Ruach

A couple of weeks ago  I ordered some CD’s from Amazon.com.  Darn convenient, that Amazon.com.

Down at the yacht club we were having an “Italian Night”.  The CD’s were/are intended for background music.  The kind of stuff that you hear, but don’t… not really, but sort of, it’s there.  I’ll also use them on the boat.  I like  “Italian” music, particularly the American kind.

What I got was unexpected. 

There’s this 50’s version of “Italian Love Songs”.  Takes me right back to when I was a kid in Salem. We lived in the Italian neighborhood.  Right next to the (really friggin) rich kids neighborhood.  I had some good friends from both of those neighborhoods.  Good guys.  A lot like me actually.  And a lot like my best friend ever, Frankie Romano. Back then none of us were smart enough to recognize there were two neighborhoods, it just seemed like we were all the same.

In the rental district right next to Chestnut street my folks rented an apartment from Connie Ingimi.  Italian was all the thing back then, not just in the neighborhood, but all over the country.  I heard a lot of pop Italian back then.  And that’s not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all.

One of the other CD’s was Dean Martin singing Italian Love songs.  Geeze that one really hit home.  Great stuff. Even my 27 year old daughter loves it. (when the heck did I get a 27 year old daughter? Seems like yesterday I was roaming around the old neighborhood with Frankie)

Then there was the more “modern” stuff.  A disc by Andrea Bocelli and, for some reason, a recording by a trumpet player named Chris Botti.  I guess I bought the Botti disc because it was suggested, by Amazon, or more precisely, by a computer program developed by Amazon.  Darn convenient, that Amazon.com.  And why was it suggested?  Well… it is titled “Italia“.  For anyone younger that me reading this you will probably laugh and say, well duh!  But you must cut me some slack here.  In my lifetime… in the past 10 years really… this was unthinkable.  Science fiction.  The computer is anticipating  my wants.  Incredible.  (yeah, I know… not really) 

Anyway.  The Botti disc is the pick of the litter.  Smooth jazz trumpet sounds.  I just love it.  Cannot wait to sit at the mooring, watching the sun go down, relaxing, listening, consumed. Oh, and it has the most beautiful song ever written.  Yeah, the Ave Maria, by Schubert.  I don’t care what religion you tie yourself to, it just doesn’t get better than that. 

Sometimes you get lucky.  When you do you might as well enjoy it.

As I was growing up, my Father taught me that a discussion without dissent is a monologue.  And who really wants to talk to himself?  We never left the dinner table without something to think about.  We never left the dinner table empty.  “Satiated” had, an has, a different meaning for me than it did for the rest of the kids on the block.

And what was it that we argued about?  Everything, anything.  Nothing was taboo.  Dinner was a feast of the mind (and sometimes,  if we were really lucky, the belly) .  Challenge everything, listen to all sides, morf your opinions as you discuss, taking and giving from the others, and come away enriched, satisfied, satiated.

Weird, huh?  Not really.  Think about it.  Wherever people get together there’s a good argument waiting to erupt.  And what is an argument but a good discussion ~ with passion.  The problem (I could say the problem today, but come on, who would I be tring to kid is that a lot of folks don’t morf. 

Some, really most, people have no concept, no picture in their brain that indicates a discussion should be anything but a battle.  I’m right and so you must be wrong!

Such a grand shame to waste an opportunity… 

To grow. 

To come up with something better that what you were thinking, just a moment ago…

Upgrading to a color chartplotter/radar display is going to take a lot more money and effort than I thought.

You would think that there would be some product support for a not so old chartplotter.  You would be wrong.  Not only is the unit currently on the boat no longer made, but the color alternative is no longer available either.  And the raydome on the boat only works with the chartplotter/radar display that is on the boat.

So what I’m faced with is an upgrade of both the display and NavPod mounting gear ($2100) and the raydome ($1000), along with at least two days labor ($1500). Plus the insidious “incidentals”.

All this gets me is a screen that is slightly larger, and in color.  There is no added functionality beyond a future ability to add a digital fishfinder.  My $5000 would only get me a color display vs. black and white.

I just don’t see it. 

The estimate just came in for a bow thruster on Ruach.  $7,500.  Ouch! 

Guess I’ll have to learn to drive the friggin boat.  Not that I can’t find something else on which to spend that money – hmmmm… color chartplotter.