I
Leaning back in the harness, I sheeted in as the evening breeze
picked up and filled the rainbowed sail of my windsurfer off the coast of
Hatteras. All day long the first of September sun had had a straight
shot through the Carolina blue sky which reflected the immaculate ocean,
and while the water had taken longer to heat up than the land had, it
retained its heat, while the land cooled rapidly with the setting sun.
Now the air was rising off the warmer water, drawing the cooler air from
the land, and thus I was sailing with my back towards Hatteras. The
thermal wind carried the sounds of a radio playin' that new Beck song--
"Where it's at." I dipped the leeward rail and headed out towards the
open ocean, for the sound of the board cutting through the water and the
wind whistling through the hollow boom was a symphony to my ears, and it
was all I needed to hear.
Away off in the distance, fifteen miles offshore, I perceived the
starboard lights of a ship passing just under rising Jupiter. I set a
course for her across the rolling swells. I looked back and there was
America, receding in my wake. There was a pretty girl back there who
had broken up with her fiance 'cause she wasn't ready. She had cried on
her twenty-fifth birthday and had said that we're all too jaded to have
relationships. At her party one of her friends had told me that she
herself didn't care about men anymore, as she'd learned to be strong.
From now on guys she went out with could do whatever they wanted to. But
to me the jaded had never been the strong, and just as it's difficult to
discern definitive edges in a gray fog, so too does caring take far more
strength than indifference. I leaned back out over the inky black
water, and I saw the Hatteras Light throw it's beacon across a vast cloud
that was blowin' in off the ocean. I had seen that same long, dark cloud
blowing in in May, on that first night that we'd held hands up in Duck.
The rolling swells had been augmenting all day, signifying the
presence of the approaching hurricane which was yet hundreds of miles
away. And so it is that while few these days ever encounter firsthand
the tempest of the poet's and prophet's written words, all eventually
bear witness to the surf, which although mercifully quelled, dissipated,
and diverted by preachers, teachers, time, and distance, shall yet
thunder upon the shores of our souls, for the Truth is as inevitable as
time herself. There was another girl back in Raleigh who'd told me that
she couldn't see her brother ever getting serious with anyone as he had
already had four live-in girlfriends, and he'd learned that they're not
hard to replace. There was another girl, now across the Atlantic, back
in Germany, whose parents were divorced, and whose dad wasn't going to
pay for her college. She said he didn't really give a reason. She was
eighteen, and she'd been having her boyfriend in Germany sleep over ever
since she was fifteen. They'd broken up, and that's why she'd come to
America as a nanny for the summer. I went shopping with her before she
left and she bought her little brother the Snoop Doggy Dogg CD he
wanted. There was this other girl, back in America, who'd told me that
she can't tell her parents half the stuff she sees when she's out. She
laughed and said she'd be grounded for describing a frat party or the
HORDE fest with any accuracy. And so it is that to describe liberalism
makes one a liberal. There was another girl who had just broken up with
her three-year boyfriend, and she was going to come out and visit me in
Chapel Hill, but I had just started seeing someone, and I didn't think it
would be too cool. I'd been cheated on before, and I'd been lied to, and
while I'd followed people down that road a short ways, I'd never known a
reason to lead anyone down it. She'd told me that she never feels guilty
about anything, but I didn't believe it-- she was too cool for that. At
the birthday party, a bunch of girls were all talking about how lame
guys were, and one of them was quoting from some debased article in GQ in
which some New York nerd had interviewed six amoral liberals to find out
what men think about sex. The divorce rate was over sixty percent in
the Chapel Hill area, and that was only taking into account the divorces
which went through the court. They weren't counting the far more
abundant divorces of the soul that had become a rite of passage for the
young in this unchaperoned culture floating with the rest of the flotsam
in the wake of the free love era. My generation's bands were forbidden
from writing love songs. One of my x-girlfriends had married a divorced
doctor, and another had just become engaged to one. One of them had been
bulimic, and one of them had cheated on me. The latter one had been
taken for a ride by her characterless first boyfriend, and every line
that he had used on her, she had presented me. There was one night, back
in Ohio while we were going out, when I saw her x-boyfriend's car in her
driveway. I paid them a visit. It was pretty late, and I didn't want to
wake up her parents, so I climbed up the chimney, and made my way along
the roof to her room. The light was off, but I could hear them. The
window was opened, and the curtain billowed out in the breeze-- it was
spring and the screens hadn't been put in yet. I threw a leg over the
window sill, hopped down, and turned on the light. I told the guy to get
dressed and come on outside with me, but he wouldn't do it. Her dressing
mirror or whatever was standing there, so like I reoriented it a bit.
