Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, he sneezed so hard, that he sneezed himself clean out of his skin, and turned into a water-dog, and jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the crests of the waves, and snapped at the jelly-fish and the mackerel, and followed Tom the whole way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.
Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies
I did three things of interest today: visited Fort Sumter, visited the Aquarium of South Carolina, and visited a used book store.
Fort Sumter, for those who don't know U.S. history, was the first battle of the Civil War. As with the other historic sites I've visited, I'll let you Google the history if you're interested. (One fun fact: there were zero casualties during the battle, though a Union soldier died in an accident during the surrender ceremony.)
There were a few interesting things about the tour. The ferry ride out to the fort was the third narrated tour I've had this trip (the others during the Naples cruise and Savannah ferry) and the least satisfying. Rather than having the pilot narrate what we were seeing, they played a recording. That made it much less personal, and forced it to omit some facts, such as the fact there were sailboat races going on that day and we passed them. Also, the recording overlapped with what the ranger at the fort said, spoiling some facts. When he asked if we knew why there were forts off Charleston's coast, we'd just heard the answer 10 minutes before.
My other observation is that the tour was almost completely Caucasian. I only saw one African American on the trip. No comments on that.
On to the next tale of interest: the SC Aquarium has a theme: the fish and habitats of South Carolina. All animals there are native to the state. It doesn't really hurt the variety; there were gators, sharks, turtles (one is named Coretta, and weights 250 pounds), jellyfish, a type of salamander called a siren which is over a foot long and looks like an eel, and much more. In addition to fish, they have a couple of rescued animals who couldn't be returned to the wild, such as Liberty, the bald eagle. Her wing was injured a few years ago, so she can't fly.
I watched the fish feeding, which is now a little interactive. They have improved scuba gear so that the divers can have a microphone in their helmets. They can hear what the audience asks, and we can hear their comments over the PA system.
It's not the prettiest aquarium I've seen (that was in Chattanooga) but it was pretty interesting. I think the focused theme really helped.
On to the Book Exchange. I don't remember the last time I was in a used book store. (I know I don't need more books, but I'm addicted.) There used to be two in Red Bank, but both closed years ago. I mentioned to one of the owners (I didn't get her name) how nice it was to be in a used book store again, but she was pretty pessimistic.
"It's getting hard to pay the rent," she said. The recession has made people cut back on everything, including used books. And since the store offers credit (as the name implies, there's exchanges) a lot of people are just trading books, rather than buying them and bringing in revenue.
It's a pity, because there are lots of books which are hard to find at a library, and are out of print. Two of the books I picked up were by the late John Brunner and late Damon Knight, two highly regarded science fiction authors whose work is difficult to find any more. (Knight is probably best remembered for the story "To Serve Man." Brunner wrote the wonderful eco-tastrophe books "Stand on Zanzibar" and "The Sheep Look Up.")
Also, used book stores have a wonderful social atmosphere. The owner knew several customers by name. More importantly, she could bring her dogs to work. One was a big black dog (maybe some sort of sheep dog?) named Katie. The other was a puppy (same species) whose name I missed. She asked me if she could walk him down the aisle I was browsing, to help socialize him, since he's skittish around people.
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