On-line groceries

On February 16, I have my second Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine shot.  Two weeks later, on March 2, I will be as immune from the virus as it's possible for me to be under today's medical knowledge.  

Will life then be normal again, as it was the last time the calendar reached March 2?  That remains to be seen.  Pundits insist that the "old normal" is gone for ever.  To insist otherwise is like yearning to drive again a 1955 Buick Roadmaster, powered with 29.9 cents per gallon gasoline.  You can't flounder around in the same river twice, and all that.

What about grocery shopping for example?  A year ago, I ate breakfast out about four times a week, in a semi-fast food establishment next door to a Safeway.  Did I need any groceries?  If so, after breakfast I'd make a stop at Safeway to pick up a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk.  And, once inside, anything else that attracted my attention.

Now?  Not so much.  I seem to lose my appetite when shopping in a potential cloud of viruses.  I know, I know.  Most experts say that grocery shopping is safe if you wear a mask and complete your purchases in fifteen minutes.  But I'm not sold on my mask as a total defense against viruses; I'm leery of the presence of others who unexpectedly do not wear masks; and I suspect there are a lot of unresolved questions about the effect of viruses borne by aerosols.  And I can't always get in and out of the store in fifteen minutes.

So as early as last March, I adopted the practice of on-line shopping.  Once a week I make a list of what I'll need in the coming week and spend a quarter hour or so clicking in my order on-line and paying for it on my Visa card.  Then, at the chosen time and date, I drive to Safeway -- a different one, about a ten-minute drive on I-5 from my house, up on N.E. 74th.  I telephone a number to announce my presence, click the lever to pop my trunk, and then -- quite promptly -- my week's shopping is brought out to the car and loaded in my trunk.  And I'm off.  No human contact at all, aside from a friendly wave.

Am I anxious to return to the old normal?  Not really.  This system is pretty sweet.  When she was 85, my writer-heroine Ursula Le Guin lamented (1) her failure to ever get a driver's license, and (2) her increased inability to walk long distances free from sciatic pain.  She had to walk several blocks to the nearest grocery.  She could do it, but she couldn't just dash down to the grocery every time she ran out of bread.

I've had to go back to the routine of my childhood, when we did the shopping once a week.  No running down to see what looks fresh and good for dinner or to pick up a quart of milk -- everything has to be planned ahead and written down.  If you don't get the cat litter on Tuesday, well, you don't have any cat litter till next Tuesday, and the cat may have some questions for you.

Exactly, but it doesn't bother me.  Maybe it would bother me if, like Ursula, I were physically incapable of making a fast trip to the store.  I would miss my ability to choose.  But nothing limits me to one shopping trip per week.  It's just a bit of a hassle, and when I order on-line I naturally think ahead less fuzzily than I do when wandering the aisles of the store after enjoying a full breakfast.  I prefer limiting myself to one shopping trip a week.  Making my weekly shopping list for on-line shopping imposes a certain amount of organization on my generally disorganized life.

It's rather satisfying.  I like it.

So when March 2 arrives, I will welcome the return to many forms of "normalcy." -- like feeling safe once again to travel by train or plane, for example.  But -- if Safeway continues to allow me to buy groceries on-line indefinitely, without service charge, I will happily do so.

I always hate being forced to change my routines -- but not all changes turn our badly.

Classy arm jabs

We will soon have a new social elite, according to the New York Times.  Or already have one, perhaps.  Those who have received Covid-19 vaccinations.

Fearless mingling at social events.  Fine dining in restaurants.  Foreign travel. Hugs and kisses. 

"Likes" on Facebook!  Bragging rights on dating apps.  As one smug vaccinatee has already claimed:  "Dating me is like dating a golden retriever ... who's been vaccinated."  Good on you, dude.

A spokesman for a dating app claims:

Basically, getting the vaccine is the hottest thing you could be doing on a dating app right now.

Well!  Time, I guess, to announce that I'll be receiving the Pfizer vaccine at 3:50 p.m. PST today.  Let the good times roll.  Let the party begin.

And no, I don't belong to a British club, charging dues of £25,000 per year -- the one that's flying its members to the United Arab Emirates for immediate vaccinations, bypassing the slow, stodgy National Health Service.   I'll just be checking in with my friendly local health provider, with Medicare footing the bill.

The Times article didn't disclose how many of those flush U.A.E. visitors were suffering from debilitating side effects after their shots -- a question that today poses some urgency for me -- but its members are spending the tedious weeks between first and second vaccinations by taking camel rides across the desert. 

That's good enough for me.

Looking forward to looking back

As a freshman at Stanford, especially my first term, I was desperately homesick.  And yes, it's possible to love the place in which you're living and to be homesick at the same time.  I know.   I lived through it.

For some reason, the men's freshman dorms didn't have mail delivery, as did the other dormitories.  We had to go to the campus post office and pick up mail sent to us "General Delivery."  It wasn't really a burden, as the old post office -- the tiny, old, Spanish mission style building no longer exists -- was located in the center of campus, next to the student union and across the road from the old bookstore.  So each day, between classes, I'd drop by and pick up my mail, eagerly hoping for a letter from home, along with my home town newspaper which I subscribed to.

