Looking back

And so ends 2015.  As with most years in recent memory, it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

What was it like 50 years ago, back when another year ended not with a bang?  The year my eldest nephew (now 50!) was born?

Well, let's see. In 1965, LBJ was ramping up the American presence in Vietnam, with an increase of American troops from 75,000 to an incredible 125,000.  (They reached just under 550,000 three years later.)  The student deferment status of II-S was worth its weight in gold.

The Dow ended the year at 969 (it will end 2015 at about 17,500).  An average new home cost $13,600.  Gas sold for 31 cents per gallon, which included full service (gas pumped, oil and water checked, tires inflated, windshields washed).  Average new car cost $2,650.  Average rent was $118 per month.  Loaf of bread would cost you 21 cents.

But, of course, if you were an average worker, you earned an average salary of only $6,450.

Until 1965, our coins were 90 percent silver.  I began hoarding silver half dollars in that year, as did many other people.  The half dollar, silver or otherwise, which had until then been as common as the quarter, soon became hard to find.

The five top-grossing movies (not necessarily the five best movies) were The Sound of Music, Dr. Zhivago, Thunderball, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and That Darn Cat! (!).

The book published in 1965 that I'm most likely to remember was Frank Herbert's Dune.  But the New York Times listed only three best selling works of fiction for the year:  Saul Bellow's Herzog, Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase, and James Michener's The Source.

Fiddler on the Roof grabbed most of the Tony Awards, including best musical.

Nineteen sixty-five was the year of best-selling hits by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher -- it was clearly a transitional year between the old pop music and the new rock.  But the absolute top hit of the year, the best selling song on the charts?  That would be, of course, Wooly Bully, by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

I was living a monastic life in 1965.  My Selective Service II-S status in hand, perched on a chair in my dorm room, studying Differential Equations, Functions of Complex Variables, Advanced Mechanics, and Electricity and Magnetism -- an unpromising beginning for a future blogger.  It was also the year of my second round trip jet flight (Seattle to Los Angeles), of yet another summer working as a chemical lab analyst, and the year I realized I really needed to learn to ski. 

It was a different world, 1965 was, but it doesn't feel that different now when I call it to mind.   It seems, as the cliché runs, "just like yesterday"!

Going beyond being pleasant

Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
--Julius Caesar

Yesterday, I took one of those silly quizzes that keep popping up on my Facebook newsfeed.  Ones like "What Planet Do You Come From?"  Where each question posed by the quiz is surrounded by a multitude of advertisements.

But this quiz purported to determine my personality by asking a few multiple choice questions.  Most of those questions sought the decade, month, zodiac sign, time of month, and time of day during which I was born.  There were also a few odd questions, such as the color of my eyes.

I took the quiz, waited thirty seconds for the mandatory commercial clip to play, and then received my analysis.  It was flattering, for the most part.  I apparently love my family, am generous to a fault, and probably feel underappreciated at times.  That's just me, the analysis said -- it would be silly to try to change myself.  But be careful, don't let folks take advantage of me.

My first reaction was to roll my eyes, and to observe that virtually any old codger born during the decade of my birth might well receive the same analysis.  But then I recall that I once had an analysis of my handwriting done -- long ago, when I was younger and my personality less predictable --  with almost identical results.

While I concede that handwriting analysis probably has some basis in science, I'm hardly an enthusiast for the "science" of astrology.  But the similarity of the handwriting and astrological analyses is interesting, especially when they correspond to some degree with my egotistical self-image.

Regardless of the validity of these pop science conclusions, they raise questions in my mind -- questions that have puzzled mankind since earliest times.  What if both good traits and bad traits really are inherent in the individual -- either because of the configuration of the stars at the moment of his birth, or because of genetics, events in utero, and his early up-bringing?

If I have a naturally pleasant, loving and generous temperament, is this something for which I can claim credit or be proud?  If I'm naturally irritable, tense, aggressive, and quick to anger, are these traits something for which I should be ashamed?  Our entire concept of morality seems based on the assumption that our actions are chosen in an exercise of free will.  Instinctual goodness or badness, on the other hand, seems no more moral or immoral than athleticism or a tendency toward obesity.

I suppose the usual response would be that free will gives us the ability to rise above our natural personality.  If we are naturally loving, we can direct our natural affections in ways that do the most good.  If we are naturally quick to anger, we can bite our tongues and seethe in private, or direct our anger toward evils we find in the world.  

