someplace else than at my wallet.

It might be different if I actually liked the Harry Potter books. I’ve tried to read them, really I have. I got about half way through volume 3 and stopped. Couldn’t bring myself to go any further. That was more than a year ago.

For me, reading Rowling is like listening to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Cliché piled on cliché piled on cliché. At least with Webber, it’s a smooth ride. But there are places in the Potter books (especially the second and, I’m told, the fourth) that read like snarled rush hour traffic.

I remember a school teacher I met in a supermarket checkout line back in Maine, with whom I was discussing the relative merits of Rowling and J. R. R. Tolkien. She summed up the difference in one word.

“Adjectives.”

Tolkien’s got ‘em – not to mention a whole lot of intellectual depth in the development and use of his characters and plots. Rowling ain’t got ‘em.

I also ain’t got Quilly. She vanished hours ago onto Platform 9 3/4 of King’s Cross Station, tracking Snape and Voldemort and the Weasleys, and she will learn the fates of the likes of Harry P. and Dumbledore long before I will.

Y’know, once upon a time, it was actually considered acceptable for a man to curl up in front of the television on a Sunday afternoon and disappear into the fantasy land of American football …?

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

This is the beginning of our hiking trail.

The signs warn against wheels of any kind, picking the flowers, or feeding the beasties.

I usually try to leave the apartment before OC, but this is pretty much all I see of him — and that not for long. (OC told me to tell you that this is his best side.)

The trial has many twists and turns. Each reveals a new facet of its personality.

Off to the right …

Over your head …

And to the left …

More twists and turns ….

Basking in sunlight …

And back to the beginning, which is now the end.

It was like seven months ago now when Quilldancer, initially in a mood of pure fantasy, started asking me about places to live. Places other than dry, dusty, deserty, fabulous Las Vegas. I was telling her about Maine, with its bugs and its seventeen seasons (one of which is actually habitable) and its people who label anyone not in town for at least three generations as “from away”, she was interested in only one thing. “Is it green??“

Well, Friday Harbor is green. And she got an ocean into the bargain. Quilly seems to be enjoying both. Is content, even…

* * *

This is Quilly’s first visit to Friday Harbor. Me? I’ve been coming here, off and on, for twenty-two years now. I first arrived in 1975, in a rickety old Ford Econoline van that I purchased from a high school classmate whom I had never trusted before in my life – and shouldn’t have that time, either. Which I drove from Boston clear across the country. In three and a half days. The last one without an alternator.

My feat was trumped by a fellow, name of Paul, who came out to Friday Harbor from North Carolina. On his motorcycle. Each of us thought the other was nuts. We’re now team-teaching a class on seaweeds to twelve graduate students. Students who are taking the same class that we took back in 1975.

* * *

By the time we got there, the Friday Harbor Laboratories had already been one of the happening places for students of marine biology for nearly eight decades. The current laboratory grounds, all 484 acres of them, had once been a military reserve (there are still a few fragments of foundations that might have been things like blockhouses and gun emplacements). The reserve was deeded to the University of Washington, specifically for a marine biology field station, in 1921. On the wall of the main laboratory building, near the main entrance, there is a plaque consisting of the letter granting the property to the University, signed by President Warren G. Harding, and the pen with which the letter was signed. Just goes to show that there’s some good in everyone, even the President in a corrupt Administration, George.

* * *

Friday Harbor sits in the middle of the San Juan Archipelago, a chain of islands at the entrance to Puget Sound. To the east, the Skagit Valley region of Washington State, USA. To the west, Vancouver Island, Canada. And thereby hangs a tale. Two of them, in fact.

* * *

Tale the first. Vancouver Island serves as a giant baffle. Surf rolling in from the Pacific Ocean strikes either the island or the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State to the south. Between these two land masses is a narrow strait, the Strait of Juan de Fuca. And no ocean wave has a snowball’s chance of making it all the way through the strait and into Puget Sound. So the salty water of the San Juan Islands is as placid as a lake. Friday Harbor has no surfer dudes. Unless the kelp flies have set up a shack.

