Welcome to the Orlop
My name is Dave Ayers and I hope you will be a frequent visitor to the Orlop. What is an Orlop, you ask? It is the lowest deck on an Age of Sail man-of-war, well below the waterline where the cables are stowed. It's also a good place for a foremast jack to hide for a catnap. I learned this from reading Patrick O'Brian sea novels, and since my computer workstation is also below the water line and I have been known to sneak a nap there, I thought it would make a good name for this blog.
I discovered blogging several years ago when my son Larry, a natural-born blogger, discovered the wonders of WordPress, a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. (Their words, not mine.) Anyway, some 620 articles and thousands of words later, I'm still at it, a testimony to this easy-to-use program and the therapy of wordsmithing.
Now for a plug for O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series of sea novels. The first was published in 1969, and O'Brian was working on the 21st at his death in 2000. During those years he arguably turned into the greatest historical novelist of his era, "creating a credible world--ashore as well as afloat--into which we can step without stumbling over anachronisms" (George Will). For more, go to the Patrick O'Brian page on the top menu.
Life and lore at the Lake of the Ozarks
Part of our retirement life is spent at the Lake of the Ozarks. This is a running essay about our back and forth life on Horseshoe Bend at this huge manmade reservoir in the Missouri Ozarks, which, incidentally, began to fill the year I was born. More...
Memoirs of an old gentleman
At least I hope I am most of the time a gentleman. In a sense the 600-odd articles in the Orlop are my "memoirs," but I will try to organize some of those ramblings here. I hope my 77 years of scrambling through life can produce a few stories of interest to those who know me, and maybe even to a few who don't. More...
Thoughts on the cosmos
Ever since I discovered the Astronomy Picture of the Day website, I have been thinking more about how conventional religious thinking and belief tends to ignore all of God's creation except this miniscule speck we call Earth. I'll try to flesh out such thoughts here. More...
