Off with these clothes ...

Faster than a speeding bullet!
More powerful than a locomotive!
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
Look!  Up in the sky!
It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's SUPERMAN!!

The movie Man of Steel opens in Seattle tonight.  It received a luke-warm review from the Seattle Times.  I probably won't see it.

The reviewer, Moira MacDonald, writes:

This is no zippy super-hero adventure, complete with zows and pows and quips, but a dark meditation on good and evil, shot in shades of gray as clouds loom and brows furrow ....

Don't misunderstand.  I'm all in favor of dark meditations on good and evil.  But not attached to Superman, idol of my joyous youth. 

When I was a kid, America was still developing its post-war confidence.  We knew our hearts were pure, but that  our abilities still were weak.  We needed leaders whose powers were as great as their righteousness.  We needed superheroes whose goodness was as unambiguous as we believed our own to be. 

We needed Superman. A hero for our times, all for ten cents from DC Comics, or courtesy of Kellogg's Pep on the Mutual Network.

Today, we live in a world of irony and cynicism.  We now know that no one is pure, no one is wholly good.  All our acts and decisions are morally ambiguous.  We no longer want or need the original Batman, but a "Dark Knight."  Nor the original Superman, but a "Man of Steel."  We want heroes whose confusion matches our own.  (I'm only guessing, from the tone of the review, that this latest embodiment of the Superman legend is himself as psychologically dark and disturbed as the Batman of the Dark Knight series.)

Not for us a mild mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, a shy bumbler like ourselves who daily earns the contempt of his co-worker Lois Lane.  We no longer dream that we ourselves hide great powers behind our seemingly pitiful personal personas.    Man of Steel, according to the review, focuses primarily on Superman's difficulties in contending with grave concerns involving Krypton, his planet of origin.  This modern Superman has bigger fish to fry, obviously, than finding a phone booth where he can change clothes in time to save Lois from an out-of-control speeding car.  His concerns today are as remote from our own petty worries as were the Russian Tsar's hopes from those of his subjects. 

Folks today would be bored with the plots of yesteryear; they would laugh at the uncomplicated, moral earnestness of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne.  Hence these movie updates, giving us protagonists with more complex psychological motivation, not to mention cinematography with lengthier and more spectacular mayhem.

And I don't object.  But film makers should invent their own superheroes, ones that match the times -- not cannibalize the simpler dreams of yesterday's kids. 

At home with George

I knew, of course, that George Washington's home was called "Mount Vernon."  Just as Jefferson's was "Monticello." 

Here in the Northwest Corner, we even have our own "Mount Vernon, Washington," where our world-famous I-5 bridge collapse occurred last month.  (We even have -- so help me, I'm not making this up -- our very own "George, Washington" (population 501).)

What I didn't know, exactly, was where one might find Mount Vernon.  I mean, yes, I knew it was somewhere in Virginia.  I guess I vaguely pictured it as down near Richmond.  But, after my recent trip to Washington, D.C. -- I now know the truth.

On Sunday, I took the Metro a couple of stops south from my hotel -- adjacent to National Airport -- to Alexandria.  Back in the good old days, before the District ceded its Virginia donation back to Virginia, the District of Columbia contained three incorporated cities:  Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria.  So, Alexandria was sort of a big deal at the time -- quite the port on the Potomac -- and it's a fascinating city to visit today.  Lots of small, brick buildings that now house hotels, restaurants, bars, antique and bric-a-brac shops.  Alexandria Old Town resembles a large-scale Carmel, but less ersatz and built in the original colonial architectural idiom.

The walk from the Metro station to the waterfront was a full mile, but a mile of street so lined with interesting sights that the walk went by swiftly.  My objective was the dock where I was to catch the boat to Mount Vernon.  Because -- as I by then realized -- Mount Vernon is just a few miles -- maybe ten or fifteen -- down river from Washington.

At the dock, I quickly located the kiosk for the Potomac Riverboat Company, where -- for a mere forty bucks -- I secured a round trip ticket to Mount Vernon, including entrance fee to the site.  The 90-minute cruise, atop an awning-covered boat, was scenic and relaxing, with a continuous narration describing what we were seeing.  I had no previous experience with this area, so the talk was welcome (if at times a bit corny).

We arrived at Mount Vernon's wharf, diametrically opposite the grounds from the noisy official entrance for tour buses and autos, and strolled on our own up the hill to the "mansion." We had four hours to kill before our return to Alexandria.  The place was humming with tourists, but the only time the grounds seemed at all crowded was while we waited in line for the tour of the mansion, and shuffled through the mansion itself, hustled along from room to room at a steady pace.  The rest of the grounds, some 500 acres, including a substantial number of outbuildings, trails, gardens, a "pioneer farm," and livestock paddocks and stables, was there to be seen at our own pace.  Including the time I allowed for a fast lunch, I found four hours to be an appropriate length of time to spend.

George Washington considered himself primarily neither a politician nor a general -- but a gentleman farmer.  He reproduced, insofar as possible within the limitations of colonial life, the amenities of an English estate, but an estate that was virtually self-sufficient.  Everything possible was grown, manufactured, and/or serviced on the grounds (which at the time were a far more extensive eight thousand acres).  George experimented continually with new ways to improve the efficiency of the farm and the lives of his family and his workers.  The Washingtons lived a good life, and his hired workers appear to have been housed and fed well.

