Octdecennial

There's really not much to say, is there?  Today is the eighteenth anniversary of the founding of this blog, but the prior year has been the worst ever.

Calendar year 2024 had only 27 posts, eleven of those posts in the first two months of the year.  Historically the trend had been increases each year, until the Covid year of 2020, when I somehow generated a record 148 posts.  

Meh.  What else did I have to do in 2020?  But since 2020, the trend has been decidedly downhill.  98 in 2021; 59 in 2022; 52 in 2023; and now 27 in 2024.

For my 2025 New Year's resolution, I vowed to average two posts per week during January.  I succeeded, but it's been downhill ever since.

Why?  If I knew the answer, I might be able to do something about it.  Covid-induced brain fog is one possibility, although I never had more than the mildest case of Covid.  But they say even a mild case can cause various cognitive problems.

I begin my nineteenth year.  I'll write when the spirit hits me.  I've never found that forcing myself to write results in much that's worth reading, and so I won't.

It will be interesting to see what that kid on a haystack has to say for himself a year from now.  

Source Code

The author was a small, skinny kid with a squeaky voice.  He found it hard to relate to other kids, and felt more comfortable with adults.  He didn't seem to be really bullied, but was simply ignored by his classmates.  He, in turn, tended to ignore them, aside from a close group of friends with whom he went on long mountain backpacking trips, when as young as 13, without adult supervision.

He had a close relationship with a loving family, a family of high achievers who were concerned by their son's somewhat isolated behavior, but who gave him a large degree of freedom.  He developed interests that other kids simply didn't have, and he delved deeply into them.  

By fifth or sixth grade, he realized that he could attract interest and a certain degree of acceptance from his peers by becoming the class clown.

Gosh, I thought.  He sounds a bit like me when I was  his age.  But this lad was Bill Gates, who, together with his high school friend Paul Allen, became the founder of Microsoft.  I'm afraid the resemblance between his life and mine diverged at a fairly early stage, but the early resemblance was enough to keep me turning the pages avidly.

In his autobiography, Source Code: My Beginnings, Bill describes his life in colorful detail from the time he was an infant growing up in Seattle, through his grade school years at View Ridge and Laurelhurst elementary schools, and then -- from seventh grade on -- at Seattle's prestigious Lakeside School.  Looking back, it's easy to conclude that his experiences at Lakeside had a greater impact on his future life -- both professionally and personally -- than did his undergraduate years at Harvard.

His brilliance, especially but not exclusively in math, was evidenced early on.  As was his ability to focus exhaustively on one subject at a time.  In elementary school:

I got interested in penguins and could have told you how long an Adelle can hold its breath underwater (six minutes) or how tall an Emperor can grow (4.3 feet).  For a while rockets and bridges captivated me.

In fifth grade, the teacher asked each student to pick a state to profile.  Others picked California or Florida or Hawaii.  For some reason, Bill picked Delaware.

I inhaled everything I could find on Delaware.  I trolled the stacks at the library, dug out Delaware: A Guide to the First State, and books on Delaware's history, the state's role in the Underground Railroad.  I wrote to the state of Delaware for brochures on tourism and history.

He studied the Indian history of the state and wrote "fictitious accounts of the lives of a Delawarean oyster fisherman and a granite miner."  He analyzed in some detail the DuPont company, Delaware's largest corporation -- including a description of the chemistry of polymerization.

By the time I was done, I had generated 177 pages on little Delaware. ... The class jester wasn't expected to turn in a tome. ... My teacher loved it.

I loved reading about it.  This was the sort of a intellectual triumph I would have loved to have generated as a fifth grader, presenting it proudly to the teacher in front of the entire class.  But who does that in fifth grade?

Well, Bill Gates did.

When he was a sophomore at Lakeside, the school acquired a teletype machine allowing its employees and students to use, through a telephone connection, purchased time on a mainframe computer in California.  Shortly before this, he had met the guy who became his best friend (but who died tragically in a climbing accident two years later) -- a boy as intelligent and as intense as Bill.  Both of them were fascinated by the use of computers, and the found other Lakeside friends with similar interests, including the slightly older Paul Allen, who shared his interests. 

Soon, computing consumed his consciousness, at the very time when early forms of personal computers were becoming available for private use.   To be accessible to the average user, those PCs required software, and it was the development of software to which Bill and his friends turned their attention.   Luckily, Lakeside was the kind of school where teachers weren't threatened by a student's brilliance, but went out of their way to encourage them., even remaining very flexible about class attendance.  Bill's budding abilities at coding -- and really, at that point, almost everyone's ability at coding was somewhat rudimentary -- enabled him, while still a sophomore, to do free lance consulting work for a couple of local companies.  

One of those companies was located on Roosevelt, in the U-District adjacent to the University of Washington.  Bill was soon sneaking out of his bedroom window at night , taking a bus into the U-District, and working all night long on coding -- arriving home in time for a couple of hours sleep before going to school.

The last 75 percent of the book takes Bill from Lakeside, to Harvard -- where he dropped out -- and on to his and Alllen's founding of a small software business called Micro-Soft.  The rest is history, and the book presents that history up until Bill Gates was about 40 years old.  A sequel is expected.

To me, as can be gleaned from the above, Bill's early life was the most fascinating part of the book, especially because he is very open about his probably falling somewhere on the autism scale (but never formally diagnosed, I gather), and because the locale was here in Seattle.  But his post-university years, although dealing with technical computer coding problems and creation of a business, is clearly and entertainingly presented.  It was even easy for a non-computer buff like myself to follow.

Ash Wednesday

Remember, man, thou art dust, 

and unto dust thou shalt return.