As a consequence, two persons may behave identically.  But one of them -- who acts nicely by instinct -- is no more virtuous than a dog who wags his tail.  And the other one, whose acts of kindness may be accomplished only by strenuous efforts to overcome his natural inclination toward anger, may well be a saint of sorts.

As Shakespeare suggested, at some times -- maybe not on a hourly basis, but some times -- we are masters of our fates.  Rising above whatever instinctual behavior is built into our brains may be the definition of heroic virtue.

Decadence

If I had my Companions here, and a few thousand warriors, I could sweep Crete from end to end.  These people are in second childhood, fruit for the plucking, finished, played out.

Theseus is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology.  Growing up as the unrecognized son of the King of Athens, Theseus is finally acknowledged as a teenager by the aging king, only to be taken by the Minoans of Crete as part of an annual tribute.  Theseus and 13 fellow Athenians were destined to die as food for the "Minotaur" -- the monstrous offspring of a mating between a bull and the Minoan queen,  kept hidden in a labyrinth. 

The myth describes how Theseus organized his fellow Athenian captives into a tightly knit group.  The king's daughter Ariadne falls in love with Theseus, and  helps him find his way through the labyrinth, kill the Minotaur, and escape with her from Crete.

I heard the story from my father as a boy.  It was a story, no more and no less realistic than Jack and the Beanstalk.  But in 1958, Mary Renault wrote her critically-acclaimed historical novel, The King Must Die, re-telling the story from Theseus's point of view, filling in the blanks she found in the myth, and adding her own twist to Theseus's nature and personality.  She offers what, we may choose to believe, were the real and somewhat more plausible facts out of which the ancient myths grew with time -- an account based on her understanding of Greek and Minoan civilizations during the time of Theseus's supposed life.

I read the novel as a youth, and I've just finished re-reading it now.  Coincidentally, my nephew, an English teacher, will be teaching the novel to his ninth grade honors classes as part of the school's prescribed curriculum.  The Renault novel has become a classic.

On re-reading, the novel was every bit as exciting as it had been the first time around, and as evocative of Hellenic civilization -- or at least of a plausible interpretation of Hellenic civilization.  But reading it now, it also brought about thoughts of our world today.

More explicitly than in the myth, every important act by Renault's Theseus is rooted in his religious beliefs -- and especially in his conviction that he is an offspring of the god Poseidon, the god of the sea, of horses, of bulls, and -- crucial to Renault's story -- of earthquakes.  Since childhood, Theseus has had an ability -- whether physical or god-given in origin -- to sense impending earthquakes.  Nothing is more natural than for him to treat this ability as confirmation of his descent from Poseidon the Earth-Shaker.  Allied to this ability is the ability to sense -- whether supernatural in origin, or self-delusional -- when Poseidon is pleased or displeased with his course of action.

Although Theseus turns primarily to Poseidon for guidance, he fully respects the other Hellenic sky gods -- especially Apollo -- and pays respect to the earth gods of the indigenous matriarchal civilization that the invading Hellenes had found on the Greek mainland and on Crete.  For purposes of this summary, it's important only to realize that Theseus and his companions were formed in a world where respect for the gods was instinctual and imperative.

Many aspects of life on Crete amaze Theseus, including the antiquity of the civilization and the incredible wealth and leisure of the ruling class.  But he is appalled by the superficiality, as he views it, of Cretan life, and by the impiety of the Cretan people, both rulers and ruled.  The teenagers brought to Crete annually as tribute for the bulls, in Renault's version of the myth, don't serve as food for the Minotaur (who in fact is merely a human prince), but as participants in the bull ring, to their eventual death as a sacrifice to the bull god, the Earth Shaker himself.  They become "bull dancers."

But the performance long ago lost its religious significance to the Cretan public.  Only the forms of religious sacrifice remained -- the performance by now is for the crowd's entertainment, similar to bull fights in today's Spain, and an occasion for gambling on the relative longevity of the young bull dancers.  Even Princess Ariadne, who is the high priestess, has no belief in anything other than a desire to perform the public rituals properly. 

Theseus, who views kingship as a sacred duty -- serving not only as a military leader but as a priest standing before the gods on behalf of his people, and destined finally to offer his own life as an ultimate sacrifice -- not only is scandalized, but is unable to see how the Minoan king, the Minotaur prince, and even his beloved Ariadne can live with themselves.

Renault's description of the Cretan aristocracy -- the folks who attend the bull performances -- anticipates by a half century Suzanne Collins's description of the citizens of The Capitol in her Hunger Games trilogy.

