I Love The Night

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  “It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk, and left the quiet earth alone with the stars. It seemed as if, in the silence and the hush, while we her children slept, they were talking with her, their sister — conversing of mighty mysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish human ears to catch the sound. They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there. And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays ...

A Fascinating Observation

“One of the world's premier sperm-whale experts, Hal Whitehead, began observing whales in [the Galapagos] in 1985 . . . . He has found that the typical pod of whales, which ranges between three and twenty or so individuals, is comprised almost exclusively of interrelated adult females and immature whales . . . . The females work cooperatively in taking care of their young . . . . Young males leave the family unit at around six years of age and make their way to cooler waters of the high latitudes. Here they live singly or with other males, not returning to the warm waters of their birth until their late twenties . . . .

The sperm whale’s network of female-based family unites resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home in Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.”

Philbrick, Nathaniel. In The Heart Of The Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship “Essex”. Penguin, 2000. (p. 70-71)

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