"Check it out," I said. I took off, and left them both forever in my
wake, with the light on. For it's the poet's task to hold a mirror up to
his peers.
One night not so long ago Joey had told me about some threesome
she had been in the summer before at the beach, and there was another
girl back in Durham whose parents were divorced, and her little sisters
were living with their mom who let them do whatever they wanted. Her dad
was dating some girl her own age, and she refused to talk to him. She
said that there was no way that she was ever going to have kids, and I
kinda laughed and said, "Aww man, somebody did it for you," and she
turned and looked at me and said, "what?" Her fourteen-year-old sister
had gotten an abortion in July. I sheeted in hard as I reached the
pinnacle of a swell, and I was airborne for twenty feet, 'til I landed
high on the next wave. Back on the mainland the homecoming queen from my
senior year in high school was still anorexic, and in a hospital, and one
of my old roommates from college had just gotten engaged, and another had
gotten divorced. I didn't know what the future held for me and the girl
I had just started seeing, but she had told me that nothing surprises her
anymore, and all I could do was hold her, as I did on that first night by
the Corolla Light House, away back in May. And how it feels to hold a
pretty girl with subtle Faith.
The wind was shifting from shoreward to the Southwest. It had
picked up, and whitecaps were appearing for the first time in three
days. A sudden gust caught the sail and nearly catapulted me off the
board, but I was able to unharness, sheet out, and spill the wind. But
the next gust caught the sail which was far too large for the augmenting
conditions, and threw me headlong over the board into the warm water.
And so it is that the men endowed with larger hearts and greater
characters are often the first to be thrown by the pernicious will of the
deceitful. I bobbed in the swells, and the whitecaps looked like ten
thousand sheep surrounding me. And I wondered how many shepherds had
sunk below, and been trampled by the indifferent flock they had sought to
lead. I made out my board about fifteen feet away and swam towards it.
I oriented it so that the mast lay perpendicular to the wind in the
water. I grabbed a hold of the boom, which formed a cross with the mast,
and put my feet up on the board, lying flat on my back in the water. I
took a deep breath to provide some extra buoyancy, and I raised the edge
of the sail a few inches above the water. The wind rushed in, further
raising the sail, which allowed more wind to rush in, and holding onto
the boom I was raised from the water, as the mast shot up to point
towards the sky. And so it is that the formidable elements which torment
us, bring us to our knees, level our souls, and dash our dreams, are the
same elements that can resurrect us. And while we have seen that the
honest man's soul is the first to be leveled by the dervish elements,
know ye that those of greater character are the first ones back on their
feet, catching the Truth in the snow white sails of their lofty spirit,
and standing with dignity upon the water, in the midst of the indifferent
and insidious.
A peal of thunder tumbled across the sky, and I knew that it was
but echoes of Thomas Jefferson trembling to think that God is just, as he
and the Founding Fathers set in stone the fundamental principles which
defined the civilization that had become the very beacon of Freedom. It
was not Jefferson's America I had left behind me on this first of
September evening, so much as it was Jefferson's America that I had set
out to rediscover, where like families were cool.
II.