R. I. P. Burgermaster

As forecast in an earlier post, my favorite burger joint, where I have routinely alternated between eating breakfasts and lunches, will serve its last burger, its last pancakes, tomorrow.  I had my last breakfast there this morning; tomorrow, I'll try to brave the final day crowds and have my last lunch, my last meal. .

Ever since the imminent closing was announced a couple of weeks ago in a Seattle Times article, the place has been full of customers for both breakfasts and lunches.  Lots of folks have been dropping by the Burgermaster's death bed, as it were, to pay their last respects.  This week, a television crew from a local station showed up, interviewing customers as they stood in line. Many older folks have been bringing their grandchildren: "See, Johnny, this is where your grandpa and I had our first date!" 

Yes, as the painter has painted on the front window, this was the 73rd and final year for the University area Burgermaster.  It opened in 1952, in the same location but in a much smaller building.  Sort of a burger shack, I guess, judging from photos on display.  I'm not sure when it expanded into its present building, capable of seating a fairly large crowd.  As it certainly did today.

Things I liked about it:  The carefully tended plantings out in front, changing with the seasons.  The illustrated celebrations of current holidays, painted on the large front windows.  (The current paintings, celebrating Valentine's Day, contain for the first time a small signature by the talented artist.)  The play area for small children, giving them toys and books with which to amuse themselves while the "big people" chatted.  The usually ample parking.  The friendly staff who, eventually, greeted you by name.  The coffee jugs full of "help yourself" coffee (assuming you paid for the first cup).  The way in which, after your meal was brought to your table, you were left alone to peruse the newspaper or read a book, or simply stare into space as long as you wanted.  No one kept dropping by asking you if everything was okay, or if you were "still working on" that piece of ham.  

In other words, it wasn't a formal restaurant, nor was it a McDonalds fast food joint.  It was something in between, with the better aspects of both extremes.

It was also a community center, one whose destruction will leave a big hole that won't easily be filled.

Unless the Burgermaster organization -- yes, the university area establishment became the "flagship"of a small local chain, although the others tend to be car service take-outs -- finds another convenient location in the same neighborhood, and opens up a similar new establishment.

Please?

----------------------------
Photo:  Customers lined up before 8 a.m. this morning, ordinarily a slow period.  

Despair of a NIMBY homeowner

I'm a liberal Democrat.  I believe in affordable housing.  I recognize the often desperate lack of affordable housing in Seattle, as well as in most other large cities.  I'm pleased to see attractive large apartment buildings being constructed surrounding light rail stations.  (I'm also a light rail fan.)

Unfortunately, like many other well-meaning citizens, I'm happy to endorse the efforts of city and private authorities to satisfy the need for such housing.   But . . .

Not In My Back Yard!! 

I live in a middle to upper middle income Seattle residential area.  My neighborhood, Montlake, lies immediately south of the University of Washington, across a canal called the Montlake cut.  The median value of a single residence home in Montlake seems to be about $1.4 million.  That figure seems a lot to persons living in much of the country, but is only a bit above average for Seattle.  I live on a rather long block that was platted and developed by two separate developers in the early 1920s.  The street on which my house faces makes a small, funny jog about three lots south of mine, where the labors of the two developers met.

Unlike many or most post-World War II developments, the developers did not build houses all based on three or four basic floor plans.  They seem to have done the platting, provided the streets and sidewalks, and, I assume, built the sewer lines.  The lots were then sold to prospective homeowners who then built their dream houses with their own architects.  No two houses up and down the streets of Montlake appear identical.  Some are three-story semi-mansions, some are small one-story cottages, and others fall everywhere between.  

But the lots are small, and zoning requirements for side and front yards restricted the size of the houses.  They all appear quite "nice," to varying degrees, but not -- at least in my portion of Montlake -- in any way pretentious.

City zoning has long permitted apartment houses and other multi-family dwellings only on major thoroughfares.  In my part of Montlake, that includes only 24th Avenue E.  (Lake Washington Boulevard is also a thoroughfare, but it passes through the Arboretum and has no housing.)

We have a small business area on 24th.  There are a couple of restaurants, a coffee shop, a bicycle shop, a small grocery, a cleaner's, and a branch of the Seattle Public Library.  Aside from a couple of other very small specialty businesses, that's about it.  Montlake's business area is smaller than those of most other neighborhoods.  There are a few small apartment buildings, taking advantage of the traditional exception from single-family zoning along an arterial.

In 2023, the state legislature passed HB1110, which removed the ability of cities statewide to impose certain forms of restrictive zoning on residential housing.  For cities Seattle's size, the act prohibits zoning that limits builders to one residence per lot.  Local zoning codes must permit at least four residences per lot in general, and six residences per lot on construction within  quarter mile of a "major transit stop."

The Seattle City Council is now considering specific changes to its zoning code, to bring it into compliance with state law.  My own neighborhood, fortunately, would fall within one of the least-modified areas.  The developer would be able to build four-unit housing with no more than three or four floors.  Just a half-block to the north, in a block identical in character to our own, and considered part of our same mini-neighborhood, the Code would permit 40-foot-high, four-story apartment houses.

These changes all come to seem less theoretical when new construction begins appearing.

A few doors down from my own house, there was a modest house adjacent to an empty lot, both owned by the resident of the house.  The empty lot, mostly lawn with a number of trees, one of them quite large, enhanced the character of the two lots, as well as the attractiveness of the neighboring lots.  I always considered the homeowner lucky to have such a beautiful park-like area extending his overall living space.  

A few months ago, workers began sawing down the trees.  As work continued, it became obvious that the existing  house's owner was building two large, blocky houses, one behind the other -- both now nearing completion -- on the previously undeveloped lot.  Both new houses are a full three stories high, and they appear to have been built as close to the lot's boundaries as zoning permits.

Neither house appears designed to provide "affordable housing," either to homeowners or to renters.