Slavery, of course, is the inescapable issue.  The Washingtons had a large number of slaves, both field and house slaves, who worked from sun up to sun down.  Although some of the slaves with higher responsibilities -- supervisors, dining room servants -- didn't seem too bad off, the great majority of slaves had diffiicult lives, often compounded by separation from family members except on Sundays.  On the other hand, hired workers doing similar work also had difficult lives in those days, and the Washingtons seem to have been stern -- but not cruel or despotic -- slave owners.  (George Washington's slaves were all freed at his death, pursuant to the terms of his will.  Martha, reportedly, was not pleased.)

For those of us who grew up and live in the West, "olden times" means the late nineteenth century.  Mount Vernon gives a fascinating introduction to daily life as lived at a certain social level, a century earlier, by Americans still strongly influenced by their British antecedents.  Mount Vernon -- at least as presented by those managing it -- gives a sympathic picture of our first president, and an understanding of important social and economic aspects of his life not emphasized in our high school history classes.

Potomac musings

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
--Abraham Lincoln (1864)

I watched Abraham Lincoln stare his eternal stare, gazing down the Mall toward the Capitol. 

Funny how a portrait (the Mona Lisa, for example) or a statue seems to change its expression each time you look at it, the expression sometimes reflecting more the mood of the viewer than the intention of the artist.

I happened to be in Washington, D.C.  No particular reason.  A few months ago, I realized it had been a long time since I'd visited our nation's capital.  I arbitrarily picked several days in June.  I returned to Seattle this morning.

I love to walk, and Washington's a walker's paradise.  After a day devoted to Smithsonian museums, I wandered about in the twilight, past the Washington monument (now enshrouded in scaffolding and surrounded by construction fences), down alongside the reflecting pool, and up the steps to Mr. Lincoln's memorial.  I stared at the creased face of the gentleman from Illinois for a while, trying to gauge his mood, and then sat down on the steps, gazing back toward the Capitol in the failing light.

I was surrounded by middle school and high school students, kids understandably far more interested in each other than in our Sixteenth President.  I suspect Lincoln would have understood, although I suspect that in his day, teenagers were, on the whole, a more serious and less undisciplined group. Maybe he would have seen the laughter and frivolity surrounding him as the happy fruit of his efforts to preserve the Union, well worth the horrible deaths that teenage boys in his own time suffered on behalf of that goal.

A day earlier, I had taken the Metro to Dupont Circle, planning to check out some of the mansions and embassies in that popular area, and then walk down P Street, across Rock Creek, and into Georgetown (which I in fact did).  I emerged from the Dupont Circle station and found myself smack in the tumultuous center of Washington's gay pride festivities.  The parade spread out for blocks along the very P Street I was to follow into Georgetown. 

I'm always a little puzzled by gay pride parades.  They bring to mind the analogy of a parade in support of Black/Afro-American rights -- a parade in which barefoot "darkies" ride on floats, playing banjos, eating watermelon, grinning and rolling their eyes at the viewers.  But, whatever. I suspect that Abraham Lincoln, had he been still alive, would have watched the weekend's goings-on in amused silence.

No, Lincoln's eyes didn't seem directed at the children running around, shouting at his feet.  Nor were they on Dupont Circle.  They were, as always, trained on the Capitol and on the government it represents.

He was watching a Congress grinding to a stop, derailed by a political party determined to prevent the government from effectively governing, as a means of persuading voters that -- because government is ineffective -- they should oppose any and all activities of government.

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
--Lincoln (1854)

Not so, says today's GOP.  Were Lincoln to step down from his Memorial and wade back into the sea of politics,  today's Tea Party Republicans would view the first Republican president with horror and contempt as a "RINO" -- a "Republican in Name Only."

But Republican obstructionism is old news.  Something new was also afoot. Once I arrived in Washington, the newspapers were full of stories of the recent leaks that had revealed the Administration's secret  surveillance policies.  President Obama, himself a constitutional law scholar, apparently has decided that our personal liberties are best protected not by the courts, not by traditional checks and balances --  but by himself.  "Trust me," appears to be Obama's announced approach to warrantless searches.  Trust him, and trust, by extension, all persons who later fill his office.

Washington looks more beautiful than ever.  The public buildings are gleamingly white.  The parks are well tended.  Once-dicey parts of town north of Pennsylvania Avenue have been gentrified, the sidewalks lined with open air cafés in which beautiful and/or powerful men and women sit and dine.

I loved my visit.

But what I saw also recalled thoughts of Rome's first emperor, Augustus Caesar.  The emperor who bragged that he had found Rome a city built of brick, and left as his legacy a Rome built of marble.  The emperor who modestly declined to call himself a king or dictator.  He was merely a consul of the Roman Republic, a consul who ultimately was persuaded to accept the honorific of "First Citizen."  The Senate still met.  The Republic's institutions continued to exist.  But, insofar as real decision-making was concerned, Augustus himself made the decisions. He essentially asked the Roman people to "Trust me."

Lincoln was frowning.  He looked troubled.  And had he, during his lifetime, been able to look ahead to 2013, he would have been troubled.  So should we be.

Falling down, falling down ...

Lucky indeed this week the Seattle attorney who had no depositions -- or, even more -- court hearings scheduled for Bellingham.  Bellingham, the county seat of Whatcom county (a county that hangs off the Canadian border), is a fair-sized city, and one that generates a fair amount of litigation not only for its own attorneys, but also for attorneys in Seattle.

The drive to Bellingham, up I-5, is a pleasant drive that takes about an hour and a half.  Time enough to compose your thoughts, or compose your oral argument.  Time to get out of the office, enjoy the scenery, and bill easy time to your client.

