Here’s a quick post to alert you that several days may go by without word or photo from tugster.  I’m repeating a trip I made last year from Warren RI to Chicago IL via the Erie Canal and other great American and Canadian waterways. If you missed it, you might check out last year’s posts here.
I’m onboard lecturer working a small passenger ship.  Despite my lightweight MMD, I am indeed gainfully employed, paid not to stand watch, throw line, read a chart, wipe spilled oil, bust rust, or maneuver the vessel.  I puff on no cutty pipe and chew or spit no quid.   I swab no decks, make no beds, brush no heads, shut no sheet, serve no drinks but to myself, “sir” no sirs, peel no spuds.  I leave others to juggle flower pots, pluck strings, and tickle ivories–although I play crazy air-concertina.  I could go on.  However, I do racont, if that be the verb exercised by a raconteur.  I indulge no ideology except that of the gallivant.
But in 2017, tall tales might be considered gauche, aka fake news, a phrase that goes back to the 1890s, although I’d suggest that Eve herself was an occasional purveyor of compromised truths, in conjunction with Adam’s dispersal of same.  So the racontage I disperse needs to be both researched and enthralling . . . a tough combo.
The article below truly comes from the April 27, 1921 New York Herald, and if I applied for the “perfect job” advertised there for the SS George Washington, I’d not be hired.  If you are in the need of a belly laugh,  rolling on and then off the deck guffaw, read the article in your best raconteur voice to your supervisor.   Or have a subordinate perform it to you, aloud or over the intercom.