Transit of Venus

Sailing amid the beauties of the South Pacific 'one fine day' in June of 1769, the scientific members of a years-long expedition aboard HMS Endeavour, Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy commanding, observed the transit of Venus across the sun. It was considered one of the major scientific achievements of the era. WIthin a decade Captain Cook was dead on a beach in Hawai'i at the age of 51. Life is like that, sometimes. These stories grew out of transitions in my own life, many of them involving women. I came to describe these periods as transits, like Botticelli's vision of that other Venus. The stories were inspired by those women, some of whom were heavily involved in my life at the time, along with others scarcely aware of my interest, but aren't necessarily about any of them in particular. I wrote some of these stories amid the beauties of Hawai'i, and others while living among the denizens of an industrial ghetto in Oakland, California. Life is like that sometimes.