Travel Diary: Norfolk VA
Repeat of basic message: No real adventures to report. In other words, a millionaire copper tycoon has not been mysteriously murdered in his stateroom while the ship has been at sea. The captain has not realized that there are two world renowned detectives on board and come to us begging us to do our Nick and Nora routine to identify the murderer before the ship reaches the next port.
Still, the days are not without excitement. Our first stop on our voyage north was Norfolk VA. Because we used to live just up the road in Williamsburg, we didnāt really expect much from our shore leave. But, we had never really explored downtown Norfolk which, it turns out, is rather charming.
There were historic plaques all over the place. Most of them can be summarized like this: āThere used to be a really cool 18th century building here of historical significance, but we tore it down to build this piece-of-shit office building you now see before you.ā Or, āThis was the site of a 19th century African-American church, but now it is an ugly-ass parking lot.ā Still the developers wise city fathers have not yet demolished every interesting building. Circling back to Andrew Carnegie, here is the Carnegie Library Norfolk built in 1904.
It is so old that the letter āuā had not yet been invented. It is, alas no longer a library but an apartment complex. Having discovered this, Michele is pictured plotting our course of action.
We had lunch at Bonchon, a Korean restaurant. Well, sort of Korean. Whatever it was, it was damn delicious and SO MUCH FOOD. We kind of waddled out of there. Whatever they say about cruises and their all-you-can-eat buffets, this was by far the most food we ate at a single sitting this trip. So far. Challenge accepted.
These mermaids are not, as I logically first assumed, an early invasion force of Prince Namor.
We hadnāt realized before that Norfolk is a mermaid-themed town. Many great old buildings have been destroyed but you canāt escape the mermaids. Someone in Norfolk, inspired by Chicagoās wonderfully-named exhibit, Cows on Parade decided that Norfolkās thing would be mermaids. As a consequence, mermaid statues are everywhere.
Modeling the mermaids on cows raises interesting zoological questions. Cows, and here I mean cows rather than cattle generally, are kept because of the milk they produce. Are mermaids mammals? Do they lactate? Please keep your juvenile snickering to yourselves as we address the vexed biology of the mer-people. Yes, before you ask, this will be on the test.
Of course, I asked Chatgpt which engaged in some rather essentialist thinking and concluded that "mermaids would be considered mammalsāassuming their biology aligns more with humans than fish." This is simple question-begging and I think sidesteps the entire issue. I assume my friends in philosophy of biology will do better.
Stay tuned for more mediocre photography and important biological questions!
jpj stories by John Jackson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
