Tag: Word of the Day Challenge

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All At Sea

Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in fate/destiny?
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Destiny, Fate? The guiding hand? Chance, chaos, and doing your own thing. It’s complicated for sailors. Two quotations will help me illustrate:

Blackbeard felt this way about fate and destiny: “It is a blessing for a man to have a hand in determining his own fate.”

“He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.” ~ George Herbert

Blackbeard had it in one. We have a hand in our own fate, but there is much that is beyond our control. Our skills can help us maneuver out of a corner, but sometimes it won’t be enough. This personally proved true for him.

George Herbert also knew what he was talking about. Set out for a sail on a sunny day that turns to a storm, and you’ll see how fast you can move from being in control to praying for salvation.

Out of Control

The skills you learned sailing in milder circumstances may not save you when the wind piles you against a lee shore and snaps the main sheet out of your hand. The first utterance out of your mouth is, “Dear sweet Lord…” To explain, I had the helm ( in charge of the rudder and main sail on a sailboat) when a sudden squall came up. A burst of wind whipped the main sheet ( the line used to control the sail) out of my hand, and the line and boom whipped out of my reach.

All of a sudden, I was sailing towards a rocky point rather than parallel to it. I was suddenly thrown from being in control to being out of control. How did I escape? The sea calmed for a bit, I handed the rudder to another sailor, and I climbed onto the rail and snagged the main sheet when it snapped towards me. If that had failed, I’d have attempted to lower the sail and control a mass of wind-tossed sail. The most perilous part was balancing while getting back into the boat, while the sea danced around me.

So, sailors love to exchange little stories like the one above. They are not only amusing, afterward, but also instructive. My father told a grisly tale of surviving the sinking of a tanker in the Second World War. Not only was it a captivating tale, but it also offered practical advice on survival. I guess he assumed that I’d go to see eventually.

A lot of these stories are punctuated with nods to deity, fate, fortune, and destiny. If you are down in the engine room during a sinking, escape may be a matter not under your personal control.

Control

Among my possessions is a small volume of the New Testament carried by my father on voyages during the War. He was a Christmas and Easter sort of Christian. But like many sailors, he was neither agnostic nor atheist at sea. I received my appreciation for preparedness from my seaman father. Sloppy and unprepared sailors have limited life prospects. Sailors also have an appreciation for how uncontrolled events may roll out in an emergency.

Ritual is a way in which sailors have historically attempted to influence what they truly know is uncontrollable. Christening ships, precious coins under mast steps, not sailing on Fridays, no whistling on deck ( you’ll whistle up a storm), no sky pilots (priests and ministers), and many other things labeled by the flatlanders as superstition.

In this day of multimedia presentations, you can vicariously thrill to a leaping deck under your feet. But the actual experience is beyond that. One time I was sent forward during an emergency on board, and the only way forward was by an outside companionway. Not bad, you say? Try it in the middle of a hurricane. Slipping and sliding, fearing that you’ll be washed overboard? not reproducible. Getting to the end of the companionway, I ducked in and secured the entryway. I said a brief prayer for my continued health and made as if nothing had happened at all. Nice and calm by the time I got to my duty station. Right!

Believe in destiny and fate. I don’t think I’d have been much of a sailor unless I did.

Now on to practical matters. Cap’n Lou will personally deep-six you if you come aboard with bananas! Got that?

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The Folkie Apocalypse

Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
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OKAY, This is your alert! He’s so off on a Greenwich Village roll again! You Have Been Warned.

I sat down to watch the movie ” A Mighty Wind” with some trepidation. Within moments, I was groaning at the portrayals of people who were almost like the folkies I had known. The movie cut, in a humorous way, just a little too close to the bone. The preoccupations of the performers opened to public view. The jealousies and innuendos were all there. We took it so seriously, and the movie exposed how mundane we were.

It was tough to watch because I know friends who either never picked up a guitar again after their last gig or those who practiced endlessly for a gig that will never come. Think of it; thousands of folkies, male and female, practicing in their basements, waiting for the Folkie Apocalypse to come. Do you think I’m joking? We may be getting old, but Folk Music is a powerful drug. When it takes hold of you, it doesn’t let go.

