SHARKS AND SEAHORSES
This week we spent a fascinating morning at the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium. There is an attractive color brochure with a map. And blue-shirted volunteers were all around and engaged with visitors, particularly at the Contact Cove where you can do a two-finger touch of sea stars and other animals. Also noteworthy, I thought were the one-page glossary handouts of fish and invertebrate names in three different languages: French, German, and Spanish, designed for foreign visitors.
Exhibits are both indoors and outside and feature deep sea fish as well as coast dwellers. Scientists here focus much of their research on white sharks and seahorses. We saw an impressive shark tank where there are live shark training demonstrations several times a week and also made note of the several kinds of seahorses in the regular exhibits and near the lab. What looked to be hundreds of teeny tiny seahorses born several weeks ago were clustered around a leaf stalk in one tank. and another tank had other baby seahorses farther along in their development. They are amazing creatures who can camouflage themselves to blend into their particular sea environment.
I was particularly drawn to the tanks of jellyfish and the sea nettles (the latter I’d never seen before). I find watching jellyfish float and drift in the currents to be very soothing, almost therapeutic. The mangrove display outside emphasized the critical role this tree-like shrub plays in reducing shore erosion and providing safe havens for various creatures. We will definitely make a return visit, most likely with our granddaughter in tow!
WHAT I’M WATCHING
I’m really impressed with the offerings on PBS this summer. Not only is there the new version of Poldark, but Last Tango in Halifax is back for a third season of the trials and tribulations of Celia and Alan and their tangled up families. One aspect of this program I like and appreciate is that there is a lot of conversation in it, but there are silences too, and it all feels more like real life than some television dramas. Also there are moments of humor.
Added to this line-up on Sunday evenings (here you can watch from 8:00 until 11:00 pm if you’re so inclined; we record everything) is The Crimson Field, a raw and graphic drama set at a battlefield hospital in Boulogne, France in 1915. The story focuses on three new volunteer nurses and their interactions with the nursing supervisors, doctors and patients. And for fans of Downton Abbey, watch for Kevin Doyle (aka Molesley) in a very different role. Overall, it’s strong stuff, definitely “mature content,” replete with rivalries and turf wars, and exceedingly well done.
WHAT I’M READING
This is the time of year when I give myself permission to read more fluff, or shall we say, less serious literature. Recently, it was The Memory of Violets by Hazel Gaynor and At the Water’s Edge, the newest novel from Sara Gruen of Water for Elephants. Gaynor’s book is a historical novel about two sisters who are flower sellers in 19th century London. Their lives intersect nearly 40 years later with a young housemother at a home that trains girls to make paper flowers. I enjoy historical novels in general and this one presents a slice of society of which I knew very little.
Somehow I’ve escaped reading any of Gruen’s previous commercially successful novels. At the Water’s Edge is set in 1944 at an inn near Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands. The three principal characters are spoiled, rich, hapless young Americans from Philadelphia on a quest to redeem themselves by recording the famous monster. Maddie, wife of one of the two men, has a checkered family history, and has never done anything for herself. Living in spartan accommodations with strict food rationing in place, she is forced to face her own self-centeredness and the true state of her marriage.
I found the whole premise a bit farfetched and initially had little sympathy for her or Ellis and Hank. Nonetheless, I did keep reading and was absorbed enough in finding out whether anyone got what he or she deserved to read to the end.
