Remember the boat we called the Sea Snark? They're still around. They are little sailboats that no person who really likes to sail takes seriously. They were made of styrofoam when I was young. It looks like they're made of recycled plastic now.
Encyclopedias were kind of our web when we were kid. All parents who wanted to encourage their kids to study had them. Too many were used for reports in elementary schools. What does this have to do with sailing and Snarks? Read on, dear brother, read on.
Encyclopedias were around in the days before supercomputers, for those younger than I am. We'd pull one of the tomes off of the shelf and look for something interesting. We'd read a bit, and then find something in the entry that we didn't know much about yet. Off we'd go to look up that item, and on and on it went. This is quite like websurfing. For instance...
A friend on Facebook posted that Martin Gardner died yesterday (May 22, 2010). Who, you may ask, is Martin Gardner? The short blurb on my friends Facebook post tells us that he was a mathematics and science writer... with a lot of interesting interests. So, of course, I looked it up myself, and surfed around a bit to find out what I might have read (or might want to read) of his.
Ah. It turns out that I am second-hand acquainted with his works! Why, a large number of my friends and relatives have read and/or quoted and/or otherwise assimilated several of his philosophies. Perhaps I've read some of his articles, but neglected to remember the author. It turns out that he wrote some annotations to Lewis Carroll's works.
Ah. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass -- I read those as soon as I was finished with first grade. That's right, I could read, the books were on the shelf, and I chose to read them. Perhaps that explains a few things... Anyway, in this item about Martin Gardner I found snippets of commentary on something called The Hunting of the Snark, a poem by Carroll. I had not read it before.
Ah. There it was. Sailing to a distant land using a map - a blank piece of paper - in order to hunt for a fictional being.
Ah. There's more! It looks like a lot of people have referenced the The Hunting... . Even Supreme Court Justices made passing references. And, no less, a small recreational sailboat was named the Snark.
Ah. A small, lightweight sailboat, never meant to be taken seriously, but certainly excellent for children's adventures and imagination. After all, the world's best entertainment comes from within one's own imagination.
With love,
your sis.
