Can I dedicate this thread to Espiritus Corvus and his stories?

My phone will cut but not paste.
TJBM #81, #82, #83 are chock full of classic Crow. He wrote lots of wonderful stories on TJBM over the past few months. If anybody stumbles onto his version of my future as a writer, please post is here for me. I got the best laugh from it.
I took screen shots of it so I wouldn’t lose track of it.

@Patty_Melt Is this it
“Hang on a sec. Let me plug in the crystal ball. Oh, yeah, there you are. Man, nice big house on the ocean. You’re sitting in the sunlight at a glass-top, wrought iron table on a balcony overhanging a rocky cliff with waves crashing two hundred feet below. You appear to be writing something…. oh, it’s a note to a literary agent… it says,
“Re: Next week’s film contract negotiations concerning my last book. I want you to push harder for a larger percentage of the film rights, an advertising budget increase and double the product consignments. These Hollywood suits need to be reminded that these films would never happen if it weren’t for my hard work. My film adaptations pay their exorbitant salaries. And they are skimping on the swag. My daughter isn’t interested in ladies Rolex watches, she’s into Movado now. Also, she’s got her eye on a Aston Martin Volante convertible. I’m sure they can find one laying around Burbank that they aren’t using. So, tell them to get with it, or we’ll re-open negotiations with MGM.”
LOL. Behind you are classic French doors leading to your home office. On a wall there is a dartboard on the face of which is a heavily damaged photo of J. K. Rowling.
TJBM will tell us what they see when they look into their crystal ball.”

Right here

Man he was good!

Thanks for contributing @SergeantQueen and @Patty_Melt! Keep ‘em coming!

Yes! Thanks, @SergeantQueen!

Within the first ten responses of #83, there is a classic. It demonstrates the beautiful heart and intricate brain we know as EC.

Most of my best EC material is trapped in the PMs of the Seek account, which is now deactivated. Alas.

Ouch.
I have emails with him I wish I could get back.

In what turned out to be our final pm exchange he bantered along with me about Fanny our saucy maid from below stairs for that alone I shall remember him fondly

Can you post a link @ucme?

The mods can reactivate your Seek account @Muad_Dib.

Best not to post link coz the conversation began & is referred to throughout with him asking if i’d sign the petition…yeah, that one & so contains sensitive material which would more than likely grab the attention of the mods.
Typically I managed to turn that around into bawdy banter which to be fair he enjoyed :D

Aye, to be a true old salt, he would have to be favorin’ wenches.

I was shocked and saddened to hear of his passing! He was one of the first Jellies I had PM’ed wa-a-ay back when I was @Yetanotheruser. He’s also responsible for my current username.

On another site it was mentioned that his maritime pursuits were all fabricated. That’s OK. It was out mutual love for things nautical that made us “fluther-friends”, and that’s how I’ll choose to remember him. He had a way with words, and evidently, an imagination to match.

Fair winds and following seas, Old Salt!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ @Strauss .

You can’t write the stories he wrote unless you’ve some experience or done a LOT of research. And he he DID live in Florida and I’ll bet he spent a lot of time on the water.

He posted this on Gail’s memorial thread, and I think it’s only fitting that I both link and copy it here:

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Thank you @Strauss.

Here’s part of a PM he sent to me.

The one and only time I was in Astoria, Oregon was early June, 1976. Beautiful up there. I was involved in the Bikecentennial, one of the many national celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the country. I think Outback and National Geographic Magazines sponsored it.
My group was about fifty cyclists with full panniers and two sag wagons (vans with tools and first aide supplies, a mechanic and medic in each). We biked from Astoria to Williamsburg, Virginia in 93 days. I trained and waited on tables for a year to do that. It was one of the most memorable summers of my life that didn’t have something to do with a girl. The town and the woods around it were full of bikers from all over the world. LOL. There weren’t enough accommodations, all the motels and hostels were full, lines stretching around every restaurant.
I got to know this nice lady at the museum and she put a couple of us up in her huge Queen Anne house while we waited for our group’s turn to go. Mrs. Emily Parsons. I wrote to her for years. We had a great time, but the town was in shock. I hope Astoria is still the sweet little town it was back then. Great western architecture.

