If Excitement is Contagious

we could be a ship of fools.  Phil served in the Navy and spent two years at sea. I have never been on a ship or a boat larger than 60 feet.  I am excited over this first time experience and looking forward to meeting new people.  This is a big part of the travel experience for me. It does bring to mind the allegory "Ship of  Fools" that has been a fixture in our literature and music. Katherine Anne Porter use the device of the allegory for a  novel as an attack on a world that allowed World War Two to happen.  The Doors and Grateful Dead had a song called "Ship of  Fools". I am sure there is more literature and music that have used this composition but those come to my mind.  Renaissance men developed a horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they put them on a ship because folly, water, and sea as everyone "knew" then had an affinity for each other. The "Ship of Fools" crisscrossed the seas with their comic and pathetic cargo.  Some of them found pleasure and became better, others worse or died alone away from their families.  The cities and villages which had rid themselves of their crazed and crazy, took pleasure in watching the sideshow when a ship full of foreign lunatics would dock in their harbors. I have thought "Ship of Fools" when I watch the people cavorting on the beach in front of the El Oasis that are spending the day off the cruise ship.  I don't really think that Seabourn Seajourn will be a ship of fools but I am sure there will be some interesting people with 450 guest and 335 crew members.  We have three days at sea (separately) and I think of it as sailing on the edge of oblivion, we will see.

So, as we board that ship today - with enthusiasm.      Animo.!!!