Inlets and Outcasts

"The Sea Around Us"

There could be no Las Van Lew without Rachel Carson. In Case you are new to the writers table at The Better Duck Inn, Las is the heroine of the screen play we are imagining.

“Laskarina Pinotsi, commonly known as Bouboulina (Greek: Λασκαρίνα (Μπουμπουλίνα) Πινότση;^{[note 1]} 1771 – 22 May 1825), was a Greek naval commander, a woman of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, and considered perhaps the first woman to attain the rank of admiral.” (Wikipedia)

Nor could Las Exist without our own dear Patris, who gave us Laskarina. The Van Lew, we apprehended from the Fort Huachuca connection to Camp Little Silver, and signal operations, a tip of the hat to Hardware Merchants, and their daughters of the Civil War era. (Las, her crew, and ship, RV Bowser, are on the rocks since November)

While we ponder the disaster, backstories are evolving. Too few remember how we got our environmental protection, now rapidly disappearing. Too few remember DDT, and what it took to get rid of it. No, there would be no Las Van Lew without Rachel Carson, who was vilified by the petrochemical industry. You could call her an outcast, without much of a stretch, but without her writing, I wonder if I would be. They were spraying the estuary we lived on with crop dusters. The same one that I imagined, The Better Duck Inn, in.

After the Hello Girls returned from France, they fought like hell for recognition. Well, our heroine’s mother was one of them. In this imagined production they will not be forgotten. Nor will Van Lew’s, who not even many historians can recall. Here at the writers table of the Better Duck Inn, writers add cornstarch, not for relief from jock itch but to thicken the history.

Below the Shark River Inlet, where Marconi built his Campus, is the Manasquan. This is the view today from The Shrimp Box, now open for the season.

I had the clams, in case you were wondering.