Episode: 2070
Title: HPR2070: Adventures with Jonathan Slocum
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2070/hpr2070.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:56:49

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This is HPR Episode 2070 entitled Adventure with Jonathan's Lockham.
It is hosted by David Whitman and is about 12 minutes long.
The summer is joined me on an audio video adventure with Captain's Lockham and another
robot double-use of his salad.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
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Good morning Hacker Public Radio.
This is David from St. Helens, Oregon.
And I hope this is show 2070 that is being listened or published on July 8, 2016.
This will be my 60th birthday.
I hope I did not procrastinate too long.
Today I'll offer to you a suggestion for some fun and some interesting audio that you
can download from the internet and listen to yourself.
I had a very good time listening to these books and actually making an audio book and listening
to it and watching a YouTube movie about Jonathan's Lockham who was the first man to sail
single-handedly around the world.
I have a sailboat and I like adventure and I understand a little bit about sailing especially
about the trials and tribulations you can get into and I like going to different places
in the world.
So may I suggest that you have my three-layer cake with the extra frosting that is going
to be part four, especially for Mike Ray and you'll understand that when you get to it.
But first of all, I would like you to read the book, The Voids of the Liberty Audi by
Jonathan Slokham.
It's a preview book or the first book he wrote and it precedes the sailing around the world
book.
And this book is not an audio forum, however.
It is at Project Gutenberg.
I have some notes in my show notes that tell you how to get this.
So what I did was I got the text file.
You can get a Kindle, an EPUB, an HTML book there.
But I chose to want to listen to this on my morning commute.
So I took advice from Ken Fallon and other HPR hosts.
I don't remember exactly who, but I'm sure it was Ken because I think he listens to the
CIA handbook or something.
On his way to work or used to at least, then he made audios of these.
But I used eSpeak, which you can get easily on your Linux box, by Sudo apt-get install,
eSpeak.
And then use the eSpeak command, which is eSpeak space, dash f, space.
The location of your file, space, dash w, and the output of your file, which you want
to be called.
Then find that.
It's a wave file then.
And you can put that on your phone or other listening device.
And thank you for this advice.
I really have used this a bit and it's really good.
I like listening to the computer voice.
But this book, The Voids of the Liberty Dottie Jonathan, Slocum was a ship's captain.
And he got stuck in South America through some misfortune.
And he brought his family home by building a sailing boat and sailing this long voyage
from South America up to the United States.
So I suggest that you take this book first and consume it in some manner, whichever
way you choose.
And then go on and download the book, Saving Alone Around the World.
It's an audio book read by Alan Chan.
And the address for this is the Liebervox project book and it's Liebervox.org slash sailing
around the world.
Let me read this over again.
It's Liebervox.org slash sailing alone around the world by Jonathan, Slocum slash.
And all the worlds have hyphens in between them in the title.
So grab this and listen to it.
I think you'll find this interesting.
I like Jonathan's approach on life.
There's descriptions of the places he went to in the world and his adventures and how
he got along there.
It just is a real heartwarming, lifting book for me.
I just was really thrilled in order to be able to find this.
It's one of the standout audio books that I found.
And then after you get done with that, switch over to YouTube and watch the YouTube movie
that explains more about Captain Slocum, his adventures, and about his boat, the spray.
And you can get dimensions if you want to build your own spray.
And maybe you will by time you get done with this off the internet and they give you
some, lots of explanation about that and about people who have built that.
Now, so my birthday gift to you is these three books or three audio presentations or two
audio and one video presentation.
The Voids of the Liberty by Jonathan Slocum make an audio book of that.
Welcome to the audio book, sailing alone around the world, read by Alan Chant, who's
really good at this.
And watch the YouTube movie about Captain Slocum by following the address that I've given
you.
And now I want to present Lebervox recording of the cremation of Sam McGee by Christian Hughes.
Now last year I read The Shooting of Dan McGrew, a Robert W. Service poem.
I read that myself.
I really don't like reading these things myself.
I'm not very good, my audio really sucks.
So I found this by Christian Hughes, it's one of my favorites.
So enjoy now the cremation of Sam McGee and happy birthday to me.
Thank you for listening, contributing to Hacker Public Radio.
The cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service read for Lebervox.org by Christian Hughes.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.
The Arctic Trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.
The northern lights have seen queer sites, but the queerest they ever did see was that
night on the marge of Lake Leberge.
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee with a cotton blooms and blows, why he left his home in
the south to roam around the pole God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell, though he'd often
say in his homely way that he'd sooner live in hell.
On a Christmas day we were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail, talk of your cold through
the park as fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we closed then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see.
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee, and that very night as
we laid packed tight in our robes beneath the snow, and the dogs were fed and the stars
or head were dancing heel and toe.
He turned to me, and Caps says he, I'll cash in this trip I guess, and if I do I'm asking
that you won't refuse my last request.
Well he seemed so low that I couldn't say no, then he says with a sort of moan.
It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the
bone.
Yet taint being dead, it's my awful dread of the acid grave that pains, so I want you
to swear that foul affair you'll cremate my last remains.
Her pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I saw I would not fail, and we started
on at the streak of dawn, but God he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee, and before
nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried horror-driven, with a corpse
half-hit that I couldn't get rid because of a promise given.
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say, you may tax your brawn and brains,
but you promise true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains.
Now a promise made is a debt on paid, and the trail has its own stone code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night by the lone fire-light, while the huskies round in a ring held out
their woes to the homeless snows, oh God how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow, and on I went, though the
dogs were spent and the grub was getting low.
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in, and I'd often
sing to the hateful thing, and it harkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake La Barge, and it derelicted their lay.
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the Alice May, and I looked
at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum.
Then here said I, with a sudden cry, is my crematorium.
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler-fire.
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher.
The flames just soared in the furnace-roared, such a blaze you seldom see, and I burrowed
a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so, and the heavens scowled,
and the huskies hauled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why, and the
greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grizzly fear, but the stars came out,
and they danced about here again I ventured near.
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said, I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked.
Then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace-roar, and he wore
a smile you could see a mile, and he said, please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm.
Since I left plumb tree down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.
The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.
The northern lights have seen queer sites, but the queerest they ever did see.
Because that night on the marge of Lake La Barge, I cremated Sam McGee.
End of poem.
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