Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Beautiful walk, star trek for real and Moby Duck

- The walking path at Tanyard Creek Park near my office, lined with lacy trees.

- Loving the wake-up call that the space shuttle astronauts got from William Shatner on Monday morning: "These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before…" How cool is that???

- Reading a New York Times review of a book with the best title I've heard in ages: "MOBY-DUCK - The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them" by Donovan Hohn. The book is truly about a journalist's ocean quest for 28,800 rubber ducks lost at sea off a container ship, discovering where they came from, where they drifted, and why.

12 comments:

Jannie Funster said...

Wow, that's a lot of ducks! Was there one with a big prize inside,I wonder?

Shatner still rocks after all these years! That IS way cool, that going boldly bit!

xoxo

desk49 said...

The trees here
Look quite dead
Not a bud
Have they shad

The question is
Will man from our time
Go there again?

It will help to know
The ducks path so
NYC will know how to dump
Trash so it will not
Come back to shore.

Louvregirl said...

Love that wake up call! How great is that. O.K. Lynn, I'm a 'natural' trekkie, having come home from school (d-a-i-l-y) to watch the voyages of the star ship Enterprise...
Also, thank for the Lacy Tree; what a lovely name...should be a name for a street; Lacy Tree lane?
:)

TALON said...

So pretty a path - makes me want to take a stroll and drink in all that beauty.

That's a neat wake-up call!

Fireblossom said...

Ducks? Really? :-/

Lynn said...

Jannie -

No - no prize. They fell off the container ship and scattered. It has actually been helpful to scientists studying ocean currents to see where they ended up and how long it took them to get there. The writer took one he found back to the toymaker in Japan and fit it inside its original mold. He said he expected it to light up or something. :)

I loved the gravity in his voice as he read it. The astronauts said it was their second favorite wake-up call.

xoxo

Ellis -

lol! A great wrap up. :) Thank you for my poem.

lg -

I used to love to watch the reruns of it, too.

Lacey Tree Lane - I like that! That park is so full of lovely spots that I could have endless photos from it. A great place to walk.

Talon -

Those paths are part of Atlanta's Beltline project with 33 miles of paths like that running through the city - they run alongside the old railroad trestles.

FB -

Seriously. :)

Maude Lynn said...

That call from William Shatner is the coolest thing ever! Yes, I am a nerd.

G. B. Miller said...

I'm amazed that a book with that long of a title actually got published.

Riot Kitty said...

That book sounds hilarious!

Sparkling Red said...

I'm very intrigued by that book. Sweet title! So many books, so little time.

Snaggle Tooth said...

Such a pretty sight in your pic!
I heard that Shatner recording on the news, n of course think it's great (as a Sci-Fi fan).
I wrote an ESR post in July '06 on those duckies in regard to the ocean currents here
http://snaggedt.blogspot.com/2006/07/just-ducky.html
if your interested
Unfortunately the Sci data links on the linked survey were taken off-line for unknown reasons-

Lynn said...

Mama Zen -

I am a nerd, too - I was delighted with it when they had that on the news.

G -

Me, too - sounds all very tongue in cheek. He doesn't take himself too seriously, I guess.

Riot Kitty -

I kind of like thinking of all those ducks just floating off in all directions and the places they chose to end up. :)

Sparking Red -

Same here - I have a book club meeting tonight and I haven't even finished the book.

Snaggle -

I will look at the link - I think that's neat that you wrote about it, too. :)