Holmes Lake Regatta

Put on your life jacket and sunscreen! This blog is going sailing in Lincoln, the capitol of Nebraska. True, Nebraska is landlocked, but memory is not. Memory has to bail sometimes, and may even have to stand on the daggerboard to right the boat when it turns turtle*, but it is free to sail all the way to the edge of this Administration's flat Earth and beyond.





Put on your oldest Keds. They may still squau-ucksh and squirrish from your last day sailing. No need to shower and shampoo before this outing.



My sailing experience is limited to a few golden summers and autumns on Holmes Lake, a Corp of Engineers project completed in 1962, in Sunfish, Dolphin, and Dolphin Junior boats in the years just before I learned to drive. We had fabulous fun learning the sailor lingo of "hard alee", "prepare to jibe", "come about", "high-siding", "tacking", and "running before the wind". Sometimes even the "doldrums" can be exciting.



Captain Small's little dog, Tinker, is more active than Blue Dog. My sons loved Lois Lenski's Big Book of Mr. Small, and my students love each story.

The lake has been dredged and restored in the last two years, and reopened this month. I hope a new generation of kids with slip on their squauuuuckshy tennis shoes and go sailing.

*turn turtle To capsize or turn upside-down: Our sailboat turned turtle during the squall.




My students are looking at images by Van Gogh, Turner, Homer, Whistler, Seurat, and others this week. We're using curves and overlapped triangles to create space and movement. We're off to sail the Seven Landlocked Seas!