I again located the lights of the ship, now no more than a mile
away, and I perceived her to be vast. My arms were becoming fatigued
from keeping the sail virtually perpendicular to the gale, but to harness
in would ascertain my being thrown by the next gust. The thunderheads
opened up, and the torrential wind-whipped rain descended so as to make
it as likely that I would drown standing on the board as if I were
standing on the ocean's floor. Each time I topped the apogee of a swell,
I would find the green light on the ship, before plummeting down the back
of the wave. I gasped when a flash of lightning showed the massive wall
of water before me, but out here, beyond where the surf breaks, the giant
is gentle, and she but lifted me as she would a cork to where I could
again gain my green bearing. This time I looked back toward the
mainland, and I made out nothing. I kept my gaze fixed shoreward for a
few seconds, but the solid rain obscured the Hatteras light, and the
faint pulse of the beacon could just barely be seen, like the final
flicker of a dying candle.
Once upon a time back upon those darkened shores the fleeting act
of passion had been preceded by a noble pledge of the eternal soul.
But in this cultural vacuum they taught us not to love for children, as I
have heard was once the way, but for kicks. The Bible had been banned
in the schools, and condoms and computers had replaced it. The printed
word, the seed of God, had been abandoned by the dominant adults of the
Great Nation now behind me. The ambitious mediocre will always outnumber
the righteous individual, and the postmodern bureaucrats took full
advantage of the technology which amplified the superficial, obscured the
subtle, and made idolatry cool. Drug use by children and teens has
doubled in America over the past few years, along with the teen homicide
rate, and rather than providing a haven from the Spartan, debased culture
in the schools, and introducing the children to the Romance of Reading
and their Eternal Souls, the mendicant feminists, vindictive socialists,
and amoral postmodern administrators, united in their jealous mediocrity
and vast ambition, went for Western Culture's jugular. These were the
same people who had smoked some dope, burned some bras and some flags,
dumbed down the educational institutions so that kids would grow up
unaware that the feminists were killing the culture, and then hired
intellectually indifferent administrator/economists like President
Shapiro at Princeton to sanctify the whole mess. By running up the
national debt to pay for the NEH and NEA and then having unsuspecting
eighteen-year-olds take out college loans, they were able to fund it all
with their children's money. Never before in all of history has a
generation charged its children so much to desecrate their Sacred
Heritage.
The vast ship was now less than half mile away-- between the bow
and stern lights, I gauged that it ran almost a quarter mile long. Back
on the mainland, in Chapel Hill, five students had perished in a
fraternity fire on graduation day last spring. It had been determined
that some of them had not been awakened by the smoke and the fire alarms
because they had been too intoxicated. Three months later in August a
front page article in the Raleigh News and Observer had featured the
picture of a history professor at UNC posing with an erudite squint in
front of his bookshelves. He had written a book on how Elvis had
liberated Southern women. On the front page of the largest paper in
North Carolina it said that he had determined that Elvis had liberated
them with his pelvis. Seamus Heany, the nobel prize-winning poet, had
spoken at UNC on that pristine yet tragic graduation day last May. In
the "New York Times Book Review" over Christmas he had said that poetry
had nothing to do with morality. After the grievous deaths, Chancellor
Hooker did his divine postmodern duty to UNC and his liberal brethren,
and he scolded the student body for preferring drinking to thinking, and
he shortened rush from three weeks to two weeks, or something. A year
before the five fraternity students perished, an intoxicated freshman had
fallen to her death at five AM outside the physics building here at UNC.
Flowers had been laid out right next to where I parked my bike every
day. This past summer the Smashing Pumpkins drummer followed in Kurt's
and Shannon Hoon's footsteps, and I thought of the millions of dollars
that the liberal executives promised to those in my generation who would
destroy themselves with drugs, while their tag-team feminist friends in
the Universities kicked those who wrote rhyming sonnets encapsulating the
moral Truth out of their classes. My friend Wendy had come to Chapel
Hill on a track scholarship, she'd gotten into the Chapel Hill band scene
around here and hung out at the Cradle, and four years later she'd
graduated as a heroin addict. Chancellor Hooker had said that in his
day, rather than getting wasted, students had read Plato in the Quad. In
his day they had taught Plato in the classroom, and not the merits of
Elvis's Pelvis. The esteemed history professor, rather than teaching the
students about Plato, Aristotle, Locke, and the unparalleled Greatness of
the Founding Fathers and the Western Heritage, had spent five years
supported by my tax and tuition dollars conducting the intensive research
which had led him to conclude that Elvis had liberated Southern women.
