Golden Ball

the Golden Ball ketch under sail showing the starboard leeboard

My new employer, the Apalachicola Maritime Museum, is restoring an L. Francis Herreshoff design wooden boat, a shallow-draft, leeboard ketch designed for West Florida waters, named the Golden Ball. I have been working on a newsletter article celebrating the boat and chronicling the restoration process and progress. A Golden Ball fan stopped in Apalach for supplies and a look at the work in progress. I interviewed him about experience living aboard and sailing boats of this type.

During our talk, his wife, complained about all that welfare money going to drug addicts, how recipients should be drug-tested and denied benefits if positive. I was a bit astounded that a freewheeling, open sky, sailboat person could hold that view (I favor legalization and treatment and an absolute and complete end to the War On Drugs). We went on talking and my new friend turned out to be a War on Iraq and Vietnam War supporter. He actually said that if we had not overthrown Saddam Hussein in 2003 the Middle East would be in a terrible mess today (I wondered if he had skipped reading the news due to long time at sea and just had not noticed ISIS, the civil war in Syria, the disintegration of Libya, the militarization of Egypt. I also wondered if he had not noticed the cozy capitalism now practiced by the Vietnamese). He stated that the Vietnam War was only fought to stop Communism, as if Communism were a deadly virus. I objected, and we argued, then I apologized for my statements explaining that I mistakenly thought he was a working man, and a man of the people, not one of the rich elites that communism might harm. No, he said he had no money, but that he believed in Liberty and Choice, and he feared that some communist government would force him to do things he just did not want to do (maybe like work). He said he knew some Cubans who had told him how terrible their lives were before they fled Cuba for America. I replied that when a country is under constant, vicious attack from a powerful, terrorist neighbor, this kind of 'choice' must be abandoned in order to protect the nation from its enemies. He did not seem to understand my point, nor my thesis that communism in Vietnam was a homegrown response to French Colonialism, not a product of an international conspiracy where "the communists came to Vietnam from Russia (or China, he was not sure)." He also believed that Muslims in general were guilty of attacking 'the homeland', and that 9-11 was not just a criminal conspiracy (while the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma City bombing was). At this point in our talk, he actually threw up his hands and he walked out of the museum, so I guess I lost my friend! It is painful, sometimes, to be right.

I am confounded how these right-wing memes, so false and vile, are so prevalent in the culture and so impossible to dissuade. Neither logic nor facts work to bring forth right thinking in these kinds of peoples. On the other hand, some of our veterans might have committed or at least observed atrocities during their wars, and their sanity depends on a world view that maintains whatever the US does is always right, i.e. "My country, right or wrong." Very sad.

Sunset Cruise

iPod photo, sun setting over Saint Vincent Island

On my new job, I sometimes work as the mate on our cruise boat tours. My duty is to assist the captain and the guests and provide informative comment on the trip. Last night, I got to go on our "Sunset Cruise", a trip out on Apalachicola Bay where we can view a proper sunset, and as was the case October 8, a full moon rise. Nice.

Our little boat community quickly developed a rapport, and it was great to be able to speak frankly with people. One couple was from Kentucky, another from Georgia. We actually were able to politely talk politics and, wonder of wonders, we were in complete agreement. 

Sun almost gone!

Now, the Georgia couple were partaking of a bottle of white wine, which smelled very sweet, and I was offered some. However, as a Coast Guard approved cruise ship mate, I had to decline. They, however, got pleasantly tipsy. At one point, the nice lady lamented the fact that her hill-billy kinsmen voted Republican in spite of their economic and class interests. Naturally, I agreed that wonder was in order and proposed that perhaps wedge issues were to blame, i.e. abortion, gay marriage, whatever Karl Rove dreams up.

Today, I discovered a better answer. The Maritime Museum paid for all us mates and captains to attend a class given at the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve (now in Eastpoint), and the lecturer spoke of the current threats to Apalachicola Bay system: development, water diversion, pollution, and over-fishing. All but the last occur upriver, and all involve one primary theme, PROGRESS.

So, I think that all those people who vote against their class interests have deluded themselves with the chimera of progress. They believe in it, and they believe the Republican Party stands for it, even though most Democrats are also deluded by progress, although they may not believe in it with the fervor of the true church. Furthermore, they all confuse progress with money and all those other flashy symbols of the Way, i.e. a MacDonald's hamburger franchise setting on reclaimed wetland. They want to go along with that program, no matter that they will end up more poor and more desperate because of their allegiance to The Big Dream, thus dooming the rest of us.

Me, I am happy to do without progress. Oh, by the way, the patriarchy has a sole-proprietorship on Progress. No woman would be so idiotic!