ON BOAT DISCUSSIONS-WITH

Summer in Tenants Harbor: Four boaters walk by Roseledge Books. Three come in to browse; the fourth sits in the yard, settles the dog, and thinks about things. With the summer’s fog, they’ve taken to becalmed-boat activities, e.g. acting out parts in a play (Roseledge Books always has at least Shakespeare’s The Tempest), making a pot of something (Roseledge Books has Marjorie Standish’s Soups, Stews, and Chowders; the Tenants Harbor General Store has groceries, and the Produce Lady offers a 3 mile walk to stretch your legs and a farmer’s market to satisfy even the fussy). But now the mind needs more. Has Roseledge Books got an idea for you!

Fig. #63. Roseledge Books to the left. Tenants Harbor General Store to the right. Sea Street decision alert.

Evolution is ever within, or maybe without, but ever it is. Clearly, it’s time for a late afternoon discussion-with (that is, discussion with a glass of something). What to do? How about browsing the ever-changing shelves of Roseledge Books to find the perfect reads. For evolutionary starters, Charles Darwin’s Voyages of the Beagle is right there with the sailing tie-in. Then Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (a favorite thinker) advances the cause in Amir Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull, and the book provides a snotty Vatican report as well, which is always helpful, I think. Maybe for the alternate viewpoint in the crowd, Roseledge Books has John Darnton’s The Darwin Conspiracy, a murder mystery which, whatever else the critics had to say about it, is evolutionarily accurate. RB is currently out of Tim Severin’s The Spice Islands Voyage, a revisiting of Alfred Russell Wallace’s trip which, some argue, provoked Darwin to finally publish, but when it is more available, RB will have it. I love Tim Severin’s books.

So the readers browse, then read, the thinker thinks with the dog, the day recedes, ideas sprout, exchanges blossom, the boat idles, friendships endure, and the world is a better place. I just don’t think it ever gets better than that.

Otherwise, the slow summer meanders into August. Blue asters are in the ditches. Farley Mowat’s Bay of Spirits has arrived, and I can hardly wait to read this complement to (wife) Clare Mowat’s The Outport People which Roseledge Books is out of right now, but is one of my favorite books.

A day later: Oops; skip the on boat discussion-with about evolution. A RB Regular just bought the Teilhard de Chardin biography. The day is glorious. Time for a webcam look.