I vividly remember one morning, during an hour between classes, sitting on a ledge near the main library, perusing my day's mail.  A good day: my mail included a letter from my mother.  After reading her letter, reading between the lines where appropriate, and scanning the rest of my mail, I just continued relaxing in the warm California sun.  Unusual even for California, from September until I returned home for Christmas that fall, we had not one drop of rain.  It was unbelievable to a kid from the Northwest Corner, and I sat with the sun at my back enjoying it, even while wishing I were home where my folks and siblings were "having fun" without me.  Although I'm sure they were tired of rainy Washington, and may well have been envying me.

As I enjoyed both the sun and my longing for home, I had something of an epiphany.  It dawned on me that some day, by the time I was, say, thirty, I'd be longing for the life I was then having at the university.  Not just the California sunshine, but the ability to sit in the mid-morning sun, unconstrained by office life, staring off into space.  I guess I foresaw my future life to be that of a worker bee: eight hours a day sitting at a desk doing  unfathonable, but deathly boring, tasks.

I envisioned that "future me" looking back on "college me" sitting near the main library, staring at the fountain in front of me, surrounded by bright fellow students rushing back and forth on their way to class, and sadly wishing I were then where I was now.  An office worker feeling homesick for college life.  Homesick even for the experience in college of feeling homesick for my childhood home. Homesick even for the experience in college of thinking about how someday I would be an office worker homesick for myself in college worrying about how I'd feel in my future office.

These convoluted thoughts come to mind because I've been reading André Aciman's just-published new book of essays, Homo Irrealis.  In his 2007 memoir, Out of Egypt, and in a number of subsequent essays, Aciman describes how his large extended family, along with all other Jews, was expelled from Egypt in 1965, when Aciman was fourteen.  Unlike the adults, Aciman was fed up with Egypt, and longed to live in his idealized picture of France.    

But everyone, even he, found themselves thinking about how nostalgic they would feel, once in Europe, thinking back on life in Egypt.  As he writes in the foreword to his new essay collection:

[I]f we spoke about our anticipated nostalgia frequently enough, it was perhaps because evoking this looming nostalgia was our way of immunizing ourselves against it before it sprang on us in Europe.  We practiced nostalgia, looking for things and places that would unavoidably remind us of the Alexandria we were about to lose.  We were, in a sense, already incubating nostalgia for a place some of us, particularly the young,, did not love and couldn't wait to leave behind.

This sense of nostalgia, compounded and complicated in numerous ways, runs as a constant theme throughout Aciman's novels and, especially, essays.  It's perhaps his primary theme, one he has embellished upon to a dizzying extent.  For me, it's always been a pervasive feeling, but not one I obsess over to the extent that Aciman does (or, at least, as his writing does).  In one of his earlier essays, he tells us how, as a New York father, he walked every day to the corner to meet his sons' school bus.  Each day, he imagined the future sense of loss he'd experience once the boys had left for college -- again, intentionally immunizing himself now against the full impact of that loss when it would occur in reality.  

As a freshman, my feeling about college life was a mixture of the disparate feelings about Alexandria felt by various members of Aciman's family -- I loved the university, but my love was alloyed by my longing for home and family.  But my realization that someday I would be nostalgic for the life I was then experiencing, not altogether happily, was simply a realization -- I wasn't intentionally immunizing myself against future nostalgia.

And yet, I fully understand and empathize with Aciman's nostalgia obsession, as that obsession occurs throughout his life and writings.  I never looked back from that feared office job on my greater happiness as a student.  By the time -- later in life that I had expected as a freshman -- I was sitting in an office, I was doing work that I actually enjoyed, even enjoyed rather intensely.  But I've always looked back on freshman life at Stanford -- epitomized in my mind by that memory of reading my mail in the sun, by the main library -- as a golden period in my life.  I look back on it that way even though I have never forgotten the longing for home as well as the normal stresses and fears of student life.  

In a sense, for me, even if arguably not so much for Aciman, what I now look back on with pleasure is simply the experience of being an 18-year-old.  And, in the same way, what was I really looking back on with nostalgia when I was a student of 18?  I've read, somewhere, a psychologist's remark that when college kids, in the early months after leaving home, feel homesick, they are only partly nostalgic for a place and for people.  Primarily, they grieve for the loss of their own childhood.

I have a soft spot in my heart for that young freshman, thinking his Aciman-esque thoughts about the past and the future.   Aciman himself has a black and white photo of himself at 14, taken two or three weeks before he left Alexandria forever.  

I look at the picture of the boy posing for his father with the sun in his face, and he looks at me and asks, What have you done to me?  I look at him, and I ask myself: What in God's name have I done with my life?  Who is this me who got cut off and never became me, the way I cut him off and never became him?

