Wanderung 27

Bob:

During breakfast, Monika ran out to the aft deck to take pictures of a beautiful sunrise. Of course, I had to join her and we both were enthralled by the gold pouring over the sea.

Monika took off at 9:30 to participate in the Beginning Knitting class, and she ended up instructing some of the other women on the European style of knitting. One oddity was that Marcia distributed chopsticks to use in place of knitting needles--far cheaper but as far as I know they only come in one size!

I attended the "Trekking the Planet" lecture by Darren and Sandy at 10:00, hoping for some nitty-gritty advice on how to get to out-of-the-way places safely and efficiently. Their presentation was rather more an impressionistic pastiche of photographs and short movie clips on the people and places they had seen, but that was all quite interesting and probably suited the audience's interests. They also did a moderately hard sell of their travel website, which I would have reduced to a mere byline, but then again I'm not very good at self-promotion. After lunch, we returned to the Pop Choir rehearsal, and were both enthusiastically welcomed back into the fold. It seems that our presence was missed!

Most of the rest of my day was spent churning through a book on the origins of Sesame Street by Michael Davis that I found in the ship's library. The biographies of every major and minor player in the design and production of the TV series, told in flashback fashion, became a bit tedious and confusing, but the basic story of how such an innovative educational TV offering ever made it to the air in the first place was absolutely riveting. The series debuted in 1969, but I had no idea that CBS and NBC had been offered the idea in 1967 and had both turned it down flat! As it turned out, that was a multi-billion dollar mistake! The history of puppetry and children-centered TV was also covered in detail, outlining the historical links between the puppetry of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie and the children-centered TV of Captain Kangaroo to the ultimate result in Sesame Street. Since I remembered both of those earlier programs, it was heartwarming to see how they had contributed to a cultural icon like Sesame Street.

But I was also struck how the young, idealistic, liberal folks forming the core of the production team were altruistically trying to improve the educational attainment of inner-city black children. That type of altruism seems increasing old-fashioned and out-of-touch in the increasingly self-centered, self-satisfied, greedy, and materialistic modern day America. How many folks nowadays dedicate themselves to helping the poor and disadvantaged? The dominant ethos in America has changed so much since the 1960s that It was almost like reading about a different country entirely. Curious.

Since it was our second formal night, we dressed in our best and attended the Captain's welcome-back party just before dinner. We had, in fact, a new Captain who had just come aboard in Funchal. One of his first acts was an afternoon briefing in which he informed us that the Norwalk Virus was indeed affecting people on the ship. Although I had already suspected as much, that explained why we suddenly had wait staff positioned at the Purex hand sanitizer dispensers in the buffet to ensure we all used that before entering the food area. Still forewarned is forearmed, and in retrospect Monika's bout with gastrointestinal problems a couple days back was quite possibly a light case of Norwalk Virus infection.