One more rock

Boy standing atop a cairn
on the summit of
Ben Nevis, Scotland 

Something's magical about the Last Day of the Year.  I know, it's just another day.  If we still used the ancient Roman calendar, 2019 would have begun on March 1, and we would be still trudging along for another couple of months until it came to an end.

But, here we are, locked into to our Gregorian calendar.  December 31.  Today, we wind things up.  Money earned after today gets taxed in 2021, not 2020.  We ring out the old, and ring in the new -- hoping despite all experience to the contrary that the new year will be better.

And so it is with this, my blog.  This post is the final addition to my 2019 sum of posts.  Google's magic counters flip back to zero after midnight, and start counting for 2020.

I can't speak for quality, but not a bad year for quantity.  As of Saturday, I had published 111 posts during 2019, a new record.  One post more than the 110 I published in 2010.  Today's post is unnecessary when it comes to setting records.  It's overkill.

Back before surveying was less precise than it is now, people argued about whose area had the higher mountain.  For example, Rainier or Whitney?  Climbers even built cairns, piles of rocks, at the summit to boost their mountain's claims.  "Look, my mountain's now higher than yours!"

Similarly, I shamefacedly confess that in 2010, I published a recipe for a Tom & Jerry on December 31, just to add some heft to that year's total number of posts.  No such phony padding is necessary this year.  I've already set a new record, fair and square.

But why not raise the bar a bit?  Make beating the 2019 record a bigger challenge?  Why not just pile one more rock on the top of Whitney's cairn, even after surveys have proved that it's beat Rainier by a hundred feet? One more post to increase the quantity of this year's posts, even at the expense of decreasing their average quality?

Hence this lame post.  Post No. 112 for 2019.

Happy New Year!

A Wizard of Earthsea

My imagination refuses to limit all the elements that make an adventure story and make it exciting -- danger, risk, challenge, courage -- to battlefields. ...To be the man he can be, Ged has to find out who and what his real enemy is.  He has to find out what it means to be himself.  That requires not a war but a search and a discovery.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

If the title of this post attracted you, you probably have already read all six books of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series.  I haven't.  Until a month ago, I had never heard of the books or of their author, despite enjoying both fantasy and science fiction.  But my nephew thought I'd like them, and, after reading the first book, I agree.

Ms. Le Guin published A Wizard of Earthsea, the first book of the series, in 1968.  As she points out in her 2012 commentary, included in the Kindle edition, the only fantasy material read widely by adults in that year was the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Her publisher asked her to write a book for teenagers -- a YA novel -- and this was her first attempt to reach that audience.  As I've concluded myself, it's hard to draw a line between YA and adult literature: "Despite what some adults seem to think, teenagers are fully human.  And some of them read as intensely and keenly as if their life depended on it."  It isn't an audience you write down to.  Teenagers are fully capable of reading language as complex as that found in any adult fiction -- which they also may well be reading.

If there is a distinction between serious adult and YA novels, it may that teenage minds are still searching for meaning in life, and are more open to unconventional ways of finding that meaning.

The Earthsea series -- or at least the first volume -- is similar to Lord of the Rings in that it describes in rich detail an alternative society, probably a pre-historic society, that is fully human and exists on Earth.  But on an Earth where the geography is unfamiliar.  LOTR  described what could be construed as a distorted map of Europe, before coast lines had obtained their present shape.  Wizard describes a huge cluster of islands, of all shapes and sizes, running from cold regions in the north to much warmer regions in the south, surrounded by seas that, to anyone's knowledge, go on forever.

Le Guin describes the places and peoples of Earthsea, as the novel progresses, as though the reader is as familiar with that world as he is with New York and California.  Her technique plunges the reader deeply into her world in a highly satisfying manner.  But a map would help visualize the world she describes.  She mentions that she drew her novel's world on a large piece of posterboard before she began writing, or even knowing the plot of, the novel.  Kindle does provide the reader a similar map, but it is so tiny as to be useless.

Earthsea is a world where magic is just one element of daily life, where every small settlement has its sorcerer or witch who has the ability to cast mundane spells protecting homes, improving the fishing, warding off illnesses.  But these minor spells are not to be confused with the harnessing of the great forces of the universe, for which one must know the "real names" of persons and objects, and have the ability to invoke those real names in the Old Speech, an obsolete language like Latin, believed to date back to the creation of the world.

Ged is a boy who lives on an obscure island in Earthsea, a boy brighter and more curious and more energetic than his peers.  (A boy like the typical young reader, I suppose.)  He learns minor spells from the local witch, but as he turns 13, a learned Mage discovers him and, recognizing that Ged has great latent powers within him, takes him on as an apprentice.  The Mage, Ogion the Silent, tries to teach Ged that any use of the greater forms of magic always disturbs the equilibrium of the universe and the soul of the person using it.  One must use it with great care. 

But Ged wants to be famous and powerful.  He finds Ogion's caution and prudence to be stifling, and goes off to the Harvard of his time, to learn the highest arts.

