Local View Column: Try not to get shipwrecked by the lexicon of the lake

By John Freivalds

Published September 1^st, 2019

Duluth News Tribune

When I go to Duluth these days I go as a tourist, but I used to go frequently as a bulk-grain exporter. We used to ship thousands of tons of grain and sugar-beet pellets out of Duluth to Europe and northern Africa using ships now referred to as salties.

I must admit that when I joined the grain-trading firm I didn't know the lingo and had to endure the old pros laughing at me for using “boat” instead of “ship.”

“John,” they would sneeringly say to me, “a rowboat is not a ship.” I won't bore you with the other lingo I had to learn, though they included “FOB,” “CIF,” “FAS,” “draught” (not a reference to beer), and “satshinc” (for “Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, included in freight charges”).

The simplest way to remember “ship” vs. “boat” is that you can fit a boat on a ship but a ship can't fit onto a boat. Not technical enough for you? The Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology defines it this way: “A ship is any vessel or conveyance that floats or operates on the water and is equal to or larger than 197 feet (in) overall length. A ship may be used for pleasure, commercial, or residential purposes."

Oh, yes, also, ships need crew members, whereas boats usually don't. I know, I know: Tug boats? Ferry boats? OK, it’s as confusing as the popular TV show, “The Love Boat,” which portrayed a cruise ship as a boat. But for TV, “Love Ship” wouldn't have been romantic enough.

Old-timers will remember the Bing Crosby love song, “Slow Boat to China,” and its gushy lyrics, “I’d love to get you on a slow boat to China, all to myself alone.” Boats are romantic ships — except, of course, when they haul refugees who become “boat people.”

It's even confusing for the port of Duluth, as it serves two masters: the tourists who flock to Canal Park to see the “big boats” (“ships?”) go by and the shippers of iron ore pellets or limestone or grain who charter ships to haul out their goods. Even the port of Duluth reflects this linguistic confusion, if not ambivalence. CanalPark.com instructs: “View the Duluth ship schedule to see when boats from all around the world are estimated to arrive and depart.”

Duluth is a unique port, for it has a narrow, lined channel entrance to the main harbor. Gawking tourists thus can line the quay to watch both boats and ships go in and out. Other ports like Oakland, Baltimore, and Rotterdam open up to the sea and/or bay, and it's difficult to see any vessels.

Alas, “boat” and “ship” are so intertwined they can't be separated. Pity the poor guy who has to learn English as a second language like I did.

Someone who acts unknowingly is said to act “like he just got off the boat” — even if it was an oceangoing ship.

And people whose boats are washed ashore on a distant island are said to be “shipwrecked,” not “boatwrecked.”

Perhaps the best way to leave this is a quote appropriate for our time from that famous sailor, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: “We may all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now.”

John Freivalds of Wayzata, Minn., is the author of six books and is the honorary consul of Latvia in Minnesota. His website is jfapress.com.

Freivalds: Weaponizing weather (and any forecasts)

Published 9/11/2019

By John Freivalds

Roanoke Times, Roanoke, Virginia

While the Department of Defense has long been researching how to physically weaponize weather, e.g., lengthening or shortening monsoons, like the Popeye project during the Vietnam War, a sophisticated form of cloud seeding. And if you can't physically weaponize the weather (like dropping an atomic bomb on a hurricane as Trump suggested) then weaponize the forecasts (and anything else) for political benefit.

Drag Racing 101

The dragster JFA sponsored in Virginia

By John Freivalds

Little did I know when we moved to Lexington that I would become an aficionado of drag racing in the Shenandoah Valley. Hey I'm a Georgetown University grad where I studied practical things like what were the causes of the Peloponnesian War (434 BC).

Readers Write: Border Crisis

Image taken from July 2^nd, 2019 Time Article A Reckoning After Trump’s Border Separation Policy: What Kind of Country Are We?

By Linda Kelley Freivalds

Published July 3^rd, 2019

We can step up and fix immigration

I’ve been amazed and shocked by President Donald Trump and his administration’s positions on so many issues, I cannot count. But watching the news with photos of congressional visits to refugee sites in Texas I am appalled, embarrassed, ashamed, discouraged, saddened and whatever other words are available to see the photos of what our country is doing to people who are only trying to escape tragedy and difficulty in their home countries. We, America, are acting no better than other despotic countries.

My husband and his family escaped from Latvia in 1944 when the Soviet Union invaded their country. His family was fortunate to be taken in by the U.S. troops at a displaced persons camp in Austria and finally was transported to the United States. John, my husband, to pay back the gift of becoming an American, sponsored a Cuban family when Fidel Castro kicked out 350,000 people who are now thriving in the United States.

We did it before; we can do it again.

Linda Freivalds, Wayzata