Our neighborhood can absorb the sudden increase in heights and residential density imposed by this construction, viewed in isolation.  But there are a number of houses in the neighborhood that are probably candidates as "tear-downs." Each such property is no doubt attractive to developers choosing not to replace them with attractive single-family houses, but instead to develop their lots to their full allowable density under the new state law and the proposed new city zoning ordinance.

I have already received a number of form letters from area realtors offering to buy my house, "as is," cash on the barrelhead.  I have restrained myself from angrily replying to these letters.

But this is obviously our future.  Seattle has beautiful neighborhoods, each resembling suburban areas outside other large cities.  These neighborhoods have significant tree coverage, advantageous both esthetically and environmentally.  The single residence atmosphere of these neighborhoods makes it possible to know your neighbors and work together on neighborhood activities as simple as street parties and children's holiday parades.

But Seattle also has a severe shortage of houses.  We want to be a big city -- major universities, renowned symphony and opera and ballet, theater groups, museums, major league athletics.  And we also want to be a city with a suburban residential flavor.

I guess we can't have both -- at least as comfortably as we have until now.  "Comfortably" for those who happen to already own  houses.  Greater residential density is great in places like New York.  I love walking along the townhouse-lined streets of Manhattan's Upper West Side; they have a pleasant urban "feel."  But that's New York.  That's not been Seattle.

But I guess it may be our future.  

Waterfront park

One of the pleasures of having visitors from out of town is showing them sights that you've been wanting to see yourself, but haven't yet gotten around to.  Such as Seattle's new Waterfront Park.

One of Seattle's prime tourist attractions has always been the Pike Place Market.  The Market consists of old buildings, many of them perched on a steep hillside above the waterfront and lining the narrow Pike Place street -- a street or alley crowded with pedestrians and vehicles competing for passage.  Building filled with vendors of produce, fresh fish, and a plethora of tourist knicknacks, and of places to eat and drink.

Another sight has been the waterfront itself, a street along the shore of Elliot Bay, with its numbered piers jutting into the bay.

Unfortunately, getting from one of those attractions to the other has never been particularly easy, and even less attractive.  Until now.

My friend Jim, our friendship dating back to UW student days, was visiting from Indiana on Wednesday.  The weather had been snowy off and on, and the streets -- at least streets around my home -- were full of slush.  We wanted to get out and do something, and finally the weather cooperated.  The temperature creeped into the high 30s, and the slush began turning into water -- clearing enough pavement that we felt like getting out of the house and walking.

Jim grew up on suburban Mercer Island, and attended school at the University of Washington, so he was familiar with the city.  Or at least the city of the 1960s.  We walked a mile through the draining streets to the UW light rail station, and took the train downtown.  We wandered through the Market, and then into/onto Waterfront Park.  We walked through the park, admiring the views of the Seattle skyline in one direction, and the ferries and commercial boats cutting their way through Puget Sound on the other.

I hoped that Jim, a Seattleite by history although I call him now a Hoosier, would be impressed.  He didn't disappoint me.  

He remembered the waterfront as it had been until very recently.  Several flights of steep stairs dropped down behind the back side of the market to ground level.  There one had encountered a two-level elevated freeway that separated downtown and the Market from the waterfront.  The highway -- the Alaska Way Viaduct -- didn't pose a physical obstacle to pedestrian access, but it was definitely a psychological block and an esthetic horror.  Californians familiar with the old elevated Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco have a fair picture of the problem.

But now, the Viaduct traffic has been re-routed through an underground tunnel and is totally out of sight and out of mind.  The new park extends from the Market out over the waterfront street traffic and leads pedestrians through a series of plateaus, ramps, and steps gradually down to ground level, right at the waterfront.  A considerable amount of landscaping has been installed, which will come into its own when Spring arrives and leaves begin bursting out on trees and shrubs.  Also bursting out will be outdoor cafés where weary tourists and residents can stop for a meal or libation.  

No one was eating outside in 35 degree weather, so we worked our way down to the waterfront and walked most of the length of the touristed area until we reached Ivar's where we had fish and chips.  Ivar's has been around even longer than I have (founded in 1938), and is another Seattle icon.  Eating there, out doors but under cover, watching seagulls scarf up French fries tossed by amused diners, was a perfect way to wind up our explorations.

After examining the brand new ferry terminal -- another revelation -- we worked our way back to the Symphony light rail stop by a more conventional route on Second Avenue.  It was an enjoyable day -- one full of surprises for Jim, and for me as well.  

I also discovered on my phone, once back home, that we had walked a total of 5.5 miles, which we can chalk up as early preparation for our planned hike, with a number of Jim's relatives, along the coast of Wales come June.

Salve! Parli italiano?

Sixty-five years ago, in 1961, I began the study of Italian.  It was a six-credit "Intensive Italian" course designed to prepare me for my stay in Florence, Italy, as a member of Stanford's overseas study program.  I took two more quarters of Intensive Italian in Italy itself.

In those days, unless you were traveling as part of an American Express tour, you really needed some basic Italian just to get around Italy on your own.  Now, almost any Italian who has any relationship with tourists speaks passable English.  Then, very few did.  Even those who knew a foreign language were more apt to know German or French, rather than English.  Those Stanford courses were mandatory for everyone in the program, just as were the series of inoculations for a whole panoply of diseases that were apparently rampant in post-War Europe, but diseases for which we pampered Americans were totally unprepared.

I learned to speak the language well enough to ask directions, buy train tickets, order meals, talk to bank clerks.  And that was about it.  Social chats with local students were pretty much beyond my abilities, although not beyond the abilities of some of my fellow students.  As humorist David Sedaris says about his early attempts at French, for the native speaker, trying to talk to him was like chatting to a child who spoke only baby talk.  