Flashbacks

I have not been able to watch the movie ” Inside Llewyn Davis.” Just watching the trailer gave me bad flashbacks. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Greenwich Village, and I loved my life there. I’m not sure that, in a way, I’ll ever get over it. But, to get shoved back inside it again. No. Much too much crazy stupidity. But oh for the beautiful afternoons, evenings, nights, and entire weeks of playing that music.

I say beautiful. But we lived in run-down fleabag hotels, and cheap rentals that you shared with all manner of critters. And after parties, the empties seemed to roll by themselves across the floors. You might need a glossary to decode the version of hipster English we spoke. It blended idioms from jazz, blues, the Bohemians, Eastern Europe, and just low-down New York City street argot.

About a year ago, they convened a symposium on the Folk Revival in a town near me. I stayed away from it. It focused on big names and their “significant” contributions.” Horse shit. The real contributions that were significant were made in the little coffeehouses. And the real contributors were the people who never got acknowledged in the “East Village Other, “Variety, or the Times. The real deal happened at the Rienzi, Kettle of Fish, or at four AM in that cafeteria on Sixth Avenue.

Onward

Where they dispersed to is unknown. No trips to the coast for record deals, no late lamented recognition by friends who made it. They were young girls with guitars, an unlikely Black and very conservative Jewish harmonica player, an offbeat Columbia philosophy professor making moves as a beat poet, and uptown hipsters looking for a new world.

No, they did not take the last train out to the coast. Every once in a while a few stumble together in a sort of conclave. The sparks flash, and the grandkids refer to dictionaries, glossaries, books like The Mayor of MacDougal Street, movies like A Mighty Wind, or Inside Llewyn Davis for clues to meanings. Then they are shuffled off to the assisted living they wandered from. You know the one with a sign saying “a memory care community.”

Memories. How appropriate. As that refugee philosophy professor cum beat poet, Mother Hibbard, said, “Be aware, traveler, you’ll never pass this way again.” 

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Mid-Watch

A Flashback Friday Presentation from February 27, 2021

You get a sort of meager slumber. Night-Ops rumbling above, General Quarters can sound any time; and up you’d rise to your assigned station. You don’t bother shucking off your shoes; you might not have time to put them back on. That was Operational Readiness Inspection. Tht was life in the Navy.


Given that as a background, you’d think that a quiet anchor watch in a friendly harbor would be a piece of cake. Civilian life!

Not so when the anchor, solo, is holding loosely on shingle, and the skipper and the rest of the crew have flexible ideas of what constitutes a watch. Four hours, you’d say (except for the two dogged watches). Perhaps if you’re more familiar with bells, it should be eight bells ( two bells in each hour). These days, you might pull out a phone or tablet and spend time listening to music. Not so then; things that played music did not fit in a pocket unless they were a harmonica.

Why, Dear Lord, Why?


Inevitably, your mind wandered to things best left unexamined. Why did I agree to come on this stupid cruise knowing that I’d catch the mid-watch? Then the sound of oars and loud voices came to me over the water. “Hey. Pipe down. Everybody’s asleep…except for the anchor watch.” “Ahoy, Psyche! Is that young Westerly? Do you want a bottle? We have one more drop, and we’ll be chumming the fishies!” I thought this one over before answering quickly. ” It’s Wes, and I assume that you’re the crew that shut down the Twin Dolphins tonight.” The reply- ” We are. So, you want the bottle?” I jumped into the skiff, let off the painter, and rowed out to meet them.


A companionable two hours of conversation and sipping killed off the balance of the watch. The crew that shut down the Twin Dolphins rowed back to their schooner and me to the ketch.
As I was climbing on board, a groggy Cap’n emerged on deck. ” I thought I heard voices…is that rum I smell?” My reply: “Sure is Cap’n. In the middle of the mid-watch, I rowed out to meet a bunch of rum-toting drunks. We drank all their rum, and only now am I reporting back for duty.”


He blearily looked at me. If he weren’t just fresh from his bunk, he’d have pulled out his pipe and done his little routine of filling it, lighting it, puffing on it, and then pointing the stem at me. Being it was 4:30 in the morning, he just grumbled, ” the mid-watch can do strange things to the mind, but providing rum doesn’t count as one of them.” Before he noticed, I quickly deep-sixed the empty pint of rum over the side.

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I’M OK With Me

Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
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I have no desire to escape into some sort of alter ego, even for a day. It’s not that I consider myself perfect, but I’ve reached a sort of agreeable truce with who I am. And I’m pretty pleased and satisfied with him – foibles not excluded. I’ve paid attention to the pulse of my life, and understand that almost anyone else would feel alien.

