Lördag med Gutenberg

SHIPS AND MEN

A ship is a marvellous thing. It took ships—and the men who sail them—to circle the world and tie it all together into one round ball. Brave seamen from a thousand ports have faced storms and unknown dangers, first to make the world a bigger place for people to live in, then to bring all people close together.

No matter how dangerous the voyage nor what she carries, a ship is always “she” to a seagoing man. He never calls a freighter or a tanker or any large vessel a boat. Only shoreside people who have never been to sea make the mistake of calling a ship a boat. And shoreside people never know the excitement and fun—and the long, hard work—that the skillful men of the sea know every day of their lives.

STANDING WATCH

Jim is a sailor on a freighter carrying cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Every morning at half-past three, someone comes into the forecastle. That’s the seamen’s name for their sleeping quarters. They pronounce it “foke-sull.”

Jim mumbles a little. Then the light goes on. The sailor who has waked him wants to be sure he doesn’t go back to sleep. With half-open eyes, Jim sees his clothes hanging from hooks. Back and forth they sway as the ship pitches and rolls. Jim is so used to sleeping in rough weather that he hadn’t even noticed when a storm blew up in the night.

                                                                      ur Ships at Work

Jim puts the telephone on his head and leans against the rail around the small platform that sways far to one side, then to the other. Soon he hears the ship’s bell, a faint sound above the storm—“Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding.” Eight bells. It is exactly four o’clock. At four-thirty the bell rings again, just once. Two bells will be five o’clock, and so on until eight, when there will be eight bells again.

Här kan jag friska upp minnet, och på nytt lära mig vad klockan är när den slår glas. Min kusin har en skeppsklocka, och jag blir alltid lika förvirrad när den slår.

Ett par av dagens fynd är ovanligt nyutkomna för att finnas hos Gutenberg, Machines at Work och Ships at Work, båda skrivna av Mary Elting Folsom (1906-2005) och utgivna 1953. Den förra illustrerad av Laszlo Roth och den senare av Manning De V. Lee. 

Kanske var det rent av så att det var det konstlösa i bilderna som gav utrymme för fantasin.

 Författaren skrev mestadels den här sortens böcker för barn, hon och hennes man, som även han var författare, var båda medlemmar i kommunistiska partiet — det finns inte så värst mycket skrivet om henne, men vill du veta mer om denna intressanta person så lyssna till den här 45 minuter långa intervjuven, från 1988, med henne.

MAN-MADE GIANTS

You could do everything that the machines in this book do. For some of the jobs, of course, you’d have to get friends to help you. But people have always been able to work and build wonderful things, using just their muscles. And they can do a very great deal more when they use their brains, too. They can invent machines to make work thousands of times easier and faster.

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