Aciman is wondering what his life would have been like if he could have remained in Egypt.  But his conversation with his 14-year-old self is the conversation we all have with the child we once were, the child that we vividly remember being, yet the person we no longer are.  The boy's searching question, "What have you done to me?" and our response, "What in God's name have I done with my life?" 

Emerging from the Trump Presidency: Part Two

This is a summary of the second of two streamed lectures by Professor David Domke, presented under the series title Emerging from the Trump Presidency.  I summarized the first lecture yesterday.

Domke's second lecture was partly an analysis of the present state of political life in America, and partly a spirited call to action.  It began with a lengthy quotation from Dr. Carol Anderson's book White Rage, pointing out how much this country could have achieved for citizens of all races if we had all quietly accepted and implemented the 1954 anti-segregation ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and had greeted the election of Obama in 2008 -- greeted his election not necessarily because everyone agreed with his policies, but as a symbol of our nation's increasing acceptance of American diversity.  

Rather than confront all change with "massive resistance."

Domke used Dr. Anderson's words as a springboard to support his conclusion that, after years of his having worked primarily to build bridges between left and right, he now concludes that today's world requires us to channel our efforts into securing permanent political gains -- not in just being "nice."

Professor Domke discussed four factors that endanger democracy in today's world.

1.  White Christian nationalism, always simmering beneath the surface, has been "unleashed," made acceptable by Trump and his allies.  The symbolism of the attack on the Capitol -- led primarily by white males.  Since 2008, the percentage of Americans who call themselves Christian has fallen from 54 percent to 44 percent.  Evangelical Christians feel besieged, which has led to an interweaving of political and religious identification.  Domke feels that we need to hold white right-wing Christians "accountable" for their words and acts.

2.  A massive political division between urban and rural Americans.  This division was made evident by Sarah Palin's campaign for the vice presidency in 2008.  But the percentage of Americans who are neither rural nor urban, but suburban, is 51 percent.  These are today's swing voters, voters who Trump thought would be his automatically in response to his language intended to scare suburban women into voting Republican.  He failed to realize that suburban voters are rapidly becoming more diverse and liberal, a factor that offsets to some extent the danger of the urban/rural divide.

 3.  The "siloed" media environment.  This began with cable TV in the 1980s, worsened with Fox News in the 1990s, and has become extreme with the development of internet news sources.  Surveys show that Democrats "trust" three news sources by over 60 percent each -- CNN, ABC, and NBC, with CBS coming in just under 60 percent.  Republicans trust only Fox News by over 60 percent -- 67 percent, actually.  The next highest in trust is ABC with 37 percent!   Trump allowed himself to be interviewed almost exclusively by Fox.  To erode this "silo-ing," a president needs to open himself to questioning by unfriendly as well as allied sources, regardless of how uncomfortable that may be.  He needs to talk to those who don't naturally hear him. 

4.  "Diametric" difference in governing wishes.  When asked (1) if the Democratic president should work with Republicans, even if some unpleasant compromises had to be made, (2) or stand up for your principles, even if not as much gets done, Democrats favored (1) by 62 percent to 37 percent.  Asked the similar question with respect to a Republican Congress's dealing with a Democratic president, Republicans voted for (2) by 59 percent to 38 percent.  Party leaders follow the wishes of their constituents. 

Domke remarked that these four factors were merely observations of problems we face today.  He hasn't developed any solutions.

As for the future, Domke gave his call to action.  In 2016, and even worse in the 2014 mid-terms, the Democrats were hurt by three factors.

1.  We weren't sufficiently alert to the forces favoring the Republicans: e.g., Hillary's personality in 2016, same-sex marriage.

2.  We weren't sufficiently equipped to fight even if we had been alert.

3.  And our forces were not sufficiently mobilized, even if we'd been equipped..

Democrats made remarkable improvement in all three area by 2018 and again by 2020, as the 2020 results in Georgia and Arizona, for example, suggest.  In 2020, the nation saw the highest percentage turn-out of voters since 1900, to a large degree by new Democratic voters.  We can't let up.  

Domke showed a clip of today's ceremony at the Mall honoring the victims of Covid-19.  It was an excellent and moving display, and was done with an appropriate objective.  We need to do more of that under Biden's presidency.

Finally, although the Democrats have very narrow control of both houses of Congress, insofar as possible we should try to achieve victories in four areas before the 2022 elections:

1.  Voting rights legislation.  For example, adoption of the "For the People Act," passed by the House but bottled up in the Senate by Mitch.

2.  Turn the South blue.  Since 2008, the Democrats have made steady gains in flipping red Southern states blue.  Texas and Florida aren't there yet, but we should keep working on them.

3.  Fortify Congressional representation, governorships, and legislatures in the North, especially in the industrial Great Lakes states.

4.  Choose "optimism."  This sounds a little airy, but Domke says that optimism doesn't mean a prediction of a happy future, but an "ethical choice" to assume that success is possible and to work hard toward it.  Doing so is how we can -- as MLK put it -- bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

In summary, we need to get off our duffs.  Not just assume that a Biden win means ultimate victory.