This is not some sort of smug way of petting myself on the back. As a matter of fact, I can do a great job of kicking myself for faults. It’s just that deficiencies and all, I’m OK with myself. If someone else occupied my shoes for a day, they might not be.

Faullts

I can be really irritating. Last year, when I was ill with some odd virus, I put an entire raised bed in the garden out of place. While I’m not into creating formal symmetry in the garden, not twisting into odd corners to provide irrigation to the beds is preferable to the current layout. Everyone has heard me kvetch about emptying the bed, relocation, and refilling. I now get looks from family members when I start in on this

I’m pretty sure that whoever’s shoes you might want to step into has some similar irritating quirk that was not in the press release or short bio.

Who Not To Be?

We might spend time more profitably considering who we would not want to be. Come on, some politicians come to mind, some tycoon who was an Epstein affiliate? Rather than try to escape your own set of circumstances, be appreciative that you are not an ICE agent, pedophile, grifting politician, or that cousin you can’t stand.

This is not an idle exercise. Empathy allows us to place ourselves in another’s shoes, understand their position, and sympathize with them. People like those I’ve mentioned share the same range of emotion and behavioral characteristics as the rest of us. But somewhere they went off the rails, did awful things, damaged people’s lives, and perhaps enriched their own in perverted ways.

Rather than simply condemning them out of hand, we should appreciate the fact that their motives were distortions of the norm, and under other circumstances, it might be us doing those things. Consider, if you will, why you would not. And be thankful that you are you. Not them.

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The Very Meaning of Custom

Daily writing prompt
Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.
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Most often, nothing is available prefabricated when I do a portrait of a ship or boat. The same is true of an eagle or other project. The essence of “custom” is that you are doing it because someone wants it, and it is not available from a commercial source. So you have to make it all by hand. DIY? I guess you could call it that. Here are some ship and boat portrait examples:

A wooden artwork depicting a ship, featuring a detailed design in white and black against a polished wood background.
A decorative wooden wall art piece featuring a ship made from inlaid materials, displayed against a green background.
A carved wooden wall art piece depicting a sailing ship with two sails, mounted in a black frame, against a brown background with blue water at the bottom.

None of these has any commercial parts, and most of the ships I carve have no plans. With luck, I find published drawings online or a good photo. Marine carving is the ultimate in DIY.

Eagles and Sundry

Intricate wooden carving of an eagle with outstretched wings and detailed feathers.

Eagles, banners, and other things are similar. But here you do get fortunate in finding good drawings or published patterns that you then have to resize, redraw, and interpret for carving. Once again, it’s not like building a kit. The eagle from the first USS Pennsylvania was an interesting case. All I had was a photo I took at the Mystic Seaport. From that, I made a pattern I used for carving. I was interested in how my master’s, Back In The Day, modified patterns to derive different versions of eagles. I modified the pattern for a dozen eagles to see what the variations yielded.

A workshop wall displaying various wooden carvings and tools, including shaped wooden pieces and hand tools.
Pattern’s hanging in my shop

Having worked in my friend’s boatyard, where patterns hung from the rafters, informed me how to do this. Patterns get reused. Want a Payson’s Cove 25, but at 30 feet with a bit more beam and a higher sheer line? We modify a pattern with the information, and sometimes create a new one. Who knows? Someone else might want one if the design change is popular. I am reasonably sure that this was how the old timers did it. If it was goodenough for them, it works for me.

Clients sometimes have specific themes and needs; you do what you can to satisfy them:

Wooden sign featuring 'JMC Charolais' in gold letters, with a carved image of a white cow on a green and blue background, located in Georgetown, MA.

Despite a shop full of gear and tools, the essentials of the trade are pretty much the same as would have been found in a seventeenth-century shop – gouges, chisels, planes, and shaves. Some things do not change

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It’s just words!

Daily writing prompt
If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
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Trouble, trouble, trouble. I have a history with dirty words, and I don’t mean that I use them too much. Okay, I use them like salt and pepper. And you can interpret that as you will! Saucy verbiage serves a purpose. It puts exclamation marks in discourse. You’ve avoided blander selections from the lexicon to emphasize your point. Done with a bit of flair, and selectively, I don’t think it rude.