These young lords and ladies were full of nonsense, having almost their own language, like children's games.  And they held their honor as light as they held their gods. ...New things were their passion, and hard for them to come by.  ... They would stand on their heads for the sake of newness, if nothing else new was left.  You could see this in their pots and vases.  ... It was a pleasure only to take their pots in your hands, to feel the shape and the glaze.  But lately they had begun to spoil them with all kinds of gaudy stuck-on finery, flowers and dangles which might show their skill, yet gave the thing a look of being fit for no use and good for nothing but to gather dust.  The truth is that what had not been tried in a thousand years was not worth doing,  But even beauty wearied them, if it was not new.

Perhaps that is how today's visitors from the Arab world view us in the West?

In the end, of course -- like the exquisite but similarly trivial society in the Hunger Games's Capitol -- it all collapsed.  Poseidon became disgusted by the impieties committed before him.  He spoke, the earth shook, and the great palace of Knossos collapsed.  Only Theseus and those companions he had trained in discipline, supporting each other to the death, their mutual support reinforced by oaths mutually sworn before the gods they held sacred, escaped the island.

The Cretans considered Theseus and the other dancers in the bull ring "barbarians."  They were uncivilized, their behavior was crude and unrefined, they were like children.  They were amusing as entertainment, and as occasional invited guests in their beds. The dancers' belief in the traditional gods was charming and picturesque, but, my goodness, they took everything so seriously.  They hardly knew how to take a joke.

Theseus was not "uncivilized" -- he was a Hellene, and he himself saw non-Hellenes as "barbaric."  He took his beliefs seriously, and accepted the burdens of his duties.  He had his pleasures -- women flocked to him -- but those pleasures always were secondary to his obligation to the gods and to those he was duty-bound to defend. 

In a typical adventure story, Theseus would have had the last laugh -- but for Theseus, the deaths of thousands and the ruin of Minoan civilization came from the gods and inspired awe.  Theseus had served only as the instrument of the gods' will.  It would have been impious to laugh at what the gods decreed, even when you became -- as he ultimately did -- King of Athens and overlord of Crete as a result.

Christmas memories

After procrastinating for days, I finally wrapped the five presents I will be taking with me to California for an unusually small Christmas gathering -- but all of us family, and all wonderful company, so we'll have quality even if not quantity!  For several days I put off the onerous task of wrapping, which actually ended up taking about a half hour of my valuable time.

Somehow I felt I'd have to devote an entire evening to the project.  Probably because, as a kid, I did spend at least a large part of an evening.  Back when wrapping presents was not a chore, but a delightful activity.

By the time I was 10 or 11, my brain had matured somewhat -- to the point where Christmas wasn't completely "gimmee, gimmee."   For brief moments, I was excited about giving presents as well.  From that age, each year I made up for the small amount of money I could spend on gifts by the amount of thought and time I was delighted to devote to the project.

Looking back on those days, my gifts may have seemed odd.  Did my mom (a non-smoker) really need another ash tray, with another elf sitting on it?  Did she really need a set of six water glasses, supplementing a cupboard full of such glasses?  But I have no doubt she treasured each gift, knowing how much time I spent wandering around the main street of my small town in search of ideas.

But if the gift-buying provoked a certain amount of anxiety, the wrapping was sheer pleasure.  I was not an artistically creative youth.  I devised no original forms of gift-wrapping -- in fact, my entire hope was to wrap gifts in conformity with certain well-known standards of how gifts were to be wrapped.

Who set those standards?  Again, my mother -- without realizing what she was doing.  I doubt if she ever offered a single suggestion to me to assist me in my own wrapping.  But I had watched her wrap for years.  She was not an artist either, but she had inherited standards of wrapping from her own mother, and she was magnificently competent in meeting those standards.  Her corners were wrapped square; her ribbons were taut; her bows were symmetrical and flower-like.

I spent as much time selecting gift wrap -- just the proper design appropriate for each member of my family -- as I did in selecting the gift itself.  Once the paper was selected, the proper ribbon -- always wide, satin ribbon -- had to be chosen in the appropriate color.  And then there was the question of the gift tags -- those little tags (or, increasingly, tiny folding cards) that identified the giver and recipient of the package.  These tags had to match the paper as well -- either designed specifically for the wrapping paper I was using, or ones that somehow complemented the paper in color and theme.

