Olaf Stapledon in the ODNB

Fri, May 5, 2006

Robert Crossley’s entry is here. Needless to say, I’m glad to see this.

Clancy and I have been visiting my family in North Carolina (you can see some pictures). Everyone seems to have a lab or retriever where I grew up, and they tend to run around unfettered. Driving out to go fishing early in the morning, I’ve noticed several trotting back purposively, for breakfast perhaps, from a morning swim. At a little marina eatery, a pack of them barked at me from a distance, ran up, and proceeded to give me the “perhaps you’d like to throw one of these sticks into the nearby water for us to retrieve” look. You’re up for it, they implied. Are you aware of how entertaining this would be for us both? Etc.

The rapacity of pinfish is quite amazing if you’ve never personally experienced it. I’ve never known them until this week to attack plastic lures. But they do.