Emerging from the Trump Presidency: Part One

David Domke, professor and former dean of the University of Washington Department of Communication, and founder and director of Common Power, streamed the first of a two-part post-election lecture series this evening.  As mentioned in my earlier Domke posts, I'm offering what is essentially my summary of his lecture, without critical analysis, and doing so for my own future reference more than for your entertainment.  However, I'll be delighted if you enjoy reading my summary.

Domke began his lecture by expressing the uppermost thought that virtually all of his audience had in mind -- Just 40 More Hours of Trump!  And warning us that winning the presidency was not a culmination, but only the beginning, of our efforts.  This is no time for slacking off.

This lecture was Domke's study of similar moments in America's past, and an analysis of what history suggests will happen in the future.  He recalled to our minds the "Southern Manifesto" of March 12, 1955 -- signed by 19 of the senators from the eleven states of the Confederacy.  (Only Al Gore, Sr. and Kefauver, of Tennessee, and LBJ of Texas didn't sign -- and LBJ was talked out of signing only because the Southern bloc saw in him a potential Southern president.  The Manifesto was a reaction to Brown v. Bd. of Education, urging that integration be resisted by all lawful means, and in the hope that reasonable readers in the North would help the signers and thus avoid forceful resistance by less prudent Southernors.  Senator Byrd coined the phrase "massive resistance," a phrase that has emerged once more since November's election.

Domke pointed out that there have been three periods in American history where social changes resulted in progressive movements, movements that were strongly resisted by parts of the population, and whose fervor eventually died away.  The net change in each case was one of progress.  To effect that progress, large numbers of individuals had to work together, each helping the country inch slowly into the future.

Those three movements were:

1.  The mid 1840s to the late 1860s -- Abolition and women's rights.

2.  Late 1890s to early 1920s -- Progressive movement and women's rights.

3.  Late 1940s to early 1970s -- Civil rights movement and women's rights.

We are now in the midst of a fourth movement, beginning in the mid 2000s, focusing on the pluralization of American society.

Each of these movements was met by strong resistance:

1.  The Civil War, and the post-War white terrorism.

2.  The temperance movement was co-opted by men, giving the women one of their major social goals (Prohibition), but doing so under male ownership.  The Ku Klux Klan.  The Immigration Act of 1924, limiting immigration from each nation to its percentage of the population in 1890.

3.  Hostility mainly to Blacks, but also to all coloreds and women.  The Religious Right -- flipping the South to the Republican party, and laying the roots of today's White Nationalism.

4.  Today -- nativism and xenophobia, voter suppression, anti-abortion, voter ID laws, and anti-immigration.

Each of these four "progressive" eras was marked by technical improvements in communication that were of use to both side:

1.  Telegraph

2.  Film and radio.

3.  Television

4.. Cell phones, internet, Twitter.

How much longer will today's period of turmoil and conflict continue.  Historically, each period has lasted about twenty years.  This suggests we will continue to be at each other's throats until 2025 or 2030.  Domke says this is good, because we have a lot that needs to be accomplished, and it can be accomplished only at the price of stirring up opposition.

The first three periods were marked by progress promoted by Congress through legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and approval of constitutional amendments.  Our present period has been unique because of the absence of any serious legislation, aside from Obamacare.  The reason can be stated in two words:  "Mitch McConnell."  

He notes that Obama's presidency stirred up enormous opposition, not only because of health care but because of the symbolism of his being a black president.  Note how the rioters in D.C. were virtually all white males.  Progressives have a lot of work to do, and it will be difficult.  But Domke is optimistic. 

He ended the night's lecture with clips showing CNN's Van Johnson reporting the elections of 2016 and 2020.  Stunned in 2016, hoping that Trump would realize how many Americans not in his base feared his leadership, and urging Trump to take firm steps to show that he served as president of the entire country, not just his supporters.  In 2020, when CNN declared Biden the winner, Johnson broke down on camera, describing how devastating the past four years had been for all Americans who weren't white.

Domke's second and final lecture will be tomorrow.

Decline and fall

I guess Ancient Rome has always fascinated me.  I don't remember exactly when I first began thinking about it -- maybe in sixth grade when our social studies class had units on Greece and Rome.  But I remember my fascination, in ninth grade, daydreaming over reconstructions of the ancient Roman Forum that were pictured in our first year Latin text -- Latin for Americans.  If only I could have lived back then, I thought.  Life in Rome was so ... so ... so civilized!

This, of course, was many years before I saw the movie, Gladiator, where Roman soldiers crucified the wife and pre-teen son of a general who refused to pledge personal loyalty to the corrupt Emperor Commodus.  (I make here no allusion to anything involving Donald Trump.) 

I was fascinated by Rome, but not really obsessed.  But I do remember how my brother and I invented a game that we spread out over our entire bedroom floor -- a variation, I suppose, on our game of Mamba (q.v. 3-11-20)  -- a game we called "Rome."  No, I don't recall the details, but I assure you there were neither gladiatorial fights nor lions fighting Christians in the Colosseum.

