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Welcome to the “Georgia Wasp…”

This blog is modeled on the Carolina Israelite. That was an old-time newspaper – more like a personal newsletter – written and published by Harry Golden. Back in the 1950s, people called Harry a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.” (For his work on the Israelite.)

That’s now my goal as well. To be a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.”

For more on the blog-name connection, see the notes below.

In the meantime:

April 26, 2026 – The last post mentioned “a new adventure coming up in May, 2026. A two-week trip to Ireland that will lead to another series of posts.” A highlight of that trip? My clambering to the top of Skellig Michael, “a rocky island off the coast of County Kerry, Ireland, with a Gaelic monastery and a World Heritage Site.” But now that new adventure is in doubt.

My travel partner and I spent last Thursday night in the ER, for what turned out to be a likely Meniscus Tear. And for future reference, I note what one site said What to Do and Not to Do:

Regardless of how your meniscus injury started, you need to go easy on your knee to let it heal. Once it’s injured, you may feel pain during everyday activities that never bothered your knee before… If you feel pain during an activity, that means your actions are likely tearing the meniscus further, and you should stop right away. Never drive through the pain of a meniscus injury.

Which means no more comments like, “walk it off, Nancy,” or “just rub some dirt on it.” Like we Boomers used to hear when we were kids? (Or at least what we like to tell young folk that’s what we heard when we were kids.) And it’s certainly good advice now, advice that “we” intend to follow in the next couple weeks. In the meantime, since last Thursday we’ve been waffling back on forth on whether to cancel the trip. Things looked bleak Thursday night, April 23, but after the follow-up work on Friday came the thought: “Maybe we can still make a go of it?”

Thus the “bit of drama” in the title of this post. So in the meantime, until things get sorted out – and to fill in the blank space in the interim – I offer this short review of a past travel adventure: My brother and I canoeing 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi back in 2014. Which brings up the question: “Why in the hell would anyone in his right mind want to do that?”

Why would two old geezers – in 2014, 63 and 69 respectively – paddle far out into the realm of sharks and drownings? For one answer see John Steinbeck. He began Part Two of Travels with Charley by noting most men his age were told, “slow down.” (He was 60 at the time. “Oh, to see 60 again!”) And so, back then doctors advised men that age to “pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood.” (To “trade their violence for a small increase in life span.”) But that wasn’t Steinbeck’s way:

I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage…  If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway. I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It’s bad theater as well as bad living.

And I certainly don’t want to be accused of Bad Theater. Which brings up what Robert Louis Stevenson said in a similar vein in his 1879 book, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.

Early on in his Travels, he found himself groping in the dark for a campsite. (A site “black as a pit.”) He settled in for the night, then ate a crude dinner; a tin of bologna and some cake, washed down with brandy. “The wind among the trees was my lullaby.” Then woke in the morning “surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been,” out in the open, “even in this tempestuous weather.” He then waxed poetic: “I had been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random nook in Gevaudan – not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth.” In other words, he experienced what the less adventurous have no idea they’re missing. Something of the feelings that “the explorers back in the olden days had.” (Those “early and heroic voyagers…”) On page 64 of my copy he expanded that thought:

Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind.  And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?

And by the way, I myself have hiked the Robert Louis Stevenson Trail in France, back in 2023. (To see multiple posts on the hike type “Cevennes” in the search engine above right.)

In the same way – as I also experienced on that November 2014 primitive-camp canoe trip – “who can annoy himself about the future” when he’s immersed in the exacting task of paddling for hours on end. When he’s 12 miles offshore, at the mercy of the elements. When day’s end promises naught but a lukewarm meal on a soggy beach, or salt marsh. (Which actually turned out to be quite rewarding. The wealth of bull rushes growing out of the sloshing water on that salt marsh gave the softest bed of the journey.) Plus, as Tom prepared our dinner – likely hot dogs and baked beans – some playful dolphins frolicked not ten yards away in the Gulf.

All that and a few swallows of “O-be-joyful” made a very pleasant evening, 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi. But as it turns out, that’s the nature of pilgrimage: “A person who makes such a journey is called a pilgrim. As a common human experience, pilgrimage has been proposed as a Jungian archetype. . . Some research has shown that people who engage in pilgrimage walks enjoy biological, psychological, social, and spiritual therapeutic benefits.”