That's one year for Hendrix, one for Joplin, one for Morrison, one for
Kurt, and one for Elvis. And too it is one year for each of the poor
intoxicated students who perished in the fraternity fire. The renowned
history professor recently received a promotion and a grant from the NEH
for his new book which details how Snoop Doggy Dogg has completed Elvis's
mission of liberating the Southern woman, and made it so that no longer
do Southern Belles have to raise the children they conceive, but they are
now free to murder them.
A sustained burst of lightning illuminated the vast ship, now
only a few hundred feet away, and I saw its name: "THE USS KITTY HAWK."
The thunder that followed matched the profound awe I felt in the presence
of such a magnificent vessel. 1,065 feet in length, with a flight deck
of 4.1 acres which towered 200 feet above the waterline, the tempestuous
elements which threatened me at every instant meant nothing to her, as
her starboard light rocked ever so slightly in the heaving seas. With a
capacity to carry 75 of the most advanced fighter jets ever built, she
was the world's largest aircraft carrier. KITTY HAWK had been named
after the dunes fifty miles north of Hatteras where Orville Wright had
flown the first heavier than air machine 140 feet earlier this century.
With a crew of 5,500, three Sea Sparrow launchers, four CIWS mounts, nine
.50 cal machine guns, and four 21-foot wide propellers, she was a
formidable embodiment of section 8 of the United States Constitution, in
which Congress was granted the power to lay and collect taxes to provide
and maintain a Militia and a Navy so as to suppress insurrections and
repel invasions. But yet there were those insurrections from within and
invasions from without which such a majestic ship was defenseless
against. My mast reached but fifteen feet into the air, and I stood on a
ten foot board, and though utterly dwarfed by the magnificent war ship, I
knew that there existed dimensions which could not be measured by the
same ruler. As the great ship dwarfed my craft, so too had I reflected
earlier in the day how the ocean blue dwarfed her, and yet there resided
a mystery in her blue eyes that I knew to be far vaster than any secret
kept by the azure surf. And I thought of how the individual's role was
every bit as fundamental as the warships to protecting the borders of the
Founding Principles which provide the Beacon by which Freedom is allowed
to walk the American shores hand in hand with Moral Responsibility.
While the KITTY HAWK protected the tangible borders of the free
territories of the world, it was the lone poet, philosopher, writer, and
entertainer whose duty it was to protect the abstract, yet absolute,
borders of the Permanent Things. As the king in his castle is immune
from the wind and the rain, so too are the vast academic institutions and
government bureaucracies exempt from the living laughter and pain. It is
the rugged individual, trying to survive while walking the straight and
narrow, who comes to know the First Principles. The Truths and the
Realities which the politician and lawyer often smile through in this
idolatrous age, no poet of the printed word can afford to ignore. What
was subtle to the immense Ship was profound to the windsurfer, for each
swell and deviation in the wind had vital consequences for the latter.
The bureaucrat becomes accustomed to leaning on the bureaucracy, but the
poet is propped up and propelled by the Truth alone, and thus he lives in
tune to the minutest fluctuations in the ever-changing wind. And while
today there was no war calling the KITTY HAWK out to sea, there was a
battle calling me back to shore. I saluted the 5,500 men aboard the
ship, and I dipped the leeward rail and headed downwind, running parallel
to her, as a flash of lightning illuminated her one last time before I
turned. She had her divine duty, and I had mine. And so it is that the
first and second amendments are one and the same, for the pen is mightier
than the sword, and thus the freedom of speech is the right to bear the
most appalling arms. When I turned back towards America to remind her
that the government existed for the people, and that the people didn't
exist for the government, the Hatteras beacon could no longer be seen.
