Cup with a Theme Song

My wife & I watched a movie last night called The Gift. We realized within the first few minutes that it had been filmed in the Deep South, where we live. We like to guess filming locations: we'll freeze a frame to discuss the fine points of trees, topography, flowers, architecture, any detail that helps us nail down an anonymous location. In this case, the Deep South coastal plain, but not Louisiana or Mississippi; maybe around Mobile Bay; not Florida; most likely somewhere between the Okeefenokee in Georgia and the Pee Dee in South Carolina. Beaufort? No, Beaufort's too much of a city. Savannah? Again, too built-up. But around there. Low Country. Around Edisto? Yeah...those roads look like the roads to Edisto:

And the swamp scenes look like swamps around Edisto:

Like lots of South Carolinians, we vacation on Edisto Island. It's very isolated and there's only one grocery store. Part of the Edisto Island experience is unloading the car at the rental house, then heading over to the Pig to buy groceries. That is, the Piggly-Wiggly:

Pay no attention to the lower case p and w.

Piggly-Wiggly is a regional chain, founded in Tennessee in 1916. Just based on the name you might've guessed it was Southern: where else in the 21st century United States could such artless charm be profitable? Here's an old logo:

Is that corny, or what? Reminds me of Betty Boop. But even in the Information Age, the Pig is still the Pig:

I have liked the Pig since I was little: he was happy and friendly and helpful and about my size. And in my adulthood I appreciate that no-one has tried to make him cool, clever, sexy, sophisticated, or God forbid, pretentious. Being happy and friendly and unaffected is enough. The Pig is just a decent human being, so to speak; a citizen, transcending both cool and corny.

So anyway, in the movie there is a scene where Cate Blanchett is toting some groceries...and the Pig is on the bags! Ha! We knew they filmed it around Edisto! But as the credits rolled, we learned that we were wrong. They'd filmed The Gift near Savannah after all.

A few Edisto summers ago the house we were renting didn't have enough coffee mugs, so my wife picked up a few at the Pig. The mugs of course had the Pig on them. Every morning that week I'd get up, pour coffee into a Pig mug and go drink it out on the beach; and in some winsome way the cartoon pig on my cup supercharged the natural optimism of those beach mornings. I enjoyed seeing his shiny happy face each day, and when the week was over, the Pigmugs came home with us, along with the mustard, ketchup, spices, cereal, and other nonperishables that we didn't finish off.

Now I drink all my coffee from a Pigmug. I must sound like a happy idiot (which I am in many ways not related to coffee cups), but each morning the unassuming Pig still sparks in me a microburst of cheerful energy. Other coffee mugs don't do that.

There's an old song that comes to mind when I'm out on a morning beach: a morning-beach-theme-song.  It's one that I sing to myself more often, now that the Pigmug bears summer beaches year-round into my Upstate world. In fact, as much as that theme song belongs to the morning beach, it belongs to the Pigmug even more:

All Year Permanent Beach

Oh, yeah...I almost forgot: the Beach-Pigmug Theme-Song.

Behold the West

One of the many hats My Fabulous Wife wears is that of travel agent; so my family usually takes cruises when we go on vacation. For example, this Christmas we took a week's Caribbean cruise out of New Orleans on Norwegian Spirit.

Among other ports of call, we visited Belize City. Belize is one of the few places where cruise ships cannot dock. Instead, the ships anchor a couple of miles out, and little water-taxis called tenders carry people to shore (You can see on Google Earth how far out the ships anchor). Tendering is more trouble than docking, but this time I was reminded of why I'll probably miss it if it goes away.

Big cruise ships are absolutely preposterous by every measure; Oasis of the Seas, which we saw, is one of the largest, at about 1200 feet long (four football fields), 185 feet wide (double the Titanic), 16 (as in 'sixteen') stories tall, carrying 8,000 people. Like so:

But as monstrous as the cruise ships are, they are still just dots on the ocean. Any ship at sea tends to look insignificant. And embarkation at the home port is like getting on an airplane: exiting from big concourses into a covered walkway which connects to the ship. There's no opportunity to really experience the scale of the ship. And if the ship docks at the places it visits, you simply walk down a short ramp onto a concrete dock, and hit the town a few hundred yards later. Again, not enough space to view a 1,000 foot long ship. Plus docking often means as many as four ships all within spitting distance of each other, like buses parked outside a mall, which makes them less remarkable. They look penned-in, bovine, like here at Costa Maya:

A ship just looks its best away from the shore. Like at Belize where the ships anchor:

(These aren't Belize photos)

This is what makes tendering so pleasant: the trips convey a real sense of departing and returning to a huge vessel, from right up close to far away. And stepping between the stable ship and a bobbing tender just emphasizes the difference in scale:

(a medium-sized ship)

Sometimes it's too windy to tender, and nobody gets off the ship. We experienced this a few years ago in Cozumel when the docks had suffered hurricane damage, and were unusable. There were six cruise ships off the coast waiting for the wind to drop to a point that made tendering safe....didn't happen. Oddly enough that was my second most memorable day of cruising; the sight of five other ships as an ensemble was just incredible. I had been reflecting in a vague sense for a few years that cruising was showing me something about the uniqueness of the West, but I couldn't quite express it. The collection of ships sharpened that impression, but not conclusively.

