Those lying steamboat captains! Grrr!

I adore the NY Times archives. I come across these old articles every once in a while during random research that are so entertaining it makes me wish I lived a hundred or so years ago if for no other reason than to look forward to the morning paper. Tonight I was researching steamboat speed for the Anamnesis Delta and came across this gem, which I've typed up in its entirety from the October 8, 1892 issue of the NY Times and offer it for your enjoyment. (I assume this is in the public domain, but I'm sure someone will come along soon enough to ask me to cease and desist if it isn't.)

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The Speed of Steamboats

The steamboat season may now be regarded as at its close. It goes out in a blaze of glory, owing to the advent of a new vessel, whose Captain has succumbed to the inevitable temptation of beating some other vessel in a race and then boasting of his steamer's remarkable speed. This seems to be a very good time to say that in the bright lexicon of the steamboat Captain there is no such word as slow. In his merry imagination miles are ticked off by the boat's clock in spaces of time which are strangely mysterious. For it should be noted that these wonderful bursts of speed never take place on regular trips of the boats; or, at any rate, no passenger has ever been found who reached his destination the sooner because of one.

The real truth of the matter is that in the waters around New-York City there is not a steamboat afloat to-day that can make the speed with which she is generally credited in the minds of steamboat travelers. It is not for us to say who is responsible for the popular misinformation on this interesting topic. No doubt the steamboat Captains can easily prove that the disseminators of the exaggerations are the newspapers. We are not prepared to deny this, but content ourselves with expressing the hope that no one will press the inquiry as to who told yarns to the reporters.

It should be added that the popular mind is led further astray by the failure to discriminate between nautical and statute miles. No steamboat Captain was ever guilty of the gross carelessness of stating the speed of his vessel in sea miles. A land mile is shorter by about one-seventh of its own measurement than a sea mile. Therefore a steamboat can log more land than sea miles to an hour, and, equally therefore, the steamboat Captain uses the former in his reckonings of speed. Hence when the ordinary wayfarer on the waters hears of a steamboat's making 20 miles an hour he thinks she is going at the habitual gait of the City of Paris; which she is not by about 2-1/2 land miles per hour.

Now, it appears that in the latest contest of speed on Long Island Sound one of the racers, according to her skipper, made 22 miles an hour--land miles, of course. The steamboat which did this plies between a point near the Brooklyn Bridge and City of New Haven. The distance from the bridge to Sands Point, where this recent race ended, is 17-3/8 nautical, or 20 land miles, and from the Point to the Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance to New-Haven Harbor it is 42-1/2 nautical and 49 land miles. Now, knocking off the exra two miles--which may have been due to forced draught, in the furnace room or the pilot house--and putting the ordinary running speed of the boat at 20 land miles an hour, she ought to make the run from her wharf here to the Southwest Ledge Light in three hours and a half. However, we must allow her an extra half hour for the delays of East River and Hell Gate navigation, and give her four hours for the run. When she makes it in that time, the passengers will no doubt be very highly delighted.

The Captain of this vessel properly referred to the Sandy Hook boats as models of speed. They are, indeed, fast, but not quite so fast as they are said to be. The time which they usually occupy in making the run from Pier 8 North River to their wharf at the Atlantic Highlands is an hour and five minutes. The distance from the Battery is 17-1/2 nautical and 20 land miles. When a boat makes 20 miles in an hour and five minutes, she is traveling at the rate of 18-1/2 miles per hour. This is excellent going; but as most of the old travelers on the Monouth and Sandy Hook are under the impression that these vessels can do 22 or 23 miles an hour, it is disappointing. No doubt they could and would do it if they should chance to meet that New-Haven boat out in the widest part of Long Island Sound on a dark October night.

This whole matter of steamboat speed is best explained by the absence of all satisfactory tests. The trial over the measured course in water unaffected by tidal currents is not given to steamboats as a rule. The trial trip of a new boat in this part of the world consists of a run down the bay or up the Hudson, in the course of which many men of maritime pursuits discover the sun over the foreyard at irregular but frequent intervals. When the boat returns the Captain announces that she attained a speed of so many miles per hour. She then goes into her regular daily business, and never attains that speed again. The result of which is that some observant persons are forced to the conclusion that a steamboat is a vessel which can go very fast--but won't.

With a Bit of a Mind Flip, You're into the Time Slip

Ever feel like you're living in a very odd, alternate reality? Sometimes it seems I've fallen into Frederik Pohl's There Will Be Time or Richard Bach's One, or anything by Philip K. Dick. I have the niggling suspicion that I took a wrong turn, or a thousand wrong turns, and every subsequent action further tangles the continuum. Eh. Maybe it's just PMS.

Whatever it is, it's accompanied by a sort of "waiting for the other shoe to drop" anxiety, as if at any moment the curtain will be pulled back (or the false skin on the prophet's mutant face) and the wrongness of it all will come spilling out like a pile of maggots on a sloughing corpse. Yeah, I'm in a mood.

I suppose writing until 2:00 a.m. and sleeping until 10:00 a.m. and waking with a massive sinus headache to a dismally grey fogged-in May morning hasn't particularly helped my state of mind. Also, the fact that I want to finish the novel I'm working on, finish my novella's pre-edits, and finish up three months' worth of work projects before I leave for my cruise next week may be putting a tad bit of pressure on me. Without pressure, though, I accomplish nothing.