My first mate is a local and specializes in the voodoo legends of these islands. She keeps my guests rapt in lore on deck under the moon while we sail just off the old, local slave plantations There are spectacular graveyards and great stories that the regular beach-going tourist misses when they stay too close to their hotels. They miss a lot of local culture that way. I was thinking of working up a combo walking/jitney connection tour guide with her that we might drop off with the hotel concierges to put in their restaurants, coffee shops and bookstores.
I wonder if it would be too unethical to have all the tours end at my boat just before sunset? LOL. ‘Tis munny in me parse, Lass.

Hem (Hemingway) is long gone, but the progeny of his cats remain and are cared for and protected by the curators of the house and museum. Hem liked six-toed cats, evidently. The cats that remain all have six toes. Now, in the cat world of Key West, these cats must be quite high in the hierarchy. And quite clique-ish. An new cat in town, possibly a mascot who wanders off a fishing or sponge boat from Tarpon Springs, might find it difficult to fit in. But fishing boat cats are blue collar tough, and used to navigating their way though the other tough cats who hang around the docks of various villages.
rrrr

Also, lately I’ve renewed a fascination with the Mayans of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. I recently read that they weren’t originally a bloodthirsty culture. No human sacrifices, no ripping the hearts out of the losers of their sports tournaments. They were a wealthy, peaceful people, rich in grain, cocao, turquois and gold, and, as you probably know, extremely adept at astronomy and way beyond Europeans and the Mid Easterners in mathematics. Hell, even there honeybees were stingless.
About 500 years before the Spanish arrived, the Aztecs, an extremely warlike people, much like Spartans, made military incursions into Mayan territory from the west. They brought their bloodthirst gods with them and many of their customs and forced the Mayans to accept these things.

But, there is evidence that there was a small, highly secret priesthood that preserved the old ways and worked and waited for the right time to re-establish the original, peaceful Mayan culture.

About fifty years before the Spanish arrived, there were a series of crop failures and power usurptions, and the government of the Maya under Aztec influence began to weaken. Far off temple complexes like the very important fertility temple in Cozumel, were left to fend for themselves financially and this gave them a bit of independence. They high priests were in the process of re-establishing the old ways at Cozumel when the bloody Spanish arrived and destroyed their culture completely.

Crow and I explored a lot of ideas about writing a story or maybe a book together:

Things are busy here, with fertilizing the orchards and sheering the sheep. But not so busy that I can’t reserve time in the evenings to read your ideas and embark on a new endeavour with a friend. Yes, please send my your ideas which will stimulate ideas of my own to share with you and we can step into this together.
....
Yes. It’s been a long and busy season down here. Soon the rains will come and I’ll put the boat in chains and it will just be me and the plantation.

An overwhelming amount of individuals on death row in this country have “Wayne” for a middle name.

