{"id":9934,"date":"2026-06-15T12:15:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/?p=9934"},"modified":"2026-06-15T12:15:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:15:31","slug":"it-all-began-with-a-napkin-ring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/it-all-began-with-a-napkin-ring\/","title":{"rendered":"It All Began With A Napkin Ring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Later this year (2026) WildBlue Press<\/a> will publish a book titled The Watch Stands as Written: Voices from the Midwatch<\/em>. My coauthors, Gary Guinn, Ken Keith, and I tap into the experiences of sailors serving their country during perilous times by analyzing the content of a very old US Navy tradition. On New Year’s Eve, it is acceptable for Officers of the Deck (OOD) to write the first log of the new year in verse (The midwatch from 0000 \u2013 0400). This radical deviation from the usual deck log content is remarkable given that typical log entries are full of navy jargon and technical information. The tradition began over one hundred years ago. No one has discovered its exact origins.<\/p>\n

The Watch Stands as Written<\/em> exists due to a serendipitous discovery. I noticed that my father-in-law, Erwin A. Schroder<\/a>, always used a large metal napkin ring at meals and after finishing he rolled up his linen napkin and slipped it back into the ring. My spouse, Simone, observed that he had used this as far back as she could remember. It was only after his passing that we gave the ring a thorough inspection. To our surprise, it had information about Erwin’s ship on which he \"\"<\/a>served for 2.5 years in the Pacific Theater during WWII (USS Patterson<\/a>, DD 392). In fact, we found that it was reasonable to assume that the napkin ring was used by Erwin while dining in the ship\u2019s wardroom. The story appears in a series of posts on this blog beginning with “Lords” of the Ring<\/a>. The reason why wardroom napkin rings had identifying information on them was because they were not laundered after each use due to a shortage of fresh water. Erwin\u2019s ring now resides in the collection of the National Museum of the United States Navy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Research on the ring motivated me to know more about Patterson, and before I realized it, I was digging into a wider history of the ship leading me to my first experiences reading US Navy deck logs. Serendipitously, I stumbled on to a New Year\u2019s Day midwatch log from another ship and was shocked to find a poem. Google, being one of my closest friends, informed me that the tradition of writing the first log of the year in verse was very old. I endeavored to locate additional examples and the National Archives cooperated with my search, and I quickly found dozens of deck log poems.<\/p>\n

Believing that there might be a human-interest angle for my discovery, I posted \u201cMidwatch in Verse: USS Maryland<\/a>,\u201d my first in a series of posts. The day after posting, my friend Gary Guinn commented:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not sure that I was up for a new book project, I continued posting more midwatch poems. Each post contained a short ship history, a midwatch poem or poems, and a short profile of the author(s). Eventually, I told Gary that I would <\/strong>be interested in a book project on this topic if he joined me as a coauthor. Together we crafted the book Midwatch in Verse: New Year\u2019s Deck Log Poetry of the United States Navy, 1941\u20131946<\/i><\/a> published by MacFarland Books in 2023. Gary and I taught together for many years, he in English and I in Psychology. I read poetry. Gary teaches and writes poetry. Additionally, he spent the years 1968-1974 as a US Navy Reserve Hospital Corpsman. We made a good team!<\/p>\n

As I was not ready to move on to other projects after the publication of Midwatch in Verse<\/i>, I began to read more recently digitized deck logs at the National Archives online catalog. The midwatch poetry tradition flourished during the Cold War years. These poems possessed a different tone compared to those during WWII. Officers seemed more willing to editorialize in their poems, sometimes worrying about global conflagration other times expressing a positive vision for the future. Poets during the Vietnam War not only commented on the conditions in a war zone but also on reactions of citizens back home. These differences stimulated a desire on my part to analyze Cold War midwatch poems with the intention of producing another book. Once again, I went to my friend Gary to determine if he was up for another round of book building. He agreed and we were off.<\/p>\n

As we began to download deck log poems from the Archives it became obvious that there were going to be thousands of poems to read and analyze. We needed help and one person who was well-placed to provide his expertise was my friend Ken Keith. Ken is a fellow psychologist, an excellent writer\/editor and is the only person I know who posts a daily poem that he wrote on social media during April \u2013 National Poetry Month. Ken agreed to join the team.<\/p>\n

So, after reading, categorizing, and analyzing over 10,000 deck log poems we completed writing The Watch Stands as Written:<\/em> Voices from the Midwatch<\/i>. The book contains humor, longing for loved ones, frustrations, victories, and other emotions felt by those who experienced the Cold War up close and personal.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026..and it all began with a napkin ring.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Later this year (2026) WildBlue Press will publish a book titled The Watch Stands as Written: Voices from the Midwatch. My coauthors, Gary Guinn, Ken Keith, and I tap into the experiences of sailors serving their country during perilous times …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,98],"tags":[314,169,316,175,299,100,102,315,167,99,317,118],"class_list":["post-9934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-naval-history","tag-cold-war","tag-deck-logs-in-verse","tag-korean-war","tag-mid-watch","tag-midwatch-in-verse","tag-officer-napkin-rings","tag-pacific-theater-wwii","tag-the-watch-stands-as-written","tag-us-navy-deck-logs","tag-uss-patterson-dd392","tag-vietnam-war","tag-wwii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5IN7p-2Ae","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9934"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9953,"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9934\/revisions\/9953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}