Still, it isn't just today. It's that on days like today it's impossible to ignore the idea that everything around me is a prop in an elaborate farce. I used to think about that a lot as a kid. Sitting in church, where I got all of my weird, creative ideas as my mind wandered away from the pulpit, I would look around and think, "What if none of this is really happening? What if I'm not really here, not really doing any of this, and everyone else is in on it?" And then I'd think, "What if I'm just a memory of this moment?" And I am, now—or at least the ten-year-old me having that thought is. And that's pretty unnerving.

Bah. I think I'll go get some coffee and set off another hundred alternate realities, and leave the rest of this to Stephen Hawking.

Photostream

You might be wondering what that slide show is in the banner. Those are the last nine pictures I uploaded to Flickr. At the time I originally wrote this post, they were pictures from my trip to St. Petersburg, Russia in June/July 2006, now shown below. View the progression of sunset beginning at midnight on July 6: [gallery link="file"]

When I first arrived in St. Petersburg in early June, the sun "set" around 2:00 a.m. (more of a twilight than a setting), and was back at it by 3:00 a.m. By the beginning of July, twilight started around midnight, with some near-darkness around 2:30 in the morning that lasted a couple of hours.

The pictures were taken on my last night there. My roommate and I took the metro to Finland Station from our Lesnoy Prospekt flat to see the bridges rise on the Neva. The last bridge finished rising around 2:45 a.m. The metro had stopped running for the night, so we walked back to the flat in the grey semi-darkness. That walk continues to appear in different guises in my books. (Right now, it's doing a stint as a walk in the underworld.) So many memories from that trip I will always cherish, but that last, quiet walk, knowing I was leaving for the US in the morning and might never see the White Nights again...that will stay with me forever.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

I spent the day gardening, both inside and out. First, I finally got my new website and blog together, and up and running after sitting on my domain for two years. You're looking at it. (There are still a few things to add, like my blogroll and Twitter feed, and various other knick-knacks, but the basics are here.) Then I gardened out on the deck next to my little office. Sort of. Let me go back about six months first to give you the setting: The first week of November 2009, my landlady notified me that the building my neighbor and friends lovingly called "The Crack House" due to its aging paint job was going to be painted. How lovely, I thought. (Personally, I was kind of fond of the sad, grey Crack House, but I like shabby chic.)

Thus began a long, dark autumn and winter with the apartment shrouded in sheets of black mesh. (A darkness I didn't need with my Seasonal Affective Disorder; the usual lack of sun was good enough, thanks). Outside my bedroom window, strange men walked back and forth on scaffolding all day long shouting at each other (clearly thinking that the residents inside couldn't possibly know what puta meant), and were kind enough to start my day at 7:30 in the morning with their radio on the scaffolding set to banda music.

The shroud came off in February, but by then, the contractor had begun rebuilding my deck. (Wait, rebuilding my deck? What does this have to do with painting The Crack House? I have no idea. It was news to me.) With more strange men wandering about outside my curtainless office windows at any given moment, I was banished to the bedroom (because I work from home, and, I confess, usually in my bathrobe). It's a fine bedroom, but the light is mostly in the back of the house, which is why my office is there in what was once a sun porch.

Worse than being banished from my office, however, I was banished from my garden. I came out one morning to find all of my plants and deck furniture crammed into a pile in the center of the deck while the fence was being torn down. The rainy season hit immediately afterward and it remained in this state of disarray for several weeks. Once the fence was demolished, I found all of my belongings tossed into a pile on the roof behind the deck, plants on top of plants, and piles of work supplies on top of those. I waited (not very) patiently while the deck was torn up and a new deck was constructed, and then a new fence.

When they seemed done at last, I went outside to see how it looked and found the charming situation pictured to the left. The back door would only open halfway, thanks to the contractor's failure to measure the door when she put in a new step. I then waited while the rain returned, told that despite the fact that this step is under the roof, they could do nothing while it rained.

Finally, I heard the carpenters outside one morning and rejoiced. I would be able to use my new deck at last. I took a look when they were done to see if they had really fixed the step, and discovered that King Solomon had apparently lent his wisdom to the task. The result is on the right. Well, hell, at least it works.

You thought this story was over? So did I. The contractor told me that the crew would move my belongings back as soon as the inspector came. Two weeks passed. I spoke with the landlady, wondering when in the name of all that is holy I was going to be allowed to have my garden back. She was surprised, since the contractor had told her two weeks ago that the inspection was done and she was moving the furniture back. Then she added one little nugget that was the perfect ending: the contractor had informed her that plants could not be kept on the deck, because watering them would ruin the wood. I'm just going to end there and enjoy the sound of brains exploding on monitors.

Oh, and yes, I spent the last two days moving all of my furniture and plants back where they belong. A butterfly landed on the deck and warmed its wings. Birds sat on the fenceposts and sang. I kid you not. And wonder of wonders, my poor, bedraggled little Betty Boop rose bush that had been buried in tarps and buckets for months is sprouting two lovely buds.

Today is the first day back at my desk, sitting with the window open as I type, and seeing the green outside. And look how much I've accomplished: an entire website.

(I did, however, manage to accomplish one little thing while in the Slough of Despond of the past six months: I submitted my novella The Devil's Garden to [redacted]...it will be published in 2011. Update, July 4, 2010: See Independence Day: Stranger than fiction. [Redacted] is no longer my publisher.)