Check out this list that Chuck Shepard over at the News of the Weird has been compiling for twenty years. And check out how many of these Waynes are on Texas’ death row.
Michael Wyne Adams (Virginia
Timothy Wayne Adams (Texas)
Shannon Wayne Agofsky (Texas)
Thomas Wayne Akers (North Carolina)
Matthew Wayne Almand (Florida)
Stephen Wayne Anderson (California)*
Joshua Wayne Andrews (Virginia)
David Wayne Arisman (California)
Dennis Wayne Bagwell (Texas)*
Timothy Wayne Barnett (Alabama)
Michael Wayne Baxter (Maryland)*
Kenneth Wayne Beck (Missouri)
Gerald Wayne Bivins (Indiana)
John Wayne Blair (Tennessee)
Scott Wayne Blystone (Pennsylvania)
Donald Wayne Booth (Texas)
Elvis Wayne Botley (California)
Steven Wayne Bowman (South Carolina)
Larry Wayne Brigman (Minnesota)
Ricky Wayne Brown (Florida)
Michael Wayne Brown (Oklahoma)
Michael Wayne Brunner (Kentucky)
Edward Wayne Bryant (Oklahoma)
Dennis Wayne Bryant (Virginia)
Estell Wayne Buck (Ohio)
Bradley Wayne Cagle (Texas)
Curtis Wayne Campbell (Oklahoma)
Seth Wayne Campbell (Texas)
Darren Wayne Campbell (Oregon)
Mark Wayne Campmire (Connecticut)
Michael Wayne Carter (Indiana)
Rodger Wayne Chastain (California)*
Douglas Wayne Clark (Texas)
Ronald Wayne Clark, Jr. (Florida)
Darryl Wayne Claughton (Alberta)
Ira Wayne Cloninger (Virginia)
Timothy Wayne Coalson (Georgia)
Kevin Wayne Coffey (Texas)
David Wayne Cole (Pennsylvania)
Michael Wayne Cole (North Carolina)
Timothy Wayne Condrey (North Carolina)
Joseph Wayne Cook (North Carolina)
Billy Wayne Cope (South Carolina)
Alvin Wayne Crane (Texas)*
David Wayne Crews (Tennessee)
Donald Wayne Darling II (Alabama)
Christopher Wayne Davis (Louisiana)
Gary Wayne Davis (Kentucky)
Jerry Wayne Dean (Kentucky)
Aryan Wayne Duntley (California)
John Wayne Duvall (Oklahoma)*
Dennis Wayne Eaton (Virginia)*
Dale Wayne Eaton (Colorado)
Timothy Wayne Ebert (Texas)
Michael Wayne Eggers (Alabama)
Gary Wayne Etheridge (Texas)
Michael Wayne Farmer (Maryland)
Ellis Wayne Felker (Georgia)*
Darrell Wayne Ferguson (Ohio)*
Matthew Wayne Ferman (Ohio)
Lewis Wayne Fielder Jr. (South Carolina)
Michael Wayne Fisher (Pennsylvania)
Earl Wayne Flowers (North Carolina)
Terry Wayne Freeman (Illinois)
Percy Wayne Froman (Alabama)
Ronald Wayne Frye (North Carolina)*
John Wayne Glover (Australia)*
Richard Wayne Godwin (Oregon)
Arthur Wayne Goodman, Jr. (Texas)
Richard Wayne Gorrie (New Zealand)
Jeffrey Wayne Gorton (Michigan)
Keith Wayne Graham (California)
Coleman Wayne Gray (Virginia)*
Charles Wayne Green (Arkansas)
Kenneth Wayne Gregory (Florida)
Christopher Wayne Gregory (Texas)
Ralph Wayne Grimes (Kentucky)
Anthony Wayne Grimm (Illinois)
Randall Wayne Hafdahl (Texas)*
Conan Wayne Hale (Oregon)
Kenneth Wayne Hall Sr. (South Carolina)
Michael Wayne Hall (Texas)
Steven Wayne Hall (Alabama)
Bradley Wayne Hamrick (Washington)
Jerald Wayne Harjo (Oklahoma)*
Emmanuel Wayne Harris (Arizona)
Robert Wayne Harris (Texas)
Nathaniel Wayne Hart (Texas)
Jerald Wayne Harvel II (Oklahoma)
Mark Wayne Hauseur (California)
Billy Wayne Hayes (Tennessee)
Carl Wayne Heath (Maine)
Brandon Wayne Hedrick (Virginia)
Michael Wayne Henry (Texas)
Rodney Wayne Henry (Kansas)
David Wayne Hickman (Texas)
Donald Wayne Holt (Maryland)
Jeremy Wayne Hopkins (Texas)
Bryant Wayne Howard (Oregon)
Christopher Wayne Hudson (Australia)
Calvin Wayne Inman (Texas)
Derek Wayne Jackson (Pennsylvania)
Kenneth Wayne Jackson (Texas)
Eric Wayne Jacobs (California)*
Allen Wayne Jenecka (Texas)*
Mark Wayne Jennings (Virginia)
Robert Wayne Jiles (New York)
Timothy Wayne Johnson (North Carolina)