After I returned home, I tried to  refresh and improve my memory of the language a couple of times by taking non-credit refresher courses, but I really hadn't retained much to refresh.  The courses didn't help.

And by the time I first returned to Italy, in 1970, Italy no longer felt like an isolated monolingual country.  Especially among the younger set, it had been exposed to a massive tourist influx which, together with increased teaching of English in schools, made most Italians with whom I interacted  far more fluent in English than I was in what was left of my Italian.

And since 1970, that trend has spread to most of the population, at least in northern Italy, and in all age groups. 

But the language is still useful to know.  A reading knowledge of Italian, to understand what all the signs say, and to read newspaper headlines.  And some speaking and listening ability, just to survive interactions with the occasional Italian who can't (or prefers not to) struggle with English.  Just two years ago, just a two or three mile walk from where we were staying on Lake Como, my sister and I stopped at a tiny café and asked for some cappuccino.  We encountered the sole person in charge, and he spoke no English.  He understood "cappuccino," of course, but we had some other details to discuss, and I found even my very minimal Italian ability quite helpful.

And so, when I returned from Lake Como and ran into an ad for "Duolingo," an on-line language program, offered free of charge, I decided to give its Italian program a try.  I was soon hooked.

Duolingo takes you through a number of levels, designated by various precious stones, as your ability increases.  Each day you start out with five "hearts," and you lose one heart each time you make an error.  When you're out of hearts, you're through for the day.

You are provided with vocabulary as you need it to carry on conversations -- baby talk conversations, it's true -- and examples of the necessary sentence structure.  You translate English to Italian, and Italian to English.  You are given spoken sentences over your computer's speakers, and required to write them out.  Sometimes a paragraph is dictated, and you are asked not to translate word by word, but just to make an educated guess of what was being discussed.  You are asked to fill in blanks in a sentence, mainly as a way to force you to intuit the concept of singular/plural adjectives and pronouns, and the need to make adjectives agree in gender and number with the Italian nouns.

What's interesting is that, unlike in high school or college courses, there is never any abstract discussion of agreement in number and gender.  You simply pick it up by trial and error.  You never are asked to prepare tables conjugating verbs and declining nouns, adjectives and pronouns.  You simply learn that "I speak" differs from "we speak" more by the form of the verb than by the pronoun attached (and often omitted).  Parlo = I speak.  Parliamo = we speak.  You learn grammar by repetition, just as a baby learns.

Soon, you become so absorbed in what you're learning (or at least in competing to reach the next jeweled level!}, that "striking out" by losing your last heart and having to wait for the next day to continue becomes unbearable.  At that point you learn about paying an annual fee and being given, effectively, an infinite number of hearts.  No matter how many mistakes you make, you never "strike out."

Yeah, yeah, I thought.  I'm not getting sucked into that.  They offered me a two-week free trial, but I refused.  I was afraid I'd forget to cancel before the two weeks had expired, and I'd be trapped.  The months went by, and the offer was repeated.  Ok, I thought, I'll give it a try.  I loved it, but not enough to pay for it.  They gave a very clear warning that my two free trial was about to expire, and made it very easy to quit.  Which I did.

Another month or so later, they generously repeated the offer of a two-week free trial.  I was really getting into working my way through one lesson after another, without worrying about my "hearts."  The warning came again as the two weeks neared its end.  I sighed.  I did nothing.  My Visa card was billed appropriately.

I've never looked back.  It's been worth it.

Sacred Ganges

At least thirty religious pilgrims were reported dead this week, when panic broke out among an estimated 100 million pilgrims in India.  (Some claim the government is covering up the true toll of death and injuries.)  

The tragedy occurred during the peak moments of Maha Kumbh Mela.  The Kumbh Mela festival occurs only once every twelve years, and involves bathing in the Ganges river, which is believed to wipe out one's sins.  This year's celebration, the Maha Kumbh Mela, marks the completion of a full twelve-cycle circle of the twelve-year old cycles, making the 2025 celebration an event that occurs only once in 144 years.  

The most favorable spot to bathe is Prayagraj, where the Yamuna river (which flows through Delhi and Agra) flows into the Ganges.  These two "real" rivers are met at that spot by a third, invisible, mystical river called the Sarasvati.

By some celestial coincidence -- or maybe it was planned? -- the peak of the celebration, when the tragedy occurred, was the date of the second lecture on "rivers" by the University of Washington history department.   That second lecture, by Professor Anand Yang, discussed the Ganges river.  Professor Yang was himself born in India; he graduated from Swarthmore, and received his doctorate at the University of Virginia.  He speaks quietly and eruditely, and his lecture was well illustrated by projections of ancient art and some modern photographs., 

Even more than the Nile, discussed last week, the Ganges is a holy river, within Hinduism.  Professor Yang discussed the importance to Hindus of immersion in the river, and of having samples of the river in the home.  If curious, he remarked, you can obtain small vials of the Ganges water on Amazon at a reasonable price.  The Wikipedia article discussing Kumbh Mela states that the twelve-year cycle is based on the time that the planet Jupiter takes to make one complete revolution.**  No further information is provided.  I'm not sure whether the planet's actual revolution is studied, or whether this is a mystical revolution in the same sense as the Sarasvati is a mystical river.

I will publicly expose no further my ignorance of Hinduism, and especially of this festival.

Like the Nile, the deposits from the Ganges create rich agricultural soil, which historically allowed India to feed its enormous populations.  

The Ganges, together with its tributary the Yamuna, is also a major east-west transportation route across northern India, originating in the Himalayas, and swinging eastward into the Bay of Bengal.    As such, it has also facilitated several conquests of India by outside forces, including most recently the conquest from west to east by the Mughals from the Afghanistan area, and, from east to west, by the British from the Bay of Bengal.