But not this week.  A week ago Thursday, as the entire nation now knows, a segment of the bridge spanning the Skagit river between Mount Vernon and Burlington came tumbling down.  The 70,000 vehicles that use the bridge daily were being re-routed onto city streets across smaller bridges.  It was not a pretty experience, as I understand it.

I have crossed the Skagit bridge innumerable times.  Never gave the bridge much of a thought.  It's possible to drive for an hour or so on today's freeways with no thought at all about the infrastructure that permits your driving hypnosis, that vacant stare as you follow the lane markers mile after mile on a smooth ribbon of roadway.  Unless the scenery is spectacular, or the bridge unusual, you hardly notice that at times you are driving a hundred feet or so off the surface of land or water.

Until a girder gives way, a bridge is down, and you find yourself staring down at water flowing past.

Luckily, and amazingly, no one was seriously hurt by the collapse, despite several cars' being dropped into the river, but the impact on economics and personal convenience has been far more serious.  For harried folks, like Seattle attorneys, who just have to reach Bellingham, Amtrak has temporarily added another train in each direction between the two cities.  A solution is not so easy for merchants in the area who depend on the freeway to deliver customers to their shopping centers.  Motorists poking along, bumper to bumper, have shown little interest in pulling out of line to do a little shopping.

Supposedly, the bridge will be sufficiently patched up to permit freeway traffic in another two or three weeks.  Meanwhile, we learn once again how our vaunted "self-sufficiency" as individuals depends on the reliability of an infrastructure on which many others have worked together, working to create and maintain it for our convenience.

Memories

Scientists -- and parents -- have long wondered why we don’t remember anything that happened before age 3.
--NBCNews.com

Actually, I -- for one -- do.

 My family moved from a small triplex unit to our first real house just one or two months before my third birthday.  I have distinct memories of quite a few events while living in the triplex, and also good memories of checking out the new house before the furniture was moved in.  (I recall being fascinated by the location of the electrical outlets, and how the normal outlets varied from the large three-prong outlet for the kitchen range -- and yet, despite this early start, I never became an electrician).

The article explains that "infantile amnesia" results from the rapid growth of the hippocampus during a child's early years, a proliferation of brain cells that causes memories to be lost as the hippocampus develops.  The hippocampus keeps track of where long-term memories have been stored; it presumably loses track of these locations during its rapid development.  A scientist was quoted as saying that his four-year-old daughter had detailed memories of a vacation a few months earlier.  "But four years from now she won't remember anything."

Don't bet on it professor.  My memories as a four-year-old are also rather clear.  Not day to day, of course, but memories of events that, for one reason or another, made an impression on me.

“The hippocampus matures slowly and probably doesn’t reach any reasonable maturity until we’re 3 or 4,” [Dr. Eric] Kandel says. “While 2- and 3-year-olds can remember things for a short time, the hippocampus is required for long-term storage of those memories.”

Either these scientists' data regarding storage and retrieval of memories are incorrect (based on my own highly-persuasive anecdotal evidence), or my hippocampus -- unlike the rest of my physiology -- was an exuberant early bloomer.

I should submit a paper based on myself.

Welcome to scouting

The Boy Scouts of America finally got around to changing its rules, yesterday.  Beginning in January, the organization's doors will be flung open, and openly gay boys will be accepted into the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Explorers.  I say "openly gay," because no one doubts or questions that gays who kept their mouths shut have been scouts for generations.

Immediately, news stories began reporting attacks from two opposite ends of the political spectrum.  First, gay activists are understandably outraged that openly gay men still will not be welcome as scout leaders -- that they are seemingly still equated with sexual predators.  A spokesman for one gay rights organization says that his group will continue pressing corporate donors to refuse aid to the BSA.

My own feeling is that scouting exists for the benefit of boys, not for the benefit of men -- however generous and well-meaning -- who wish to volunteer as scout leaders.  Offering a welcome to gay boys will provide an enormous benefit both to the boys and to the country in general -- helping both gay and straight boys to grow up with the self-confidence and all the other virtues that scouting attempts to instill.  Scouting, together with attitudinal changes occurring among their peers, may well help create a generation of future gay adults free of the crippling personality problems that have stigmatized many gays in the past.

Acceptance of gay leaders in scouting will come, sooner or later.  Such acceptance will be a step forward for gay equality, but that political step forward seems to me far less important than the opening up of scouting to all boys.  The BSA obviously faces enormous strains within its membership.  It should be rewarded for making the decision that it did -- not threatened with continued sanctions.

The other attack comes from conservatives.  Despite resigned acceptance of the change by the Mormon and Catholic heirarchies, there are a considerable number of evangelical groups who are insisting that their members pull their children out of scouting.  It's hard to tell whether they fear that contact with gay scouts -- sleeping in the same tents! -- is apt to infect their children, or whether they simply wish to punish the BSA for surrendering to "liberal" pressure, and promoters of the "gay agenda."

The best response I've read today came from an evangelical father, whose church is strongly opposed to the admission of gay scouts. 

"If I place this situation in the context of my religious beliefs, I'm forced to ask myself, 'Would I turn a homosexual child away from Sunday school? From a church function? Would I forbid my children to be friends with a gay child?' I can't imagine a situation where I would answer 'yes' to any of those questions. So how can I in this one?" he wrote.

This parent isn't interested in scoring political points or punishing the scout leadership.  He is concerned with his children, and their best interests.  If I wouldn't forbid my kids to be friends with a gay classmate, he reasons, why should I refuse to permit him to belong to the same troop?

Why, indeed?  And this is the sort of careful thinking that I hope prevails among conservative parents, once the shock of the decision wears off.  Some parents will decide otherwise, just as many parents once pulled their kids out of desegregated schools.  In the long run, however, I trust that the scouting program will not lose the hundreds of thousands of members that is now being prophesized by evangelical Protestant leaders.