Terry Wayne Johnson (Florida)
Jason Wayne Johnson (Texas)
Mark Wayne Jones (Ohio)
Tyler Wayne Justice (Texas)
Kenneth Wayne Keller (Texas)
Gary Wayne Kleypas (Kansas)
Bruce Wayne Koenig (Maryland)
Derrick Wayne Kualapai, Sr. (California)
Dudley Wayne Kyzer (Alabama)
Ronald Wayne Lail (North Carolina)
Monty Wayne Lamb (Texas)
Robert Wayne Lambert (Oklahoma)
Jonathan Wayne Larrabee (South Dakota)
Jeffrey Wayne Leaf (Oklahoma)
Bobby Wayne Ledbetter (Alabama)
Darrell Wayne Lewis (Arizona)
John Wayne Lewis (Oklahoma)
Christopher Wayne Lippard (North Carolina)
Kenny Wayne Lockwood (Texas)*
Mark Wayne Lomax (Texas)
Christopher Wayne Luttrell (Kentucky)
Darrell Wayne Maness (North Carolina)
Shelly Wayne Martin (Maryland)
Donald Wayne Martin (Texas)*
Randall Wayne Mays (Texas)
Steven Wayne McBride (Minnesota)
George Wayne McBroom (Arizona)
David Wayne McCall (Texas)
Rocky Wayne McGowan (Kentucky)
Robert Wayne McMillion (Florida)
Jason Wayne McVean (Colorado)
David Wayne Mears (Michigan)
Wesley Wayne Miller (Texas)
Jimmy Wayne Miller (Texas)
Don Wayne Moody (Texas)*
John Wayne Moore, Jr. (Missouri)
John Wayne Moses (North Carolina)
Dustin Wayne Nall (Texas)
Jack Wayne Napier (Kentucky)
Michael Wayne Nelson (Florida)
David Wayne Nelson (Alaska)*
Oral Wayne Nobles (Massachusetts)
Danny Wayne Owens (Alabama)
Bryan Wayne Padd (Arizona)
David Wayne Pallister (England)
Jeffrey Wayne Paschall (Utah)
John Wayne Peck (Virginia)
Douglas Wayne Pepper (North Carolina)
Michael Wayne Perry (Tennessee)
Jason Wayne Petershagen (Texas)
Michael Wayne Poe (Tennessee)
Curtis Wayne Pope (Texas)
Bruce Wayne Potts (Texas)
Lonnie Wayne Pursley (Texas)*
Donald Wayne Rainey (Mexico)
Gary Wayne Ray Jr. (Oklahoma)
Earl Wayne Reynolds (Virginia)
Michael Wayne Richard (Texas)*
Randy Wayne Richards (Canada)
Barry Wayne Riley (British Columbia)
Robert Wayne Rotramel (Oklahoma)
Roy Wayne Russell (Washington)
David Wayne Satterfield (Texas)
Christopher Wayne Scarber (Kentucky)
Patrick Wayne Schroeder (Nebraska)
Randy Wayne Seal (Florida)
Michael Wayne Sears (Virginia)
Timothy Wayne Shepherd (Texas)
Kenith Wayne Sherrill (Washington)
Donald Wayne Shipe (Virginia)
Dallas Wayne Shults (Tennessee)
Mark Wayne Silvers (South Carolina)
Daryl Wayne Smith (West Virginia)
Justin Wayne Smith (Texas)
David Wayne Smith (Virginia)
Richard Wayne Smith (Texas)*
Richard Wayne Snell (Arkansas)*
Ronald Wayne Spencer Jr. (Texas)
Richard Wayne Spicknall (Alabama)
Jerrell Wayne Stanley (Texas)
Randall Wayne Stevens (Illinois)
John Wayne Stockdall (Missouri)
Michael Wayne Summers (Missouri)
John Wayne Surratt Jr. (North Carolina)
Gary Wayne Sutton (Tennessee)
Bobby Wayne Swisher (Virginia)*
Charles Wayne Thomas Jr. (Texas)
Reginald Wayne Thomas (Texas)
Michael Wayne Thompson (Indiana)
John Wayne Thomson (Washington)
Andrew Wayne Toler (Texas)
Robert Wayne Vickers (Arizona)*
Russell Wayne Wagner (Maryland)*
Billy Wayne Waldrop (Alabama)*
Jerry Wayne Walker (Kentucky)
Anthony Wayne Walker (Ohio)
Jessie Wayne Walker (North Carolina)
Chadwick Wayne Wallace (Illinois)
Daniel Wayne Warfield (Virginia)
John Wayne Warrener (Colorado)
Alexander Wayne Watson Jr. (Maryland)
Louis Wayne Watters, Jr. (Texas)
Anthony Wayne Welch (Florida)
Coy Wayne Wesbrook (Texas)
Melvin Wayne White (Texas)*
Larry Wayne White (Texas)*
Timothy Wayne Widman (Pennsylvania)
Michael Wayne Williams (Virginia)
Richard Wayne Willoughby (Maryland)
Kenneth Wayne Woodfin (Virginia)
Bobby Wayne Woods (Texas)
William Wayne Wright (Texas)
Darrell Wayne Wright (Texas)
Jerry Wayne Wright (Tennessee)
Robert Wayne Wyant (Virginia)