Professor Yang devoted significant attention to the Ganges's pollution problem.  The Ganges is by far the most polluted river in the world.  It's a sewer for human waste, as well as for industrial waste.  It is valued as a holy depository for the ashes from cremation.  Many of the devout spend their last days beside the Ganges, so that their ashes can be swept off the ghats, where the cremations occur, directly into the river.  Professor Yang noted that not all bodies are fully cremated before being pushed into the river.

The government talks seriously about cleaning up the river, but -- I gather -- like most governments, hasn't yet made any significant inroads into the problem.  Think of that before buying your vial of Ganges water on-line.

Like last week's, this week's lecture was fascinating and very well presented.  It makes me want to know much more about India and, to some degree, about Hinduism.  I've visited Delhi and Agra, following a trek in the Ladakh Himalayas, and have paid a short visit to Mumbai, but I've never been to Calcutta or the Ganges plain.  I think such a visit would be worthwhile.

What little I know about Indian history comes not from a scholar, but from a British author, writing for mass audiences -- William Dalrymple.  His book White Mughals follows the life of a British "Resident" in Hyderabad, but in so doing, also portrays an interesting look at the British East India Company's headquarters in Calcutta shortly before and after the year 1800.  At a younger age, Dalrymple wrote City of Djinns, an engaging picture of Delhi, both as it is at present (or in 1993,when the book was written), and as it has evolved over the centuries, surviving and rebuilding following a series of invasions and conquests.  

Those books won't make you (or me) an expert on India, but they should whet your appetite for learning more.  Meanwhile, I look forward to next week's lecture on the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) river.    

---------------------

Photo of the aftermath of this week's panic at Maha Kumbh Mela, beside the Ganges. New York Times photo.

** (1-31-25) Looking up Jupiter's physical characteristics, I see that the planet rotates in just under ten hours. But it orbits the sun in just under 12 years, which must be what the Expedia article meant by "rotation." Trivial, but some readers with an astronomy background might be interested.

A fellow of infinite jest

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

--Albert Einstein

With due respect to Professor Einstein, sometimes it's the unreality of reality that is the illusion.  A comforting illusion.

Take my periodontist.  Please!  (Sorry, I'll try to be serious.)  Let's begin at the beginning.

I've been fascinated by the human skeleton ever since elementary school  I used to pour over drawings of skeletons in our school encyclopedias, memorizing all the bones and how they were connected.  There was nothing scary about those skeletons, any more than studying the steel girder skeleton of a skyscraper was scary.  It was just the way things were put together.

Then there was Halloween, of course.  In Seattle today, folks' yards are decorated, for most of October, with (fake) human bones.  Just bones.  Or skulls.  Or full skeletons.  Skeletons sitting in chairs talking to each other.  Or half submerged skeletons emerging from the soil.  All very creative.

I'm sure we had "scary" skeletons when I was a kid, but the decorations tended more toward witches, and black cats, and ghosts, and spiders.  And pumpkins galore.  And girls dressed up as princesses and fairies and other pretty creatures, a bit scary perhaps to young boys but in a different way.  I'm trying to remember how I felt about skeletons as part of Halloween.  They were just one form of decoration among others, and I don't recall any particular reaction at all.

At some point in my life, of course, I realized that I myself was a walking skeleton, painted over with layers of flesh.  Not a new idea intellectually, but it hit me with a sense of reality.  I really WAS a walking skeleton.  I could bare my teeth at myself in the mirror, and almost imagine the skull beneath the face.

Almost, but not quite.   Certainly there was bone structure there -- I could feel it through my forehead and cheeks and chin.  But I couldn't quite picture those bones as coming together as a skull.  Not even after watching Hamlet declaiming, "Alas, poor Yorick," as he held poor Yorick's skull in his hand.  Just a play, that was. 

But the reality beneath the illusion became much more clear yesterday at my periodontist's office.  As part of an investigation of my mouth, he had a CT scan done of my skull -- not the entire skull, just the portion beneath the eye sockets.  He was interested in the teeth and gums.  He posted the scan on a large screen in front of my dental chair for my education and amusement while we talked.

"Alas, poor Me!"  There was no doubt that I was looking at my very own skull.  I even saw, for the first time, my one remaining unerupted wisdom tooth, right where it was supposed to be.  It was my head, all right.  Just another skull among the uncounted billions which have passed through an earthly life over the eons.  

I was looking at my head as it would be some years from now, lying six feet beneath the surface of the earth with a horrible, demented grin stretching across my entire face.  It was far scarier than a Halloween decoration. Far scarier than Hamlet's stage prop.  This wasn't merely a skull, first studied with curiosity from an encyclopedia in second grade.  

This was me.  The real me.  The me that a good haircut, a clean shave, a Botox treatment, and a genial smile could not disguise.  What I see today in a mirror, however dispiriting the sight, is just an illusion.  The reality is what I saw yesterday in my periodontist's office.

The shock of that sight merely enforces a decision already made long ago.  Cremation. And, please.  Do it quickly before that ghastly smirking skull begins peaking our from beneath my face.

History of the Nile

One of the advantages of having done my graduate work at the University of Washington is that it opens the door to a number of events right here in Seattle that I wouldn't otherwise have known about.  Even aside from Husky football games.

Since the year after I graduated from law school, the Alumni Association together with the UW history department has presented annual (or more frequently than annual) series of lectures.  The first few years were devoted to ten lectures each academic quarter by Professor Giovanni Costigan, a professor of the old school, one for whom teaching was more important than research.  And he was an amazing teacher and lecturer.  His two-hour lectures often ran overtime by as much as a half hour, as he made an effort to share all his enthusiasm about whatever subject was under discussion with his audience.