Ged ultimately becomes very powerful, but finds himself confronted by a dark power of equal strength that threatens to destroy him.  He has many adventures, sailing eventually to the ends of earth trying alternatively to either escape or conquer this dark power.  He learns, as he grows into his later teens, that he can never escape ultimate destruction by running from his adversary, but must aggressively pursue it.  Which he does in the company of his best friend from sorcery school.

Quite literally, he finally learns that "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The novel ends with both a victory and --  equally important -- an increase in self-knowledge.  As Le Guin notes in her discussion of her novel,

The search takes him through mortal danger, loss, and suffering.  The discovery brings him victory, the kind of victory that isn't the end of a battle but the beginning of a life.

In less dramatic forms, it is the victory that every young person needs to achieve to become an adult.

Some YA books are too good for kids.  I probably will continue reading the series.
-------------------------------

(1-4-20) Finished reading the third book of the series today, each book better than the one before. As with Tolkien's The Return of the King, many years ago, finished with tears in my eyes.

Idaho Christmas

 A second consecutive Christmas in Challis, Idaho.  Some highlights:

• After a four-hour drive from Hailey airport, I arrived just as my nephew Jesse was being given his present early -- a small, extremely lively kitten.  Beige in color, or "champagne" as Jesse suggested.  After some discussion, he will retain the name his temporary foster people had given him -- "Leif," after Leif Erikson.  Leif was the star of the holidays, much to the dismay and jealousy of older resident border collie Molly.
• Temperatures dipped to the 10-15 degree (-12 to -9.5 C.) level each night.
• Snow was on the ground everywhere, although the roads were good, when I arrived.  We had a heavy snow on December 24.
• Walks in the deep snow around Kathy and Andy's property.
• On-going project by Jesse and Andy to film life on the Challis property.  This included video scenes of one of their horses dragging downed limbs to the site of a future bonfire.
• Decision to cancel the planned Christmas bonfire, because of inclement weather and temperatures.
• Visit overnight by Santa, rewarding all of us young girls and boys.
• Watching "A Christmas Story," for the nth time.  "I triple dog dare you!"
• Hauling in wood for a continuous fire in their enormous stone fireplace.  Staring at the fire in a trance, a primordial experience originating with the cave men.
• Gazing at the snowy hills surrounding the Challis Creek Valley.
• Discovering that neighbors in some places still arrive unannounced with Christmas cookies and a few minutes of chatting. 

A brief visit, but an enjoyable one, in a far different climate -- weather and social -- than my home in Seattle.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Northwest Boychoir

Last night at St. Mark's Cathedral

The sending of Christmas cards may be moribund, as I suggested in my last post, but not so the singing of Christmas carols.  Last night I attended the annual performance of "A Festival of Lessons and Carols" by the Northwest Boychoir (together with"Vocalpoint! Seattle," an associated choral group of teenaged boys and girls), at St. Mark's Cathedral.

Last night's performance was their seventh of the Christmas season, performed throughout December in various Seattle-area churches.  Their seasonal offering reaches its culmination Monday night -- I'll be in Idaho  -- when they perform downtown in much larger Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony.

I've raved before about the singing of the Northwest Boychoir, after seeing them perform the "Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine" together with the Seattle Symphony in January 2017.  Their singing is perfect and highly disciplined.  Both they and their instructors should be congratulated.

The Lessons and Carols is based on the Christmas Eve service at King's College, Cambridge.  It began with four carols, followed by the reading of nine lessons from the Old and New Testament.  Each reading was followed by the choir's singing of a carol, followed by the audience/congregation's joining in a singing of a well-known carol.  Some of the boy readers -- although all were obviously Seattle-area residents -- appeared to be attempting an English university accent, which gave the readings -- all from the King James Version of the bible, with all its thee's and thou's -- additional dignity and force (at least to my Anglophile ears).

The two choirs entered the cathedral from the rear.  They paused half way down the aisles, in the hushed and partially darkened cathedral. Breaking the silence, a young, unaccompanied soprano began singing the first verse of "Once in Royal David's City," before being joined by the full chorus for the remaining verses as they filed to the front.  The boy's clear, high-pitched voice rang through the entire cathedral; the experience was mystical and spine-tingling.

The evening's performance, about ninety minutes in length, washed away all my customary "Bah, Humbug" pre-Christmas attitudes, and put me in the right frame of mind for celebrating Christmas three days from now.

Hey, now I don't even care if people stop sending Christmas cards!
------------------------------------

A number of clips from the similar King's College service can be found on YouTube. King's College originated the idea of commencing the service with a soprano solo of "Once in Royal David's City." To my untutored ear, last night's Northwest Boychoir's singing appeared nearly as good as that of the King's College Choir, but of course their chapel -- built between 1446 and 1515 -- adds a bit more glamour than does St. Mark's. Also, the English boys and young men appear more poised physically, and enter the chapel surrounded by typical English pageantry.