I haven’t seen any responses since I posted these, and I know the last one was long (sorry).

Anyway I have quite a few more interesting conversations. Does anyone want me to keep posting?

Yes! Keep posting!!

From myself to the rest of you: I know that last one was long, But Crow and I had been having a PM conversation about how the state of Texas (where I live) required me to change my name when I got here. See, my parents only gave me two names, and I’ve always liked having just two names. So when I arrived in Texas and I tried to apply for a drivers license at the last moment (like I always do), the lady at the DMV informed me I had to pick a third name.

The below is part of our discussion about that.

Wow. I never heard of a state forcing someone to make up a middle name for themselve at the state’s convenience. That seems so thoroughly un-American. It reminds me of the Russion occupation in Poland after WWII, when they forced people with Jewish names to to change them to slavic names. Or in Spain at the time of Torquemada and the Conversos. That is one of the strangest American stories I’ve ever heard. The State of Texas should be ashamed of themselves. I’m serious.

Yeah, I passed that question up because my answer is complicated with a lot of history and emotions on my part, and I’m sure to be misunderstood here on Fluther. These are all good people, but they would never understand and think I was being a pretentious snob if I tried to explain my journey of finally, late in life, growing into my three names. I’m even very careful here to not refer to my “boat” for what it really is—a very fine, well appointed, 42 foot sailing yacht which I worked very hard for and continue to do so. They can’t handle that without attaching a truckload of preconceptions and prejudices—because they are normal, middle class people—just like myself. I even use cursewords here, like fuck, much more than I ever would in real life in order to avoid being imagined as some kind of Thurston Howell the Third in caricature. LOL. Some stories are just best left untold.

I’m doing fine. I left the small island of Bequia this morning at 0900 AST north for St. Lucia (click to enlarge) under fine, 17 to 24mph open-sea westerlies. We’re making good time in excellent, sunny weather. God, this world is a beautiful place. A pod of pygmy sperm whales have been excorting us off our starboard bow for the past two hours.
With about four tacks, we should be in Soufriere by tomorrow morning. The mate took the wheel about an hour ago. I’m still a bit wired on morning coffee, but should be napping for tonight. Satcomms are being negatively affected by ambient atmospheric conditions, so the net is hit or miss right now. Text only.

All is well in my life. Living in a hotel on Martinique as their live-in dive master and boat captain and chartering my boat to the clientele while renovations are being done on the ranch back on St. Lucia. I took over the gig while the guy, an old buddy, who usually does it is on vacation back in the States. Great food. Nice pool and view of the bay. Interesting French tourist ladies.

Crow wrote a lot here on the 100th anniversary question https://www.fluther.com/195940/ready-to-celebrate-our-10th-anniversary-tomorrow/#quip3298718

Sorry I couldn’t answer your PMs for the past two days. I had a monster storm west of me and had to move the boat to a safer place in case it turned right.
Of course you can keep my insult on your profile. It’s good for me to be reminded of my transgressions from time to time.
I’m glad that you’ve moved to a place with better neighbors. That’s so important. And labs (labrador retrievers) are cool, aren’t they? Sweet, sweet animals.
I’m looking forward to your latest bug story.
W.

After a huge personal setback I took a break from Fluther. When I returned, he sent this by PM:

Spider Woman! I am doing great. I am so glad you decided to come back. I’m still taking care of this little farm in the Caribbean, have added a new border collie named Dave to accompany ol’ Sam and now have mare named Cheyenne. She is much better than the jeep in this rugged terrain and has much more personality. The boat is down the hill in the harbor ready and waiting for the odd charter.
I hope you stay, Snowberry. I’ve missed you. We had some good laughs and I do remember insulting you on a bad day and I hope I am forgiven. I remember one night you and Jan Penguin and I had a good laughs over some really strange Texas spiders. God it’s nice to hear from you.
I suppose you know that we lost Gail a year ago this coming Oct. 24th, 2015. I’m still not over it.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’ve come back!