Even as his lectures went well past their scheduled ending time, few in his audience were tempted to leave.  He was that good.

Professor Costigan was a jewel, one that in my opinion was never out-shone by later speakers.  But a number of other professors, especially in the early years, were also very good, very enthusiastic lecturers.

In the past twenty years or so, it apparently has been more difficult for the history department to find professors willing to sacrifice an evening a week for any extended period of time from their own professional work and research.  So it has been necessary, apparently, to ask a different professor to give a lecture each week about a subject of his own expertise.  Some of the lectures have been very good, but the results have been uneven.

This year, the department is offering a series of four lectures on the subject of "rivers" -- each lecture presented by a different speaker.  The four lectures will discuss the Nile, the Ganges, the Rio Grande, and the Columbia -- an interesting mix.  I attended the first lecture last night by Professor Joel Walker, whose topic was entitled "River of the Gods: The Nile and Ancient Egypt."

If the other three lectures are as well presented as Dr. Walker's, I'll be very happy.  

Professor Walker discussed the geography and geology of the Nile basin; the hydrology of the Nile river system (what makes the river rise and fall seasonally?);  the effects of the Nile on the economy of ancient Egypt; and the central place of the Nile in the religion of Pharaonic Egypt. In answer to post-lecture questions, he also described briefly the effect of modern dams on the river, and the effects of the growing water shortage on the international politics of the region.  He wasn't optimistic about the future.

Dr. Walker had a very short time to cover his topics, covering some three thousand years of Egyptian history in a little over an hour, but he presented his main points clearly and in some detail.  He was a good speaker, one who obviously had organized his talk in considerable detail, but who managed to deliver it in a relaxed and casual manner, giving it a feeling of having been ad libbed.  His specialty is the ancient history of the Middle East (Hebrew, Persian, Arab, Turkic, Ottoman), up through the early Christian era; he was careful to deny any particular expertise in ancient Egyptian history.

But he knew more than enough to serve as a highly effective speaker for last night's lecture.  I'm eager to hear the remaining three speakers, and I look forward to next Wednesday's talk on the Ganges.

Children of the war

For those of us beyond a certain age, Ukraine was just a region in the Soviet Union.  Then, when the Soviet Union broke up, it somewhat improbably became an independent nation.  Then, in 2022, Russia decided that Ukraine was really part of Russia, and wanted it back.  

We all know how that has turned out.  But Ukraine and Russia aren't just hunks of land on a "Risk" game board.  Ukraine is full of people.  What are those people like, and how has war with Russia affected them?  Rather than some comprehensive survey of the entire nation, the New York Times published a feature article this past week studying three teenaged students and a drama instructor in Kyiv, Ukraine.

A drama instructor who was bearing up under the psychological pain of knowing that her fiancé was in the Ukrainian army, fighting near the Russian border.  But a drama instructor with the whimsical humor to name her studio the "9¾ School," after the magical track leading to Harry Potter's Hogwarts.  She wrote a different play each year, directed it using her pupils, and put on a performance at the end of the course.

In 2024, she decided to ignore the war and write a romantic play about teenagers in America.  The play was entitled "It's OK," after one of the songs in the play.  It starred a 16-year-old boy, Sasha, who enrolled in the class while still hospitalized for emotional distress caused by the uncertainties of war.  His character, from New York, was orphaned by a car accident.  He was taken in by the desperately poor best friend of his mother, who lived in a small town in Mississippi.  He fell in love with the two young daughters of the family, played by two young teenagers. A fourth cast member, age 12 but "an old soul," played the mother.

The details of the plot aren't really important.  What's important is how Sasha's intense focus on learning and acting the part of the orphaned New Yorker began the process of restoring his interest in life.  The article points out that he memorized a poem for the play, a poem that included the words:

And even if your soul is the most desolate of deserts, then something will grow from it.

The young actors learned their lines.  Their teacher taught them to act. 

Sasha's mother burst into tears when he appeared on the stage, acting the lead in the play.  The entire audience was near or at tears, watching a play about kids being kids, not obsessed by death or injury.

I know Simon [the character Sasha played] is pretty sad but with that family that loves him, the character, he got loved by someone,” Sasha said. “It was very good for him.

Sasha himself felt himself loved, both by the play's audience, and, more importantly, by the three kids his age with whom he had worked hard to produce a good performance.

Sasha now hopes to become a psychologist, to help both veterans of the war and the young people whose lives have been turned upside down by that war.

After the performance, Ms. Korzhenevska joined the actors onstage and praised each one. Sasha, she said, had developed a kind of peace and inner calm.

I’m just on tranquilizers,” Sasha said. The audience laughed.

“Me too,” Ms. Korzhenevska admitted.
“I’m just joking,” he replied.
Ms. Korzhenevska hugged him. “I’m not,” she said.

Sasha came to the class a very sad boy.  Much of that sadness is probably still felt.  But he has retained -- or regained --a sense of humor.

A sense of humor always helps.

Dentists as artists

 

I have found the entire business absolutely extraordinary:  the shock of sudden crippling, the multiple aspects of "patienthood," helplessness and dependence; excruciating sensitivity to the behaviour (and especially the motives) of those round one; ....

--Oliver Sacks (Letter of September 30, 1974) (complaining about aftermath of climbing accident in Norway)

Yesterday morning, at 8:45, I found myself sitting in a dentist's chair in an office high above the streets of downtown Seattle.  I was scheduled to have a crown installed on one of my lateral incisors, a tooth that had received fillings at least twice in the past.

The tooth looked fine.  The fillings were not the old silver colored blights, but a composite that blended totally with the tooth.  The tooth hadn't been bothering me.  But despite my protests, and my alarm at the expense,the dentist had finally persuaded me that the fillings weakened the tooth, and the whole edifice would eventually come crumbling down.  Crumbling and possibly leaving nothing to work with in restoring it.