Moribund

Eleven years ago, I posted a lament for the dying custom of sending Christmas cards.  I waxed sentimental over my childhood, recalling how, as a kid, I had opened with excitement the huge bundle of cards that arrived each day. And how, fascinated especially by cards from non-relatives, I would try to figure out who these many senders might be, and what part they played in my folks' lives.

But the custom was already dying by 2008.  I didn't note in my blog how many I was sending that year, but I had been gradually whittling the number down over the previous couple of decades.  Not in a spirit of retaliation, but simply as a recognition that customs change, and that it might be embarrassing to receive my card if you hadn't planned to send one to me.  But I soldiered on:

Maybe in 2008, with email and Facebook so readily available, no one really does care if I send them a card or not. But I send them for myself, at least in part. Christmas just doesn't feel like Christmas until I carry my stack of envelopes down to the corner and drop them in the mailbox.

By last year, I noted that my "stack of envelopes" was down to about twenty, and that, as of today's date one year ago, I had received only seven.  By the time the season was over, late stragglers raised that figure to thirteen.

This year, I sent out 21 cards, about the same as last year.  As of today, with two more mail delivery days before Christmas, I have received three -- one of them from my sister, and one of them an e-card, rather than a tangible card delivered by mail.

I'm sure I'll get a few more by the time I return from Idaho, but the trend is obvious.

"Moribund," i.e., not dead but close to it.  Is it pathetic to continue with a moribund custom?  Where is the dividing line between "pathetic" and "delightfully antiquarian"?

And at what point do we pull the sheet over the moribund patient and snap our fingers to summon the eagerly awaiting mortician?

Merry Digital Christmas!

Walking in the rain.

Rain in Red Square at 4:30 p.m.
University of Washington

Poring over my past posts, I notice that "rain" is a familiar topic.  Complaining about rain.  Lamenting lack of rain.  Oddly awed by how weather changes from sunny to rainy, or vice versa, here in the Northwest Corner.  And a surprising number of references to how rainy it is, or was, or may be in Britain while hiking over there.

But most noteworthy, for today's purposes, was a 2016 post entitled "Drowned Rat."  The plot was simple.  I had decided the weather was good.  I started my daily walk.  Perversely, it poured.  I was drenched.  I wussed out, turned around, and returned home without completing my hike.  I mortified myself.

Today, I can report something more uplifting.  It's been unseasonably dry all season, but today rain was forecast with 100 percent certainty, starting at noon today and continuing through tomorrow.  I looked out the window at about 2 p.m.  Yup, it was steadily raining.  Well, maybe things will ease off, I told myself.  Looked again at 3 p.m.  Still steadily raining.

Based on "Drowned Rat," this is where I would say that hiking today was not feasible; I'd curl up with a good book.   But no!  "Am I or am I not?" I asked myself, quoting a character in André Aciman's memoir.  Am I a Native of the Northwest Corner?  Am I a Man of Great Machismo?  Or am I a sniveling coward who fears a potential fate as a drowned rat?

Sweater on.  Check.  Windbreaker on. Check.  Hiking shoes on.  Check.  Out the door and into the rain.  At 3:30 p.m. in mid-December, it's already dusky in these parts, but I am not deterred.

Seen from your window, rain can look intimidating as it splashes into  puddles.  But once you're outside, wrapped up in rain gear, you hardly even notice it.  I loved the hike.  Walking in the brisk forty-four degree (6.5° C.) outside air was invigorating.  The rain in my face was bracing.  I felt like a kid again, a kid who had to walk to school every day, regardless of whether it was raining, and who not only didn't mind it, but liked it.  All of us did as kids.  Our lockers steamed each morning with drenched coats and jackets.  No one told a teacher, oh, I couldn't come to school yesterday.  It was raining.

Not only the teacher but your fellow students would howl with laughter.  This is the State of Washington.  Rain is what we do up here.

The only obstacle to enjoying a walk in the rain, possibly, are the puddles that gather on our weirdly irregular sidewalks.  You have to look for them and tiptoe around them at times.  As kids, we wore boots over our school oxfords, boots like those you see in drawings of Christopher Robin.  I  don't have those, but I have hiking shoes with thick soles and Gore-Tex tops.  If I don't step into a three-inch deep puddle, my feet stay dry.

I hiked as far as Suzzallo Library on the University campus, where I stopped at the library's branch Starbucks.  Finals were over last week; the campus is still populated but not crowded, and the buildings stay open with reduced hours.  I sat down with my cup of coffee and a muffin, enjoying the unusually calm atmosphere, watching wet tourists drop by and look around.  It was definitely dusk by the time I departed.  The street lights and car headlights reflected on the wet streets and sidewalks.  I realized why so many photographers of city life in Paris and New York love scenes of rainy nights and twilights. 

By the time I looped around the campus and back into Red Square, back once more in front of the library, it was much darker.  I snapped the photo above, and continued home.  I got back to the house just after 5 p.m..  It had been totally dark for maybe a half hour.  The puddles in front of me were now nearly invisible in the dark.  By the time I reached my house, my shoes were soaked from prancing through them.

