Strong Moon Rising

I didn't blog last Sunday. I was at The Shedd.

What, you may well ask, is The Shedd? It's one of the best aquariums in North America, and it's in Chicago. I drove for more than five hours, each way, to visit it.

I think I have to write the petrol off to Motherhood. It wasn't really a business expense. If I'd known about the exhibit showing the 16 foot rise and fall of the water level in the Amazon, it might have been... but that's not why I went there.

However, that Amazon exhibit would be fantastic research for a world where the gravitational pull from a moon, or primary planet, was very strong.... in fact, as I have in my lightly-touched-upon Volnoth world.

Naboo. Jar-Jar Binks. I seldom see positive comments about the creativity of that world, but I think it would be very interesting to write of a society that lived both above and below a waterline.

Why would it happen?

Jacqueline would say, "Start with the sun!" But, I might start with the moon. If I wanted a race that spent half of the year in the trees, and half of the year in biodomes under the "sea" there would either have to be seasonal high tides... on an Amazonian scale, or else, the surface climate would have to become intolerably cold in winter (Helliconian?).

Next time I go to The Shedd, I'll start in the rainforest, not with the somersaulting dolphins! Oh, and by the way... I had another paradigm shift on this trip. I paddled in the surf of Lake Michigan. It looks like the sea, acts like the sea, is about the same temperature of the sea, and it's fresh water.


Whoops, there goes another preconception.