On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:56:08 +0700, wrote:


Ah Peter, the last work iin morning after remarks, "I'd like to marry
you but I'd have to build a boat first...."

Probably in self defense, my mother introduced me to the public
library as soon as I could read. My Goodness, there was a lot of
information in that building and right on the way home from school --
if I took a bit of a detour. At one time I was the youngest person in
my home town to possess a "library card".

I guess I have read D.H. Lawrence, at least the more lurid parts of
Lady Chatterly. Really hard core stuff in my youth.

Hemingway, is good and bad. Most of the bull fighting books were great
on detail but dwelled, and dwelled, and dwelled, and dwelled on the
tension and fear building up before the matador enters the ring. I
found them tedious. On the other hand the old man and the sea, was, I
believe, one of the best books about small time commercial fishing
that has been written.

Mark Twain (which, by the way, is 12 feet) is a writer that I enjoy as
I do Kipling. Neither of them would be published in the present day of
"political correctness" which seems a puzzle as it is neither
political nor correct, but that is another story. I keep a copy of Kim
and re-read it at least once a year.

It seems that we have similar reading habits. "The Old Man and the
Sea" is one of my favourites. I probably read it once a year. I would
very much like to have the fortitude and calmness under difficult
situations of Santiago. Kipling's "Kim" is also and fired my
imagination as a child. I bought the audiobook of it from Naxos and
listen to it during night watch. I have also reduced it to MP3. If you
want a copy I could send a copy to you by snailmail if you should so
wish. Listening to it is not the same as reading but it is still
excellent. I am amassing quite a lot of audiobooks, some of which I
buy and other which I download from Project Gutenberg. They are a
great way to pass the time at night if you want to stay awake. My
cockpit stereo can play MP3s but I normally load everything on my
little 6 Gig. iRiver which has a 32 hour battery life and doesn't have
the battery problems etc of iPods. I also download podcasts from time
to time and store them for later (I use Limewire - free) to keep
abreast and stimulated.

http://www.gutenberg.org

As for Lady Chatterly, I first read "her" at age 13 - the book was
smuggled into N.Z. as it was banned there. Today, we would wonder what
all the fuss was about. I recall that my friends and I were sorely
disappointed when we read it. There was much better titilation (no pun
intended) in the African articles of National Geographic. Just shows
how societies' mores have changed (I will be 60 in November). I much
prefer his other works and especially some of his poems such as
"Don'ts" which for a long time was my Ten Commandments and 'Snake".
Did you know that his remains are interred in the US? He was a great
friend of Aldous Huxley who wrote "Brave New World", another Britain
who lived and died in the US. Huxley wanted to become an American
citizen after living there for years but objected to the part of the
oath that he would take up arms in its defense - like Lawrence and
many others of the time, he was a pacifist, a belief strengthened by
the insane slaughter in WWI..

I think I have searched out and read nearly all of Mark Twain's
writings. Apart from his descriptions of life and the world about him,
I like his humility, humour and his ability to see things in a cynical
manner. I don't mean in a negative way but in the true meaning of the
word - to see things as they are.

Most of my reading lately is trash. I work on the boat; I eat supper;
it's too early to go to bed; I read a book, the last thing I want to
do is read a good book because I've got to get up tomorrow and do it
all again, so I read trash. Science Fiction; Fantasy; Detective
stories, etc.

Well, given that you have a boy in high school it might have been
correct, when you were ten, that Americans read, but it certainly
isn't true now. I have no contact with the U.S. except for the
internet so can't say from experience but when I read some idiot's
remarks about something he saw on TV that is physically impossible it
really makes me wonder.

But then have political leaders who are old enough to remember the
last time we got ourselves into a situation where we didn' know how to
get out of it and did it again. Truly, Those who cannot learn from
history are doomed to repeat it.

At the risk of being flamed again, I really feel for the families of
those getting killed in this generation's Vietnam. I have met a lot of
servicemen, mainly navy, around the world and many of them are from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds who joined the military to get
an education or a trade. Perhaps if those who decided to send the
troops to conflicts that are not directly in defense of the homeland
had their sons in the ranks and in the front line, Vietnam and Iraq
would not have happened. Vietnam now seems so pointless and such a
terrible waste of life.

A Japanese Haiku best sums it up for me.

Of twenty thousand warriors life and sword and shield
Naught hath remained but the summer grass
Growing over the old battlefield

By the way, when we stopped off at Hawaii on the way back to Sydney,
we took our son to Pearl Harbour to see the Arizona Memorial and the
WWII submarine that the owner and I had visited in 1982. To our
delight we discovered that the Battleship Missouri was now a permanent
exhibit. It is one "big mother" of a ship. One link of the stud-link
anchor chain would serve well as a storm anchor for Herodotus. I
didn't know that it was refurbished and was used in the First Gulf
War. The spot on the aft port side deck where the Japanese surrender
was signed in Tokyo Bay is marked and fenced off with ropes. I always
regretted that the Japanese Yamato, the largest battleship with the
biggest guns ever built was sunk by US planes. It would have been good
to see it today. I wonder how the two, Missouri and Yamato, without
intervening air power, would have fared in a standoff. I have an
excellent recent Australian SBS documentary "Battleships" if you would
like a copy (Do they have electricity in Bangkok to use your DVD
player?).

Enough for this evening.


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

cheers,
Peter