But who cares?  I'm a Wild Man of the Northwest.  None of my DNA comes from the Wicked Witch of the West.  Unlike her, I'm not soluble in rain water.

I strip off my windbreaker and drenched baseball cap.  I put on dry jeans.  Dry shoes.  I pour myself another cup of coffee.  I feel happy.  Virtuous and happy.

Édith Piaf

For Proust's Marcel, just the taste of madeleine brought back his youth.  For me, less intensely and literately, spotting the name "Edith Piaf" on the first page of "Goings on About Town" in this week's New Yorker did the same.

My first two years of college.  The coffee shop of the old student union -- before the modern food court came into being -- was a smoky room in the basement.  Crowded, noisy, with wall murals of post-war kids riding around in jalopies -- they seemed incredibly anachronistic, although painted only about a decade earlier -- and music.  Recorded music, the popular tunes of the day.

I hung out there between classes, studying for the next class or maybe -- it was next to the post office -- reading my mail.  I would add "and drinking espresso," which now would seem a natural activity  Except no one drank espresso then. And I hadn't yet learned to tolerate even Folger's.  I wonder what I did drink in that smoky den?  If anything.

The music was just background noise, like any jukebox in a restaurant.  Until the day I heard a woman with a nasal, smoky, tired voice singing in French.  French!  In an American eatery!  I had no idea what she was singing, but the song moved along in waves, rhythmically, with frequent repetition at the end of a phrase of the word "Milord."  And, of course, that was the name of the song:  "Milord."  One of the biggest hits of Édith Piaf's career.

A song by a prostitute who invites an upper class English boy or young man (she calls him Milord) to sit at her table, tells him he's beautiful, learns his heart is broken, tries to cheer him up, and finally succeeds.  The French meant nothing to me, but the music -- and Piaf's voice -- cheered me as well.

The next year or so, my roommate bought an LP of her songs, and a few years later I bought my own, which I have here in front of me as I type .

"Milord" was a popular song, but the Piaf song that sticks most in my mind -- that best expresses my reaction to her work in general -- was a song (also to be heard in the student union) not of cheer but of quiet resignation -- "Je ne regrette rien" (No, I regret nothing).

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait

Ni le mai tout ca m'est bien égal.

No, nothing of nothing

No, I don't feel sorry about nothing

Not the good things people have done to me,

Not the bad things, it's all the same to me.

C'est payé, balayé, oublié

Je me fous do passé

Avec mes souvenirs

j'ai allumé le feu.

It's paid for, removed, forgotten

I'm happy of the past

With my memories

I lit up the fire.

Doesn't sound like a song for young people?  Not exactly Bob Dylan lyrics?  Well, if you thought that you'd be wrong.  For young people around 1959 and 1960, life -- although not excluding the usual joys of youth -- had underpinnings that were somewhat morose and resigned.  In one sense, we were a generation of introverts. We were the silent generation.  And as Joan Didion wrote, years later:

We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate.

But if Piaf's songs conveyed -- in their melodies and in the timbre of her voice, as much as in their lyrics -- a certain world-weariness, and if they did not provide the anthems of a youth movement that rock music did a few years later, they nevertheless gave us a sense of maturity, of adulthood, of appreciation for the sadness of life itself.

Believing ourselves jaded adults -- perhaps avoiding mass movements, imagining ourselves smoking French cigarettes and drinking absinthe in a tiny French café, discussing existentialism -- provided us the same satisfaction as imagining themselves social revolutionaries provided our younger siblings a few years later.

We would survive outside history, in a kind of idée fixe referred to always, during the years I spent at Berkeley, as "some little town with a decent beach."

Joan Didion again, of course.

Édith Piaf knew nothing of a little town with a decent beach.  She grew up in poverty, and lived what was probably a somewhat sad and lonely life, despite her many fans, dying at the age of 47, in 1963.  But she enriched, in some small way, my life and that of others in my generation. 

And now I think I'll replay her album.  If you aren't familiar with her music, pull up one of her songs on YouTube.

Sequels

If you search my blog for "sequel," you'll find a number of posts offering my opinion.  I'm against them.

I'm not referring to the books that were intended as a series to begin with -- Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Pullman's His Dark Materials, Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.  Nor am I referring to books written years later as a sequel to or reinterpretation of a novel written by a different author -- though I have my doubts about those, as well -- like Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.  No, what I really have in mind are the frequent instances where an author writes a wildly popular novel, so popular that many of its readers demand to know "what happened next," and his publisher -- I'm speculating -- tells him "Don't be a fool, give them what they want -- there's gold in them thar hills.

Which is exactly what I expected of a sequel to André Aciman's novel Call Me By Your Name, reviewed in this blog in July 2009.  Reader reviews on Amazon and in Goodreads howled their disapproval of the downbeat ending to the novel, or, even if they appreciated Aciman's craftsmanship, begged for a sequel with a "happy ending."  We see the same phenomenon with other novels, whether their endings are happy or tragic.  If the protagonists are appealing, many readers treat them as real people, as though the author knows what happened to them next, and is obligated to tell us.