At the university, I took a course on the history of the Roman Republic, which convinced me that we know very little about the Republic, especially the early Republic, aside from what we can read in the histories written by later Roman historians themselves.  Let's just admit that it's very doubtful that Rome was actually founded by Romulus, after doing away with his twin Remus, in about 750 B.C.

I took a refresher course in Latin as an upperclassman, in preparation for possible graduate study of the early Middle Ages, which can also be viewed as the Late Roman Empire.  I now envy my insouciance in those days regarding the question of how I planned to make a living once I had my freshly minted doctorate in hand.

All of which is prelude to my divulging that I today persuaded myself to sign up for an on-line course entitled "The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome."  The course is offered by an organization whose name you probably know, but which I'll omit revealing.  The course consists of 24 lectures that will be given by a bona fide historian from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay  I can watch each lecture on-line, or play them off CDs that they will send me.

Wow, you must be paying a fortune, you exclaim!  No, no, I smugly respond.  The "tuition" has been marked down from $269.95 to a mere $35.  

Name brand luxury items are rarely reduced significantly in price, because of fear of cheapening the brand.  And this sounds a bit like an offer to sell a necklace with gems that are "even more beautiful than emeralds and rubies," for only $49.95.  But for 35 bucks I'm willing to take a chance.  

The lecture titles are listed, all 24 of them, and range from standard histories of the early emperors, through and beyond the fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century, and into the Byzantine period, and "late antiquity."  An entire lecture is even devoted to the question "When and Why Did the Roman Empire Fall?"  Edward Gibbon chewed on that question over the course  of six hefty volumes; our one-half hour lecture will boil the question down to its essentials, I presume.

I hope to be diligent and listen to all 24 lectures.  If I find I love them, I'll comment on this blog.  Otherwise, I'll quietly write off my $35 investment, and we'll say no more.

Unmasked

At the end of last September, I went for a walk around the University of Washington campus; I blogged a little travelogue about my adventure.  I noted that classes were about to begin, and that the campus -- despite the limitations imposed by the pandemic -- was finally showing slightly more signs of life than it had shown during a long, desultory summer.

Still, dorms were only partially occupied, most classes would be virtually presented, and I remarked on other differences between September 2020 and past Septembers.  I was impressed by the way that almost everyone I saw was wearing a mask, and was observing -- more or less strictly -- some form of social distancing.  

The state was then reporting a 14-day running average of about 200 new cases of Covid-19 per day.  That alone seemed adequate reason to be careful.

Today, there were many more kids on campus.  Not just attending laboratory and other necessarily in-person classes, but essentially whooping it up outside.  The new playing fields behind Hutchinson Hall were filled with impromptu soccer games, other athletic endeavors, and students just sitting around chatting.  Red Square was nowhere near as crowded as usual for January, but there were still plenty of students walking around, dodging skateboarders trying out tricks on the steps and flat surfaces.  Fellow pedestrians suddenly loomed up on shady paths that for nearly a year had been refuges of solitude, pedestrians who now needed to be avoided.

And fewer -- considerably fewer -- than half the persons I saw on campus today were wearing masks.  Some who "wore" masks were using them essentially as chin warmers, freeing their mouths and noses for easier breathing and talking.  

The state's 14-day running average?  It's now 2,892 new cases of Covid-19 per day. 

Despite a 14-fold increase in new cases -- and, as a result, a chance of encountering someone shedding viruses that is 14 times what it was in September -- many in the university crowd seemed convinced that the pandemic was over.  That maybe the end of the Trump era also meant the end of Mr. Covid-19 as well.  

Or maybe it's just hard to ask us Americans -- especially young Americans -- to have an attention span that exceeds more than a month or two.  "Oh, I'm so tired of thinking about pandemics.  It was kind of fun for a while, but I am so BORED.  Let's go get a beer." 

Not reassuring. It makes me feel even more nervous each day as I step out the door to take my supposedly health-guaranteeing walk.  A walk through -- I now imagine -- an increasingly dense cloud of viruses!

I'll certainly sign up for a vaccination as soon as it's available.  Those students seemed like nice kids -- I hope they do, too.

Thoth and the baboon

I've seen pictures of Thoth all my life, without paying much attention.  His figure was just another odd image in a vague Egyptian background.  Probably first spotted in some Abbot and Costello movie, right?  But unlike Greek and Roman gods, I never thought much about him or about other gods of his Egyptian ilk.

But I understand he was pretty cool, bird head and all.  As Wikipedia informs me, he was the god of wisdom, writing, hieroglyphs, science, magic, art, judgment, and the dead.  Pretty good stuff.  A bit like Apollo, who we talked about last month.  But Wikipedia says he is actually the Egyptian equivalent of the Greek god Hermes, who in turn is compared in some respects to the Roman god Mercury.

Thoth had some weighty duties, like maintaining the universe, arbitrating inter-god disputes, and judging the dead.

