Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 55 entries, all of them here in full.
January 22, 2025 · 99 words
Go ‘Pods!
A gorgeous nudibranch crawling along the reef at Siladen, Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes). Sulawesi is a paradise for nudibranchs, and apparently every other form of aquatic life. Nudibranchs are a type of gastropod, basically a snail that has got rid of its shell and survives by tasting really awful to predators.
Read entry →January 18, 2025 · 110 words
Monstre!
French pro-Axis poster from the Second World War. Churchill smiles at a starving French family while surrounded by the slogan, “Monster, you make us suffer!” Churchill looks more like a film comedian than a statesman, let alone a monstre. The poster is intended to encourage the French public to forget that it was the G
Read entry →January 12, 2025 · 99 words
Immigrant
A Viking grave in a Scottish churchyard. (I don’t remember the name of the village, but it was very near Loch Lomond.) The gravestone is carved so as to resemble an overturned boat— boat burials were still a thing. The “viking funeral,” with the ship set on fire and pushed out to sea, is a […]
Read entry →January 10, 2025 · 351 words
Holy
This photo is 50 years old! And sort of looks it. I and Photoshop have done our best. This, from 1975, looks down from Delphi toward the Gulf of Corinth. I had come to Delphi at the command of a couple of major figures— one from the Bible, the other from science fiction. Not that […]
Read entry →January 7, 2025 · 153 words
Spin About
A reconstruction of the turret of the USS Monitor, open to allow a view of the mechanism and one of the two 11-inch guns. The turret was designed by American inventor Theodore Timby, and the rest of the ship by the Swedish-born John Ericsson. A problem with the turret was that there was no brake— […]
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