Not hippies anymore

The University District's annual street fair is reputed to be the oldest such street fair in the nation.  Today, it's also the first each year of about twenty Seattle street fairs.   I wandered into it by mistake this afternoon, and ended up strolling the entire five or six blocks.

Scary to admit, but I well remember the street fair's very first year -- in 1969 (or 1970, depending on who you believe).  University Avenue ("the Ave") had by then become hippie heaven, attracting both University of Washington students and a large number of high school students, non-students, former students, wannabe students, and wouldn't-dream-of being students.  The Ave -- which a couple of years earlier had been merely a shopping area specializing in bookstores, restaurants, and other businesses catering to the university crowd -- had become what -- to shocked adults -- appeared to be a freak show, a zoo, an exemplar of American decadence, a multi-block cloud of psychedelic smoke.

It was hard to walk a block along the Ave without receiving at least five offers to sell various drugs.

The tradional merchants weren't pleased.  And the typical 1969 habitué of the Ave couldn't have cared less about what traditional merchants felt.  But some peacemakers apparently decided to effect, at least for a weekend, a reconciliation.  Actually, I don't recall exactly who first proposed the idea of a street fair -- to me, it seemed to just happen of its own volition.  But the Seattle Times has claimed (in a 1991 story) that it originated "as a gesture of good will between area merchants and "hippie" students and artisans."

My own recollection is that the street fair was conceived by idealistic young people as an alternative to the profit-hungry businesses along the Ave.  The concept was to offer goods and services to those who needed them, with payment being a necessary but secondary concern.  But my memory is hazy, probably dulled by all the second-hand smoke I inhaled.  At any rate, there were lots of psychedelic paintings for sale.  Lots of scented candles, homemade carpets, "powerful" healing oils, and the like.  There were performers dressed in torn jeans, bright clothes and peasant dresses; in feathers, painted skin, and lots of hair.

Finding myself on the Ave today, not having attended the street fair for years, I was interested to see how the concept has changed.  It's changed exactly as you'd expect, reflecting a university world where majors in African-American studies, women's studies, sociology, English, and philosophy have largely given way to majors in engineering, business, computer science, and pre-med. 

College kids -- scrubbed and well-groomed, with cheerful smiles replacing the cynical sneers or stoned grins of yesteryear -- stroll along, often with their parents.   The merchandise -- most of it still small arts and crafts rather than commercial manufactures -- appears to be made with far superior ability and technique, and is much more tempting to purchase.  The food -- much of it now specialty ice cream -- looks delicious and is much harder to resist.

In place of ad hoc musical performances, formal, scheduled musical events are now being offered at a couple of venues along the Ave, featuring local bands and singing groups.

The street corner buskers and solo musicians remain, although today's music is naturally the music of our own era, rather than 60's rock, supplemented by recitals by a few surprisingly talented classical musicians. (I listened for some time to a teenaged cellist, who had drawn an appreciative crowd about him.)

In a sense, today's street fair seems a betrayal of everything the "hippies" of 1969 held dear. The hippies lost; "the Man" won. But, in another sense, many of the social goals of the young people of 1969 have been accomplished. We all became "the people our parents warned us against." And, eventually, so did our parents.

As the years passed, we merely took a bath and cut our hair. And prepared to buy our marijuana at state-licensed stores. As I walked along the Ave, I saw the results.

Into the western Pamirs

After this past week's sybaritic visit to sunny Santa Catalina, it's time to pull myself together and confront the strenuous adventure that I -- for some unknown reason -- have committed myself to undertaking in September.

I've never been to Central Asia.  What do I know about Central Asia?  Well, it used to be part of the USSR.  It lies, historically, on the old Silk Route to China.  Its peoples were pawns in the Great Game between Britain and Russia in the nineteenth century.  And, of course, that Russian fellow, Alexander Borodin, wrote some rather nice music about the "Steppes of Central Asia."

That's about it.

Most of my visit this year will be not to the steppes -- the flat grasslands -- but to the mountains of Tajikistan.  These peaks, the Fann Mountains, constitute a western section of the Pamirs.  I'll be hiking with a British trekking company, a group of no more than twelve hikers.  We'll be hiking and camping in the Fanns for eleven nights.  Compared with my 2011 climb to Renjo La, in the Everest region of Nepal, the altitudes I encounter on this hike should seem somewhat trivial -- most of our campsites will be in the area of 12,000 feet.  We'll be doing a lot of up and down hiking, however.  We'll be hiking about six or seven hours each day, while dipping down maybe 3,000 feet into canyons and regaining the same elevation before dark.  

We also have a personal option, near the end of the trek, to climb to Chimtarga Pass at about 15,000 feet.  (I've discovered that these options tend to be "optional" only if one doesn't mind wholly surrendering the hard-earned respect of his fellow hikers!)

As a treat, once we emerge from the mountains at the end of the trip, we'll drive across the border into Uzbekistan, where we'll spend two nights in the medieval city of Samarkand -- a central city on the Silk Route, conquered in turn by Alexander the Great, the Muslims, and the Mongols, and made capital of his empire by Tamerlane in the fourteenth century.  A lot of history, a lot of architecture.

We end our trip by taking the train from Samarkand to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, and thence flying home.

I have just four months to get myself in shape for some vigorous hiking, and to read up on my history of Central Asia.  The time will go fast.  I doubt if I'll ever get around to following the trekking company's advice that I pick up some useful phrases in Tajik before leaving home -- someone had better be ready to translate for me!