In a well-written novel, the author knows the story he wants to tell, and tells it.  If the ending doesn't satisfy the reader, it's not because of oversight on the author's part.  The story conceived by the author demands that "unsatisfying" ending.  And Call Me By Your Name is a very good novel by an excellent author.  Readers have obviously wanted Oliver and teenaged Elio to get together again.  But Aciman's Proustian story was told from the point of view of a middle-aged man recalling memories from twenty years after the fact of his first love, a summer romance that ended with that summer.

It was over, and twenty years later both Oliver and Elio knew it was over.

So when I saw a review of Find Me, Aciman's sequel, in today's New York Times, my heart sank.  But having read the review, I have hope.  Apparently, Oliver and Elio don't even appear in the novel during the first half; the story is told from the point of view of Elio's father, now divorced from Elio's mother and caught up in a love affair of his own.  (This is odd, because in the final, farewell scene of the earlier book, where the two say goodbye once more, twenty years after "that summer," and five years after the events in Find Me, the mother still lives on, somewhat dementedly, at the family home, and a portion of the father's ashes are buried on the premises.)

Do the "boys" say farewell once again in Find Me?  The reviewer doesn't give away the ending, but notes that the focus of the book is on "the come down," the "second act" of a love affair.  Cleverly, the reviewer notes:

"We're not going to feed off the past, are we?" Oliver asks toward the end of the novel, and this question can almost be read as Aciman's meta-commentary on the existence of "Find Me" itself.

Near the end of the earlier book, Elio mused to himself that Oliver:

was and would forever remain, long after every forked road in life had done its work, my brother, my friend, my father, my son, my husband, my lover, myself.  In the weeks we'd been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank, where time stops and heaven reaches down to earth and gives us that ration of what is from birth divinely ours.  We looked the other way.  We spoke about everything but.  But we've always known, and not saying anything now confirmed it all the more.  We had found the stars, you and I.  And this is given only once.

No wonder so many wanted a sequel.  But he had already told us in this musing, fifteen years after their summer together, (and in the same year as Find Me apparently takes place), that this had been "given only once."

And, as the reviewer tells us,

we are given a book that explores what can happen when your life gets away from you, when you realized just how much time you've wasted.  It may not make for the stuff of glistening cinema, but it strikes an affectingly melancholy chord.

So maybe Aciman once more knew what he was doing; maybe he resisted the urge to sell out! And yet, if Find Me only shows the disillusionment that comes with age and the passage of time, shows how one can't be seventeen forever, shows the future sadness already strongly suggested in Call Me By Your Name -- why bother? I'm happy if the new book remains true to the original novel, that it doesn't in effect trash it, but do we need it?

But I'm not being fair; I haven't read it. The book isn't high on my "to read" list, but I'm sure I will read it.  Because I've read almost everything Aciman has published -- his essays repeatedly, his memoir Out of Egypt several times, and, so far as I recall, all of his novels except Eight White Nights, which I began once, but in which I got bogged down.  (Maybe I'll even tackle that again one of these days!)

A Pilgrimage to Eternity

Timothy Egan writes a column for the New York Times, which I avidly read, and is the author of eight award-winning books I haven't read, including The Worst Hard Time.  He is a Seattle resident and native, one of seven siblings, a graduate of Gonzaga Prep in Spokane and the University of Washington. 

I've always enjoyed Egan's columns, because he discusses politics without simply repeating the same old sound bites.  His columns -- although liberal in slant and, certainly, opposed to the Trump presidency -- have a balanced, thoughtful approach that I like to think represents the Seattle approach to life.

Hiking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across the north of Spain has become an item on a bucket list for many adventurers.  Egan, instead, as a youthful 62-year-old, chose to hike an older but less well known route, the Via Francigena, from Canterbury to Rome.  The route crosses the English Channel, passes across northern France into Switzerland, crosses the Alps over the Saint Bernard Pass, descends into Italy's Val d'Aosta and into the Po Valley, crosses the Apennines almost to the Ligurian coast, and then south through Tuscany and Umbria to Rome. 

Why would a guy in his sixties do this?  I suppose, for one thing, Egan and his family have done a lot of hiking in the Pacific Northwest; they enjoy walking.

We introduced our kids to the wild at an early age, bribing them with Skittles to get up the trail, promising to protect them from every horsefly and mosquito in the Cascade range. Lucky for us, and them, it took.

And his book is a travelogue of his walking, through European towns and villages, some famous, some known only to pilgrims following his route.  More seriously, Egan -- raised in a Catholic family but himself a lapsed but curious Catholic -- wanted to experience this route followed by centuries of religious pilgrims to Rome, hoping to find a reason to stop straddling the line between atheism and belief.

I'm no longer comfortable in the squishy middle; it's too easy.  I've come to believe that an agnostic, as the Catholic comedian Stephen Colbert put it, "is just an atheist without balls."

