Majáková lod’

The other day I was looking through my copy of Richard Scarry’s European Word Book. (I bought the book while spending a few months in Prague years ago, so here “European words” means English, German, French, and Czech.) While flipping through the pages, this little drawing of a mouse manning (mousing?) a lightship jumped out at me. A lightship! And not just any lightship, but the Ambrose lightship! My God! Mon Dieu! Mein Gott! Ach můj bože! Scarry’s boat is a later generation lightship than the one I drew in Lightship, the one now docked at South Street Seaport Museum, but, still — how funny and strange to find that this illustrator whose work I enjoyed so much as a boy had touched this subject I would later discover (rediscover?) for myself. The more you read and write and draw, the more these things seem to loop back on you.