A long time ago when I had all my personal belongings, such as all my books and magazines, readily accessible at my fingertips, I would sit down and pull out a few of my ship books and just flip through the pages and look at the pictures and drift off in a totally peaceful and sated state of mind. Sure, I coulda done the same thing with my beyond numerous movie star books but the bottomline question which usually prevented me from doing so was "Why the hell should I look at that stuff when I have enough drama in my own life?" So, I always turned to my ships. Whenever I've felt down or blue about anything, all I'd do is pull out 2 or 3 ship books and by the time I was finished leafing through them, I always felt better about whatever was troubling me. I dont know if you could actually classify that as a soothing-sorting-thru-it-all-thought process or not, but for me it was always the closest thing to it.
I know that some people might find that kinda boring, even extremely eccentric on my part, that all it takes is merely looking at photographs of my ships to steady and reinforce my inner spirit, my mojo if you will, but that's what works for me. I think everybody out there has some kind of hobby or interest that does that for them but so many of us get caught up in the rat-race antics of our daily existences that sometimes we unintentionally allow such peaceful habits to fall to the wayside. So for myself, as soon as I can swing it financially, I'm rescuing all my things from their midwestern storage unit and bringing them back into the fold of my life, where they can be seen, where they can be enjoyed, and where they can embrace the light of day as much as any beloved personal belonging would do if it were more than just an inanimate object.
In fact, I think one of the most underappreciated, as well as least spoken about, treasureable feelings in the world is to be able to have all of your personal possessions with you in one single place, but like with some folks out there, for whatever reasons, that's never been the case with me. When I left the midwest, I left behind everything behind so that I could go to school on the East Coast - my furninture, my books, my cd collection and all the miscellaneous knick-knacks that sometimes cast a personal reflection of who we are as people. Then after I met Jack and before I moved to the West Coast, I took what I had on the East Coast and put a great deal of that into storage, along with all my other things, so yes, as you can imagine, the storage unit became a bit larger! After the Loma Prieta quake in '89, with the exception of a few personal mementoes and the majority of Jack's papers from the George Moscone/Harvey Milk murder trial, there really wasnt anything left to put into the storage unit that time around.
It was at that point that both my personal belongings and myself sorta came full circle. When I left Northern California, I moved in with my grandparents in Michigan and not only was I fortunate enough to have a roof over my head, but during that time I was also lucky enough to be there when my grandparents decided to sell the place and thus we all went through the tedious, yet very emotional, process of sorting through and distributing all the family heirlooms. You guessed right again - yet more stuff for that nearly bulging storage unit in western Ohio! No, no, dont get the wrong idea, I'm notta packrat by any means folks, I may have a fairly large storage unit in the midwest BUT that is ALL I have, aside from what I have in my apartment in Boston as well as the very clothes on my back, I really dont have much of anything to talk about. No large CD accounts for the future, no houses, no cars. Of course, there is something that is far more important to me than any material possessions - friends. I have my friendships and those mean a great deal to me. After all, they always say we cant take anything with us, but they're wrong because those friendships reside in our hearts-n-souls and where we go, they go too.
Perhaps some folks might find themselves saying "Geese, Spice, why dontcha get rid of some of that crap and lighten your load?" I dont think so. I'm gonna be turning 46 years old this year, and though that doesnt make me old by any means, those things are all that I have. It may not even be as a quarter as much as what other folks have, but they're all mine. Give up the 2 wood veneer coffee tables my grandparents were presented with on their wedding day on Valentine's Day, 1942? Dream on. Throw out one of the few remaining copies of the Cunard liner FRANCONIA's World Cruises of 1931 & 1932 still in existence? Forget it. Toss that old 1947 Kingston Radio, the one I use to listen to the broadcasts of Santa Claus's sleigh-ride from that one radio station in Ontario, Canada late at night every Christmas Eve when I was a child? Move along with that thought Sparky, just move along.