* * *

Tale the second. When the Oregon Treaty of 1846 settled the long-standing boundary dispute between the US Oregon Country (now the states of Oregon and Washington) and the British Rupert’s Land (now the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta), it drew a line down the middle of the channel separating the US mainland and Vancouver Island (the southern tip of which lies south of the 49th parallel, North latitude, along which the rest of the boundary was drawn). Half of the channel would belong to the US, half to Great Britain.

Trouble was, the San Juan Islands, which were not marked on the maps the treaty writers used to set the boundaries, lie smack in the middle of that channel. The resulting argument led to one of the last, if not the last, armed confrontations between the United States and Great Britain. It featured, among others, Captain George Pickett (of Gettysburg fame) in early command of the American forces, and General Winfield Scott (the Mexican War hero and first General-in-Chief of Union forces during the Civil War), sent to negotiate a truce between the USA and Britain. The San Juan Island National Historical Park commemorates the event – of which the only casualty was a pig.

That was not quite the end of the matter … but I’ll tell the story of Point Roberts another time.

* * *

How did the place get the name Friday Harbor anyway? Quilly asked me that question the other day, and I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t think the place had been discovered on a Friday, and I didn’t think that Robinson Crusoe had had anything to do with Washington State.

Turns out, ironically, that the town was in fact named after a Man Friday. Joseph Poalima Friday, to be precise. No, not that Joe Friday… Friday, once an employee of a Hudson’s Bay Company farm in what is now part of Washington State, moved to the site of the town of Friday Harbor, right around the time of the Pig War, and raised sheep.

* * *

“Poalima? Is that an Indian name?” Nope. It’s Polynesian. Joseph Poalima Friday landed in western North America from Hawai’i. How weird is that …?

* * *

Quilly and I are here in Friday Harbor for another six weeks or so, and then (assuming all goes as planned) we’ll be on our way to Honolulu. In the meantime, I expect you’ll be hearing more from Quilly than from me on this blog.

For one thing, I’m working, while she’s hibernating.

For another, I’ve asked her to do me a favor. Anything I write, I give to her, and she has the right to post it, trash it, or set it aside for some other purpose. Has she ever bothered to tell you that she had a major role in editing Magic Bites, the well-received debut novel of fantasy writer Ilona Andrews – and got a juicy acknowledgment for her work in the front of the book?

Of course, with me, she’s got tougher material to work with. But, you never know …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Since I have been here in Friday Harbor, I have stood — twice — within 5 feet of deer who are less startled by me then I am by them. I saw a young buck sporting budding horns in velvet, and a little doe who was quite happily munching grass on the side of the trail. She politely stepped aside to allow me to pass, but she did not run.

The other night after I barbecued ribs, a fox showed up for dinner. We did not feed the poor scruffy-looking fellow, but I did try to snap his pic — it came out hopelessly blurry because of my excitement.

Every evening OC goes to a point near the edge of the harbor and practices his trumpet. Both a harbor seal and a porpoise have come to visit. Nature gets up-close and personal here.

The Friday Harbor Laboratory properties are a nature preserve. The animals seem to know that they are protected and they behave accordingly. Harming the wildlife here is expressly forbidden. We aren’t even allowed to pick the flowers. Even so, I have violated — and keep violating — the “no feeding the wildlife” rule. I suppose someone will discover it soon and ask me to leave. You see, I have been feeding the mosquitoes — in fact, considering the dots all over my body, I may even be over-feeding them.

OC says he uses the muffler [the technical term is "Harmon mute", even though mine was made by Giardinelli, not Harmon ... but don't tell Quilly I'm being this pedantic. OC] on his trumpet in deference to the fish — or perhaps the fishermen …. He doesn’t want to be held responsible for emptying the bay of marine life. (OC is the only one who thinks he’s a bad player. The seal and I like him.)