I had my first close encounter with Red Tide recently, and it isn't pretty. On the Gulf, the culprit is Karenia brevis, a naturally-occurring organism seen as far back as the 15th C. The algae is not particularly villainous until it has a population explosion. That's recently happened in these parts, and it's asphyxiating fish in vast quantities. My sunset walk on the beach night before last? Not so pretty. Dead fish on the shore as far as the eye can see. Which I did not photograph. There's a limit to my need to document, though not to my imagination. Something about this episode may find its way into my work, although I may not recognize it by the time it happens.
Happy Valentine's Day
To men of early 20th C, fashionable women must have seemed much too thin. But a glance through photos of the time shows that it was a matter of perspective. (To the left is Lina Calvieri, an opera star and great beauty, in 1914.)
Their narrow skirts made them seem like much smaller targets than they'd been some years before. A century earlier, women of the Regency seemed half-naked in their light muslins, compared to their mothers or grandmothers in the previous century's double-wide skirts. For more on the topic of changing fashions, I recommend you click on the "historic dress" label at Two Nerdy History Girls, the blog I share with Isabella Bradford/Susan Holloway Scott.
Whatever your fashion choices, I hope yours is a very sweet Valentine's Day.
Both illustrations are courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
The Girl on the Beach
The sand art gets pretty creative.
