CAPTAIN'S BLOG, 21 September 

Oysters aside, I . . . Being that oysters are now out of the picture (so to speak), that is, independent of the picture, I now redeem the vast, black, entrepreneurial hole in my ego in the transport-business--ah, meaning I mean to say through and by sheet rock, granite, marble and what have you . . . That being said, I . . . —Yes, well, gather round then will you? Me, yes, as I was saying: sending great big chunks of grade-A top-nozzle button-your-blouse-and-zip-your-trousers granite-rock (yes’m and yessir, ain’t up to no tricks-and-gags as your everyday salesman of these now modern-times, hear now straight and even: plain as day is long and cows make milk, second-to-none and fresh-pulled from your bona-fide and your all-natural tors them very selves in the flesh, fresh today from the not-your-average-or-your-usual dime-a-dozen massif granite-rock—pink red or white, coarse- and medium-grades simply a matter of taste and locale! Shipped to you the boys in blue for our special- and previously-arranged, agreed-upon-by-all-parties price by the unit-pound for unit-pound or—for you the by-nature-prospectors, the all-or-nothing and aces talkdown-to-brass-tacks deal-cutters and business-doers, and the otherwise starry-eyed—considered broadly in grand-scheme schematics by the bushel or a whole crate-load) on a slow-chugging Steamboat down the Hudson River into the distant and much treasured bobcat-jungles of the Southern United States. That's right, ladies and boot-scuddlers: New York Harbor!

I stand now perpendicular to wide sky in the fixed and steady (up-to-date) daytime-hours; tide is high but securely withdrawing, and not a mist or mote of solid, standing cloud-coverage . . . as American-finch-tweets loft by degrees into the plain blue day.