Arrr, We All Be Piratical this Fair Day!

Shiver me timbers!  Art by Yuehui Tang

So, I didn't get the post I hoped to finish this weekend done for today, so International Talk Like a Pirate Day to the rescue!  Sadly, today's average community college student appears to have never heard of this important observance, so I did my part today to bring some cultARR! to their humdrum lives on campus today.

Pirates composed an important part of my imaginative landscape from young boyhood, and the biggest wake was made by the character of Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, of which I had books and audio records, and above all the Disney film which I saw several times from quite young.  The character of a pirate was both attractive and dangerous to my mind, and I readily identified with Jim Hawkins and the difficulty of navigating the treacherous waters of having a pirate for a mentor: a risk, but one that promised adventure and a chance at treasure.