I am going backwards through my PM’s (the newest ones first). This one is dated October 2015:

I’m very sorry that I hadn’t seen your message to me until now. I was going back through some old PMs hunting for something and there was your message asking how I was. It’s dated last October. I completely missed it. At the time I was ferrying sailboats from Grand Bahama Island to a dealer in Coconut Grove just south of Miami in order to fill me parse with munny for a trip south. I am fine. No spiders to report, thank god. I’m in Ascension Island for repairs and maintenance (a lightning storm blew out all my antennaes) and waiting to take the mailboat south to St. Helena where I’ll ride a donkey around for a couple of weeks, see Napoleon’s last abode, do some diving, get the T-shirt, then return to the boat and sail back to St. Lucia and the farm. All is well.

Wow. WHAT an imagination!

Another long one, but wow, he had amazing brain too!

Wasn’t it you, oh Spider Woman, who told the story about thee really strange, stringy, white spiders you discovered when you turned the on your porch light one night? Sadly, it was in chat and, as far as I know, cannot be recovered. Jonesn4burgers made you retell it when I showed up late for the first telling. I could swear that was you. Who else could it have been?
Wow. The spider’s sex organs are next to their mouths… talk about intelligent design. By any chance are spiders the progenitors of the species we know as Frenchmen? (That’s an ongoing, traditional sailor joke, Matey. Probably of British Naval origin.)
I will be unabashedly anthropomorphic here, and I am betting that spiders do have orgasms. How could they not? (And no excuses for leaving her high and dry, buddy. Not with that menu of possibilities. Not like those incompetent and poorly designed humans.)
My money also says that Jonesn4burgers will be back, if she isn’t already. She just needed a little time away.
Here’s a little spider trivia I ran across a few years ago. And a question:
Our former Attorney General, Janet Reno, had quite a mom. Jane Wood Wallace, was a journalist for the Miami Herald who had worked her way off the society pages, reporting on the latest doings of the Miami Lady’s Garden Club and such, into investigative reporting on Florida politics, corruption, and the licentious destruction of the Everglades by South Florida developers. She was best friends with the famous early suffragette, conservationist, and Everglades ecologist Marjory Stoneman Douglass (River of Grass), who was many years her senior.
Ms. Wallace never missed an opportunity to write of the Glades, the importance of it’s riparian ecology to the rest of the continent, it’s wildlife, it‘s people, the politics of sprawl and development and the effects thereof. She was one of the few white people and the only woman to be allowed into the Kiva during the annual Corn Dance, when the male Seminole leadership sequestered themselves in a traditional enclosure, drank a viscous bitter, black, hallucinogenic liquid and… had visions, I suppose.
Anyway, she was quite a lady and revered among the Seminoles, more properly known as the Miccosukee, of the Glades. She was invited into their chickees and reported on them in the Miami Herald on a regular basis in an effort to humanize them for her readership in hopes of saving them from genocidal urban sprawl.
One of the things she reported on was that in each chickee (a kind of wall-less, open-air, post-and-beam, grass-topped shelter, a kind of tiki hut—the traditional habitat of the Miccosukees.) there was a family spider. This spider kept the other spider and insect population down around the chickee. One day, while on a visit to a family in their chickee, she saw a spider and killed it with her shoe, to great consternation of the family.
Have you ever heard of this before? The family spider? If so, what kind of spider would that be?
Anyway, if true, it is an excellent example of a symbiotic relationship between man and spider. Cool. Or it may have been that Ms. Wallace was just pulling our legs for a great story. What’s your take on this? Have you ever heard of this among aboriginal people before?
~W.
September 21st, 2014

Here we had been trading compliments:

