Nineteen Keys.

And the sea will grant each man new hope, his sleep brings dreams of home.

I'm about to embark upon a major sea journey to mark my forty-fourth birthday and official entry into middle age. Naturally, one's thoughts have turned to magnificent disasters of the past in seeking to make sense of one's own.

The Grand Daddy of them all, within a nautical context, is undoubtedly the loss of RMS Titanic, in the first hours of April 15th, 1912. Of all the stories to emerge from this iconic catastrophe, is a taped interview with Edith Russell, survivor of the disaster. I'll let her words speak for themselves, since no introduction of mine would do them justice except to note, with bemused irony, that we share the same birthday. Given planned events in my very near future, one sincerely hopes we don't share the same nautical fate.

Listen carefully to the reminiscences of this global treasure and witness to the endless folly of man, and you'll learn the reason for the title of this, my latest attempt at an enduring blog.

(Edith Russell, born Cincinnati, Ohio, on 12 June 1879. Died 4 April 1975 in London. She was 96.)