They couldn't afford to have me return to shore.
III.
And so appearance became all as the resentniks triumphed in theirdeconstructions, the moral Truth and family values became but props, and
they expelled men of God and Character from the helms of our cultural
institutions, and replaced them with vacillating, rudderless economists,
advisors, experts, and administrators. "It's the economy, stupid,"
they told the people, and while the stock markets soared and houses got
bigger and families got smaller, a little girl went into Walmart to buy
her father back. Wherever there existed a cultural beacon, the
uncreative socialists and embittered feminists, with nowhere to go and
nothing to lose by eradicating the concept of freedom and true love,
demolished the beacon, and replaced it with a postmodern bureaucracy.
Instead of defending the Greats that gave him his job, that provided him
with endless enjoyment, exaltation, and entertainment, Harold Bloom wrote
a eulogy for them in his pessimistic tome entitled The Western Canon.
Nietschez pronounced that God was dead and in doing so became the
spiritual leader of the Nazis, the feminists, and the
deconstructionsists. Some liberal wrote The End of History, a Princeton
Alumni Weekly a couple of years back was entitled The Death of
Literature, and around then I remember The End of Physics was published.
This spring somebody out-liberaled it with The End of Science.
For thousands and thousands of years men had contemplated the
Truth, and sought the Answer, and strove to introduce children to God,
but today the liberal boomer elite were telling us that there would be no
more of it. The purpose of going to college was no longer to seek the
Truth, nor to try to change the world for the better, for now the liberal
boomer/resentniks and their best friends were in power, and we had
arrived. It was OK to make faster computers, and higher resolution TV's,
but there was no need to create anything of substance to be put on them--
it was the resentnik's turn, and anything which reached beyond nihilism
would not be allowed, for the contrast would expose the insipidness of
their tax-funded journals. No longer was literature to be written, but
from here on it would be administered. No longer would men become Poets
by following God, but they would now enroll in creative writing classes,
and be granted the Divine Right by a feminist. My generation was
informed that everything cool was now officially over, and then we were
branded slackers, and told that the only identity which we would be
allowed to have by the liberal press was that of no identity--
generation-x. And as my eyes strained the dark horizon for a glimmer of
the Beacon of Truth which every generation has the responsibility to keep
burning for its children, I realized what it was that the postmodern
boomer elite feared more than anything-- my generation's imagination.
For while a man has his imagination, he yet possesses his most
fundamental private property, and he can yet be free. But the
fundamental psychology of the liberal boomer elite was that they did not
believe the Truth and God to exist, and thus all they had in their
dismal, gutted world was the material and their petty power. And though
they themselves were dying, they could only maintain their power by
keeping the young from being born. That's why the liberals promoted the
corporate-funded drug addicts and nihilists in my generation, gave
scholarships to the rudderless souls who had nothing better to do than
brown-nose them, and excommunicated the sober free-thinkers. Only
somebody afraid of the future would write THE END OF HISTORY.
As I realized this my grip tightened on the boom, and I would
hold her close the next chance I got, for although God's cultural beacons
by which our forefathers once navigated had become obscured by the
postmodern fog, there was yet the stalwart, living faith within my heart
that differentiated me from the indifferent, howling elements. I had
been knocked down, cheated on, and lied to; I had been kicked out, I had
been slandered and lied to by smiling administrators in this rough and
tumble world, but yet they could not make me one of them. I would still
believe in her until I found her. And I would maintain my imperishable
faith that there was but one Way, and that that was to do Right.