All of this effort for four presents -- mother, father, brother and sister.  At the appropriate time, usually sooner rather than later, because I couldn't wait, the gifts would emerge from my room and be laid ceremonially beneath the altar of our Christmas tree.  Appropriate words of  appreciation for my wrapping were as vital to my sense of self-worth as appreciation for the present wrapped within.

I thought of all of this, ruefully, as I wrapped the presents -- swiftly and mechanically -- that I'm taking to California this year.  I no longer find richly-colored gift wrap in folded sheets, sheets that generally were the correct size for the packages I needed wrapped.  Now, if gift wrap is available at all, it comes in rolls.  And it seems "cheaper" in appearance somehow, the colors less saturated, the paper flimsier, than the paper I recall from my youth.  But the Christmas lights seemed more magical back then, as well; the crèches more reverent, the carols better sung.  The less said about the psychology behind my perceptions the better.

What's more disturbing by far than rolls of gift-wrap, is the wide-spread substitution of "gift bags" for paper.  Again, not to belabor the point, but what better suits our frenzied times than a form of "wrap" where you just drop your purchase into a bag and set it under the tree.  And so much easier to "unwrap" as well.

But -- as I've tried to hint -- what's really changed is me.  And it's a change that occurs to most of us as we grow older.  Christmas celebrations were magical as a kid because they were new to us (and because they seemed to come around far less often!).  We could have been sitting around an aluminum "Festivus Pole," and (assuming we kids got some presents, and the family was all together and showing excitement) it would have seemed like a wondrous time of year.   

So I travel to California, bearing gifts -- especially for the younger set -- and I know that I'll have the opportunity to witness excitement and joy, the same excitement and joy that I experienced back when I was struggling to force a length of inflexible wide satin ribbon into my first bow.

And some of that excitement and joy will work its way under my skin, melting my scrooge-like heart.

Merry Christmas to all -- no matter how young or how old you may be!

Take the Green Line

At some point I need to understand the metro. I have a weird mental block with it (as a Californian... we drive).

A relative's friend invited her to drop by, next time she was in our nation's capital, and visit her home, conveniently located near a Metro stop.  I wasn't shocked -- more startled -- at the above response. 

This relative is sophisticated and well-traveled, and she just turned 40.  She's no country bumpkin. But lots of folks who live outside major cities would make the same response.  Riding on a subway is apparently like using the internet for the first time -- simple enough, but somehow intimidating.

I love it!  I'm not bragging.  It's no accomplishment. Millions of very average residents of -- for example --New York, Chicago, San Francisco, ride the subway daily, half asleep, to and from work.  I use public transit routinely -- both in Seattle, which has light rail but doesn't really have a "subway," and as a tourist elsewhere.

I use it because it's convenient, of course, and because it's cheap.  No one with any sense rents a car at Newark or Kennedy and drives to his hotel in Manhattan.  If you don't use transit, you pay for a cab.

But with me, it goes beyond convenience.  I honestly just love transit systems, and I love riding the rails.  When visiting a new city, especially in Europe, virtually the first thing I do is get a map and master the public transportation system -- especially rail transit.

I guess I was brought up that way.  My home town of about 20,000 had, maybe, five bus routes.  When I was about 7, my mother showed me how to climb aboard a bus near our house and ride about two miles to my aunt and uncle's home.  I was ecstatic.  I was traveling on my own.  If my folks had done this today, my folks would have been charged with child neglect, and my siblings and I would have been taken away and put in foster homes.  By the time I was 9 or 10, I was boarding city buses downtown, alone and on my own, and visiting  my grandmother.  At 14, I traveled, alone and on my own, coach class, by train, from Seattle to Chicago -- two nights and three days of travel each way -- to visit a friend and former classmate.

By the time I traveled to Italy, studying for six months, at the age of 21, I traveled everywhere, on my own, by train and bus.  The London Underground and the Paris Metro became virtual playgrounds for me during my visits to those cities.

Many young people have these experiences, and then, as an adult, "put aside childish things."  But I take after my mother, I suspect.  Into her old age, she loved nothing more than planning train trips and mastering city transportation systems.  To me, like her, getting around a city is as much fun as what I find at my destination.

Within the United States, New York is of course the subway rider's dream.  Searching this very blog, I find at least six of my posts devoted, in whole or in large part, to the fun I've had riding the New York subway.  And I also find my 2009 review of the novel Lowboy, about a schizophrenic teenager who spends all his days underground in the labyrinthine New York system.

Every visit to New York finds me licking my chops over the New York subway map.