The moral of all these recollections, aside from the fact that wouldnt it be nice if I found me a fairly nice man with a big ole' house that needs to be redecorated and/or has some fairly good amounts of free storage space? Okay okay, maybe that's not too realistic but it never hurts to dream! Actually, I dont think there is any moral to any of this, except for just one admission on my part - whenever my life is in distress or up-in-the-air to a degree, like alotta folks out there, I try to reach out to those things in my immediate environment which comfort me the most, as well as give me strength, give me sustenance. 
But, those ships books are way too far away for me to reach out to right now, so I'd like to do the next best thing. I wanna look at and post a ton of photos of one of my most favorite ships in the entire world, the Cunard liner AQUITANIA (1914-50). Yes, I definitely could write a history about each individual photo, and maybe someday I will, but not today. Today all I want is to look at her and absorb every bit of her majesty and beauty because somehow, some way, it's gonna help me deal with some of the things I'm currently going through in my own life. I dont know how many images I'll post in this piece but I hope I come across a mighty slew of them and I hope that everyone enjoys looking at them as much as I do, even if only for a few seconds. Thank you for reading and for viewing.
There's another reason why I have mixed feelings about going to Connecticut to work next month. For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you may recall that when I contracted Genital Herpes, I did so because the man I was seeing at the time did not disclose that information to me, unlike myself who told him way before we even hit the sheets that I was Hiv+. Even after my Genital Herpes diagnosis, after I confronted him, he still denied it. So, rather that become an angry, bitter person and spewing forth all kinds of negative, spiteful venom towards the man, I chose to do what I felt was the right thing to do - I walked away from the situation, kept my focus on staying as healthy as possible and living life as happily as possible too. However, occassionally I still do wonder if I made the right decision and yes, you guessed it, this all took place while I was living in Connecticut the first time.
I've already written about my Genital Herpes infection a number of times in this blog but I find myself needing to revisit the issue once again. In the past several months, there have been so many people who have asked me "Why havent you called the whistle on this guy and outted him for what he did to you?" The answer to that is quite simple - harming and/or destroying another human beings life is not going to solve any problems. It's not going to take the Genital Herpes away. What's done is done. As for revenge, why would I wanna waste my valuable life energy on something negative like that, especially since I've already confronted the individual as well as proved that he is a liar?_.jpg)
In the past I've made it a point to make very clear that this man who infected me with the Genital Herpes is not only closeted about his homosexuality, but that he, ironically, is also an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi. True, a person's religious affiliation should have nothing to do with who they are personality-wise but most of those who are even slightly familiar with the Jewish religion know quite well that the Orthodox Jews are the most vehemently anit-gay of the anti-gayest Jewish denominations. Talk about having ones bubka and eating it too, oi gevalt. I'm not singling him out because he happens to be Jewish (please, I'm a descendant of Russian Jews myself) but because he is using his religion as well as his religious station to not only mask his true sexual orientation but to also give himself immunity from the consequences he would encounter if he were to play by the rules like the rest of us do. Not disclosing that you have an extremely contagious STD to a sexual partner is unacceptable behavior (and in some states, illegal too), but to knowingly infect someone who already told you upfront that they are Hiv+ with yet another STD? It's not only irreprehensible but it clearly demonstrates that if by their own nature a person is misleading and dishonest, they're gonna be that way regardless of what their particular religious affiliation is. In other words, try not to dislike anyone; but, if you are gonna dislike someone, make sure it's not because of their religion but because they are a schmendrick.
Back to the immunity angle. Let's say I were to approach this particular man's local rabbinical council and present my case to them in the hopes that they would indeed reprimand him for his wrongdoing - would such a council listen to what I'd have to say or would they automatically discount it because I am a Gentile and he is a Rabbi? Would they, in all their alleged theological wisdom say amongst themselves "Well, he's one of us, he knows that homosexuality is wrong, this crazy gentile must be confusing him with somebody else." In other words, would I be totally discounted because of who I am as an individual? I dont know everything there is to know about the Jewish religion but I think the most they could do to him is temporarily suspend him so that he couldnt preach/administer at any congregation. Aside from warning other people so that they themselves could go get tested for Genital Herpes, that's the only good that would result from outting him. Seriously. Besides, why would I want to prevent him from preaching his religion anyways? That doesnt have one single thing to do with me whatsoever, that is strictly between him and God. As for any degree of guilt that he may have for what he did to me, which I doubt he has since he couldnt even admit the truth to me in the first place, that too is something that's strictly between him and God as well. Since I'm already infected, the only justice I would want now is to somehow warn other people so that it would prevent them from being infected with the Genital Herpes. 