Thank you. I have never attempted to publish, but I’m becoming more confident and probably will try to sell a few articles and stories in the future to supplement my income as a sailbum. But, god, I hate that part of it. Writing is one thing, marketing the work is another. It utilizes a totally different part of the brain it seems. But, thanks to the positive reaction that this one got, including yours, I went back to it, polished the grammar and straightened out some facts, just in case.
These things you read are actually extensions of my ship’s log, which are cleaned up and entered into a journal that I keep during this voyage that started back during Thanksgiving, 2012. A blog would make more sense, I suppose. I could post photos, documents. It will all be safely on a server somewhere, I suppose. I don’t know the first thing about blogging, except that the fastest selling novel in history began as a blog, Fifty Shades of Grey. But I don’t think she for for her quality writing, not from what I read, anyway. She just somehow pushed a previously unsuspected button that exploded a bomb among women readers. More power to her, I say.
I enjoy your posts as well. Your interest and knowledge of spiders is quite daunting, and your story of the Alabama Porch Spiders of Texas was hilarious. You have a husband who brings you a tarantula as a gift that proceeds to scare itself to death. You named it Chainsaw. C’mon, Snow. That is fucking gold.
From you I learned that there actually are bird-eating spiders somewhere on this very same hemisphere. And they are not as friendly as tarantulas, and neither are motivated by philosophical ruminations.
I belly laughed when you informed this crowd on the bloodsucking, democratic ways of Bedbugs:
They hide during the day, and come out at night to feed. A severe infestation will show spots of blood (which is actually their feces) on the mattress. …anyone can get ‘em. They are often spread by staying in an infested hotel room, and it can be days before the bites show up. Actually, in the last few years they have been spreading, and it’s bad.
Man, you wouldn’t let up…
”...if it were due to diet, you should have a rash ALL OVER your body, not just on one leg or one foot, but who knows?”
Jesus. I’m sure our Asters and Eggies got no sleep at all that night.
Hopefully, I’ll only need all that information to win a round of Trivial Pursuit.
Just in case you’re getting the uneasy feeling that I’ve been stalking you, let me assure you that that isn’t the case at all. I remembered these instances, but not verbatim, so I simply Googled: “Fluther”“Snowberry”“Spiders”—and you are all over the place.
It’s always a pleasure to read you, and thank you very much for the encouragement.

I think that’s all my PM’s from our good friend @Espiritus_Corvus RIP

Thank you for sharing all of them @snowberry

I forgot to check my email. There may be more there. I will let you know.

This is from email, and it’s the last I have:

I have to sail a young British couple south to an island called Mustique, just south of St. Vincent. My first mate, Eddie, just handed me the helm for the night. It’s beautiful out here. We expect some weather around three a.m.,k and I’ll save the Joe Walsh for then. But for now, the sun just set and the Caribbean sky is lighting up with stars above me. Just the sound of my hull cutting through the water and the wind in the sails is music enough for me. Soon, when the sea is completely black, I’ll be leaving an elctric blue wake tonight, churning up the bioluminscent diatoms in these tropical waters, turning them into a highway of bright, ice blue stars behind us.

Man, if more people could experience this on a regular basis, they’d know, First: how insignificant they are in this huge, wild and precious sheme of things. Second: how beautiful and mysterious our gifted planet is. And Third: I’m pretty sure we’d have peace on earth. But that’s probably the old hippie in me speaking.

Speaking of peace on earth, the distaff side of my charter just informed me there has been a terrorist action in London, on the London Bridge. They are both Londoners. What a pain in the ass these terrorists are. I sent Eddie down with some champagne for them. She also marinated some conch in lemon and light spices and will offer that. I don’t like it when the outside world interferes with my magical one, the one I try to share with these busy people hunting for a little magic while on vacation.

Yes, my stories are based on personal experiences as well. I’ve never ventured into children’s stories. Just thought I’d give it a shot, but my forte is history, art, the sea and culture. Humans. And you evidently know a helluva lot about marketing work than I do. I’m all ears.

OK. Time to take the mate’s report and get to work.

”I don’t like it when the outside world interferes with my magical one, the one I try to share with these busy people hunting for a little magic…..”

”Yes, my stories are based on personal experiences as well.”

I guess this is as close as we will ever get to a funeral for our good friend Crow.

May you continue to sail the bioluminescent waves with the glittering stars above to guide you. RIP.

I prefer memorials over funerals anyway.

How did you all find out he died?

Some Jellies were friends with his brother on Facebook, and they found out through him, who then posted it here. I found out here.

@snowberry But where exactly? That’s what I meant, is there a place in Fluther for that purpose or we just bump into it in an OP like this one?

If a Jelly passes someone starts a thread in Meta @flo. And yes. We just bump into it. We just bump into every single question on here.
Did you know you can sort questions by how currently active they are? That’s how I find a lot of questions.

@flo Here’s the question you’re looking for. https://www.fluther.com/205107/can-we-pass-a-final-wish-of-smooth-sailing-to-our/

I understand.

Farewell dear friend.

I just knew him from the answers he gave, and I only remember positive and impressive answers from him. I hope he didn’t suffer.

Sometimes spam dredges up some very special memories.