Do you need further proof regarding my fixation? 

I certainly don't expect anyone else to share my mild derangement, any more than I'd expect them to share my passion for hiking in remote areas.  Chacun à son gout, is what I always say.  It's hard to explain my passion.  Every transit system is a bit different.  How one buys one's ticket from a vending machine differs from system to system, and can be a bit of a challenge -- although, now that most machines accept credit cards, the process seems simpler.  Learning where to change lines -- a joy for those of us who love such things -- can also confuse the novice.

But let's face it -- learning how to ride the subway isn't rocket science.  At the very least, it's a tool, like using an ATM or riding an elevator.  As use of automobiles within central cities becomes increasingly difficult -- Seattle is making it deliberately more difficult -- mastery of transit systems will become essential.

If I learned -- belatedly -- how to use a smart phone, you clever people can use and enjoy riding the rails underground.  Try it.

Knee-slapping in Seattle

Is Seattle the "Least Funny City" in America?  A 2008 on-line article (I'll leave the author anonymous) so claims, quoting from GQ Magazine:

“It’s rainy and progressive and almost kind of European,” GQ observed. “It’s Norway on the Pacific. Norwegians should design wind farms and plan the health care system, but they may not roast people at the Friars Club.”

The on-line author did deny claims that we Seattleites had absolutely no sense of humor.  He gave ten examples of jokes we found funny, such as:  "Knock, knock. Who’s there? Seattle Washing. Seattle Washing who? Seattle, Washington."

As a Seattle resident with Norwegian roots, I respond "we are not amused."  Well, actually, oddly enough, we are amused.  And although I wonder how familiar this guy actually is with us benighted Northwest Corner dwellers, reading his article made me wonder -- what, really, is "humor"?

Intensive middle school level research (Wikipedia) into the sources of "humor" uncovers a revealing description by a psychologist named Peter McGraw:  "humour only occurs when something seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening, but simultaneously seems okay, acceptable or safe."  Although McGraw is a contemporary professor at the University of Colorado, his description simply elaborates on the long-appreciated understanding that humor -- when we think about it -- usually arises from some apprehension of incongruity. 

Humor may well be our way of dealing with the sense of discomfort we feel when we sense the incongruity, a way of releasing the tension.

My pondering of this question -- even before I read the "Least Funny City" article -- began this morning when regarding the behavior of one of my cats.  A cat is a repository of almost every virtue to which we humans aspire (but usually fail to achieve).  But cats do not have a sense of humor.  Not even a glimmer of one.

Nor do other animals.  Dogs may at times appear to find life funny, but that's just because of the way they open their mouths when they pant. 

Cats and other animals are similar to Biblical characters.  "Jesus wept," declares the shortest verse in the Bible, but nowhere is it recorded that Jesus roared with laughter.  It's even harder to imagine Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, or even St. Paul indulging in self-deprecating wit.  They all, like my cat, took life seriously, and understood exactly what life demanded of them.  They saw no ambiguities to be reconciled.  Something that was "wrong, unsettling, or threatening" was simply that -- wrong.  It was never simultaneously "okay, acceptable or safe."

Despite being a Scandinavian Seattleite, I find life generally funny.  I think I have a sense of humor not much different from that of a guy in Brooklyn or Dallas.  I suspect my fellow citizens in the Northwest Corner find Donald Trump at least as hilariously funny as do our contemporaries elsewhere.  But if we nevertheless appear humorless to our fellow Americans, maybe it's simply because -- like Ezekiel -- we are convinced that we have discovered all the ingredients of a life that's both virtuous and satisfying, right here where we live.  Good is good, and bad is bad.  Where's the incongruity in that, huh?

And to return to our anonymous author's on-line article -- as I mentioned, he lists ten favorite jokes enjoyed by us Norgies in the Northwest Corner.  We do have a sense of humor. And they aren't all "knock knock" jokes.

Question: How many Seattleites does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: One.

I rest my case. 

Out, out, damned signature line

"Sent from my iPhone"

This annoying phrase has been attached to every email I've sent out on my -- yes -- iPhone over the past year.  I can always delete it, of course, but it's placed down at the bottom of the page where I never notice it while typing.

I don't notice it until I read my sent email, and then it jumps out at me like a sore thumb.

What kind of impression does it create?  Primarily, I suspect, it says "Here is a jerk who is so clueless that he believes everyone is impressed by his owning an iPhone.  Whoopie!  A major status symbol."  That's pretty embarrassing.  Kind of like signing my emails with "Sent while shopping at Macy's."