But he apparently started out as god of the Moon (like the Greek god Diana).    The Moon's crescent shape, reflected in the shape of the ibis's bill, apparently led to the ibis being considered his manifestation on Earth -- hence the ibis head in his frequent portrayal.  Millions of ibis, after death, were therefore wrapped up as mummies.

But another manifestation was the baboon.  Why?  Wikipedia says only, cryptically: "Sometimes, he was depicted as a baboon holding up a crescent moon."

It is Thoth's identification with the baboon that gave rise to this illuminating blog entry.  This week's issue of The Economist discusses the economic (of course) consequences of Thoth as baboon.  Egypt apparently had plenty of ibis of its own, but was short of baboons.  The nearest plentiful supply of baboons was in present-day Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia -- then part of the Kingdom of Punt.  Egypt developed the sea skills necessary to sail to Punt primarily because of the lure of baboons -- like gold and spices lured the Spaniards and Portuguese to America.  Experts say that this Egypt to Punt sea route, over a period of more than a thousand years, became the first leg of what eventually became the spice route.  

Other goods also drew Egyptian sailors to Punt, such as incense, but baboons were the big draw.

I've seen baboons.  I've met them rushing down a trail past me in Zambia.  I've awakened on a pleasant morning in Kenya, finding my tent surrounded by outraged baboons, yelling and screaming.  Whether at me and my audacity for existing, or at each other, I'm not sure.  But, at the time, I feared the worst.  

They're rather ugly animals, both in looks and in conduct.  Ill-behaved.  Uncouth.  It's hard to imagine their being valued over gold or incense.  Or being deemed manifestations of the god of wisdom, science, writing, and art.

But then I suppose other cultures have worshipped gods (or men) who were even less obviously admirable than a baboon.

Rocannon's World

Rocannon is an ethnologist of mixed ancestry.  One of his parents was from Terra (Earth), the other from the planet Hain.  He is on the little-known planet Fomalhaut II as part of a scientific expedition from the League of All Worlds, studying the three known intelligent life forms on the planet.  His docked space ship, with everyone else aboard, had been destroyed -- presumably by forces from a rebel planet in the League.  Rocannon is the only survivor.

Rocannon is in the land of the Angyar, the dominant species on the planet, which appears to be at a medieval level of development.  A kind and tactful man, he has made close friends with leaders of the kingdom.  They become alarmed by a number of devastating attacks on towns and villages, attacks with no apparent rational goal and uncertain perpetrators.  Rocannon and Mogien, a young Lord of the Angyars, set off on an expedition to discover the source of the attacks.

Fomalhaut II is eight light years from the nearest League planet.  The League has ships that can travel at virtually the speed of light.  Even so, it would take eight years to bring another ship, although -- because of relativity -- it would seem only weeks or months to those aboard.  But Rocannon has lost the normal means of communication -- the ansible, which is an instantaneous form of communication not subject to the relativistic limits to which space travelers are subject -- which was destroyed with his space ship.  He's out of contact, and on his own.     

Sadly, I did not discover Ursula K. Le Guin's works until after her death in 2018.  I began by reading the first of her Earthsea cycle books, A Wizard of Earthsea, and was hooked.  I read all six, one after another, a year ago.  I followed up that series with two of her better known works, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.  I've written in this blog about all of these books.

The latter two books are part of what is called the Hainish cycle -- consisting of a number of novels and short stories.  The story of each book is self-contained, but they all assume a universe where human life first evolved on a planet called Hain.  Hain colonized a large number of planets, including Earth (which explains where we came from!).  Hain's civilization then declined, and the colonized planets lost contact with each other, or even a memory of each other and of their own origins.  The descendants on each planet remained humanoid in form and nature, with a certain amount of differentiation from planet to planet.  Their civilizations began advancing once again, and they gradually re-connected and formed the League. 

The book in which Le Guin describes the earliest stage in the confederation of Hain planets is The Dispossessed, but the earliest book actually written by Le Guin was Rocannon's World (1966).  I decided it was time to begin at the beginning.  I  just finished reading that novel.

As in the later books that I've read, Le Guin is as interested in constructing and describing a world in rich detail as she is in developing a plot (although Rocannon's World seems more plot-driven and conventional than some of her later works).  From the beginning, she mentions plants and animals, fragments of history, peculiarities of custom and ethnic life,  casually, without explanation -- as though the reader is already familiar with the world she has constructed.  (All -- or most -- becomes clear, of course, as the story continues.)

I have to mention the "windsteeds" -- the most common means of rapid transportation on the planet.  These are domesticated flying mammals which are trained to the saddle and are loyal to their tenders.  Think of Pegasus -- the flying horse.  Except, these are huge flying cats.  Rather than graze on grass overnight, they hunt out and eat small animals.  Their fur is soft, and they purr when stroked.  Le Guin -- a confessed cat-lover -- knows the way to our hearts!

Nothing in Le Guin's books is spoon fed to her readers.  We are asked to follow her story closely, never assuming that casual mention of a detail will have no importance later.  Le Guin assumes her readers are both curious and intelligent.  