So on this Christmas cruise we returned to Belize, and I anticipated the little tender jaunts. What I didn't expect was 5 ships at anchor, close enough be seen at once, but with enough space that they didn't overlap. Once again I was struck by not just the ships, but the ships as a group.

 

Tendering away from, and returning to this gaggle of gargantuas sparked a little epiphany, what I call a Behold the West moment. Here are these crazy-big vessels, each costing $800 million-$1.4 billion, poised off some pretty beach. They tootle around the world for fun. People of modest means can afford to travel on them. There are dozens. Older, smaller ones go to breaking yards such as Chittagong and Alang  (see these places on Google Earth) as newer, bigger ones are built in Finland and France. Their staffs come from every country, but all speak the lingua franca, English. This world-spanning business is self-managed without any overarching authority, each company calling its own shots. And none of it is a big deal. It's just the West being itself: imaginative, creative, cooperative, competitive, trusting, self-motivating, confident, extroverted. Explosively productive.

So I was struck once again by being a citizen of this spectacular culture, and tried not to take it for granted. Because even in 2011, most of the world doesn't work this way, and despite her ruinous sins, the modern West is still Christianity's child, though a wayward one of late.

Tendering back to Norwegian Spirit I considered the pyramids as a sort of ancient analog to the cruise-ships; decided that wasn't a good fit. Pharaoh would see in them a threat to his authority, and he'd be right. And his people: why venture beyond the safe, reliable, life-giving Nile? No, the ships aren't floating pyramids. Then I remembered how the Parthenon looks when you come into the harbor at Piraeus:



The Parthenon, as the best iteration of the Greek temple ideal, better reflects a cruise-ship-making worldview: the long refinement process, examining each bit for improvement; constantly comparing the idea of a temple to the reality of a temple. Letting the idea and the reality each measure themselves against the other, and both improving through that interplay. In fact, this interplay between idea and reality, and the self-criticism imbedded within it is a cornerstone of the Western way. And if Pharaoh would balk at Norwegian Spirit, wouldn't the rambunctious Greeks love it? Well, some would: Diogenes would sneer; Socrates would yawn; but the likes of Aristotle and Pericles would be delighted. The West is their child, too; they'd be proud of her.

And aware of that pride, they might whisper an old Greek word into their daughter's ear: hubris.

Hanseatische Reise

My fabulous wife runs a travel agency, does cruises mostly. So sometimes we go on the cruises, too. As long as one of us can speak the language, we run our own affairs in the ports. We're doing a Baltic cruise in June; we'll spend a day in the old Hansa city of Rostock. Here's what we have planned for our group:

We take a local ferry from the big cruiseship wharf at Warnemunde right on the Baltic (Ostsee) to Rostock, about 10 miles inland (too shallow for big ships). The name of the ferry is the Rostock 7, which refers to the following old rhyme, dating back at least to 1596. It's called Die Rostocker Kennewohrn, the Rostock Landmarks.

In English it says:

Seven Towers of St. Mary's Church
Seven Streets at the Great Market
Seven Gates lead to the Land (countryside)
Seven Merchant Bridges by the Strand
Seven Towers upon City Hall stand
Seven Bells who together strike
Seven Linden-trees in the Rosegarden
These are the Rostock Landmarks

Using the rhyme as our guide, on our walking tour we'll see St. Mary's church, the Great Market, a couple of the remaining gates & bridges, City Hall, the Rosegarden, stroll along the harbor, and maybe hear some bells, so we'll see & hear what Rostock says we should. I made a map from Google Earth, we'll have a good time, won't get lost. It's all in the old city, so there'll be opportunities for, you know, German refreshments when we need a break. This should take us 'til early afternoon, when we take the ferry back to Warnemunde, and visit that town, which is nowadays a beach resort.

Back to the rhyme, the Niederdeutsch (Low German) version is the original, which resembles modern Dutch as much as it resembles the modern Hochdeutsch version.

Niederdeutsch version:

Söben Toern to Sint Marien Kark,
Söben Straten bi den groten Mark,
Söben Doern, so da gaen to Lande,

Söben Kopmannsbrüggen bi dem Strande,

Söben Toern, so up dat Rathus stan,

Söben Klocken, so dakliken slan,

Söben Linnenböm up den Rosengoern:

Dat syn de Rostocker Kennewohrn.

Hochdeutsch version:

Sieben Türme der St. Marien Kirche,

Sieben Straßen bei dem großen Markt,

Sieben Tore, die in das Land führen,

Sieben Kaufmannsbrücken bei dem Strand,

Sieben Türme, die auf dem Rathaus stehen,

Sieben Glocken die zugleich schlagen,

Sieben Lindenbäume im Rosengarten:

Das sind die Rostocker Wahrzeichen.

The Low German reminded me of some Grimm's fairy tales I'd read in college. They had little Low German rhymes such as: "Manntje, Manntje, Tempe Te, Buttje, Buttje, in der See..."

Turns out that some of Grimm's tales were originally in Low German.... like this:

"Dar wöör maal eens en Fischer un syne Fru, de waanden tosamen in'n Pißputt.."

My modern trans: Das war einmal ein Fischer und seine Frau, die wohnten zusammen in einen Pißputt

My English: That was onetime a fisher(man) and his spouse, they lived together in a pisspot (a chamber pot, a filthy hovel).

Charming. Grimm's fairytales can be quite blunt.

Part of the fun in cruising is that there is every chance to learn something new and unexpected; in this case, some language history, and I haven't even left home yet.