The fallout from Palin after a pleasant voyage

For 16 delightful days we were passengers on a small ship voyage from Chicago to Warren, R.I., through Lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, the New York Barge Canal, the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. One of the delights was that there was no television set aboard. We were kept informed by newspapers acquired at ports enroute but there was no regurgitated news every hour on the hour. Somehow we survived.

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John McCain cooked his goose as far as I was concerned by choosing as his possible successor in the nation's highest office a woman who preaches “creationism� instead of evolution, who opposes women's right to choose and who believes that God directs her every action. Sarah Palin obviously is a formidable woman with many admirable qualities. She may have been a brilliant choice to energize the religious right, but she is not the sort of person I would want to be a mere heartbeat away from the presidency— especially the heartbeat of a 72-year-old man.

Despite the hoopla about the selection of Ms. Palin, I would hope that her severe limitations will become obvious to moderate Republicans as well as, of course, to Democrats. George W. Bush believes that God directed him into his horrendous war in Iraq. Even now his associates may be engineering an Israeli strike against Iran. God save us from any more such divine assurance.

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   Our voyage aboard the Grande Mariner began inauspiciously. Somehow my co-voyager and I both acquired raging bladder infections that landed us in Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago. We were cleared for travel a couple of hours before the ship sailed, and from then on conditions improved rapidly. The Grande Mariner was 183 feet long, with a 40-foot beam and 6-1/2-foot draft, and carried 100 passengers.  Its relatively small size enabled it to get into ports and waterways larger ships could not visit.

Our first stop was at Manistee, an old lumber port on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. We then spent a long day and night at Mackinac Island, a charming historical remnant whose attractions I knew well as a boy spending summers nearby. Hordes of tourists of all ages and ethnicity continue to respond to its scenic offerings and charm.

A 27-hour voyage took us through Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Wyandotte, Mich., south of Detroit. Traveling through Lake Erie, we found Cleveland a pleasant surprise. Forty years ago the pollution of chemicals and hydrocarbons in the Cuyahoga River was so bad that the surface actually caught fire. Now it is pleasantly clean and frequented by pleasure boats. We moored a mile upstream where the main pollution was noise from an amusement park.

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Because of an impending storm, the captain decided to eliminate the scheduled stop at Erie, Pa., and head directly for Buffalo, where we moored in a sheltered cove. Some of the group visited Niagara Falls, but having been there recently, we took a long walk. The storm came at night with an impressive display of lightning, but by the next morning Lake Erie was calm for our entry into the Welland Canal. For half a day we were in Canada, descending into Lake Ontario. Back on the American side, the ship stopped at Rochester, N.Y., for the night.

A day's trip through Lake Ontario brought us to the port of Oswego. Locks on the Oswego River brought us up to Lake Oneida and the New York Barge Canal, which we transited for several days through numerous locks. Fall foliage was notably more advanced in central New York state. Commercial use of the canal was disappointingly small, although pleasure boats increased in the stretch between Schenectady and the five stairstep locks through which we descended into the Hudson River at Waterford. Proceeding through the federal lock on the Hudson, we moored for the night at Troy.

 Commercial traffic increased south of Albany but was still surprisingly light. Olana, the home of the artist Frederick Church, stood out on the bluff above the Hudson. We entered Roundout Creek at Kingston on the west bank, doing a midstream reversal to moor to the north side. An Irish festival in Kingston brought a long display of lighted boats. On our final day we stopped to enable visitors to see West Point, then proceeded under Bear Mountain Bridge and south through the Tappan Zee to the familiar stretches above Manhattan.

In New York Harbor the ship maneuvered around Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, then up the East River past the United Nations and through Hell's Gate in to Long Island Sound. There was none of the turbulence often experienced there. Exiting the Sound at the Race, the Grande Mariner navigated along the Rhode Island shore to Narragansett Bay, then around Newport to arrive at Warren exactly on time. A most enjoyable trip.

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About 10 a.m. on the day before we left, the perambulatrix called my attention to the lawn outside our patio. A large black bear had pulled down our birdfeeder in broad daylight and was lying on the lawn clawing the feeder apart. For fully half an hour said bear munched the ingredients as I recorded the incident on the camcorder. Then he/she stood up and poked his/her nose directly against our glass door before ambling off.

So no more birdfeeding until bear season is over. But what with the changing climate, how can anyone know whether bears continue to hibernate and if so when?