Or, as someone on-line has observed, it may say, "Here is an idiot who is too lazy to change his settings to eliminate the stupid line from his emails."  Kind of like walking around wearing a new sweater with a price tag still hanging from the collar.

Or worse, "Here is an idiot who doesn't KNOW HOW to remove the line."  Ouch!!

To be honest, until I decided to write this post, bemoaning the presence of the iPhone signature on my emails, it had never occurred to me that they could be removed other than on a case by case basis.  But a quick Google search revealed that a large number of folks out there were happy to tell me exactly how to do it -- a procedure that is so simple and so intuitive that I'm embarrassed to talk about it further.

Let's just say this --  you will never see that humiliating sign-off tag on my emails again.

Posted while driving my Maserati GranTurismo.

A Writer at War

The Russian Academy of Sciences has estimated that the Soviet Union suffered 26.6 million fatal casualties in World War II, of which 8.7 million were military deaths.  Other researchers, according to Wikipedia, put the total number of dead and missing as high as 40 million, with 14 million of those being military.

In the West, we naturally focus our attention on the Normandy invasion and the battles in North Africa and Italy in determining the cause of Germany's defeat.  We overlook the huge losses and intense suffering of the Soviet people, on whose territory much of the war was fought.  But if Germany hadn't been desperately fighting on the Eastern Front throughout, especially, the early years of the war, Britain might have been overrun before American help ever arrived.

I've just finished reading a collection of the writings of Vasily Grossman, a Soviet war correspondent, nicely collected and organized into a coherent picture of his activities and observations from the time of the Germans' unexpected attack in 1941 until the conquest of Berlin in 1945:  A Writer at War with the Red Army 1941-1945, edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova.  The narrative paints a vivid picture of the heroism of the Soviet military, but also of the stolid acceptance of great suffering and loss by the common people. 

This is also a book that makes you wonder -- whatever possesses human beings to fight wars?  As Grossman ponders, after Berlin is overrun: 

Millions of our soldiers have seen the well-built roads running from one village to another and German autobahns ... Our soldiers have seen the two-storey suburban houses with electricity, gas, bathrooms and beautifully tended gardens.  Our people have seen the villas of the rich bourgeoisie in Berlin, the unbelievable luxury of castles, estates and mansions.  And thousands of soldiers repeat these angry questions when they look around them in Germany:  "But why did they come to us?  What did they want?"

Why are the wealthy never satisfied?  Why do they want even the little that the poor possess?

Grossman, a secular Jew, was not a hack journalist or party functionary.  He was a literary writer, and a Ukrainian.  He never joined the Communist party.  He survived the Stalinist purges, but frequently walked the edge of the precipice.  His newspapers at times refused to publish his war stories, where those submissions showed signs of contradicting the Communists' doctrinal approach to the war.

Much of the book relates Grossman's experiences during the Battle of Stalingrad, and during the German offensive leading up to that decisive battle.  Grossman was on the front lines, sharing the lives of the common soldiers.  As a writer, his observations and news stories -- more than those of most journalists -- described the small details that brought the front to life -- a flight of birds, a ruined home, a crying mother, the body of a dead child.  He felt -- and described -- the horror of war, for the civilian at least as much as for the soldier.  His dispatches had to be toned down at times to avoid reducing the readers back home to despair.

His mother -- a Ukrainian Jew -- died early in the war, as part of the Nazis' "final solution."  He carried his sorrow throughout the war, and it colored his sympathy for those who were suffering.  He never subscribed to Stalin's boast that a million deaths was merely "a statistic."

He was avidly patriotic.  Although not a party member, he supported the Communists' conduct of the war, although he despaired at the follies of individual bureaucrats and of self-centered, egotistical generals.  As the Germans withdrew from Stalingrad, and were defeated near Moscow in the north, he rejoiced, along with the soldiers, in the same way an American journalist would rejoice in the victories in the West.

Grossman noted -- in his own notes, if not in his published dispatches -- the brutal conduct of the Red Army, once it was marching outside the Soviet Union -- the widespread rapes, the cruelty.  He also observed a Soviet soldier fetching a cup of water from the river for a suffering German prisoner.  Would the Germans have done the same if their positions had been reversed, he wondered?

Many of Grossman's quotations are lengthy dispatches, tied together with very helpful narrative by the editor.  Especially in the second half of the book, the quotations often consist of mere notes Grossman wrote to himself; one sentence observations; small vignettes; snatches of conversation.