It's "a-waitin' for me"

Twenty- six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me
Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance, romance

Twenty- six miles, so near yet far
I'd swim with just some water-wings and my guitar
I could leave the wings but I'll need the guitar for romance, romance ...

Santa Catalina!  Actually, it's only 22 miles, across the Gulf of Catalina from Long Beach, but even so -- considering the temperature of the water and the presence of sharks -- water wings wouldn't be my preferred method of transportation.  And romance?  Well, that's more up to you -- don't rely on  the island.

My brother had a landmark birthday this past week, and some twenty of us, his friends and relatives, descended on the island to help him observe and celebrate the occasion.  Rather than water wings -- or a "leaky old boat," as the Four Preps suggest elsewhere in their lyrics -- we took the Catalina Express, a speedy and comfortable one-hour cruise -- from Long Beach.  All of us, that is, except for one eccentric couple, who insisted on arriving by helicopter.

Journeying back and forth between Catalina and the mainland has been a tradition, of course, ever since the heyday of the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe called the "Pimugnans," back in 7000 B.C. or so.  We know much about these lotus-eaters from our careful study of their middens.  "It is estimated that there are over 2,000 middens on Catalina Island, only half of which have been discovered," as Wikipedia puts it -- a sentence whose meaning I find conceptually elusive, but never mind.

But today's Catalina -- the Catalina we went to experience -- dates back to Bill Wrigley, of Doublemint gum fame, who, beginning in 1919, poured millions into the island's infrastructure.  He also brought his pet team, the hapless Cubs, from Chicago to Catalina each year until 1951 for spring training.  The causal relationship between the island's idyllic charms and the Cubbies' impressive lack of baseball success has not yet been firmly established.

We loved it.  So far as I can tell from my own experience, it's the closest approximation to a Mediterranean resort city you can find anywhere this side of the Atlantic.  There's a restaurant in Avalon (the principal town on the island) called the Portofino, which suggests that others have sensed the same resemblance. 

Few automobiles are permitted on Catalina.  We made frequent trips between Avalon and our accommodations in Hamilton Cove -- about 1.3 miles to the north -- by noisy golf carts which seemed to be powered by lawnmower motors.  Pretty weird, but a lot of fun.  The same distance was also quite walkable, along a scenic, winding road through eucalyptus trees, and could be walked almost as fast as it could be driven by golf-cart.

For recreation, we ate, we drank, we sat in the sun, we watched seals and sharks and sailing ships (and at night, the lights of Long Beach and Newport) from our balconies, we walked, we people-watched along the pedestrian-oriented, harbor streets of Avalon.  Some of us entrusted our lives to zip lines.  Some attended  a silent film festival, an event that prompted many Southern Californians (are we surprised?) to arrive by ferry and wander the streets dressed in styles redolent of the 1920s.  Very F. Scott Fitzgeraldish, right?  And all of us enjoyed getting back together and analyzing the major family events of the past few years.

I had proposed a group assault on Mt. Orizaba, the highest mountain on the island at 2,097 feet.  My suggestion was politely but firmly disregarded.

It was a great four days.  We've all heard of Santa Catalina.  But it takes a visit to remind ourselves that a little bit of old Europe -- somewhat tamed, somewhat homogenized, but still, there for the asking -- exists just 26 miles, or 22 miles, or whatever, off the coast of Los Angeles County.  Just "forty kilometers in a leaky old boat," as the song goes.

I'll be returning for another visit. 

Go directly to jail

Seven-year-old Christopher and his school friend were suspended last Friday from their school in Virginia.  They were caught in a form of illicit play -- pointing their pencils at each other and "making machine gun and 'bang bang' noises."  The school stated that the school's zero tolerance policy against weapons or "anything that resembles a weapon" mandated a two-day suspension.

A few months ago, six-year-old Rodney was suspended from his school in Maryland.  He had pointed his finger at a friend and said, "Pow!"  His "permanent record" says that he threatened a classmate with gun violence.  He was suspended for one day.

I'm strongly in favor of gun control.  I'm appalled by positions taken by the NRA.  As I've stated on numerous occasions, if I were re-writing the Constitution, it would contain no Second Amendment -- or, if not eliminated entirely, the Second Amendment would be drastically watered-down.

I have even on occasions, out of humorous frustration, proposed plans for carving a gun-lovers' reservation out of the Old West, where those so inclined, together with their guns, could go and settle their daily disputes however they chose without being troubled with laws or police --  in exchange for strict gun control in the rest of the United States.

I also, however, believe in common sense.  Common sense justifies banning weapons on school campuses.  It justifies confiscation of toy guns and other weapons, just as it has historically justified confiscation of other distracting merchandise -- marbles, jacks, squirt guns, and their modern equivalents such as cell phones.

Common sense would prohibit kids from having pretend shoot-outs in the classroom while the teacher was attempting to teach.  It does not, however, justify banning kids' fantasy play on the playground that involves pointing pencils -- or fingers! -- at each other, and exclaiming "Bang, bang, you're dead!"

And even if such kids' games were to be banned, common sense certainly would not justify school suspensions for such forms of play.

A little sense of proportion, folks. Please.

It's axiomatic

I found high school geometry unsatisfying.  I liked mathematics in general, and my grades in geometry were fine.  But the subject was somewhat irritating for a number of reasons, one of which was the concept of "axioms" and "postulates."

"Axiom" is generally given two definitions.  The first, and more traditional, according to Wikipedia: "an axiom is a premise so evident as to be accepted as true without controversy."  To me, nothing was without controversy. The second, which is that used in modern logic: "an axiom is simply a premise or starting point for reasoning."  (A "postulate" in traditional geometry was an "axiom" applicable by its terms expressly to geometry; I'll use the two terms interchangeably.)

