Home
Sailing Alone Around the World - Captain Jack Slocum
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 189
Still avoiding Malcolm Lowry.
And so this, in a Dover Thrift Edition, with abundant suggestions as to further reading...
And the last few pages as well...some wonderful looking detours - "Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters", for one, but there are many others.
Back to the book at hand: Captain John Slocum Completes, over 3 years, the first solo circumnavigation of the globe in a boat of his own devising.
Lightly amusing, the voyage undertaken between 1895 - 1898, the world then largely civilized, pirates off the coast of Africa, savages of Terra de Fuego, otherwise the world at this time has been largely tamed and is a civilized place.
Link - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum
That said, this has rather inspired me to embellish my list of pronouns to include "Captain", whereas before it was just "Doctor" and "His Holiness" and "King of Kings", which actually trips off the tongue better if said after my name.
Of interest, he refers to the Captain of Christopher Columbus's "Pinto" as "assisting" him when he was too fevered or exhausted to take the wheel, a not infrequent hallucination of those without companions in perilous situations, which he takes as matter-of-fact and attends no supernatural import. Or being greeted by people in South Africa that want to persuade him he's on a fool's errand, as everybody knows the world is flat (how little has changed!).
Of amusement, he while in Juan Fernandez remarks that the people are happy without a police officer or lawyer amongst them, and they all seem healthy enough without doctors. This, of course, would be true but we'll never get back to that idyll.
Or when he arrives at Samoa, being greeted by the natives has this exchange:
"You man come 'lone?"
Again I answered yes.
"I don't believe that. You had other mans, and you eat 'em"
Comical now, but at the time a very reasoned approach to how one might sail singlehandedly to Samoa.
On Samoa as well he meets Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, wife of the famous author, from here around the Cape of Good Hope, stopping in ports to be feted and give lectures on his travels to date, which largely subsidize his further adventures.
He ends up becalmed in the Wide Sargasso Sea, which reminds me of the scene in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" where our hero is becalmed, and, finally, he completes his tour round the world, declaring himself: "I was 10 years younger than the day I felled the first tree for the construction of the 'Spray'".
On November 14, 1909 he put to sea for the last time, never to be heard of since.
Link - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_disappeared_mysteriously_at_sea
I am not sure that "Disappeared Mysteriously at Sea" is a genuine category, the sea by it's nature a devouring force that leaves little evidence of it's appetite.
Nevertheless, an intriguing, lightly told tale, 3 years travelling about the world to be digested in 3 hours of reading.
Dark Arrows: Chronicles of Revenge - curated by Alberto Manguel
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 140
An anthology of short stories, none of which particularly grabbed me. Some good writing, great authors, but the topic... well, not my topic.
This was started with the purpose of getting out of Malcolm Lowry's head, as that book - well, reading it, all the action taking place almost entirely within his head - neurosis, etc, I have mine own. That said I have another book to leap into and finger's crossed that it will be better, or at least more to my current humor.
May December - 2023 Netflix
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 173
This ended up on my "Best Films of 2023" list, or rather, was found and added to the list.
It wasn't. About a couple that have a Hollywood Actress come stay with them due to some unsavory business in their past that's now being made into a movie.
Again, another movie about people I didn't in the least care about. I've got to start pulling the plug on these films a lot quicker, there's no need to watch the thing through, half an hour in I know what's going to happen. Anyways, OK, but not my cup of tea.
Snow and a Fire Lit Under my ass...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 133
So, the days since New Years we've had the pleasure of snow and more snow, as if January were the catch-up for all the winter we'd missed. Some freezing winds and temperatures, the wind's have died, the temperature has warmed, yet still it snows, big wet flakes, a foot deep where unshoveled and untrammeled on the sidewalks, big piles at the edge of city blocks, the town, with the lights wound round the trees and pines, old buildings lit up from within, it's a Hallmark Movie.
Time, now, to be looking for work, I've scoured the internet for a 1000 places to go prospecting, places to spend the summer, but - for the moment I need money, some stable employ, an income that can accrue and buy me up the mountain...
And I find it, an ad for the old Cock-&-Suck, the trauma of which I'm still processing. They're looking for a cook. Of course they are, they always are, always have been.
But it sets the fire under my ass, get a job, don't in any way be so desperate that in the spring you're forced to go back there.
That won't do.
I suck it up, contact the mother-in-law, get the news. JR hasn't gotten a job, still, and the restaurant is reopening so he can work the summer. He's planning it on doing it with his wife.
This is - darkly - hilarious, you've probably read posts wherein I discuss his eagerness to work, earn money, take on responsibility, his ease with customers and staff, there's a comedy under way to be sure, the darkest reality TV series of them all.
It's funny, for the longest while the owners - JR's parents - kept the restaurant going because he was in school, they needed to pay for that, then he'd get a job. Only after school, and a typical - wham-bam-shit job it was, he was no more employable than before. SO now the restaurant, it's his living legacy, they're hoping somehow that he's going to grow up enough to take it over, only he won't, he'll sink it into the ground...
In any event I won't be there, just seeing the ad was trauma enough, I need to find something quick, then maybe something better...
Page 28 of 1021