The Daily Dose/July 15, 2023
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.
CAPSULE BOOK REVIEW: Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum: One of the pleasures of reading is finding something that makes your all-timer list, something as good as you’ve ever read. The really fun part of this is you never know when this is going to happen.
Dry, Technical Matter: The book chronicles Slocum’s 1895-98 circumnavigation of the globe, the first done alone. He and the Spray left Boston on April 24, 1895, and his initial plan was to sail through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal, but a brief, though invigorating pursuit by pirates at Gibraltar convince him to turn around and go around South America, through Australia, and around the southern point of Africa before heading home. He returned to Newport, Rhode Island early in the morning of June 27, 1898, after a voyage of over 46,000 miles.
Heave To And Halyard The Rampart…Or Something Like That: One thing we found astounding was Slocum’s navigational skills. Relying almost exclusively on some navigational charts – one of which ended up being eaten by a goat – intuition, and the experience purchased by “a thousand voyages”, Slocum managed to follow the course his mind’s eye had set out from the start hitting every small island in vast oceans that he wanted to, and the Spray was so well-built it stayed on course seemingly out of habit, with the helm lashed in one place no small amount of the time.
But We Digress: Here is the official Daily Dose rating scale:
1 – The very best
2 – Very good
3 – Good
4 – Not too bad
5 – A steaming pile
Final Rating: 1 – We take care here to ensure that even a 3 rating means a work has merit and we seldom toss the highest rating out there, but Sailing Alone Around the World deserves it. Plain-spoken and entertaining, Slocum spent his entire life doing what he was put on this earth to do – sailing ships on the open sea – and the resulting wisdom is issued by someone who learned it in his own school. Slocum was believed to be lost at sea in 1910.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow lays a good foundation for the finale in the sack. Today’s Diary.
14.5 hours for the day and 38.0 for the week, a wonderful daily total, a strong comeback after a slow start to the sleep week, and a good head of steam heading into the finale, the all-you-can-get Saturday Sleep Session (SSS)…
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It’s easy reading on any device.
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 1838 – Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers what History refers to as the Divinity School Address to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School, in addition to local ministers and school professors. A Harvard Divinity School graduate himself, Emerson stated that following one’s moral intuition is better than following religious doctrine and it is not required to believe in the miracles of Jesus. It was a very radical speech for the time, with Emerson surprised at the almost universally negative response it received.
In 1980 – Johhny Bench of the Cincinnati Reds establishes a new major league record for most career home runs by a catcher in an 11-7 over the Montreal Expos. Bench’s 5th-inning home run was the 314th of his career as a catcher, breaking the record of 313 established by Yogi Berra between 1946-65. Bench would retire in 1983 with 327 home runs as a catcher and the record is now held by Mike Piazza with 396.
In 2017 – Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Beiber is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the eighth of a record-tying 16 consecutive weeks at #1 with Despacito. The song went to #1 in 16 other countries including Ecuador and Italy, peaked at #2 in Great Britain, and was Billboard’s 2nd-biggest song of the year and its 9th-biggest of the decade. The 16 weeks at #1 tied the record established by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men with One Sweet Day in 1995-96 and the record is now 19 weeks by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus with Old Town Road in 2019. The song remains the only #1 song for Fonsi and Daddy Yankee and was the fourth of eight #1s for Beiber.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
…what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men had studied it, neglecting all else.
Joshua Slocum
Sailing Alone Around the World
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
The Bastille was built between 1357 and the 1380s to defend Paris from English attacks.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who holds the National League record for most career home runs by a designated hitter? – Answer next time!