The ending is both satisfying and poignant.  Her writing, although careful and austere, is not without emotional impact.

Bad day for the GOP

January 6, 2021.  Feast  of the Epiphany.  What a day!  Packed with action and drama, but maybe no real epiphanies.

I got up around 6:30 a.m., eager to find out whether Ossoff had finally drawn ahead of Perdue in the Georgia Senate race.  I went to bed about 1 a.m., after Mike Pence had declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election.

In the hours in between, I -- who rarely turn on the television except to watch a football game -- was rarely away from my TV screen.  The drama of the unexpected capture of the Senate majority by the Democrats, after a dismal down-ballot performance nationally in November.  The scary harangue by an increasingly unhinged Donald Trump, listened to by an equally scary -- and enraptured -- mob of true believers.  The ceremonial start to the counting of the electoral ballots in the House of Representatives chamber.

And then -- total chaos.  

I guess I still hold the charmingly naïve image of Republicans as the nice, elderly couple next door who greet you every morning.  Who offer you a plate of fresh-baked cookies, and then begin chatting about that wonderful Christian, Mr. Trump, who is making America great again.  Instead, Trump's crowd yesterday looked like scruffy leftovers from a 1960s image of so-called left-wing protesters, an image that I had supposed was the antithesis of Mr. Trump's Orwellian presidency.

Even so, when Trump urged the crowd to join him in moving to the Capitol, I expected no more than a lot of shouting, demands that Congress reverse the election.  (Mr. Trump -- rather than leading the charge -- reportedly retired to the White House by vehicle, to watch in comfort his supporters on TV.  He may have suffered a bone spur flare-up.)

The Nation and the World watched the rest on their own televisions.  It could have been worse, of course.  They might have seized and/or destroyed the electors' ballots.  But the chaos and the property damage were bad enough, together with our psychological injury from seeing the first "incursion" of the Capitol since those damn Brits were there in 1814.

In the early evening (Seattle time), the counting of the ballots began again.  Challenges requiring debate and voting were successful only against the ballots of Arizona and Pennsylvania.  Those ballots were sustained overwhelmingly in the Senate, where many Republicans as well as Democrats had seen enough.  The more volatile House Republicans were more persistent, and a majority of that party's members voted to uphold both challenges, which were opposed by all Democrats.  

My reaction to the repetitive five-minute speeches by House members -- of both parties -- was the unremarkable conclusion that politicians just like hearing themselves talk.  Talking is their métier, like playing music is to a musician.  I was also impressed by the lack of haste in tabulating votes in the House.  It's all done electronically, with House members nominally given a generous fifteen minutes to cast their votes.  But the timer counts down to zero long before the Speaker returns to her post and pounds her gavel.  

This wouldn't have bothered me, except that I was sitting in front of my TV at midnight, during the debate and voting on the Pennsylvania challenge, when I ordinarily would be peacefully asleep.  And it was 3 a.m. back in the nation's capital.

Throughout the counting, the Vice President repeated 51 times the baroque phrases acknowledging that the ballots appeared to be in order.  I might say, "repeated robotically."  It occurred to me that a robot could have performed his function quite easily, and it also occurred to me that Mr. Pence is by appearance and disposition highly qualified for that function.  But I was thankful that he made the ceremony merely ceremonial, and refused to inject the excitement into his performance that Mr. Trump was demanding.  

Mr. Pence's face almost broke into a smile at only one point -- when a few Congressmen clapped after he announced Indiana's votes for him as Vice President.  It was a bad day for Mr. Pence, as he now has joined the president's extensive roster of Enemies of the People.

When Mr. Pence announced the unsurprising final figures, indicating that Biden and Kamala had won the election, I glanced at my watch.  It was 12:41 a.m. my time, and 3:41 a.m. in Washington, D.C.  My cats had begun fretting at about 10 a.m. that it was time for me to be off to bed, and were now draped about the room in exhausted resignation.  

It had been a big day for politics fans, and especially us Democrats.  And a bad day for dedicated Republicans.  It may well have ended the hopes of Mr. Trump to win the nomination in 2024 -- most of the GOP senators seemed disgusted with his actions.  But four years is a long time, and memories are short.

He may be back.  But for now, he's on his way back to whichever of his gilded properties he chooses as a residence.  Don't slam the door on the way out, Donald.

Diary of a Young Naturalist

 

Dara McAnulty is a 16-year-old Irish boy.  He lives with his parents, his 13-year-old brother Lorcan, and his 9-year-old sister Bláthnaid.  Everyone in his family, except his dad, is autistic -- high-functioning, probably what until recently was called Asperger's syndrome.  Both parents have university degrees, and his dad works in marine and environmental science.  As Dara puts it

Together, we make for an eccentric and chaotic bunch.  We're pretty formidable, apparently.  We're as close as otters, and huddled together, we make our way in the world.