do not like to be away from Boston for any certain amount of time and although where they want me to go in CT is only about an hour and 45 minutes away from where I live now, I'm just not totally thrilled about it all. When they first told me about their plan on Monday morning I just stood there and listened and smiled and went "Uh huh....I see....uh huh....hmmmm..." when in reality I wanted to scream out loud "Are you fucken whacked in the head!?!?! If you think life is so grand in bum-fuck-egypt, then why dont you go there!?!" Now I can finally understand how Joan Crawford musta really felt when Mr. Mayer asked her to leave MGM - notta good feeling by any means! Okay, maybe it's not all as melodramatic as that but with the way my situation is these days, I'd rather not leave Boston at all, even though it is only temporary.
Another con to all of this is that I'm gonna have to strictly do my apartment-hunting strictly via online the entire time I am away in Connecticut but I dont think that will be too too problematic. After all, I've been looking for a more affordable apartment for quite some time now so that I dont have to keep working 2 jobs and am hoping to make this a reality by fall-time so that I can finally return to working just 1 job and having more of a life. 
As I've stated previously, I love Mother Nature just as much as the next person and yes, Connecticut is very pretty, scenic state; HOWEVER, after growing up in all those years enclosed by Mother Nature in every direction, I can truthfully live the rest of my life without it. I'm not kidding. I dont need the endless clumps of trees constantly springing up all over the place; the countless meandering streams that wind themselves through section after section of low-lying rocky hills, while people who wear Rolexes and dont believe in using deodarant hike their bony rich asses from there to kingdom-come; mega-sized equestrian estates, with their descendants of My-Friend-Flicka running rampantly and smelling profusely all over the place; and, more than anything, I certainly do not need the lack of civilization that is so prevalent because quite frankly, I literally cannot take it! 
No, no, I've lived the quiet natural life way too much in my early years of growing up and I refuse to go back to that. For those who love that kinda lifestyle, go buy a farm somewhere and knock yourselves out. If I could go back in time and change anything about my life, that right there would be at the top of the list - to never ever have been exposed to living in such isolated wilderness. Talk about stifling suffocation the good ole' fashioned way - no thanks.
I've been wanting to write about the Candian Pacific liner EMPRESS of BRITAIN (1931-40) for quite some time and now that I finally know how to properly load photos into my blog entries (still keeping my fingers crossed as I claim this) the time has finally arrived. Whenever any of us maritime historians or "ship nerds" write about any given ocean liner, we always try to provide the general background of each individual ship, such as her statistics, when she made her debut on the Seven Seas, what happened to her towards the end of her career and other specific tidbits. Even though such information is instantly available on any given internet search engine, I will include some of the statistics regarding the EMPRESS of BRITAIN; however, there are a couple more specific reasons why I am writing this piece on her now.
Before I go any further, a special note to both my readers and any maritime historians out there. Please do not confuse the EMPRESS of BRITAIN (1931-40) in this piece with the other famous Canadian Pacific liner EMPRESS of BRITAIN (1906-30), a proud reliable liner unto herself, as well as the virtually identical sistership to the ill-fated EMPRESS of IRELAND (1906-1914). Incidentally, the British shipping lines werent the only ones who listed and numbered their vessels in specific chronological order. The EMPRESS of BRITAIN of 1906 was considered # "I", the ship in this piece considered #"II" and a later EMPRESS of BRITAIN of 1956, and one of the last Canadian Pacific liners built, was considered # "III." In addition, in this piece as well as any piece regarding ocean liners, you will notice that I refer to every ship as "she" only because that has always been a revered maritime tradition. The only exception to this rule in all of maritime history would had to have been the Compagnie Generale Tranatlantique's (the French Line's) superliner NORMANDIE (1935-42), whose board of directors always referred to as "He."
