Lost another hour last night. I wrote Laura a message today saying the nice thing about sailing east is that Happy Hour arrives one hour earlier each day! The wind has returned with apparent velocities back in the 35-40 mph range. We had a short rain shower this morning and then the sun came out again. Same routine as before, breakfast in the Colonnade.
I hesitantly went to the "lecture" by Edward Marks on diplomacy, hoping to be more impressed. I was not, he just showed a PBS documentary so he did not have to say anything much. The documentary was more of an info-commercial for the US Foreign Service. It was made about three years ago. To me, the most interesting thing was who they interviewed and who they did not. John Kerry was a leading interviewee. Hillary Clinton did not appear at all. Says a lot! Just prior to the start of the "lecture", I heard someone ask Marks what the State Department thought of Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State. He hesitated and then said that, in general, there was general frustration with Hillary. When there were things that needed to be done or when leadership was needed, she was never around. Instead she was always out traveling the world first class, on the taxpayers dime. Very little was accomplished during her tenure as Secretary of State. After attending several of Marks' lectures, I have come to a conclusion that he can take what you would expect to be very interesting topics and add very little, if any, constructive or unique insight into the topic. Considering he is supposed to be an "insider" and/or expert on these subjects, one leaves these lectures asking "why did I waste my time".
On the other hand, after lunch, I went to another maritime lecture by Cpt. Tom. He takes topics which sound rather trivial or boring and presents them in a manner and with insights that make them fascinating. Today, his topic was on Macronesia, which is the area of the Atlantic which includes the Azores, the Madeiras, the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde islands. The first two of these island groups belong to Portugal. Terri and I visited the Madeiras on our crossing back in 2016. The Canary Islands, which we will stop at four of the seven islands on this trip, belong to Spain. The Cape Verde islands is a sovereign country. All four of these islands groups belong to the area called Macronesia. This term was coined hundreds of years ago due to the lush laurel tree rain forests they have in common and which, centuries ago, populated the entire perimeter of the Mediterranean Sea.
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