But one quotation, uninterrupted by editorial comment, makes up a lengthy chapter in the book -- the liberation of the death camp at Treblinka.  This chapter was neither the first nor the last of Grossman's descriptions of German atrocities.  But it's the most devastating.  The quotation concludes:

We walk on and on across the bottomless unsteady land of Treblinka, and then suddenly we stop.  Some yellow hair, waxy, fine and light, glowing like brass, is trampled into the earth, and blonde curls next to it, and then heavy black plaits on the light-coloured sand, and then more and more.  Apparently, these are the contents of one -- just one sack of hair --which hadn't been taken away.  Everything is true.  The last lunatic hope that everything was only a dream is ruined.  And lupin pods are tinkling, tinkling, little seeds are falling, as if a ringing of countless little bells is coming from under the ground.  And one feels as if one's heart could stop right now, seized with such sorrow, such grief, that a human being cannot possibly stand it.

Grossman was a writer of deep emotion, but emotion under control of a fine analytical mind. And he possessed a mind for detail and for description.

After the war, Grossman wrote a novel based on his wartime experiences.  Soviet authorities never permitted its publication during his lifetime.  But a microfilm copy of the manuscript was smuggled out to the West.  It was published under the title Life and Fate. It was first published in Russia in 1988. Some critics consider it one of the best Russian novels of the twentieth century, a finer novel than Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago.

We are entering, apparently, another period of mutual hatred with Russia.  Let's not forget that the Russians are every bit as human as ourselves, with the same hopes and sorrows.  A nation that produces a Vasily Grossman, a writer who survives the purges of a paranoid despot to become one of the best known and respected of war correspondents, without ever losing his ability to note a small, bright flower growing out of a common grave and use it to convey the sorrow of wartime -- such a nation is a nation with a soul.  We should try harder to understand the Russian people.

A modest proposal

Today is the 74th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I'm not a pacifist.  I realize that there are times when a nation must protect itself -- and sometimes others -- by force.  As in World War II.  And, maybe Korea.  Kuwait? -- maybe, maybe not.

But not always.  Not Vietnam.  Certainly not Iraq. 

The difficulty with the use of force is that -- for those who decide -- making the decision is too easy.  We're only sending in troops as "advisers," they think.  There will be a quick "mission accomplished."  The troops will always "be home by Christmas."

From the Congressional point of view, it's easy to conclude that the expected success always justifies the cost.  Not just the financial cost, but the lives lost.  The lives of American soldiers.  The lives of the people we are supposedly helping.  The "collateral damage."

Shall we send in the troops?  Sure.  Why not?  You can't go wrong by voting "yes," when the nation's on the verge of hysteria.  You can ruin a career -- or at least be forced to do a lot of explaining -- by voting "no."

Congressmen need a greater incentive to be very, very certain of what they are doing before voting "yes."  Before they vote the deaths of others, soldiers and civilians, men, women and children, who they neither know nor can  imagine.

My proposal is this.  Before a member of Congress casts a vote in favor of war, he must certify that a member of his family -- within a statutorily specified degree of  consanguinity -- is (or within a specified period of time will become) a member of the armed forces, and a member who will face combat.

Good old Samuel Johnson noted that realizing that one is to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates one's mind admirably.  My proposal should perform the same admirable service for members of Congress.

Stick

Andrew Smith writes young adult fiction. 

I've never read a satisfactory description of YA fiction, distinguishing it from adult fiction.  In Smith's case, the label may be applied because his protagonists are teenagers.  So was the protagonist in Richard Ford's Canada, but no one describes Canada as a YA novel.  Smith himself has stated that he never set out to write YA novels, as opposed to adult novels.  The label probably has more to do with the publisher's marketing plans than anything inherent in the supposed genre.

I've read six of Andrew Smith's novels, two of which I've reviewed in the Northwest Corner.  If my fondness for his books  makes me a "young adult," so be it.  I can live with it.

Aside from featuring teenaged protagonists, and from being exceptionally well written, his novels have little in common.  The two I previously reviewed contained elements bordering on fantasy (The Alex Crow) or were expressly works of fantasy (Grasshopper Jungle).  Two others were about a kid who plays rugby, describing with both humor and insight his difficulties in adjusting to his boarding school and to his classmates.  (Winger and Stand-Off).   100 Sideways Miles is an "absurdist" novel about a boy with epilepsy who has an unusual slant on the world, and about his relationship with the girl he loves and the best friend who may well be a bit insane.  The two rugby novels probably come closest to what people think of when they hear the term "YA fiction").

