Book Review: Sailing

Since this post is being scheduled within 24 hours after posting...I can't resist. Petfinder also has pages for water creatures. I don't think of  pond life as pets, but they can be in danger and need homes too, they're cute, and they can help discourage nuisance species. So here are the best photos of aquatic animals in search of good homes in the Eastern States.

Zipcode 10101: Tina Turtle from Connecticut 

Female Red-Eared Slider water turtle, one year old, four inches across her shell. If you have a safe place for her, visit https://www.petfinder.com/scales-fins-others/tina-53475586/ct/berlin/rescue-me-small-animal-placement-inc-ct584/ . 

Zipcode 20202: Nanticoke from Baltimore 

Male box turtle, about six inches across. The shelter notes that box turtles can react very badly to crowded conditions. Sometimes you see half a dozen of them all basking on the same log at the lake, but when they don't have a whole lake to bask around, two males may fight and a male may worry a female to the point of injury too. If you have a big yard with a pond and think Nanticoke would improve it, visit https://www.petfinder.com/scales-fins-others/nanticoke-e-box-54748146/md/baltimore/mid-atlantic-turtle-and-tortoise-society-md148/ .

Zipcode 30303: Flash Gecko from Sheboygan 

Right. Gordon Gecko was a character in a serious novel...Flash Gordon was a character in a cartoon series...anyway, the shelter insists that you look up the official recommendations and write something about how you plan to follow them before adopting Flash Gecko. I usually consider demands for a written essay phishy. In the case of uncommon animals there's some excuse Real geckos aren't considered a terribly difficult "exotic" pet to keep, but they do need a special "habitat" where, having no instincts to cuddle or socialize, they'll spend most of the time hiding from you. They can hear, and do learn to recognize their humans' scents and voices, eventually, as indications of where to look for food. They are one of the lizard species that can shed their tails easily if the tails are grabbed. According to the Internet they can even vocalize. If you want to make the commitment (geckos can live ten to twenty years, and although they hide more than they fight, they can bite), write to Flash's humans at https://www.petfinder.com/scales-fins-others/flash-51514482/wi/sheboygan-falls/larrs-lakeshore-avian-and-reptile-rescue-wi475/ .

Now about the book...

Title: Sailing

Author: Henry Beard

Date: 1981

Publisher: Workman

ISBN: 0-89480-144-9

Length: 93 pages

Illustrations: pencil drawings on every alternate page

Quote: “Abandon: The wild state in which a sailor buys a boat...Zephyr: A warm, pleasant breeze named after the mythical Greek god of wishful thinking, false hopes, and unreliable forecasts.”

LOL from the LOL who LOL...at almost every page of this book when I discovered it in 1983, and at almost every page when I reread it in order to write this review. About all there is to say about this book, except that it’s short, it’s funny, and most of the jokes are even clean, is that, the more familiar you are with sailing, the funnier it gets. E.g., everybody knows that “yawl” is not the Southern equivalent to “ahoy” but it’s funnier if you know what a yawl looks like.

McKie may have had a little too much fun drawing top-heavy sailors in bikinis (or losing them—he sketches a couple with their clothing tied to the mast to illustrate “jury-rigging” and a woman swimming, while her bikini top is being pulled away on a fishhook, to illustrate “swimming”), but on the whole this book is as clean and wholesome as the boat my copy looks as if it might have fallen off the deck of.

Beard also cites only one of the Ethnic Slurs that used to pass as comedy, defining “spinnaker pole” as an ethnic slur for someone who actually raises the spinnaker. Hmm. How do we want to parse that? I remember the way preppy kids, I remember the word more from 1977 but think it was still being used in 1981, started calling boneheads “pollocks.” Key to using this alleged joke in a cool way was that “pollocks” was always spelled like the fish, although it was used in phrases that recalled the way Archie Bunker used Polak. I think of the “pollock” insults, and I think of spinnakers, and I think that if the idea here was meant to be that people deft enough to get the benefit of their spinnakers were Polish, Polish people are being flattered.

This would be an excellent book to read for pain control while confined to bed. I’m not sure whether people who actually owned sailboats would get more pain-blocking laughter than people who spent enough time with sailboat owners to be content with kayaks do. I recommend this book to all friends who owned sailboats when we were young, so we can compare notes on this vital matter, and, of course, to the rest of humankind.