Unresolved Resolutions 2018

In a feeble effort to clean up my home library desk a little on the cusp of the New Year, I noticed a small notebook sticking out of a pile, and carefully pulled it out, so as to not upset the stack.

To my surprise, and then alarm, I saw it had a list of 8 items titled: Chuck: 2018 To Do. It contained my resolutions for the year ending tonight! I had obviously thought this out a year ago, and decided on my priorities.

First, the list was all about things and what to do with them (guess I’m at the age where thinning out seems a growing priority, even it much of if does not happen). In fact, I’d accomplished NOTHING on the list for 2018. I won’t go through the dismal failures, but the first words of the eight must-dos were: Clear, Review, Sell, Publish, Organize, Update, Clean and another Organize.

I’ll keep my track record in mind tomorrow morning as I think about what To Do in 2019. Perhaps I’ll resist making a list at all. Or maybe, I’ll think about how I would have to change to relieve any of this burden of things, and perhaps focus more on what I want to do for myself and the people around me, aside from rearranging the stacks of things on my personal Titanic.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Giant yacht windows: echoes​ of changing lifestyles

I grew up in an age of portholes on graceful boats and yachts. They were beauty personified. They reflected an appreciation for elegance and style and a clean interface with the vicissitudes of nature. Like the Turkish royal yacht above or my own little trawler of recent years below, yachts with portholes were the only way to go. In my log, they still are.

But today’s ultra-modern yachts sport giant picture windows, both horizontal and vertical, punctuating their hulls. Some even have decks that fold out sideways like balconies and terraces. And upright bows and vertical lines that seem to sit upon the sea like stacked boxes rather than the sleek lines of good, classical nautical design that is one with the sea.

What these absurdities reflect, to my mind, is a growing inwardness in modern well-to-doers — viewing the world not as part of nature but as part of self, not looking out at the beautiful world but in. They care more about their personal “space” than they do about connections with the waters and land around them. It is, in effect, a degrading of man’s connection with the sea.

The result is distressingly ugly, fractured and disassociating. I won’t even show pictures of these “yachts” of today, because I can’t stand them. YACHTING Magazine, a long-time favorite of mine, is now chock full of these monstrosities. Are the “end days of yachting” upon us. I hope not.

1972.The PatChas (dark hull) at anchor in Grant Park harbor, Chicago.

 

cider and his Packer snowman buddy are ready for the big game today!