However, I’ve gotten into trouble with spicy language. Last year I answered this prompt and illustrated how, without using a single vulgar or obscene term, I got into trouble. Here are the passages:

I messed up a relationship with a very proper young lady by pointing out to her that the current “dirty” word used to describe a woman’s sexual organs derived from an earlier word for a rabbit – a cunny. But of course, cunny became contaminated by association and eventually became just as crude as its predecessor. She decided that I was hopelessly obscene and not someone you could take to meet Mother.

I didn’t make myself popular with another girlfriend by insisting that the way we said words could make them obscene. It was not a very close relationship. And it was fated to early failure. I was slapped for reading a menu to her using suggestive gestures and pronunciation. What you can do with facial expressions, gestures, and suggestive pronunciation is fantastic! But be prepared for the consequences.

Crazy, right? Unfortunately, there were other similar incidents in my life. Sometime around high school, I found a generator for four-letter Anglo-Saxon-sounding words. The original work was an exercise in sociolinguistics. and pointed out that many of the dirty dozen” filthy words” in English were derived from Anglo-Saxon four-letter words. Let’s just say it was a development of the Norman invasion that Anglo-Saxon was the language of the lowly, and therefore of the low language.

Creating words

Of course, being a juvenile high school student, I soon was using the generator to create a host of juicy-sounding pseudo-dirty words. I was the toast of my gym class, but an English teacher took umbrage at my mutilation of a beloved language. This was probably a factor in my expulsion from high school. Being that I ultimately got my bachelor’s degree, master’s, and Doctoral candidacy without that certification, it could not have been too important.

So, at this point you probably ask me…Lou…Lou, have you seen the error of your ways? Have you repented? Seen the path of Righteousness? I’ve seen something alright! About two years ago, I ran into a Shakespearean Curse Generator online. It’s the best thing since, well, since the Anglo-Saxon dirty word generator: Here’s the link, try it: http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html?

By the way, some years ago, I lost track of the Anglo-Saxon word generator that made me such a fat cat at George Washington High. Just for giggles, I’d love to find it again. Drop me a note if you locate it. In the meantime, have fun with the Shakespearean Insult Generator.

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The LIST

Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
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There is something to focusing on the problems at hand rather than the unknowable. You can prepare responses. You can sometimes analyze with an almost forensic intensity how severe they may be and the sort of response that might make them resolvable. The sticky, hard-to-resolve ones are the ones we’ve created. Bad relationships are one I can think of in that category. It was glorious, until it wasn’t. And now we are faced with the strategic retreat. Or perhaps the rout. There can be finances to disentangle, entire domestic situations, and lots of hurt feelings.

The Great Unknown

That brings us to the unknowable. Those unpleasant tag ends that refuse to unravel, get larger every day, and have complicated our lives. No matter how serious or observant we were in the process of extracting ourselves, they are like splinters that resist pulling. In one case, I can recall only with a wince, the splinters were more like porcupine quills to pull. It seemed that every attempt to extricate myself from the situation complicated it.

Sometimes you can’t throw enough resources at a problem. And you wind up looking up from the bottom of a big hole. That’s where the LIST began.

The LIST

On the wall behind my computer monitor is pinned the LIST. These days it has mostly existed as a group of planning points for my seasonal affect disorder ( SAD). It’s a list of things to implement as a relief from SAD. Recently as I’ve begun to plot my actual retirement ( at age 80…soon) it’s begun to morph into strategies for easing the transition from a working life to retirement. The LIST is not a plan, it’s a set of planning exercises or elements. It’s more flexible and responsive to the unknown than a static plan.

The origin of the LIST was in the 1970’s when I had just ended a divorce, a disastrous follow-up relationship, and a career crisis after grad school. At the prompting of one of the women I was in a relationship with, I went into counseling. And yes, if you are thinking that I was one messed-up puppy, you are correct!

Three times was the charm; my first two attempts at counseling didn’t work out. Then, at a community social services organization, I started working with Joel. It was a pretty hefty three years of work. By the end, I had made large steps towards emotional maturity and assumed adult responsibilities for my actions.

A Tool for Survival

One of the tools that came out of the process was the LIST. See a crisis coming, or just decide to reinforce your resiliency, start a list.

