An Audiogramme received and faithfully recorded and submitted to the Dean, then to The Editor, from:

Dr. James Woodbury Rowe -
on matters of import to the global community

Perhaps the gentle reader would be interested also in apprising her or himself with these other dissertations by Dr. James Woodbury Rowe:

Matters of Import to the Global Community #1 and

Madcow Disease and related incidents.

Greetings Dean and Greetings to Our Prince Regent and Lord President:

We come to the summer solstice, which in one form or another is one of the four holidays recognized by the RPPS since it abolished the civic calendar and returned on its own to the festival of life.

And perhaps this is good since it allows for periodic re-evaluation of one's position and directions.

At this solstice, it has been close to 30 years since I took up the sea and I have few complaints. I have reached the point at which some of the Chief Engineers, who I now serve were trained by me as cadets. This does not bother me much. I guess at one time or another I may have taught them that no matter how good they are, they cannot make the fuel gauge run backwards. What does bother me is their expectation that I should have retired. I'm not old enough to have known the iron men who went to sea in wooden ships.

Yet still I could say I enjoy my position as First Engineer. I have only one boss - the Chief. If I had become Chief, everybody would be my boss.

And maybe this is a byproduct of culture. I recall the vignette of the British Captain who served with the American Army for a time. The Good captain said of the experience, "In the British Army my word was law; in the American Army it was a point of departure."

Certainly we can say much of the consultive nature of American decision making. Yet all systems no matter how well designed reach an apex and decline. The dizzying pace of the shrinking industrial base, which I see very clearly in the vanishing merchant fleet, has witnessed the disappearance of companies once though to make presidents quake.

Oh well, a philosopher-mathematician, long before the magic of computers made it possible for my words to be instantaneously recorded and retransmitted, predicted as early as 1920 that all we knew, all of our conceptions, which stem from the Industrial Revolutions the development of the steam and diesel engines would be swept away by fin de siede.

That indeed may be true, but I still have to repair the boiler before the Chief comes back from his break.

A cheery cheerio,

Dr. James WoodburyLord of Rowe and sometimes First Engineer.

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