Less sublimely, he wanted to detach himself from the digital world.

Easy access to a world of tempting crap has clearly not been good for me.  My attention span has shrunk.  Sustained, deep reading and thinking are more difficult.  I'm punch-drunk from the unrelenting present, the news alerts and flashes, all the chaos without context.

Egan is strongly affected by the fact that a sister-in-law is dying of cancer.  He is also strongly affected by the fact that the best friend of one of his brothers committed suicide as an adult as the result of having been sexually molested at the age of 12 by their young, popular parish priest, a priest who had run into serious problems for years before being sent to their parish.  Egan himself was traumatized by a priest's furious response, funny only in retrospect, to his eleven-year-old confession that he had trampled on the priest's prize flower bed.

As he walks from one religious site to another, reflecting on horrors of the past, from the cruelty of the Crusades to the Nazi Holocaust to the painful events he's seen in his own family, he asks himself the question that every believer from St. Augustine to the woman next door confronts -- where was God when all this happened?

As he walks the Via Francigena, Egan gradually sheds his exclusively rational approach to religion -- a rationality that is limited by our own human experiences and, in itself, can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a transcendent God.  Belief comes from living life, he concludes, not from sitting in a library thinking.  He recalls St. Francis's admonition to his Order:  "Preach the Gospel at all times.  When necessary, use words."

Egan encounters stories and shrines and memorials of famous miracles in the past, and politely rolls his eyes.  Until, near the end of his trek, he witnesses, alone in a shrine, an event that he himself believes to be a miracle.  It's not an event that he uses to convince his reader.  He could not even convince his wife who, at the time, was hiking with him.  The "miracle" is presented as something that persuaded him to believe something that he had always suspected, but doubted -- that there is something going on in reality beyond science.  Then he reminds us of St. Augustine's observation:  "Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature."

Pope Francis is something of a hero in Egan's eyes, a pope who understands Christianity in ways that his more medieval predecessors did not.  President Trump is not a hero.  In one funny scene, a grouchy abbott at a Benedictine refuge where he seeks lodging grills him about his background.  Finally, the abbott asks:

"How are things in America?"
"Troubled."
"Why is that?"
"Trump."
"What's wrong with him?"
"Everything."
"I'll show you to your room."

Egan has no theological training, although he has done reading on his own.  He discusses St. Augustine at length throughout the book, and attempts to wrestle with St. Anselm's "ontological argument" for the existence of God -- with more insight than I could bring to it. 

Not a theologian, Egan is merely a very bright, very human, and very "good" man, a man walking the some 1,100 miles of the pilgrimage (assisted at times by trains, offered rides, and a rental car) while thinking about his life and his place in the Universe. 

We learn not only about his religious contemplations, but also about his blisters and torn ligaments.  We learn about making a wrong turn and adding miles to a day's hike.  We learn about having to climb a final hill at the end of the day, when you're at the end of your rope, to reach your hostel. 

We also learn about his family -- and about Egan's life as a family member -- as first his son, then his daughter, and then his wife join him for various short stages of his odyssey.   After several days of hiking with his son, Egan is movingly depressed and bereft when his son has to leave as planned.  Hiking alone for weeks on end sounds more fun in advance than it proves in reality.

As his pilgrimage nears its end -- yes, he makes it to Rome -- Egan decides he has made some progress.  He has edged back toward the Church, but not all the way.  He believes there is something we call God out there.  He remains skeptical -- wisely -- of many claimed miracles, despite his own perceived experience with one.  He concludes that he believes in the Resurrection -- too many eyewitnesses had been willing to suffer death rather than deny their observations.

But what cinched it for me was something the young Lutheran minister in Geneva said about the message of Easter from Jesus, something that echoes Jewish sentiment on what happens after death:  "Nothing can keep my love in a grave."

And, therefore, death is not final:  "The Via Francigena has taught me otherwise."

Nothing in his conclusions is offered as an argument, designed to persuade, anymore than he tries to persuade the reader to imitate him by climbing over the Alps.  His approach to faith is highly personal, determined by his own unique experiences and by his own subjective interpretation of those experiences.  But, unless your mind is closed on the subject, his path part way back to his childhood faith is as interesting as his path through the heart of Europe. . 

He concludes by summing up his experience trodding the indistinct parallel pathways that make up the Via Francigega, as well as his path toward God:

There is no way.  The way is made by walking."

Moss, beautiful moss.

Not my roof.

Moss.  Soft green moss.  Known to us all as "non-vascular plants in the land plant division Bryophyta."

Moss should be the state plant of Washington, although the rhododendron is admittedly more flashy.  Most of my lawn, upon close inspection, is moss.  The vertical surfaces of my front steps are coated with moss.  My car sprouts moss -- resistant to car wash scrubbing -- in every area where water is apt to collect.  The trees have moss on their leeward surfaces -- a compass for the canny hiker.  

A local joke is that you can tell a Northwesterner by the moss between his toes.

And, of course, my roof has moss.  Aye, there's the rub.