The wind had been shifting to the SSE, and I harnessed in, and shot ahead
into the blind rain at thirty knots, hanging on for dear life, spending
more time in the air than upon the frothing water. I closed my eyes, for
closing one's eyes in the darkness makes it no more dark. Instead it is
then that we dream. In the utter blackness I yet sensed a direction, I
knew right from wrong, I knew the difference between land and water, a
lie from the truth. And I saw that all men were united by this-- the
one, center and circumference of all democracy, omnipotent, ubiquitous
God within. There would always be those who had power and fame to gain
by the temporary denial of Him and the peddling of crass temptation to
the children, but they were a minority I knew. For while the divorce
rate was 60%, nobody ever walked down the isle hoping for it. Everybody
who walked down the isle walked towards the ideal of eternal love. And
they deserved it.
I was sailing back towards an America where there was a virtuous
girl looking for something to believe in, and an honest guy looking for
someone to believe in him. For if one could not make a living by speaking
the Truth to the people, then of what use was money, and of what use were
words? I overtook the waves as I hurtled back towards a generation that
wanted to raise children in a moral context together with those with whom
they conceived them. Towards a generation that had been brought up on
free love, and wouldn't mind working for some that was worth something.
Towards a generation that wanted character to matter, promises to endure,
and words to mean things. Towards a generation who was born believing in
ideals that they found to be reviled, belittled, and slandered by their
teachers-- teachers who were unable to support their vast egoes in the
free-marketplace of ideas, and funded their dubious, self-serving theories
with the money my generation had not yet earned. I sailed on towards a
generation that believed that the Truth exists, and that it could be
obtained via physics and literature. Towards a generation that believed
that there is a God who created us and gave us our inalienable rights.
Towards a generation that believed that an individual's Natural State is
that of Freedom. Towards a generation that believed that the traditional
two-parent family is the natural and ideal institution for raising
children. Towards a generation that wanted character in its presidents
and literature, and that believed that artistic, cultural and literary
decadence have an adverse effect on society. Towards a generation that
believed that moral works of literature are beneficial for society, and
should be cherished and presented to our children in the schools which we
support with our tax dollars. Towards a generation that has grown weary
of the gender wars, and is awakening to the fact that it isn't that all
men are lame, nor that all women are lame, but rather that women and men
are the same in that they both want to be honored for their characters,
respected for their virtues, and told the Truth. Towards a generation
that believed that an absolute morality exists, and that it is embodied in
the Judaeo-Christian heritage and the ten commandments. Towards a
generation that believed that Thomas Jefferson made a good point when he
said, "If man cannot be trusted to govern himself, can he be trusted to
govern others?" Towards a generation that believed in smaller government
and more personal responsibility, and the freedom to spend one's money as
one chooses. Towards a generation that believed that everyone can be
taught to take care of themselves, and that they should be. Towards a
generation that believed in the future of America and the vast
opportunities we have for Performing our Duty and creating a profound
culture of our own, resurrecting the beacons that kept our grand-parents
united through the most horrific events that the modern age bore witness
to, and creating a context in which the words of the Great Books once
again resound. For upon those American shores there was an honest girl
looking for someone to believe in her, and too there was a virtuous guy
looking for somebody to believe in. I was sailing back towards not only
my generation, but all generations which had preceded, and all generations
which were yet to be.
And so it was that I sighted the Hatteras Light too late, as I
broke through the postmodern fog and shot over the threshold where the
waves were breaking. Before I had a chance to alter my course, I found
myself with the rest of my generation too high upon a breaking wave. A
wave breaks as its lower half slows down, while the unchecked momentum of
the upper half carries it forth, and suddenly there was nothing between
the sand and I but twenty feet of air. And so I plummeted in front of
the wall of water, hanging onto the boom, the sail my parachute, as the
wave came crashing down on top of all. I felt the fin break as the board
and I were crushed into the ground. The mast caught in the sand and
snapped like a twig as the thundering fury swept us shoreward. How many
had given up all their material possessions and had risked everything to
settle these shores so that they could own the most fundamental private
property-- their freedom and their belief in God? My sailboard was
battered and broken beyond repair, but I had escaped injury. Need ye
more proof that the Lord disregards the material and watches over the
mortal soul? Those who believe shall survive the breaking waves, says
I, and I write these words for ye, to let ye know that ye are not alone.
