"We were dutiful, if not particularly enthusiastic, Catholics. Mass every Sunday, Saturday catechism for me, fish sticks on Friday. Then, around my thirteenth birthday, I received the sacrament of confirmation, becoming an adult in the eyes of the church, and was thunderstruck to hear my parents say I was no longer required to go to Mass. That decision was now mine. Were they not concerned about the state of my soul? Their evasive, ambiguous answers shocked me again. They had been big fans of Pope John XXIII. But they did not, I realized, actually believe in all the doctrine and prayers -- all those Oblatios, Oratios, frightening Confiteors, and mealymouthed Acts of Contrition that I had been memorizing and struggling to understand since I was small. It was possible that they didn't even believe in God. I immediately stopped going to Mass. God was not visibly upset."
"What could rightly have worried my dad about me and surfing was the special brand of monomania, antisocial and ill-balanced, that a serious commitment to surfing nearly always brought with it. Surfing was still something that one did -- that I did -- with friends, but the club thing, the organized-sports part, was fading fast. I no longer dreamed about winning contests, as I had dreamed about pitching for the Dodgers. The newly emerging ideal was solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilization. Robinson Crusoe, Endless Summer. This was a track that led away from citizenship, in the ancient sense of the word, toward a stretched out frontier where we would live as latter-day barbarians. This was not the day-dream of the happy idler. It went deeper than that. Chasing waves in a dedicated way was both profoundly egocentric and selfless, dynamic and ascetic, radical in its rejection of the values of duty and conventional achievement."
- william finnegan, barbarian days: a surfing life
Saturday, December 23, 2017
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Grand Island, Presque Isle, and Points West
"Tuesday, June 16, [1840]
We are now in a region where the geologists begin to work. We have parted company with the sandstone, and got among hills as high and as rocky as those of New England. About two miles from Chocolate River we ascended a hill [possibly Mt. Mesnard], and spent all the forenoon examining it. It is composed of primary rock, not granite. At the base of the rock is found talc-slate, horn-blende and several other minerals. The top of the rock is composed almost entirely of white quartz, and is elevated near three hundred feet above the lake.
In the afternoon we traveled two miles farther and fixed our city at the mouth of "La Rivere des Morts," or dead river -- so called because its banks have long been a place of burial for the Indians. Here we had great sport catching trout.
Wednesday, June 17
We have had another rainy day. The storms here seem to be accompanied with more thunder than in any other portion of the state. The doctor says it is a thundering country. We have been confined to our tents the greater part of the day, but caught some trout and killed a duck. We have also seen some red deer, but as they were never known to be in these parts we are not provided with a rifle or ball to shoot them. Heretofore the caribou, or reindeer have been the only kind seen in so high a latitude.
Friday, June 19, 1840
Our encampment has not been changed today. In the forenoon the geological corps went onto Presque Isle and remained until 2 o'clock examining the different strata of rock. The examination is not yet completed, but they found, in what is called the lower sandstone, lead, iron, and sulphate of copper and brought off many very good specimens."
- Selections from North to Lake Superior: The Journal of Charles W. Penny, 1840
We are now in a region where the geologists begin to work. We have parted company with the sandstone, and got among hills as high and as rocky as those of New England. About two miles from Chocolate River we ascended a hill [possibly Mt. Mesnard], and spent all the forenoon examining it. It is composed of primary rock, not granite. At the base of the rock is found talc-slate, horn-blende and several other minerals. The top of the rock is composed almost entirely of white quartz, and is elevated near three hundred feet above the lake.
In the afternoon we traveled two miles farther and fixed our city at the mouth of "La Rivere des Morts," or dead river -- so called because its banks have long been a place of burial for the Indians. Here we had great sport catching trout.
Wednesday, June 17
We have had another rainy day. The storms here seem to be accompanied with more thunder than in any other portion of the state. The doctor says it is a thundering country. We have been confined to our tents the greater part of the day, but caught some trout and killed a duck. We have also seen some red deer, but as they were never known to be in these parts we are not provided with a rifle or ball to shoot them. Heretofore the caribou, or reindeer have been the only kind seen in so high a latitude.
Friday, June 19, 1840
Our encampment has not been changed today. In the forenoon the geological corps went onto Presque Isle and remained until 2 o'clock examining the different strata of rock. The examination is not yet completed, but they found, in what is called the lower sandstone, lead, iron, and sulphate of copper and brought off many very good specimens."
- Selections from North to Lake Superior: The Journal of Charles W. Penny, 1840
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
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