The Tall Ship Eagle

Last Monday morning we biked down to the pier to await the departure of the US Tall Ship, Eagle. A tall ship is a kind of huge sailing ship called a barque, and this particular one was built in Germany in 1936 and used as a training vessel for the German Navy. After World War Two it was taken by the US as one of the spoils of war and is now used by the for training future officers of the US Coast Guard.
A member of the crew of the Eagle told us they expected to leave port at ten, but it actually ended up being after 2 before they set sail and even then, they didn't actually 'set sail;' they fired up the diesel engines. So, we endured more than four hours of waiting in heat that felt like 100 degrees. But it wasn't a bad experience.I had a lot of time to watch the other people who were waiting. The first thing I noticed was that nearly all of those waiting were older than 75--old enough to remember the Nazis and the War-- and many of them understood the importance of the seeing the ship on the 217th anniversary of the US Coast Guard. I wondered if more than a few of them felt as I did, some pride in the ship as a kind of symbol of wrong made right.
I was struck, as always, by how the natural cycle of things demands that we be children, and then when we are old, like children again. By "like children" I do not mean to imply the the simple heartedness or innocence of children in the elderly. I guess I see a kind of vulnerability wrought from physical frailty. There is a similarity in the gait of one learning to walk and one slowly 'forgetting' it and in one who hears the world for the first time and one who having listened to it for 75 years or so, slowly becomes deaf to it. It is interesting for me to consider the child who knows nothing of the world or the infant with his supposed knowledge of the divine or mysterious with whom most of us are fascinated and thrilled by. In contrast, it is the octagenarian who is a repository of real experiences, feelings, thoughts, and dreams whom society seems to find bothersome and dull. It is a great shame, I think, that the world I live in is geared to concern itself more with the selfish wants and comfort of the strongest segment of the population (those 20 to 55) rather than with the needs of the weak or vulnerable. For one thing, there is a great deal to be learned from the experience (both past and present) from whose who have lived longer than we.
We met, too, one man in particular. This man calls himself Professor Robert Butch Wiener, and he made us promise not to call him "a character," so I won't write it. It was apparent from his need to be heard (and that of others who came up to talk to Thomas) that people just want to be listened to. He had interesting stories (and quite a lot of them), and it cost us nothing to attend to him while he talked. Perhaps it is annoying for some to listen to an "old guy go on and on,"
but as the sign in the crypt in Brno says, "As you are, I was. As I am, you will be."