I don't know how geometry is taught today.  But we were given Euclid's axioms, and from those axioms were taught to prove a large number of theorems.  The axioms and the theorems focused, of course, on the properties of geometrical figures.  A typical axiom, Euclid's first, was "It is possible to draw a straight line from any point to any other point."  The axioms were supplemented by a list of "common notions" used in development of proofs: e.g., "Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other."

The proof of theorems -- while not as congenial to me as, say, manipulating trigonometric functions -- was interesting and satisfying.  But if we were going to work so hard to prove theorems that seemed intuitively obvious anyway, why were we exempted from providing proofs for the axioms (and "common notions")?   I asked my teacher that question, and he (who spent most of his time as "boys' counselor") replied -- rather impatiently -- that we accepted them because they were "obvious." The "traditional" -- and, to me, irritating -- definition.

I would have been happier if I had been taught and had understood the second definition.  Geometry had its origins in the efforts of early mathematicians to describe real shapes in the real world -- and has its uses even now in so doing (it's always nice to know that A=πr²).  But what we are really doing when we study geometry formally is playing a game with arbitrary rules, not working scientifically from empirical data.  We are proposing that certain concepts be accepted as "true" -- the axioms -- and discovering what we can prove from those concepts using only logic.  It's like chess.  We don't ask why it should be so that a bishop can move only diagonally; we instead see what we can accomplish given that arbitrary limitation. 

We can -- and mathematicians do -- propose different axioms (ones less intuitively related to the world as we perceive it), and see where those axioms logically lead.

I've been lead to these rambling thoughts by a book review in Sunday's New York Times.  The book -- Time Reborn, by Lee Smodin -- apparently is too complex to lend itself to an intelligable one-page review, even a review written by a highly regarded physicist and writer .  (At least, I found myself unable to understand the general argument of the book from reading the review.)  But the review does present some of the author's more interesting conclusions. 

Smodin is a physicist, and his book discusses cosmological questions such as "what is time" and "where did the universe come from."  He has concluded, apparently, that black holes beget new universes, and through "natural selection" of such universes we have finally arrived at our own universe -- a universe that possesses the peculiarity that the constants upon which its physical laws depend are precisely that narrow set of constants that life required in order to have developed and to continue in existence.  With "time" in his title, it's clear that Smodin believes that this discussion is somehow related to what we mean by "time," and its passage -- and the review touches on this relationship without really conveying Smodin's argument.

The review ends with the following summary, which brings me back to my discussion of geometry:

Putting aside the sensational ideas proposed in "Time Reborn," it is a triumph of modern physics that we are even asking such questions as what determined the initial conditions of the universe.  In previous centuries, these conditions were either accepted as given or attributed to the handiwork of the gods.  A triumph, and also possibly a defeat.  For if we must appeal to the existence of other universes -- unknown and unknowable -- to explain our universe, then science has progressed into a cul-de-sac with no scientific escape.

In a sense, the reviewer shares my frustration with geometry as a kid -- if our universe sprang forth from a black hole in another universe, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, we have reached a starting point beyond which we can probe no further.  To ask whether the Big Bang was "really" generated by that black hole, or by a Word from the Voice of God, or by some Child from a Superior Race's having turned on his celestial Gameboy, is scientifically meaningless.  Information as to what  happened before the Big Bang is scientifically unrecoverable.  Empirical data take us back no further than the Big Bang itself -- not only the data we have now, but also any data conceptually obtainable in the future.

Rather than despairingly view the Big Bang as a dead end, a scientific "cul-de-sac," we should consider it as a cosmological axiom of the "game" that is our universe.  We accept the Big Bang -- that the universe began as an infinitesimal point of infinite density -- as our starting point, just as we accept Euclid's axioms -- for example, that one can always draw a straight line between any two points -- as the starting point in geometry.  We can't prove scientifically -- and will never prove in the future -- why the Big Bang exploded or whence burst all that energy out of an infinitesimal point, any more than we can prove logically Euclid's first axiom.  All we can do is speculate, as has Smodin, apparently -- with no empirical support. 

Admittedly, speculation is fun.  But it's not science; it's science fiction. In so speculating, we're like chess pieces trying to understand why bishops, unlike rooks, can move only diagonally.

Going home

My high school

"You can't go home again."
--Thomas Wolfe (book title)

But you can.  And yesterday, I did.

Not really, of course.  Not in the sense Wolfe intended.  But one can indeed go back physically to his home town, look at it once more -- with pleasure or dismay at the changes -- and remember all the good times.  (There undoubtedly were bad times, too, but they have a wonderful way of fading quickly with time.)

My sister called me from my home town -- a smallish to medium sized burg in the southwestern part of the state -- and told me she was there for an in-law's funeral.  She wanted to wander around, and wondered if I wanted to join her.  I did.  And so, I did.

Yesterday (like today and tomorrow) was unbelievably -- and unseasonably -- warm and sunny.   I put in a quick hour of piano practice, dug out my sunglasses from last summer's backpack, and jumped in the car.  Two hours later, I pulled into the parking lot of a venerable hotel that was built at the same time the city was founded.

We spent the afternoon walking through the neighborhoods in which we had grown up, as well as exploring the high school grounds.  These destinations were within the "inner city" -- that part of town that's remained unchanged, essentially, since the aftermath of World War II.  Then we drove around some of the more outlying areas -- areas that were farmland and industrial areas when we were kids.  The industries are still there -- but mostly shut down, abandoned, or operating at a fraction of capacity.  The farmlands -- like exurban farmlands everywhere -- have become a messy hodgepodge of strip malls, Walmarts, service stations, and fast food outlets -- interspersed with fairly new residential areas. 