Yes, Dara is a writer, a very good one, and a fervid naturalist.  On his fourth birthday, he bought his first nature guide, paying for it with coins given him by his parents.  He began writing observations on scraps of paper when he was very young, as a way of clarifying and "processing" his thoughts.  At the age of twelve, he began writing a blog, a blog that has drawn the attention of people of all ages, including environmental workers and activists.  And he has now written a book, Diary of a Young Naturalist.

Dara's book is based on his diary entries between his fourteenth and his fifteenth birthdays.  In the early months, his family lived in the western county of Fermanagh.  Dara found himself routinely ridiculed and bullied by his classmates; school was a nightmare, despite his receiving top grades.  But he lived his real life outside of school hours, in the fields and mountains surrounding his home.  There, he was in his element, studying and observing wildlife of every sort with a knowledgeable and discerning eye.

He was stunned when his folks decided to move east to County Down in the early summer, midway through the book.  Change of any kind is difficult for autistic people, and this was a change away from a countryside that he loved dearly.  Much of the book, behind his discussion of plants, animals, and insects, is the story of his adaptation to his new home and new school.  A new school where for the first time he found friends among students, kids he happily calls "nerds."

But the book is primarily a collection of his observations of wildlife -- including plant life -- and how he as an individual reacts to them.  

A goldeneye duck.  They're so beautiful.  Perhaps it's here alone for the winter because there's no female around.  We rarely think of all that effort being made below the water, those webbed propellers whirring so that the bird can glide with such ease and grace on the river.  It's just like being autistic.  On the surface, no one realizes the work needed, the energy used, so you can blend in and be like everyone else.

He can sit, transfixed, just in his own yard, watching and mentally cataloguing the behavior of tiny insects that the rest of us never notice.  Or he can join his siblings, climbing in the mountains that lie near his home, both in County Down and back in Fermanagh county.  

When you first encounter the cliffs here during the breeding season, between May and July, everything gloriously slams into you at once.  The not-quite pungent smell.  The kaleidoscope of sounds.  There are thousands of birds:  kittiwakes, razorbills, fulmars and puffins, all wheeling or diving, patrolling and protecting, sauntering over the shoulder of the stack.  Mind-blowing.  Magnificent.  This is a place vibrating with survival and endurance.  I feel tickled and almost hysterical, but must take it all in. 

As the year progresses, and he adapts to his new school in County Down, he feels himself maturing.  He had already made many contacts with wildlife and climate change advocates -- including Greta Thunberg -- in writing, and he felt reasonably confident speaking before large groups.  (It was the smaller groups, where he could watch individual faces and exhaust himself trying to read their reactions, that bothered him.)  But now, friendship and acceptance by some of his peers makes social, in-person interactions easier and even enjoyable.

He took a major step forward, socially and politically, by standing outside his school with signs protesting wildlife policies. The positive responses he received from fellow students encouraged him to form a school club devoted to those causes, something he would have considered impossible at his prior school.

He watches his brother and sister, still talking exuberantly and laughing loudly -- behavior that caused him to be laughed at and bullied in earlier years -- and realizes how he is changing.

I'm more self-conscious now.  I'm older, more aware of myself.  I still have vivid memories of being uninhibited like them, always talking, explaining, feeling intense, bubbling excitement.  This early teenage phase in my life is quieter, more inward-looking, reticent, scarred by the hurt of others.    

But when alone with the family, he still joins in their whoops and shouts when they spot an unexpected bird or plant.  He still does a little dance of joy and enthusiasm when not in public.  After all, even his mother is autistic, and is given to the same loud bursts of enthusiasm. 

His original diary notes have of course been edited for publication.  Self-edited, and edited together with his family and with the editor supplied by the small English publisher.  

“All my family got together, trying to coax this book into something that was manageable,” says McAnulty. But Róisín [his mom] says she wouldn’t want people to think his writing was overly shaped by others. “Although it has been edited sensitively and beautifully, the first draft was actually incredible.”  ¹

In  his Acknowledgements, Dara pays tribute to the sensitivity of the  publisher's editing.

To Adrian at Little Toller [the publisher] for not trying to "adult" my voice in the editing process.  For smoothing my edges and for giving me, an autistic teenager, the opportunity to tell my story, in its irreverent rawness and childish wonder. 

"Childlike wonder" would be more appropriate.  There is nothing "childish" about this book.  While never pretending to be anything but a young teenager, Dara writes with clarity, maturity, and erudition.  He refers to adult writers and poets.  (And he endears  himself to me by expressing his liking for the novels of Ursula K. Le Guin!) 

His book concludes:

As I ran to join my family for the last stretch of the walk at Glendalough, leaving St. Kevin and the blackbird behind, a solar glare draped over us, connected us to the land with invisible stirrings.  A longer, heavier line is about to be cast into the world.  My heart is opening.  I'm ready.

An impressive and heartwarming book.  Keep the name of this young author in mind.  You'll hear more of him.

(I had my first two orders of this book from Amazon canceled because it was out of stock. Amazon finally fulfilled it on a third try through a British bookstore. Amazon now advertises that the book will be in stock January 15.)

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  ¹Patrick Barkham interview, The Guardian (May 16, 2020)