Caravel Chalkboard Drawing, October 2009
Click on image for larger view.
For weeks I've been adrift in the fears, follies, and dreams of the European age of exploration (roughly 1400-1600).* After tasking my 7th/8th grade class to develop a sailing vessel that could harness the wind** from multiple directions and carry 2000 grams of cargo on stormy seas I followed up our days of damp tests in a plastic wading pool with this chalkboard illustration. The class hardly needed explanations of the intent behind the keel, rudder, or lateen sail after all of the trial-and-error work that they'd poured into their own boats, but I felt it important to illustrate a caravel as it figured so prominently in many of the biographies I was sharing with them.
* * * * *
It is odd how your mind can drift away, even when you are called upon to be most present: this little song by Joanna Newsom*** has been in my head ever since I spent an hour embedding the above illustration on the 8' expanse of darkness that dominates my room.
Bridges and Balloons (excerpt) by Joanna Newsom
from Milk-Eyed Mender
with fate as malleable as clay;
but ships are fallible, I say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades
And I can recall our caravel:
a little wicker beetle shell
with four fine masts and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel
O my love,
O it was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen.
*Unless, of course, you start with Marco Polo, as I do when beginning this course of study. In that case you can tack on another 150 years at the outset.
**conveniently produced with a box fan
***who I swore was a former Waldorf student after seeing this video for Sprout and the Bean
And for those of you who are up for a challenge: How many nautical puns are part of this post?
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