26 March 2006

At Sea

I'll confess I am at sea this morning. Up too early, too much to think about. The Times did not help; the issues lack focus this morning. The perils are all out there, lurking in all the articles, and maybe some promise.

The approach of Spring is viewed by the correspondent who writes from the farm in Vermont in the context of global warming; the murder of a young bird fancier who happens to be an Iraqi of the Sunni confession is profiled, he being just one of the dozens who are execute by shadowy death squads each night.

Guinea Worm, an appalling parasite that has plagued mankind since beyond the Pharaohs may be on the brink of extinction. That is the cause that St. Carter, the former President, has taken up, and it may be that is succeed.

There is room for optimism, though the operational director of the campaign said even the destruction of something so awful was the equivalent of dragging a dead elephant through a swamp. I got lost in an article that purported to explain why it is that young African American men are so thoroughly disengaged from society, when their sisters are going on to college in overwhelming numbers; and then sidetracked at why French youth so angry.

I discovered what it is like to shoot down a feral pig, and remove its entrails, which are apparently quite similar to our own.

I felt the intense unease of the author of the piece, as he watched the organs slide to the ground. When I logged on to check my own mail, there was a long epistle from a friend in Afghanistan, complete with a link to pictures that made me realize that Kabul looks exactly like Jackson, Wyoming, under the solemn majesty of the uncaring hills.

I read it and felt lost at sea, rudderless in crossing currents, bobbing this way and that. I have a list of shipboard tasks to accomplish, and the internal workings of the ship continue with regularity. The rack will be triced up, once I have turned to, the galley stocked and watch relieved. I intend to sign the logbook after completing the transmission of the daily signals.

But while the discipline of the internal schedule on the ship reflect my attempt to enforce order on entropy, a bank of thick impenetrable gray lies ahead.

A tattered little leather book lies on the corner of my Grandmother's desk, where I write, looking obliquely at the first bright rays of the sun illuminate the cross on the church across the street. Between the job, and the periodical and the taxes, the book has rested quietly, accusing me of inattention since the holidays.

If I picked it up, I would see the writing within is spidery but clear. The  author was a shopkeeper, and accustomed to keeping good records. He is a stranger to me, though a dear one. He is my great-grandfather, and was a living man one hundred and three years ago this morning. He was at sea, too, though his journey was real, and his sea was not a metaphor.

Great-grandfather was off on his grand tour a century ago, and my project has been to transcribe his journals of the trip. Match them up to go along with his postcards and snap-shots he took with his Brownie camera.

He was dead thirty years before I was born, but I have come to know him. He was a man of unshakable faith, and indomitable commitment to order. He believed that he was sailing with his fellow Lutherans toward a bright new world, filled with promise. He was on a pilgrimage, religious in nature but filled with secular wonders of the brand new 20th century.

Here is how he greeted this day, 103 years ago:

“Thursday, March 26, 1903:

Good night's rest, called (at) 7 a.m., bath, hot water tea. Walk on deck, good breakfast then the Engineer Chief asked me to accompany him down “below,” to see the vessel's machinery. Oh! The lots of machinery, the engines using 90 tons of soft coal every day, the engine for electric lighting, the engine for ice refrigeration. I am well and enjoying myself, why not when I had at:
7a.m. cup hot water.
8.30 a.m. Breakfast
11 a.m. Beef tea wafer on deck chair
1 p.m. lunch
4 p.m. Cup tea, wafer snaps
6.30 p.m. dinner, all of which I have enjoyed today. Fresh winds, moderate high sea and cloudy weather tonight. Sailed 315 miles yesterday.”

Great-grandfather was an unshakable optimist, and he believed in progress and technology. He saw no fog banks ahead, only the bright glint of sunlight on the waves. He had made good three hundred miles of progress, and seemed satisfied with the world that God gave him.

He was a young man when the Civil War swept over his little hamlet in Pennsylvania, and he died not long after the guns went silent in what the papers called “The Great War.”

On his trip he saw Paris, and he saw the cities of Germany and the marvels of the cathedral at Cologne, which he described as a wonder of civilization that left him transfixed. He passed away before it was incinerated in the second installment of the phenomenal destruction of the 20th century. It is fortunate that Paris survived, and I got to see it in my own time.

Somewhere around the apartment I have a copy of my Uncle's aviation log-book from his time in the Eighth Air Force, in 1943-44. He was a lead pilot in the bomber force and a hero, tough as nails when he had to be. He never talked about it when we were growing up. But at the end of his life, he opened up and shared something about the horror of what it was like to do it.

Some of his missions took him at the head of a mighty stream of bombers, to the towns where Great-grandfather had stayed, pious, and optimistic about the future.

I'd have to look, but one of the towns might have been Cologne.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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