It's not really noticeable moss, aside from one small area over the entrance.  My moss looks nothing like the illustration above.  Expensive houses in expensive neighborhoods also have moss -- I was checking the situation out today as I walked through Madison Park.  My moss, by comparison with some, is hardly noticeable.

But my insurer noticed it.  Do something about it, they told me, with the self-confidence that comes from knowing more about what's good for you and for your property than you do yourself.  Do something about it before your policy comes up for renewal, they admonished, not so subtly suggesting reprisals.  Look at it, they say, sending me photos they took of my roof.

Good grief!

Yeah, I know.  Moss isn't good for roofs.  Mainly because it can, as it grows deeper and plusher, shove the shingles up, allowing water to seep in and promote rotting -- rotting of the shingles themselves and of the structural elements underneath.  They're telling me for my own good. And theirs.  

I've contacted three roof specialists to give me estimates.  I'm sure it won't be cheap.  Finding a cheap contractor is like finding a cheap physician -- it makes you wonder.

But it's too bad.  Moss looks cool, just as ivy on your chimney looks cool.  Another no-no.  Moss looks soothing, and reminds one of ancient manses in rural England, perched above a babbling beck.  Cozy.  Places with a history.  Like "The Mill on the Moss."

Oh.  It was the Floss?  Oh well, same difference.  

Soon my roof will be mossless.  But in Seattle, nothing stays mossless for long.  

It'll be back.  You can't keep a good Bryophyta down.

Visit to the Burke

In my four years as an undergraduate, not once did I ever set foot within the magnificent university museum that stood in the middle of campus.  Nor in the years since, after many returns to the campus in California as an alumnus, have I ever ventured within its sacred doors.

Even more remarkable, during my interminable years of graduate school and then law school at the University of Washington,  I never visited the Burke Museum, also known as the State Museum of Natural History and Culture, just inside the main entrance to the school.  Nor, during decades living near the university -- and, since my retirement, walking through the campus almost daily -- have I ever made that effort. 

When plans were made to tear down the old building, and construct a larger building nearby, I vowed to visit the Burke before its demise.  Again, I failed.  Down came the old building, and finally, in October, the new larger building -- fronting on Fifteenth Avenue N.E. -- opened to the public.

And today -- at long last -- I visited it.

I was a little disappointed in some ways -- I'm not sure exactly what I expected -- but in other ways also pleasantly surprised.  The building has three floors, with a couple of classrooms in the basement.  As the alternative name suggests, the focus of the museum is strongly on first the geologic and biological history of the Pacific Northwest -- from the time the continents were first taking shape, through the various paleozoic, mesozoic, and cenozoic eras, up until the present day; and secondly on the lives and cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Northwest.

Expect dinosaurs!  Huge skeletons!  And expect Salish and Tlingit peoples' artifacts -- from totem poles to jewelry and clothing.

The museum building is dedicated partly to public display of exhibits, and includes the mandatory coffee shop and gift shop, but a large portion of the building is set aside for actual work and study by students of archeology.  Work areas are scattered throughout the building, separated from public access only by large windows through which the public can watch the meticulous work in which archeologists and students engage.  This is a fascinating approach, although it requires that exhibit areas be somewhat separated from each other.  I suspect that the windows require students to remember that they're "on stage" at all times -- no putting your feet up on the desk and reading the paper.

A large percentage of the public present this morning, while I was there, consisted of school children, bused in for field trips.  The museum has many alcoves where kids can sit on the floor and listen to docents explain what they are about to see.  The kids -- today, at least, mainly in the early grades -- seemed both excited and attentive to the discussions.

There does appear quite a bit of display space available for future exhibits.  I probably will return in about a year to see whether and how the museum displays have enlarged.

Advent

Tomorrow, at least for the more liturgical churches, is the Second Sunday of Advent.  Advent is the traditional four-week period of preparation for the celebration of Christmas. 

As the poet/essayist Jeffrey Essmann writes this week,* the lessons or readings scheduled for Advent possess a certain strangeness, an emphasis on the voice of the prophets of the Old Testament -- prophets who themselves were often strange in many ways.

It is a voice that echoes in the sacred silence at the very heart of us, and Advent is a season of stillness so that we my pick up the resonance of -- and be drawn to God by -- that echo.

By coincidence, while looking through choral music on YouTube a few weeks ago, I hit upon a performance by the massive National Youth Choir of Scotland, singing "The Lord of Sea and Sky" -- a "top-hit" Catholic hymn, dating back only to 1981, that is also sung in many Protestant churches.  It has a catchy tune that sticks in your mind, which probably contributes to its popularity.

Play "The Lord of Sea and Sky"

The song has three verses, each representing a frustrated God who finds himself confronted with a human race that refuses to acknowledge or accept his gifts of love.  "Who will bear my light to them?  Whom shall I send?" God asks. The refrain is the congregation's response:

Here I am, Lord.  Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me,
I will hold your people in my heart.

