A Home-Made Cruise Ship

Two fine bits of inspiration arrived in my e-mail yesterday: a home-made cruise ship and Goethe's timeless encouragement to "...Begin."

My brother Harry, a devoted boater, sent me the link to the amazing ship and its creator, Francois Zanella, a Frenchman whose day job was as a mineworker.

The subject line of the email was "along comes a hero." This man's devotion to his work of art is indeed heroic: he spent 25,000 hours on this project. This amounts to 8.6 years of 40 hour workweeks with no vacations or holidays. You don't have to build boats to appreciate this kind of dedication.

Please go to see this gorgeous piece of work. It can put a still-unrevised manuscript into perspective.

You'll note that the artist is portrayed in his captain's hat. My hat's off to this captain.


And from Mamie Potter, who shot the close-up a few posts ago of the red shoes, comes this quote from Goethe:

"Whatever you would do, or dream of doing, begin it! Boldness has power, genius, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Begin...and remember that Captain Zanella is now sailing around the world on his ship.