Introducing the Continuum

A split-Second Conversion

Our future Captain, Laska, paddled out with the tide despondent. She had the weight of the world on her shoulders. The declension narrative consumed her. The partially treated effluent from the Hudson and The Raritan, all the shit that washed into storm drains, from the fort and race track upriver, a lot more bad stuff whose origins could not be tracked made her job as river keeper rewarding, but a grain of sand weighed against even one of the global ecological problems Laska’s then twenty something psyche was drowning in. Maybe she was drinking too much, sleeping too little and eating poorly.

But on this July Saturday, Laska was paddling her green 16’ fiberglass Lincoln canoe from the Better Duck Inn’s Little Silver bulkhead, until the tide started coming in.

Back storying Laskarina, is respite. We credit Patris for Laska, who found her in history - Laskarina Bouboulina. The actual Laska commanded her own warship. Our Laska’s canoe had cane seats, fore and aft. But She preferred to paddle standing up, as she had learned growing up crabbing in the shallows of the South Shrewsbury.

The Continuum begins at slack tide between Horseshoe Cove and Highlands.

FYI for all you fellow Better Duck Inners:

Merriam-Webster defines continuum as:

“A coherent whole characterized as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees”.

• Cambridge Dictionary adds:

“Something that changes in character gradually or in very slight stages without any clear dividing points”.

• Dictionary.com emphasizes:

“A continuous extent, series, or whole” and in mathematics, “a set of elements such that between any two of them there is a third”.

Thank you for that, AI Copilot. And for making this respite, respite.