The population has nearly doubled since I was in high school -- all of the increase ending up in the sprawl outside the old city limits.

My high school was as beautiful as ever, although I've read that its measures of academic performance have fallen precipitously.  The school has gone downhill to the point where local residents now refer to it as the city's "ghetto" high school -- not for its appearance or location, which, as I say, remain spectacularly beautiful.  But for the academic quality and level of ambition of its students, resulting, at least in part, from local unemployment.  The unemployment is structural, not cyclical -- timber, paper and aluminum industries with their high-paying union jobs are gone, probably forever -- and has brought with it concomitant increases in  social maladjustment, feelings of futility and worthlessness, petty criminal activity, and drug use. These are problems common to many of the school's students -- and probably to their parents, as well. 

So, visiting the high school was a pleasure, but my knowledge of its present difficulties was saddening.

Our old neighborhoods were even nicer than I remember.  The trees have grown larger; the lawns are better tended.  These residential areas, dating from the 1920s and 30s, always seemed superior to tract neighborhoods in other cities, each house having been built by a different builder and architect in differing styles.  Such diverse neighborhoods are now increasingly uncommon, in any city, and it was a pleasure to walk past block after block, appreciating houses that had been well-designed originally and well-maintained over the years.

Revisiting my home town, and enjoying the visit, is like visiting mountains and forests in today's world.  You have to view it selectively, as though framing a photo.  For example, going on a wilderness hike, you can often take a beautiful photo of a forest, but only if you frame the shot to avoid the powerlines in the background, the freeway to the left, and the massive clearcut to the right. 

Similarly, while the old residential areas were a pleasure to visit, I had to ignore the pathetic sights of the once thriving downtown -- a once-traditional "Main Street" that is now a trashy collection of pawn shops, thrift shops, bail bond emporiums, fast food restaurants, and deserted buildings.  I had to ignore certain large vacant spaces in other parts of town -- places where old buildings, undistinguished architecturally, no doubt, but impressive as local landmarks, had been torn down and replaced by not much of anything.  I had to ignore the fact that the school district is currently deciding whether to shut down certain formerly prestigious schools as too expensive to maintain with the district's declining enrollments.

All in all, it was fun to make yet another return to the old home town.  And so, yes, I did go home again.  But, I also appreciate exactly what Thomas Wolfe had in mind.  Just as I can't go back to being a teenager, I can't go back to my home town as it was and as it felt while I was growing up -- an optimistic, self-confident community cheerfully climbing up a rising curve of prosperity.

Southwest Washington has long since passed over its own hump of prosperity.  The curve now seems headed in the other direction.

Pancakes at midnight

Facebook offers its users various opportunities.  One is an occasional look at the lives of folks you'd know otherwise only as pleasant faces.  Such as -- in my case -- college students.

I've been following a good-natured debate on a college student's Facebook page, a debate contemplating the pros and cons of going out for pancakes at midnight.   I myself have no particular feelings, one way or the other, about starchy food shortly before bedtime.  But the debate brings back bittersweet feelings of nostalgia.  Regret for experiences no longer practical -- or, if pursued, probably even enjoyable -- once you're much past college age.

At my university, going out for midnight pancakes wasn't something one did every night -- our dorms and other living groups were at the center of a campus that was geographically very large.  Going off-campus was a bit of a production; someone in the group needed a car.  But we did it occasionally, especially during the nights before exams or before term paper due dates.  Going off-campus relieved stress, relieved late adolescent hunger pangs, and recharged us mentally for another couple of hours work before bed.

My nostalgia is less for the pancakes -- although for that, too -- and more for our enthusiasm (at midnight) to charge out of the dorm and do something different.  And for our ability to come back, and still be reasonably productive, after 1 a.m.

Once the halcyon years of university pass -- and I stretched those years out, god knows, as long as humanly possible -- we submit ourselves to the unpleasantly different biorhythms of the gainfully employed.  (We do, at least, unless we live in the puzzling world of Seinfeld and friends.)

Once I finally left school behind, my work day began at 8 a.m.; I rarely had classes that began that early at the university.  And rather than jump out of bed, pull on a days-old t-shirt, and storm off to class, professional employment required me to fix my own breakfast, take a shower, put on a suit, drive to work, park, and walk to my office.  This all took time.  And I, at least, also needed to first prepare my brain for all those tasks by downing a couple of cups of coffee while forcing my eyes to focus on the morning paper. 

In other words, I had to get up between five and six o'clock each morning.  I usually was in bed by 10 p.m.  No midnight dashes to a restaurant with a bunch of buddies.  No ultimate bedtime of 2 a.m. or later.

This, I learned, is the life of an adult.  It has its compensations, certainly, compensations beyond simply a paycheck.  But it demands sacrifices as well.  And among those sacrifices is the spontaneity of suddenly exclaiming, "Hey, why don't we go grab some pancakes?" (or a hamburger, perhaps, for the pancake-averse).  Also among those sacrifices -- and maybe this is what actually hurts so much -- is of a life surrounded by others, folks subject to the same stresses as myself, who were only too happy to drop whatever they were doing for an hour and head out for a bit of food.

I miss the easy, late night esprit de corps.  And, to be honest, I also miss the late night, youthful energy -- in myself and, especially, in others.