Which brings up the image at the top of the page. It had to do with the nagging feeling I got in the back of my mind early on during that 2014 canoe trip. We had determined to break camp in the dark and get most of our paddling done before the afternoon sun started roiling the waters. (Which can be unsettling in a canoe out in the Gulf of Mexico.) The first few days we paddled along the coast, but then came the early morning we had to leave the coast and set off due south to Half Moon Island, three miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. We were leaving the civilized world and heading out in the pitch-black darkness, away from all those helpful navigation lights. “What ‘nagged me’ was the feeling, as we set off into the utter darkness on the morning of November 8, that we would either fall off the edge of the earth, or ‘there be dragons.'”

But we encountered no dragons and didn’t fall off the edge of the world. In other words, I paddled through the fear, or and Nelson Mandela said, “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” And that’s why I enjoy my pilgrim adventures:

My brother and I did eight days and 80 miles worth of canoe-paddling on our own. We’d also camped in and on a salt marsh, and seen nature at her majestic best (and worst). We’d seen dolphins capering, once just off our salt-marsh camp, and other times just off our bows. I learned to live on a breakfast ration of one and a half granola bars and tepid instant coffee. I learned to pitch a tent on a salt marsh, with water sloshing around my feet, only to find that the abundant bullrushes provided a most comfortable bed. 

Does that make me a Jungian archetype, like Rick Blaine in the film Casablanca? I’d like to think so, but for now I’d just be happy getting on that Delta flight to Dublin in a week or two, then enjoy climbing to the top of Skellig Michael and visiting the Guiness and Jameson breweries.

Stay tuned for updates!

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The upper image is courtesy of tmrichmond3.net/2014/02/07/here-be-dragons.

Re: “Walk it off, Nancy.” The AI Summary indicates that the idiom “suggests dealing with minor injuries or discomfort by continuing to move,” and is often used to encourage resilience and toughness, or can be “seen as dismissive of someone’s pain or discomfort,” but mostly originates “from a culture that values stoicism and endurance.”

For this post I reviewed On canoeing 12 miles offshore, from May 2015, and Canoeing 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi, from July 2017.

Re: “O-be-joyful.” That’s a code-word for ardent spirits. We brothers – originally four – started packing samples in past canoe trips, like down the Missouri River from Fort Benton, MT. That was a way of following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, and other American pioneers. You see, back in the old days of our country, whiskey – for example – was used instead of hard currency:

One of the first media of exchange in the United States was classic whiskey.  For men and women of the day, the alcohol did more than put “song in their hearts and laughter on their lips.”  Whiskey was currency.  Most forms of money were extremely scarce in our country after the Revolutionary War, making monetary innovation the key to success.

In other words, we were following in the footsteps of Lewis, Clark and other pioneers. See also Why Whiskey Was Money, and Bitcoins Might Be. Another note: I wrote about this subject in the March 2023 post, The Okefenokee – “Haven of Serenity” or Deadly Swamp? (About canoeing into – bisecting – the Deadly Swamp from east to west.)

A Jungian archetype “refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings,” and also “thought to be the basis of many of the common themes and symbols that appear in stories, myths, and dreams across different cultures and societies.” The Wikipedia article – quite detailed – included the lower image, with the caption: “Casablanca co-protagonist Rick Blaine has been seen through Jungian analysis as a classic hero, the character being in one of the most memorable love triangles in film.” (Who knew? But that’s why I love blogging. You learn about stuff like “Jungian archetypes.”)

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Re:  The Israelite.  Harry Golden grew up in the Jewish ghetto of New York City, but eventually moved to Charlotte, North Carolina.  Thus the “Carolina Israelite.”  I on the other hand am a “classic 74-year-old “WASP” – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – and live in north Georgia.  Thus the “Georgia Wasp.”    

Anyway, in North Carolina Harry wrote and published the “israelite” from the 1940s through the 1960s.  He was a “cigar-smoking, bourbon-loving raconteur.”  (He told good stories.) That also means if he was around today, the “Israelite would be done as a blog.”  But what made Harry special was his positive outlook on life.  As he got older but didn’t turn sour, like many do today.  He still got a kick out of life.  For more on the blog-name connection, see “Wasp” and/or The blog.

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