Ferdinandea

Even Life in its heyday couldn't deliver the astonishing caches of photos now routinely available on line. These collections have the power of immediacy too, even though they document far-flung places: for example, images from bleeding Libya and suffering New Zealand. The medium also suits historic images, such as an achievement from nearly a half-century ago.

Since Libya's back in the news, it occurred to me that I couldn't remember many of the details of the 1986 U.S. raid on the country, though I remember finishing a swim that April evening at one of Nashville's YMCAs and collecting my membership card at the front desk. Behind the desk sat a small black-and-white TV, and a number of people were gathered around, watching it. President Reagan was on, making his speech about the attack. I watched it too.

So I read about the incident today. By chance I also learned about Ferdinandea, a volcanic seamount between Sicily and Tunisia that has, at certain times, emerged from the sea to become an island, only to sink again. I found out about the island/seamount because one line in the Wiki entry on the raid piqued my curiosity: "In 1986, US warplanes mistook the undersea shoal of Ferdinandea, near Sicily, for a Libyan submarine and dropped depth charges on it."

I was intrigued because the shoal had an interesting name. Ferdinandea is well described in this interesting blog, which discusses at some length about rival claimants to the island the last time it was an island, in 1831. I'm glad I live in a world of such oddities.

Yo Ho Ho

Out on my walk yesterday, I noticed a children's birthday party under way in a back yard. Maybe it had been delayed from last weekend or maybe the parents were sticklers for having the event on the day itself. In any case, the theme was pirates.

My brother Jim had an enthusiasm for pirates, once upon a time, so much so that one of his birthday cakes had a pirate theme, complete with pirate figures, a little sailing ship, a toy treasure chest, and maybe some plastic toy palms. Some kind of passably edible blue goo represented the ocean. I've never seen any other cake like it, before or since.

The romanticizing of pirates has been going on a long time, of course, long before electronic entertainment. But still I have to marvel at a list like this. Scrolling past the familiar and unfamiliar titles, I also noticed a fair number of them were made in Italy. So not only did the Italian film factories make Hercules movies and spaghetti westerns at one time, they churned out pirate movies. What could we call them? Pasta pirate movies?

One other thing: I was reminded by the party that Friday is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Just another thing we have to thank Dave Barry for. Now if he would only promote National Gorilla Suit Day.