Among the many excellent writers recognized by the Council for Wisconsin Writers at its awards luncheon in May was Tom Pamperin. Tom received a Norbert Blei/August Derleth Nonfiction Book Award honorable mention for his book, Jagular Goes Everywhere: (mis)Adventures in a $300 Sailboat [Cedar Street Press]
Following is an except of Tom’s book:
Some weeks later—never mind how long precisely— having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
“I see you’ve been to the library again,” Jagular says.
“Nonsense,” I tell him. “I’m done with all that for now. It’s time to go off into the world and see what there is to be seen, do what there is to be done. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation.”
“What does that even mean?”
I stop for a moment and look around. The lawn needs another mowing. The door to the carriage house or garage or whatever it is has fallen off again. The walls are buckling and the whole structure is sinking slowly into the ground. The house isn’t much better. Roof. Windows. Furnace. Floors. Everything falling into ruin.
“It means Thoreau was right when he wrote that the trappings of domesticity are more easily acquired than got rid of,” I say. “So, with a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”
“You might be better off throwing yourself on your sword,” the boat says.
More about Tom and his book is at http://www.tompamperin.com/
Information about CWW, its annual contests and the winners for work published in 2014 is at www.wiswriters.org.