Aye aye then, I dragged my broken board high upon the dunes,
illuminated periodically by the sweeping Hatteras beacon. I walked on
back toward the Roger's Lodge. It was our last night in Hatteras. I'd
told everyone I was heading out for a walk, and they were probably
worried.
And so it is that those who find a beacon by navigating by their
private faith in the Lord find themselves sentenced to speak the Truth
regarding the rewards of their Faith. Though it often means to appall
rather than to console, and to enrage and upset rather than to quell,
there is but one Way for the Poet, and upon that course they pen their
moral myths. For as the Lord looses a tempest upon this earth from time
to time, so too shall those who serve Him, as they boldly pluck out the
underhanded subterfuges and dervish dealings hidden in the cloaks of the
Senators, Judges, Pharisees, Teachers, and Administrators who have
forgotten that there is that which is greater than man.
And so it was that I returned from a year at sea with Drake and
Elliot aboard THE JOLLY ROGER, fighting for the soul of a generation and
the Right to Write Great Literature, standing before the mast as our fine
frigate became the world's largest literary vessel, with over 10,000
readers each month from over thirty different nations. And as we
returned to port and September ushered in the new academic year, we
discussed one night in the captain's cabin that the time had arrived to
form a new literary settlement upon the virgin cultural frontiers we had
discovered. As she shall provide a definitive beacon by which to
navigate by, we decided to christen her HATTERAS, after the tallest
lighthouse in America. Edited by Elliot McGucken and Joshua P.
Hochschild, the literary settlement is currently looking for a few good
men, loyal to the Truth, and wicked with a pen. Please send your
submissions to josh@jollyroger.com. Although Elliot and Josh braved the
hostile waters of Princeton and Yale for four years, and are now
currently working on their PhDs in physics and philosophy, they have yet
to be convinced that the people should have to fund literature that they
have no interest in reading. Instead they believe one should sell cool
books and t-shirts to finance it (http://jollyroger.com/rogerlodge.html).
Now that The Roger has returned to port on our maiden voyage of
the new school year, we'd like to invite you to grab a coke, pull up a
lounge chair, put on some sun-tan lotion and come enjoy the final
fleeting days of the summer at HATTERAS. Check out Josh's cool review of
Braveheart and his essay on the temporary desecration Yale and the
ancient philosopher's eternal, immutable consolation, along with
Stephanie Herman's insightful and intrepid critique of feminism. The
fresh salt-tinged air of HATTERAS can be enjoyed at
http://jollyroger.com/hatteras.html . And as with everything at
www.jollyroger.com, we humbly dedicate it to ye, the reader, for we never
forget that without ye, we would not exist. Avast!
All the best,
Becket Knottingham
HATTERAS
by Drake Raft
I spent a year upon the stormy seas,
Going after what they said wasn't there,
Time after time it brought me to my knees,
And I would say this simple sailor's prayer.
I believe in Truth, I believe in Light,
I believe I was born to serve the Lord,
I will do no wrong, and I will do right,
And my simple sermon was not ignored.
For I say I have glimpsed a virgin land,
Have faith me maties, when yer feeling weak,
We're settling Hatteras, come lend a hand,
Know ye that ye become that which ye seek.
Ahoy! I'm looking for a few good men,
Loyal to the Truth, wicked with a pen.
***
LETTERS TO THE CAPTAIN
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 19:44:46 -0400
From: diana
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: Wonderful Site
I am recently a grandmother, so I'm no gen-xer, but I'm thrilled that I
now have access immediately to books I have been touting all my life to
my five children and now...one grandchild. How thrilled I was to find
the complete Penrod--a book which is so difficult to find today. I have
run off the first four chapters so that my 13-year-old daughter might
get a taste of this wonderful book. Is there any hope we might get a
copy uploaded of Tarkington's Seventeen? That was another of his best.
Thank you again. Leave it to the gen-x'ers to come through with that for
which many of us have yearned for a long, long time.