I didn't ask whether the urgency of the situation was related to his son's Harvard tuition payment coming due.  Such a joke/question would have been unworthy of me.

The procedure was scheduled to last three hours.  I have had crowns installed on other teeth by other dentists, and I didn't recall that it had taken them that long.  (Rather than leave you, my readers, in suspense, I'll just say at this point that it took just short of a full four hours.)

At first, all went as expected.  The numbing of the gum, the injection of anesthetic, the study of x-rays that were on a screen before my own eyes to remind me of why I was there.  Then the drilling away of most of the tooth, including the old fillings, leaving only a post on which the crown would be mounted.  The drilling did take a very long time, but the dentist seemed very skilled (and he in fact was), and he was a perfectionist.  I have no fear that this crown will ever come loose or need re-doing.

After a little more than an hour, the drilling had been completed. I won't describe the details of what happened next, because I couldn't see what was being done, but if you've had a crown fitted in recent years you're familiar with the process.  His dental assistant scanned the site of the drilled tooth and the rest of my mouth with an electronic instrument.  In modern times, unlike in the uncouth days of my youth, another electronic instrument then created the crown, making loud and unpleasant noises  in a room across the hall.  The rumblings went on for at least 45 minutes while I sat in the chair staring out the window.

Being confined to a dentist's chair is hardly a matter for complaint while the doctor and his assistant are working on you.  But when you're left alone, you begin to understand Oliver Sacks's feelings of helplessness, dependence, and irrational paranoia while he was hospitalized with far more severe problems than anything your tooth could imagine.

But finally, the mountain finished laboring and brought forth a small tooth-like item.  The assistant stuck it tentatively on my stump, and he and the doctor studied the lay of the land.  There had been considerable discussion between the two of them while the drilling proceeded about the color that the crown should have, to best match my other (somewhat variably shaded) teeth.  The dentist wasn't quite satisfied with the result.

To me, the crown looked quite toothlike, quite the color of my other teeth.  It was off-white, for god's sake.  But there was discussion about how they could improve the match between the exact shade of the crown and that of nearby teeth.  I suddenly realized that neither the doctor nor his assistant was merely a tooth technician.  These guys were frustrated artists -- hear the language they used about varying the shade near the visible edges of the tooth; the shade names and number that they used, like pigments a painter chooses; the friendly disagreements they had between themselves, and the way those disagreements were resolved.  

Calling them dentists or dental assistants would be like calling Michelangelo a guy who colored canvases.  The dentist apologized.  They wanted to "shade" my crown a bit differently.  I visualized them slapping a little paint on it.  "How long will that take?"  Not long, they assured me.  We had already reached the three hour mark.  

It took another 45 minutes, using the crown-making machine.  They returned, agreed that it looked better, and stared at it a bit more.  "I really think we should have used more of the blah blah blah," the dentist said.  "Do you mind if we give this one more shading?  It shouldn't take more than twenty minutes."

I hesitated.  My patience was exhausted.  I told them I appreciated their "artistic integrity," but the nuances would be lost on me.  I wouldn't be able to see the difference between one shade or another.  And no one else would either.  

The dentist looked a little sheepish, and laughed quietly that he often got carried away trying to reach a perfection that his patient couldn't care less about.  The patient just wants to go home.  Yes.  I just wanted to go home.

He didn't accuse me of being a philistine, a dental barbarian.  He was just sad.

So the "not quite perfect" crown was installed.  I gave it a good look under a bright light when I got home.  It looks fine.  It looks like the other teeth.  He did a great job.

I guess there's a moral to this story.  Just don't let the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good."  Especially when you're asking your patient for his patience.  And his money.

Lament for a favorite lunch spot

 

Just heard that the Burgermaster near U Village is going to close, replaced by a residential tower. I’m devastated. I may move to Thailand. Or Italy. Some place where you can still linger over breakfast and the morning papers!

--Facebook (January 9, 2022)

8 comments-----------------------------------------------------------

Exactly two years ago today, as noted above, I learned that my favorite hangout for lunches and breakfasts was about to close.  A developer had bought the property that both Burgermaster and the adjacent Safeway occupied.  Safeway closed almost immediately.  But the developer apparently had difficulty obtaining the necessary building permits, or at least his obtaining the permits took longer than expected.

As a result, Burgermaster has continued for the past two years, serving the needs of the area north and east of the University.  And, more important, my own needs -- it is a sit-down restaurant, where food is ordered at the counter and brought to the table by servers.

But today, the other shoe dropped, as it were.  While getting breakfast this morning, the checker warned me that my string of meals was coming to an end.  Burgermaster had been served with notice of cancellation of their lease.  Or, as the checker put it more tersely, they were being evicted.

Burgermaster serves a diverse base.  Students, construction workers, family groups, and retired people like myself.  Many of the retired customers are regulars, who show up day after day.  Some even have regular seats.  The servers greet them by name, and know exactly at which table to find them.  The loss of Burgermaster will be a significant loss for the neighborhood.

It won't be the first.  The lot to be developed abuts the upscale University Village shopping center.  The Village is a beautiful shopping center, large, nicely designed, well landscaped, and full of customers.  But it's also a shopping center that, while welcoming to all, clearly caters to a fairly well-to-do clientele.  

It wasn't always so.  At one time, it had not only expensive shops, but stores that served the daily needs of Seattle's customers.  It had a beautiful Barnes and Noble bookstore, one so comfortable and full of books of every kind that it served almost as a library.  B&N left many years ago, as digital sellers like Amazon took over the book selling business.  The local Bartell chain of pharmacies has had a large drugstore at the Village, which I have patronized regularly.  The chain was taken over by another pharmacy chain, and the Village outlet will close this month.  Amazon Books itself had a short-lived presence in the Village, but it also closed.