The hymn -- especially the refrain -- is based on the Old Testament story of the boy Samuel, apprenticed to the aging priest Eli. Samuel was awakened three times during the night by a voice calling his name.  Each time he dutifully awoke Eli to ask what he wanted.  After the third visitation, Eli told Samuel that it was God who was calling, and if awakened again, Samuel should reply, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." And that's what he did, at age eleven, and God replied, leading to Samuel's ultimately becoming one of the great prophets of Israel.

A memorable story for me, because when I was about nine, I was awakened by, I believed, someone calling my name.  We had recently learned the story of Samuel in Sunday School, and in the dark I got up on my young knees in bed and spoke some version of "Speak, Lord ..." 

Sadly, there was no reply.

But God speaks his love in silence, as well as by voice, as Essmann points out, because love can be conveyed through experiences other than words.  Essmann recalls his boyhood experiences, going out fishing with his own naturally-taciturn father:

We baited our hooks and pursued our perch in near monastic silence. I might occasionally have a question (Why do loons sound so funny?); ...  But, in general, we were silent -- silent and happy.  I watched my bobber bounce and totter in the morning sun; heard a tiny errant wave lap the side of the boat.  And I adored my father.  Those moments of sitting quietly in the presence of a loving father taught me just about everything I needed to know about prayer, about heaven.  Today, whatever minor ecstasies I may enjoy are redolent of freshwater lake and worms.

Essmann concludes his essay, reminding us that even in the Old Testament, God didn't usually speak to Israel directly, for example out of a burning bush.  He spoke through his prophets, through human beings. Today, each of us is called to be God's prophet and his voice -- to each other and to the world.  Each sharing God's love in his or her own small way, by words or through deeds, no matter how inept or unsuitable we may feel ourselves, just as timid eleven-year-old Samuel himself responded.

"I have heard you calling in the night."

Happy Advent.  And Merry Christmas!
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*America (December 9, 2019). 

Scaling El Cap

Harding, Merry, and Whitmore
Arrival at the top of El Capitan

Wayne Merry, a member of the first team to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, died on October 30 from prostate cancer at the age of 88, according to today's New York Times.

The 1958 climb sticks in my mind because it occurred during my first quarter of college, and because the last few days were heavily reported by our college daily newspaper.  Heavily reported, because this was not a two- or three-day climb, like many of today's climbs of El Cap, but the conclusion of a 45-day marathon over a period of 18 months.

I was well familiar with reading about climbs at the time, but only with the sort of slogs uphill that had characterized the the conquest of Everest five years earlier by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.  So far as I recall, I'd never heard of rock climbing, where the object is to choose an apparently nonclimbable rock face -- and climb it.

Merry was one of three members in the team -- all from the Bay Area.  The others were George Whitmore and Warren Harding.  Harding died of liver failure in 2002, at the age of 77.  Whitmore, now the lone survivor, lives on in Fresno at the age of 88.

Purists today -- and many back in 1958 -- insisted that climbs be made without hardware that disturbed the natural environment.  Merry and his friends aimed only at making the climb, by whatever means seemed necessary.  This meant pounding pitons into cracks in the rock, or using expansion bolts pounded into the solid rock where pitons could not be used, connecting climbing ropes that were left in place, and returning to the ground at night.  Each day's climb consisted of climbing the ropes already in place, and pounding pitons and placing ropes to the next higher point.

Harding, in a 2002 interview for the Los Angeles Times, recalled that they had used 600 pitons, and that he himself had drilled holes for another 150 expansion bolts.  Rock climbing hardware as known today was not readily available, and for part of the climb they made their own pitons out of the legs from old wood stoves.  In a 2016 interview, Merry noted:

I wouldn't hang a picture from them today, but back then we hung our lives on them.

But winter was coming, and in early November the team decided to "race" to the top, without returning to the ground.  They remained on the face, day and night, for the next nine days, arriving at the top on November 12, 1958.  The excitement and publicity -- at least in our campus newspaper -- almost equaled that given the first landing on the moon.

I've never rock climbed, or been tempted to do so.  I'm not totally risk-averse, but I like to think that my rationality works hand in hand with my inborn acrophobia.  But memories of the first El Capitan climb remind us of a time when the natural world still had many challenges to be conquered, when it offered adventurers a multitude of opportunities for "firsts." 

Many kinds of "adventure" will always exist, of course, not all of which require hanging by a rope thousands of feet above the ground in freezing temperatures.  And young people invent their own adventures where necessity might not seem to require them. Today, free solo climbing, where climbers climb not only with no hardware, like expansion bolts, but without ropes for protection -- is increasingly popular among young people.

In the future, exploration of the planets will provide the human race collectively plenty of opportunities for adventure.  But one person, or a team of three, confronting a sheer rock face, provides the individual with adventure of a direct and personal nature, an adventure unlike the thrill we get watching a rocket leave earth on the screens of our television sets.
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PS -- In the summer of 2018, two California climbers, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, set a new speed record on the same route up El Capitan: 1 hour, 58 minutes, 7 seconds.