My generation messed things up. I'm depending on yours to bring us all
back to our collective senses. As I tell my kids....."They don't call
them "classics" for nothing."
THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS: Avast! Yer generation didn't mess things up.
A small, ambitious, liberal contingent of yer generation did.
Date: Sun, 01 Sep 1996 19:57:20 -0700
From: firefox7
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: Your frigate and, like, yer excursions
Ahoy Cap'n,
After hours of readin yer writin, me head is set a-spin. Tis been
many a fortnight since me has seen such a refreshing ship asail. Yer
writin's do remind me that some maties in our generation still have deep
red marrow in our bones and are yearnin fer more meat in our literary diets.
We must then, sail our frigate, all sails unfurled, all hands above
deck, with clear minds and wills, into the Liberal dinghy and put asunder
the mechanism of our country's decline!
Awaiting Further Orders,
Chris Fox
THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS: Ahoy! Here are yer orders-- like grab a coke, pull
up a deck chair, buy a www.jollyroger.com t-shirt, and watch on as like we
sink the waterlogged postmodern vessels as we fire broadsides of Truth
from the Western Canon.
Date: Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:41:03 -0700
From: Mike & Lynn
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: Kudos, Kudos and Kudos!!!!!!!!!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!
The Web site, the wit, and the right attitude. You guys got it all. You
are my port of sanity.
THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS: Ahoooooooooooooooooooooooy!
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 15:09:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: The Salty Dog
To: Red Avenger
Subject: Re: Ahoy "the salty dog'! Welcome aboard THE JOLLY ROGER!
finally someone out there that i can talk too. i thought i was all alone.
please send me as much e-mail as you want to keep me informed. i'm
drowning in north carolina's liberal arts university (UNCA) thanks oh so
very much for making a stand.
THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS: Avast! There was a time when we thought we were
all alone, and if ye ask any liberal, they will tell ye that ye are. But
like we were a classic case of the silent majority, up until we chartered
this ship.
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 01:02:48 -0500
From: jay miles
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: Thimble Jim's Maiden Voyage
Ahoy! I've roamed the Seven Cyber Seas for ages, and have only NOW
discovered my true comrades in arms (keyboards?)...YOU! I am Thimble Jim,
so named due to my proximity to those dreaded pirate hideaways the Thimble
Islands (Ct.). I 'm afraid that I can't reveal my exact location now, but
having gained each other's mutual trust after my maiden voyage (Aug. 31)
aboard your sturdy and long overdue vessel, perhaps that too can come to
the surface...
I am Thimble Jim! And I guess I'm kindof a dork, 'cause I signed up
twice on your e-mailing list. Please forgive me. I am in a band, which
is dorky as well, and certainly overdone, but i DO fly the Jolly Roger
from my cymbal stands both at shows and in studio. I have also printed a
copy of your excellent Declaration of Independence, which I will hang in an
"underground" club I am now founding with my fellow truth seekers
I look forward to sailing with you!!
Until then, stay sharp...
-Thimble Jim
THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS: Avast! Send a CD to PO BOX 1087, Chapel Hill, NC
27514! Here's one of the songs from Drake's band:
ALTERNATIVE GIRLS
Alternative girl, oh what a shame,
To see you going when I just came,
Alternative girls never know my name,
Alternative girls are the ones who dress the same
.
Oooooh-- can you feel the pain?
Of the little trees in the acid rain?
Alternative girls think I'm to blame,
For the government, the environment, and Cindy's house of style.
But that's OK, if you feel that way,
It's still alright to smile.
There she is, there she goes,
There's my old shirt, but whose shoes are those?
Where'd you get them matching thriftstore clothes?
Lollapalooza,
I'm a looser.
Lollapaloozer,
I'm a looza.
And I try and I try, oh, I try,
Just to be an alternative guy,
But somehow it always comes out wrong,
I forget to put distortion in my songs.
Ahoy! Drop the crew a line!
WRITTEN BY ME GENERATION, DEDICATED TO ALL GENERATIONS.