Reinvented

We Americans take for granted our ability to re-invent ourselves. I resigned from a teaching job once to become a trucker, a doctor I know gave it up to become a money manager, and one guy working as a custodian in Newark Airport used to be a dentist in Cuba.  My brother who owned a trucking company for a decade tells a story of one of his less disciplined truck drivers who quit and reappeared a few weeks later proclaiming himself a bridge inspector working for the New York State Thruway, a reinvention that did not inspire in my brother a lot of confidence about safe bridges. But ships seem to follow the same. The bulk carrier below entered the Narrows on Thursday as North Star.

Before that, though, she had been Aghia Sophia. What a difference is the set of associations!!

I suppose this re-identification seems strange to me in part because we don’t name things, for the most part. I don’t name my car although some people do. I haven’t named my house, except when I’m talking to my bird.

Dry dock-new paint job-new identity!!  I like that.  At least most vessels like the above aren’t called BCU #xx, as in “bulk carrying unit #37.”

Photos, WVD.