Now, if I were an irrational romantic, I'd find myself staying up until midnight tonight, and then driving out to Denny's or IHOP for pancakes with raspberry syrup.  But I'm a realist.  I know it wouldn't work.  It wouldn't be the same.  It wouldn't even be close.  As Heraclitus (see, I did learn something in college!) once said, as he no doubt chewed thoughtfully on a blueberry pancake, you can't step in the same river twice.

More's the pity.    

When we were young and foolish ...(from the archives)

Travel through a mirror

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
--W. B. Yeats

A famous mountain climber, now a recluse living on the family estate -- living, in fact, in an enormous, decaying home, a one-time abbey, surrounded by a deep frozen forest, lying at the bottom of a canyon carved by waters rushing off of Dartmoor.  His obsessions: the death of his wife in an auto accident, and an ancient mirror -- highly-polished obsidian -- updated with modern high-voltage attachments -- a device that permits travel through time.  The obsessions are related.

And the other characters! A scar-faced man from the age of Dickens who claims he was robbed, that he is the mirror's rightful owner and wants it back. A woman from a dark and bleak future, who comes seeking to change the course of time. Jake, an angry student expelled from his exclusive Swiss prep school, who comes to the abbey in search of his missing father -- his father having been the recluse's best friend; Jake suspects murder. Gideon -- a boy apparently Jake's age, but actually born five hundred years earlier -- a human by birth, but raised and kept immortal by the fairy-lore of the Shee.  The Shee themselves, the amoral and self-centered beings who haunt the forest surrounding the abbey.  The abbey's butler, Piers, who just happens to be a genie.

The English have a knack for writing a certain type of fantasy novel.  Tolkien, of course.  And Susan Cooper, more recently, author of The Dark is Rising series.  In a somewhat different way, even Philip Pullman, and the His Dark Materials trilogy.  And now, Catherine Fisher has published the first book of her new trilogy, Obsidian Mirror.

What these fantasy writers have in common -- Pullman to a lesser extent -- is a deep feeling for the history and mythology of England, together with the ability to tell an absorbing good tale of adventure.  I read the New York Times's review of Fisher's new "young adult" book a couple of weeks ago, and was able to download it this week.  I read it virtually overnight. 

Obsidian Mirror is the first fantasy book I've read since Revelation Space, a couple of months ago.  Nothing could be more different.  Alastair Reynold's imaginative series takes place in a distant future among peoples whose problems are not ours and whose memories of our own lives in the early twenty-first century are as faint and cloudy as are our memories of the Middle Ages.   The series' characters live, and have always lived, in deep space.  They are "deracinated" both physically and mentally.

Fisher's novel, by contrast, is cozy, home-centered, and, well, English -- deeply rooted in the folklore and landscapes of Devon.  People drop in and out on their way to and from other eras -- nineteenth century London is vividly depicted in all its filth, poverty and danger -- but the action centers about an ancient Devon country home, an enormous structure closely surrounded by a fairy-infested enchanted forest.  The plot itself is a bit clunky, perhaps -- absorbing enough, but I had the vague sense of having read stories with similar plots in the past.  But Obsidian Mirror is superlative in presenting characters who I cared about and wanted to know better, and even more superlative in painting a sense of place, scenes both beautiful and frightening.

All the characters, including the trilogy's (presumptive) hero, Jake -- the novel is narrated from multiple points of view --  are self-centered and selfish.  Each wants the mirror for his own aims, and is willing to deceive and trick the others to get it.  For the most part, however, none is able to avoid occasional flare-ups of empathy for the others, thereby softening and humanizing each of them in our eyes.  The fact that the novel's point of view changes several times a chapter prevents us from becoming too attached to -- or from cheering on behalf of -- any one of the characters too exclusively. 

Fisher has a marked ability to depict vividly strange and/or beautiful settings.  I mentioned her descriptions of nineteenth century London.  The haunted forest surrounding the abbey -- and the elusive Shee who live and rule within -- also come alive through her descriptive language.

Jake turned.  A tiny shimmer caught his eye.  He stared at it; saw a patch of glossy leaf, a lichened tree trunk.

And it became them.

He breathed in, felt Gideon's warning grip.

They were almost people.

Where they had come from he couldn't tell; they were so much a part of the shadow and the foliage.  Tall and pale, male and female, it was as if they had always been there, and just some adjustment of the light had revealed them to him.  Their faces were narrow and beautiful, their hair silvery-fair.
...
"Who are they?" he whispered.

Gideon was silent.  Then he put his lips to Jake's ear.  "Don't be fooled.  They look like angels, but they're demons.  They're the Shee.

In Obsidion Mirror, there are no "angels," either human or fairy.  Everyone is out for himself.  Everyone is a mixture of selfishness and kindness with the selfishness usually prevailing.  But Gideon -- immortal by adoption and enchantment, the boy the Shee had five centuries earlier lured away from his family home as a toddler, the human who knows the ways of the fairy world, the boy who craves the sort of warmth and friendship that are foreign to the superficial, pleasure-loving Shee who have adopted him -- is perhaps the saddest and most sympathetic of all the characters.

The book ends after much action, many discoveries, many revelations -- but nothing yet resolved.  Gideon returns to the icy forest, his hopes of finding a trustworthy human he could befriend apparently dashed.

"Enjoy it, Jake.  Enjoy it while you can.  The food, the warmth, the people.  Do everything, taste everything.  Enjoy your life because outside is only the cold and the dark."
...
"I won't let you go," Jake said, angry. But even as he said it, Gideon wasn't there; the frail green velvet faded from between his fingers, and he held only air.

I'm definitely hooked. I'm waiting for Book Two!