I've now just finished reading Stick, which is the most serious, the most moving, and the most difficult to forget of the six Smith novels that I've read.   The book is recommended for students ninth grade and above.  If I had a high school son or daughter, I would suggest this book to him or her without hesitation.  But many parents might find it objectionable.

"Stick" is the nickname of its eighth grade narrator, a boy with a birth deformity of his ear.  Stick and his  brother Bosten, three years older, are the embattled victims of parents who apparently never wanted to be parents, and who have no way of relating to their sons other than through liberal use of the belt. 

The story contains the language that high school boys freely use.  It also contains graphic descriptions of school yard fights and parental beatings, and less graphic descriptions of sexual episodes.  It contains a suggestion, a fairly clear suggestion, of parental sexual abuse  And it contains scenes of drug use (mostly pot). On the other hand, the book also provides one of the most moving descriptions of a bond between two brothers that I've ever read, and a touching description of an eighth-grader's sudden realization that his best friend Emily is also the girl that he loves.

The book is funny, even when it's grim, and the author's use of descriptive language is often eloquent.  The book takes place largely in Kitsap County, right up here in the Northwest Corner, which -- for me, at least -- added to its charm.

Without revealing more of the plot, or of the book's conclusion, I can only say that the ending is somewhat happy -- but the conclusion reminds us that, for many people, life offers no happy ending.

Some are born to sweet delight; 
Some are born to endless night.

Strong recommendation. 

Seventh grade

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
--L. P. Hartley

My brother visited me for Thanksgiving, bringing with him a gift beyond price -- a box full of old family photographs that we had feared lost.  Included were my class photographs for kindergarten and grades 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.

I quickly digitalized the class photos, to avoid their disappearing once more, and cleaned them up digitally insofar as they had begun to fade or -- more noticeably -- discolor.

Then I allowed myself the luxury of losing myself in the photos, of studying every face, recalling names, and -- eventually -- trying to think once more as I had as a child.

All the photos bring back wonderful memories of myself at various stages -- at a time in one's life when two years growth is sufficient to change you from one person to another. 

I focused most intently, perhaps, on my seventh grade photograph -- partly because I find it easiest to identify now with the person I was then.  I see myself and my friends lined up in rows, each of us teetering on the brink of adolescence but still children in looks and -- in many ways -- in the ways our minds worked.

I can recognize almost every boy and girl in the photograph, and remember who I liked, who I disliked, and who I largely dismissed from my thoughts.  I can remember actual conversations I had with classmates, and with my teachers.  I can remember feeling more emotional at times than I would as an adult, but possessing a greater inclination to suppress those emotions. 

In fifth and sixth grades, I had been in the "band and orchestra" class -- all kids taking instrumental music instruction were placed together.  As a result, my classmates were, relative to the rest of my community, disproportionately upper middle class.  But, moving to junior high school, the deck was reshuffled and my seventh grade classmates were -- to some degree -- noticeably less motivated and "refined." 

I recall being bothered by this perceived change in social status for maybe the first month, but I established good friendships in short order.  I was elected as class president and class representative to the boys' club ("Muchachos") in seventh grade, and to student council by largely the same students in eighth grade, so I have some evidence that I got along well with classmates.

I remember facts about seventh grade, and my ambitions and dreams.  And I remember my feelings about classmates and about school in general.  But as I stare at my photo, I  recognize how hard it is to put myself now into that young boy's mind.  The gap is too great.  He knew a lot about a lot of things, but he didn't know yet the future, or his part in it.

I wish I could assure him that his future was going to be happy -- more successful and considerably more interesting than he imagined at that time.  And I wish I could warn him that he would be even happier later if he depended less in junior high on his natural abilities and curiosity, and learned to study even then in a more disciplined manner.  I wish that back then someone had thought of AP courses, where he would have competed --  would have been forced to compete -- with kids more similar to himself.  In some ways he lacked self confidence, but in others he was excessively certain of his own ability to BS his way through school.  Developing a certain amount of discipline in his studies in those early years would have paid off in the future,

So I stare at him, and I stare at him with inordinate fondness.  He was a bit lazy, but he was intelligent and possessed a curiosity that went well beyond schoolwork.  And he was, all in all, a pretty nice kid.

Good luck to you, my former self.  Rest assured that you're going to enjoy the years that lie ahead.