An interior ocean

We went boat-looking Saturday at American Marine in Zebulon.
Yes, Zebulon, North Carolina.
You're driving along old route 264 and look to the right through the pine trees - masts everywhere, and white-hulled sailboats from 14 feet to 40 feet. This in the middle of cotton country, where you've left Raleigh's madness behind for fields tended by John Deere tractors.
Getting off the highway, you double back on an access road, past the Mudcats ball park and a water tower painted like a baseball. And then the sailboats come in view, parked on their trailers and underpinnings above the red dirt.
It's a bit surreal, but this is the place. Dave Condon and his crew sell a bunch of boats, miles from any lake and hours from the coast. Hunters, Catalinas, Precisions, and the odd brokerage boat.
We climbed in and out of craft large and small, and talked about rigging and the respective benefits of water ballast and swing keels.
Looking over the flotilla of boats from the deck of a massive 40-footer with a deck salon, I kept remembering an old Ray Bradbury story. Two old sailors, becalmed in the Great Plains. A promise to be buried at sea. And when one of them died, his mate didn't have the means or the method to get him to water.
So he cut the sod free, and buried his sailing companion under the endless waves of prairie grass.
You can find an ocean just about anywhere.

Bicentennial Gardens

We took a walk this morning in Bicentennial Gardens, before the day heated up too much. "Turbo" likes the grass cool and damp with dew or sprinkler water.
Greensboro is fortunate to have a series of public gardens, from the European-style manicured beds of the Bicentennial Gardens to the long paths of the Arboretum to the hills and waterways of the Bog Garden.
I particularly like the Bicentennial Gardens because they offer the kindness of wide paths and a ban on bicycles and faster things. Grandparents on walkers, children in strollers, dogs large and small, young lovers, birdwatchers and readers and dreamers come together here - a respectful society devoted to gentle pleasures.
Our world gets louder, closer, faster, and coarser all the time. There's scarcely a space for the young father who bends down a mulberry branch to pick the small fruit and share them with his son. The public gardens offer that.
Many of us have yards, large or small, private retreating-places, but a city needs the commons where we come together. Central Park with its sunning fields, the Tuileries with the men playing at boules, or Greensboro's lesser-known walks, all serve to bind us together as a civil society.
This morning we met Fred and Susan Chappell on the walk. They were among the azaleas, deep in the green shade, in this place for poets. This place for people.

Under pressure

Just received our assignments for the big sailing race this weekend at Kerr Lake. Jack and I are newbies at working race committee - he's done it once, I've done it never - and I'll be handling the signal flags! I hope the gods of the semaphores will go easy on me.
This is the Governor's Cup and they are expecting 125 boats or more. It should be a real sight.
This has been a busy week. Kevin tells me the books have shipped, so Wake Wake Wake is now between covers. The official publication date is Sept. 1 but this allows time for reviewers to get advance copies.
I'm digging through old materials from St. Martin to gather information for a chapter in the current novel. This one is coming together in a strange way. I usually work out the grand design and then write straight through, with the unexpected characters, events etc. arising as they do in the writing. This seems to be more of a collage, with journals, writing assignments, and shifting narrators. Going forward on faith and sure not by sight at this point.

Proof

"Your proof arrived last night and I’ve looked it over and think it looks fantastic."
For a writer, that's the crop coming in - the ship reaching port - the flag planted atop the peak.
The book has moved from a collection of pages out of the home printer to a bound group of typeset pages, between covers. Kevin at Press 53 holds it in his hands, and wants to pass it to me, for proofing. Proof-reading. Approval.
I've lived a life around proofs, one of my earliest jobs in the newsroom as a proofreader for OCR copy in that brief interregnum between typewriters and computers. There is a particular skill in proofreading, to scan words without becoming too engaged, able to see the flaws, the misspellings and erratic spacing and missing quotation marks.
Proofs have a life of their own. The writer combs through them, and the editors, flagging errors and omissions. Sometimes those earliest proof copies, poorly covered and poorly bound, escape the process like a domestic crop plant found thriving beyond the tilled field. One of my students bought a spiral-bound galley proof of Fidelities - I was surprised to see that large blue document in place of the eventual trade paperback.
I get to read review copies sometimes. Magazines and newspapers get piles of books to review, often with a final cover bearing the legend "Uncorrected Proof" or with a generic cover but perfect bound - well before they are ready for the retail shelves. I just finished reading such a proof of "Two in a Boat - A Marital Voyage," a bittersweet memoir of a marriage and a sailing trip bound together like two ropes spliced into a single cordage. Here and there, typos appeared, small things to be fixed before the book makes its debut. (Best of luck to Gwyneth!)
As with the book's title, Wake Wake Wake, "proof" is a word with multiple meanings. We seek proof of a geometric problem. Proof tells us if something is worthy, whether a pudding or liquor from a pot still. Coins have proof sets.
The proof will be in the work, whether it arrives to great publicity or none at all. A book will speak to some reader, somewhere, in a voice that the author does not expect. It will be tested and tried, will not be proof against criticism, but will stand on the sole evidence of itself.
Proof.

Mayor's Cup Regatta in the books!

  
The Mayor's Cup Regatta is in the books!
It was an experience, running a sailing race when I just learned to sail last August. My experience is minuscule and my knowledge of the sport even less - but when the Lake Townsend Yacht Club asked if I would be the chairperson, I said yes.
Glad I did. It was great fun to meet so many sailors, from across North Carolina and reaching into Virginia. We had great weather - after a tempest Friday night that cancelled the fun sail, we had a brisk wind on Saturday and somewhat less on Sunday, under Carolina blue skies.
The photo is from the first day of racing, as competitors round a mark.
Now that the lake water has warmed and the sailboats are being rented, Jack and I will be out on the lake trying to move out of the pure novice category.
For more information about the LTYC, including Learn to Sail lessons for adults and youth, click on the link at left.
See you at the Marina!