You may never do all the things on the list. There are no check markds and it’s not a roadmap, or a panacea. It’s just a planning tool. You’ll add to it and subtract from it as your grasp of what might be needed grows. My list for SAD includes things like physical therapy ( keep your body healthy), practicing my guitar, museum visits, taking my wife out for coffee, and about ten other things. Depending on your situation, your list will be unique. It’s not a panacea, as I said; it’s just a tool for nibbling away at the problem at hand.

As my LIST evolves into a planning tool for retirement, several new items have been added. One has been a budget planning exercise for a more limited cash flow, and (drum roll please, Maistro), going to counseling.

Caveat: This may not be your thing! I’m mentioning it because it helps me; if it is of assistance to you, I’m pleased. But I know that it’s not for everyone. This is not one of those TikTok influencer spots where I sell you a product guaranteed to remove that little parasite that is wrapped around your tonsils. That’s my buddy Fred.

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Oh No!!! A Paradox!

Daily writing prompt
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
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The winter weather has been crudy! Not being able to do normal activities outside, other than split wood for the stove I’ve taken to reading of Sci Fi in the evenings by the stove. The folks at Prompt Central, must have known and sent this one to zing me!

Time travel, as you know, is a new frontier. We are still trying to dig our way out of simple paradoxes. You know, like what happens if you go back in time and stop grandma and grandpa from hooking up. Grandpa saunters down the boardwalk and meets Gabriella instead. You ain’t you, and you either cause a huge fluctuation in the space-time continuum, or ( according to other theorists) the flow of the continuum smooths out, and you still exist. This chestnut has been around for ages, and people are still arguing about it.

So if I were transported to Greenwich Village in late 1964, when young Lou was hanging out at the Cafe Rienzi, I’d hustle right over to the IRT subway line, grab a ride to Penn Station, and buy a ticket for an express to LA. I’m not going to mess with a paradox. Shit! If he had listened to me tell him to practice more, hang out at the Minnetta Tavern less, and not date Susan, he might have been a successful folk singer!

Wait. Be a successful folksinger? Record contracts? Groupies? Big concerts.

OK, maybe I was wrong. The young fool needs a talking to!

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Out, Out Damned Winter!

Daily writing prompt
What bores you?
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We have a blizzard incoming. Yes, all the rechargeable batteries, lights, phones, and stuff are charged—food that can be cooked over the wood stove on reserve, and shovels at the ready. There is a supply of bottled water. This is not a baptism; we’ve been around this block before. The little crank-up radio works, the cats and dog have adequate food, and I’ll chop extra kindling just in case.

Expectations

My night shift working wife will have a sleeping bag, change of clothes, and some snacks packed in her car – she may not make it home tomorrow. The day shift may not make it in till noon. To the cat’s delight, I took a poker and swept underneath a few cabinets to haul out the collection of catnip toys, feather duster “birdies”, and assorted toys – there will be a source of entertainment for them. The dog will supervise my spreading extra bird seed and the carrot skins saved from last night’s stew. The rabbits he chases must be fed. The birds must also have full feeders – all five.

We are expected to get 18 to 24 inches in this storm. Oh joy, oh rapture. I’ll be able to climb to the top of the pile by the driveway and experience vertigo from the height. We are blessed…well, more like that sarcastic phony prayer from the life at sea – “Oh Lord, may we be truly grateful for what we are about to receive!”

Bored? What am I bored with? Surely I don’t have to spell it out!

Well, I have saved up a bit of special medicine. The seeds are set, the seed starting mixture is ready, and the plant lights are ready. When it starts snowing, I’ll start sowing. To hell with this winter.

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Spacio-Temporal Continuum…Right!

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite drink?
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Drink? Ahh, it depends. I’ve been reading a lot of Sci-Fi this week, and I’m cogitating about this in terms of where I’d land on the Spacio-Temporal Continuum if my Displacement Algorithmic Defractionator were working.

If it dropped me in Early-Bird times It might be a nice warm bottle. Icchh! Let’s recalibrate…Ahh, a snifter of brandy. Wait..I don’t drink anymore!

Let’s refractionate the shares of the probability densitometer and home in a little bit on more recent times. A there it is…this morning. Yes! It’s definitely a bit more vibrant an image. Ahh, the olfactory element is kicking in!

It’s Coffee! Just the way I like it cafe con leche. fresh drip brew, and steamed milk. nice and hot!

Well, that’s all for now. I’m off to drink that final cup.