Although this may sound somewhat cliche due to the fact that it's been used to describe almost every single ocean liner ever created, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN was indeed one of the most unique liners ever built. The rationale behind her design was just as unique as the liner herself. The board of directors of the Canadian Pacific Line came up with the following concept - instead of having travelers, especially those more inland in Canada and the American Midwest, take a 3 to 4 day boat-train to board liners in the port of New York City, why not offer them the advantageous choice of taking a 2-day boat-train to Montreal, have them board the EMPRESS of BRITAIN and thus take the quicker St. Lawrence River route out to the open seas? In other words, give ocean travelers the same safe, fast, luxurious service to Europe they had grown accustomed to, only for a quicker trip and atta better price. Yet by the same token dont provide the public with the average, well-constructed sturdy vessel, rather make sucha ship one-of-a-kind, unlike any other out there. And that's exactly what they did.
Some of the statistics regarding the size and strength of the EMPRESS of BRITAIN are as follows: she was 760 feet long, 97 feet wide , towered 12 stories above the sea, weighed in at 42,348 tons and could travel atta overall speed of 25.5 knots, or roughly 47 mph(!) and carried 1,195 passengers and 714 crew members. She was dressed in the traditional color scheme of all of Canadian Pacific's "White Empress" liners - all-white lower and upper hull, green waterline cap-off, blue/green stripe around her entire upper hull and the traditional yellowish-buff colored funnels, 3 of the largest funnels ever installed on a ship, until the advent of the French liner NORMANDIE four years later. She was designed and built at the John Brown shipyards of Glasgow, Scotland, who would also be the future builders of Cunard's QUEEN MARY and QUEEN ELIZABETH. The EMPRESS of BRITAIN was not only the Canadian Pacific's new flagship and largest liner ever built, but she was also the largest Canadian liner ever built when she made her maiden voyage on May 27, 1931.
Her construction was nothing short of amazing for she was not only larger, heavier and faster than any battleship afloat during her era, but there were some details that went into her design that the majority of her contemporaries never had. Due to the fact that she would most likely encounter alot of the thick ice and smaller icechunk flows that were so prevalent on the St. Lawrence River during the winter months, she was designed with an extra-durable double hull in her bow section as a safety precaution. That's not to say she was unsinkable but unlike her North Atlantic counterparts, her hull needed extra reinforcing in order to ensure her longevity on the route she was designed for. She was also the first major liner to be utilized as a cruise-ship during a good portion of those off-season winter months when passaging up-n-down the vastly frozen St. Lawrence River basin sometime proved impossible. In addition, her yacht-like stern afforded her engines less pull when the ship was at full-speed status, thus allowing her to reach the heightened speed levels her owners hoped she would achieve. Although Canadian Pacific Line's original intent for her never came into full fruition - she wasnt the most profitable liner of her era, but well-traveled and well-loved nonetheless, the practicality of systematically shutting down a third or more of her boilers during cruising season, when she didnt need to travel as fast and thus not require as much fuel consumption, did indeed serve her owners wisely, especially in the depression-plagued world of the 1930's. 
But like so very many of the other great ocean liners of her era, when war clouds loomed everywhere in Europe in September,1939, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN would find herself painted battleship grey and serving her country in one of the worst world wars known to mankind. Sad to say, like many of her fellow liners, she too would become a tragic victim of man-made warfare. On October 26, 1940, while laden down with troops, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN was spotted by German bombers off the northwestern coast of Ireland and successfully divebombed twice, which in turn set the ship on fire. The next day, with the ship still burning, British naval destroyers and other aiding craft successfully set up tow-lines to her to attempt to bring her to safety. But to no avail. On October 28, the German submarine U-32 spotted the burning EMPRESS of BRITAIN and torpedoed her twice, with only one of the two detonating. So, the captain fired yet a third torpedo into the EMPRESS'S hull, which set off explosions within her hull, and thus caused her to list over on her starboard side and sink. The EMPRESS of BRITAIN wasnt the only ocean liner victim of World War II but she was the largest passenger liner ever sunk during wartime circumstances and when you encounter the story of her final days, you'll usually find the moniker "largest British passenger liner ever sunk during wartime." And that's where I have a HUGE problem with her story. 
