Post by SeaRat on Feb 2, 2022 20:16:20 GMT -8
I have just started reading The Adventurous Aquanaut, An anthology selected and annotated by Hillary Hauser. I bought this book from Jacobsen’s Books & More, a book store in Hillsboro, Oregon which I don’t think exists now. I have gotten a bit annoyed by the garbage posts on Facebook, and needed something more in-depth. This book did not disappoint.
www.amazon.com/Adventurous-Aquanaut-Hillary-Hauser/dp/0941332144
The first chapter I read was “Under Pressure,” by J.E. Williamson. It describes a helmet dive by people filming a movie in the time before it was published in 1936. Now, imagine helmet diving to make a movie, and then something happens.
I’ll let you get the book and see how this one comes out.
The next chapter was by John D. Craig, “The Philosophy of Danger.” He had some very interesting comments on danger (anyone remember “Danger is my Business”? Again, he was mostly hard hat diving in the early days. And again, it was to produce movies.
John D. Craig has a lot more to say about “danger,” but this ill give you an idea of that multi-page chapter.
The chapter I’m in now, by Hans Hass, is from Diving To Adventure, his book. It starts out very interestingly:
This will give you an idea of this book, and I am eagerly finishing what Dr. Hass wrote so many years ago.
John
www.amazon.com/Adventurous-Aquanaut-Hillary-Hauser/dp/0941332144
The first chapter I read was “Under Pressure,” by J.E. Williamson. It describes a helmet dive by people filming a movie in the time before it was published in 1936. Now, imagine helmet diving to make a movie, and then something happens.
…Inside my copper helmet I felt something moving! Something was crawling — creeping through my hair. I was paralyzed with horror of it. I wanted to tear the helmet from my head; yet, in the midst of my terror at the thing now moving with pin-pointed feet down my forehead, was the drivingthought that I must not — could not — spoil the film; that no matter what, I must go on. Now the fearsome thing was crawling over my left eye, down my nose, I could see it! My hair seemed to stand on end. I felt cold all over. The thing was a scorpion!…
I’ll let you get the book and see how this one comes out.
The next chapter was by John D. Craig, “The Philosophy of Danger.” He had some very interesting comments on danger (anyone remember “Danger is my Business”? Again, he was mostly hard hat diving in the early days. And again, it was to produce movies.
…We find it best not to think about fear at all. Yet think about something a diver must, as he wanders around the sea bottom or as he drifts slowly upward, his head clearing as he stops now and then to let the nitrogen out of his system. What occurs to me most frequently is an idea — an idea that perhaps life, instead of being a reality, is a fantasy, a dream, from which we will wake when we die. Having my mind clouded and partially shut off from me perhaps farther that thought. I know what it is to watch mind, man’s proudest passion, slip from me, leaving an inadequate animal body. It gives me curious ideas about the relative importance of mind and body. It has given me a belief that no matter what happens, there is still darker ahead. The things we do now may be nothing compared to what we will run into some day. And some day any one of us may step off a curb and go down under an automobile…
John D. Craig has a lot more to say about “danger,” but this ill give you an idea of that multi-page chapter.
The chapter I’m in now, by Hans Hass, is from Diving To Adventure, his book. It starts out very interestingly:
Anyone who has never sat down on a tropical sea urchin may consider himself lucky, because it is not a pleasing experience. These delightful little creatures cannot be compared in any way with their harmless relatives in the Mediterranean. Their spines are a good four inches long, very thin, brittle as glass and poisonous, each one stinging on its own account. In a word, they interfere with sitting down…
This will give you an idea of this book, and I am eagerly finishing what Dr. Hass wrote so many years ago.
John
