Sharers of the Caribbean

As you may have guessed, I’ve been away with Michael on vacation. That’s me (last week), waving to the Club Orient beach cam. My students obligingly caught the screenshot. Of course we’re home now, so don’t think of burgling our garage or anything.

Club Orient is a French naturist resort on the south end of Orient Beach, St Martin Island. The beach as a whole is clothing optional. Thirty years ago, they had a gendarme confiscating cameras. Today, they have a webcam. Go figure.

I first looked into naturism while researching the Sharers for A Door into Ocean. The sociology I read found that people behave largely the same unclothed as they do in clothes, except that class differences are obscured. Some people practice naturism like a religion; their children tend to leave as they grow up, then return to raise their own families the way they were raised.

The ocean unclothed is definitely something to enjoy. You get a heightened sense of floating, as your more floppy body parts bob in the water.

Meanwhile, a lot of science discoveries to catch up on, including a new kind of giant virus. More soon.