There are now  no bookstores in the Village, and there soon will be no drugstores.  I discovered recently, needing a passport photo, that there no longer are any camera stores.

What's left to draw me to the Village?  Three Starbucks outlets, and one supermarket that has necessarily replaced Safeway in my affections.  

There are lessons to be learned here about trends in American retailing, and about the killing off of local businesses by their acquisition and liquidation by national chains, and about the replacement of many types of small retail stores by both Wal-Mart type bulk sellers and by the internet.  University Village is such an attractive collection of stores, including a large number of good bars and restaurants that it's in no danger of collapse.  It's a gathering place for people of all ages, who wander about, meeting and checking out their peers.  But most retailers don't find themselves surrounded with the same pleasant ambience as those at the Village.

Burgermaster served a varied clientele, many of whom also on occasion stroll about the Village.  But they don't do so every day, and it will be difficult to find another spot where they can sit quietly in a booth or at a table, reading the paper or their phone while slowly working their way through a pleasant and well prepared breakfast or lunch.  Most sit-down restaurants encourage fairly rapid turnover. 

To me, the closing of the university area Burgermaster is another step in the wrong direction for a city that would like to increase casual human interactions -- not encourage its citizens to barricade themselves in their houses or apartments and order their goods and meals by phone or internet.

Taking my knee to Wales

I walked (while outdoors) 11,400 steps yesterday.  I've always considered that number of steps to represent about 4.5 miles, but my phone assures me it was a mere 3.7 miles.  

The walk began under cloudy skies, which continued until I reached my midpoint -- Starbucks in Madison Park, where I stopped for further fortification.  As I left Starbucks, the rain began.  Not sheets of rain, but a more Seattle-type rain -- not drenching, but unremitting.  It gradually increased as I returned home, but not so badly as to keep me from  walking a few extra blocks through the Arboretum.

I was wet enough on my return that I had to hang my parka and my hat in the bathroom, where the dripping would cause less damage.  But I was pleased.  It had been my longest walk of the week, although there had certainly been longer walks before Christmas.  I may be limited by arthritis in one knee, but I'm not inhibited by a little rain.

I'm a Washingtonian, born and bred.  We don't dissolve in the rain, like the Wicked Witch of the Wet.

Both my knee and my mileage are of special concern, because I'm signed up to join some friends for a five-day walk in June.  The walk is in southern Wales, around the coastline of the Gower Peninsula, a bulbous protrusion from the mainland into the Bristol Sea near Swansea.

The trek is 45 miles long, a  uniform nine miles per day.  A mere nothing compared with the treks of my younger years, but a serious objective now.  Nine miles is 2½ times 3.7 miles.  I wasn't exhausted yesterday, but I was glad to collapse into a chair when I got home.  But exhaustion isn't the problem -- I can train to overcome that.  The problem is the effect on my knee.

My knee felt pretty good at the end of my walk -- considerably better than it had when I started out.  It always takes ten minutes or so of walking to get the lubricating fluids circulating my knee.  (That's a layman's description of what goes on, not a physician's.)  I've resisted taking any pain medications, but yesterday I did take a single Tylenol pill before starting out.

Tylenol's effect isn't immediate and magic, like a shot of morphine.  Its pain-relieving effect on my knee and leg may be medical, or it may be closer to the feather that Dumbo held in his trunk.   But it seems to help, and I have Tylenol pills in stronger doses I can use if I need to.

My friends chose this particular hike with me in mind, because of its being largely flat and coastal, and because it never gets far from a paved road.  I've satisfied myself that -- should worse come to worst -- Uber is fully available on the peninsula.  On the Cornwall coastal trail that I hiked with the same group of friends in 2019, two of our group, on separate days, had to rely on taxis half way through the day because of blisters, so I won't be embarrassed if it comes to that.

Not embarrassed, maybe, but defeated.  

I'm hoping to avoid relying on Uber's assistance by preparation of mind and body.  I'll see an orthopedist in three weeks; my primary care physician says that an orthopedist may suggest a proper knee support that will limit any pain I experience.  Also, it's possible that exercising certain leg muscles -- in addition to gradually increasing walking distances before the hike, aiming for 28,000 steps* -- may limit the unhealthy directions of movement in my knee that contribute to pain.

I'm excited about the hike and, as the length of this note suggests, a bit worried.  I'd rather be thirty years old, but even back then there were worries about both exhaustion and aches and pains.  It just took longer treks back then to provoke them.

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*In September, I walked 23,000 steps my last day in Italy. I felt fine afterward.

Blogging 2025

So, a fresh page.  The drab year of 2024 is history.  A new year lies ahead.  And today, January 2, is a day for New Year resolutions.

Or for one resolution.  A resolution regarding this, my blog.

I posted 27 times in 2024.  The most pathetic total in my history of blogging, dating back to 2007.  Compared with 148 posts in the dispiriting pandemic year of 2020.  And compared with 52 posts in my worst prior year -- the prior year being just last year -- 2023.

Something has gone wrong.  I won't speculate what's gone wrong.  I'm not sure.  

I had an annual check-up Tuesday, and achieved a perfect 10/10 score on my cognitive ability test.  Just like President Trump did, which is very reassuring.  But it also means I can't blame diminished mental capacity.  I can only blame myself, which I've always been unusually capable of doing.

Which brings me back to my New Year resolution.  I resolve to force myself to write two blog entries per week for the month of January.  Even if I can't think of anything interesting to say, I'll say something uninteresting.  I'm going for quantity, a minimal quantity.  Two per week.

We'll worry about quality in February.  Assuming I live up to my resolution in January. 

Today's pathetic whining counts as blog entry No. 1.