Yes, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN truly was the largest ocean liner ever sunk during wartime circumstances; but, it's the "British" part that I not only feel is inaccurate but is also largely responsible for the fact that most of Canada's younger generations have never even heard of this beautiful liner because their connection to her, as well their country's ownership of the vessel, has been taken away from them by many misinformed historians out there. By allowing sucha travesty to remain in force, contemporary historians are not only both defaming and staining the memory of the EMPRESS of BRITAIN, but they are also allowing her history to fade away and die and that is wrong. As a matter of fact, it's more than wrong and I for one choose to stand up against it today and every day from here on out until this horrible wrong has been righted.
I've always been passionate about my stance to both preserve and promote the true stories of the Canadian Pacific liner EMPRESS of BRITAIN but in the last several weeks, especially since the 70th anniversary of her maiden voyage took place this year, it's been bothering me something fierce. I even went to one of the creators of one of the ocean liner webpages on Facebook and asked about why the Canadians dont justifiably claim ownership of the great liner's memory and he told me what alotta maritime historians claim - that the Canadian Pacific Line was mainly run by the Brits and that her port of registry was London, which therefore made the EMPRESS a British ship. To him and every other maritime historian all I can say is this - I totally disagree.
Just because an ocean liner is built in any given country, that does NOT mean that that vessel is soley owned by that country. My gawd, over the last 100 years or so, there have been so many ocean liners built in this-or-that country for shipping lines in this-or-that country, as well as had ports-of-registry totally different from their national origins, that it's nothing new in the maritime world. During the 1930's, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN was not the only ship built, as well as port-registered, in a country foreign to her own - the STOCKHOLM of 1938 is a classic example of this. She was built in Italy yet she was never even launched, but destroyed on the very same stockyards where her keel was laid down. This was not true just of these two liners, there were a whole slew of liners which were constructed in the same exact manner. In other words, does that mean the STOCKHOLM was an Italian liner because she was built there? Absolutely not. The Swedish American Line ordered her to be built there and when she was destroyed during the war, it was Sweden's loss, not Italy's. I think y'all get the point of what I'm saying. It is historical blasphemy that every book, every periodical and every website that has information pertaining to the EMPRESS of BRITAIN insists that all claims regarding her belong to the British beause they dont, they belong to Canada. She was a Canadian ocean liner built for and managed by a shipping line in her home country, so it only makes sense that the history of this vessel be both preserved and revered in her native land, Canada.
I'm sure there are folks over in Canada who could give a rat's ass either way about any and everything pertaining to the EMPRESS of BRITAIN but for those Canadian citizens who do care about their maritime history, I would very much like to say to them "Look, it's your national right, as well as your country's historical right, to lay permanent claim to this ship and it's history." For those of you over in Canada who are just as passionate about ocean liners as I am, you dont have to sit back in your chairs and say "Damn, we never even hadda national flagship in our country's history" because you most certainly did. And you still do. Dont get me wrong, I'm not encouraging or fostering anymore anti-British sentiment than what already exists over there in Canada but what I am stating is that as Canadian citizens, you do have the right to justifiably reclaim your country's maritime history - or any other part of its history for that matter.
It's been said that one person cannot change the world, that they can definitely make a profound difference, but that it takes more than just the actions of one to make a major impact. Maybe that is true and maybe no matter how much I try to defend as well as promote what I know is the truth regarding the EMPRESS of BRITAIN, maybe things wont change but I hope that in time they will. One thing is for certain, at least by writing about her and sharing her story with others, I have managed to keep her memory alive, here in the year 2011 and hopefully even beyond that. Thank you for reading.
