Wishing you a frozen Christmas

Talk of your cold!
Through the parka’s fold
It stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we’d close,
Then the lashes froze
Till sometimes we couldn’t see;

It wasn’t much fun,
But the only one
To whimper was Sam McGee.

Photos this week of New England -- the lush and beautiful New England I visited in August -- have displayed a world embedded in ice. No power for 1.5 million homes, probably for days. We can only imagine families wrapped in blankets, huddled with no light and no heat. Just before Christmas.

Here in the Northwest we feel pretty safe from natural calamities, barring the occasional earthquake or volcanic eruption. This fall's been unusually mild, with highs in the 50's and lows in the 40's virtually every day. But -- lest we get too smug -- an Arctic air mass is moving in tonight. Very cold temperatures are expected for at least the next ten days, with snow falling most days next week.

The weather honchos are predicting a low of 11 degrees Monday night. That may seem comfortably moderate to all those poor suckers who've spent their entire pathetic lives in Buffalo, Bangor or Boston -- or to Sam McGee and his fellow Yukon prospectors. But around these parts, eleven degrees is very rare. It's the kind of temperature that allows kids to skate on lakes, just like in olden times, instead of on a rink at the mall. It's the kind of temperature that runners won't run in, for fear of freezing their lungs. It's a world in which mittens become mandatory, when even the most determined teenager won't walk to school in a t-shirt!

But still it's exciting, especially at Christmas. It allows us to join with our East Coast and Mid-West brothers and sisters in a frozen solidarity. It recalls Christmas scenes of an earlier, Dickensian London. It plucks us out of our bland Northwest drizzle and places us into a real life snowy Christmas card or into a painting of Hans Brinker racing on silver skates down frozen canals.

Yup, I love the picturesque. I can ignore for a week the sound of the furnace burning oil unceasingly, and I won't mind at all having my fingers grow numb and my nose red whenever I run down to the store. I don't even mind negotiating a bit of snow on the road as I dash downtown for last minute shopping.

But please -- no multi-day power outages.

A modest proposal

Nothing but trouble comes out of Serbia? Don't you believe it. The country that gave us Gavrilo Princip -- the assassin who started the ball rolling for World War I -- has now redeemed itself by giving us Rod Blagojevich, a governor whose conduct may offer a whole new paradigm in state government financing.

Gov. Blagojevich's snuffling around in the muck for the juiciest truffle he could get in exchange for Obama's former Senate seat -- an appointment that he found himself happily holding in the palm of his trotter -- may seem distasteful to the brahmins and puritans among us. But once you hose off the slime of personal greed, the Illinois governor's conduct actually suggests a wonderful remedy for state insolvency, especially in these harsh economic times.

For several years, a lot of states have relied on state lotteries to help themselves balance their books. These lotteries have, in fact, proven excellent sources of revenue. Unfortunately, lottery profits come disproportionately from the elements of society least able to afford them -- and they shield the wealthiest members of society from increases in their own state income and property taxes.

The Blagojevich Plan -- for want of a better term -- would avoid this regressive effect. Each state government would put Senate vacancies, as they occur, up for auction. The seat would go to the highest bidder. The auction would be managed by the state treasurer, with the governor obligated by law to give the winner his formal appointment. All proceeds would go to the state's general fund, together with conventional tax revenue.

At present, the Seventeenth Amendment would permit this method to be used only for Senate vacancies occuring in mid-term. But radical right wing groups have been agitating for repeal of that amendment, permitting state legislatures once more to appoint Senators. Liberals can join that movement, while urging states to use their new freedom to adopt the Blagojevich Plan. There's no cash to be had from making appointments for political rather than economic reasons, and so the states can be trusted to make the rational decision.

Will the the Blagojevich Plan cause a decrease in quality of our esteemed Senate? Don't be silly. Take a look at who's sitting in the Senate under today's system!

Don't send Blagojevich to jail. Give him the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Burning dim

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
--Sir Edward Grey (August 3, 1914)

As I wandered around downtown today, observing the wonders and curiosities of Seattle, Sir Edward's famous words kept circling through my brain -- at times, I found myself almost humming them. Those lines were uttered by the British foreign secretary in the opening hours of World War I, as he pensively watched a lamplighter light the gas street lamp outside his office window.

Downtown Seattle looked beautiful, as it always does at Christmas. I passed one upscale shop after another, all lavishly decorated for the season, selling every luxury anyone could desire or imagine. The streets and shops were bustling with shoppers. The only gaps, the only places along the sidewalks not lined with prosperous-appearing shops, were the construction sites, marked by giant cranes. Skyscrapers, mixed-use buildings designed for both retail and residential use, continue reaching for the sky.

The usual homeless hung out on the sidewalks, holding their hand-written cardboard signs. But if we overlook them, as we in fact do, life could hardly look finer in the great Pacific Northwest.

So it was in Europe in 1914. Only the old folks could remember a time when life hadn't been peaceful and prosperous. Everyone was excited by new technological advances, scientific wonders. The arts were thriving. Everyone looked forward to the future. The lamps of civilization burned brightly.

But then ... the armies began to move.

In Seattle, today, not all is well behind the glossy surface. The shops are crowded with shoppers, but actual sales are reported to be unnervingly poor. Towering buildings are being erected by mobs of hard-hatted construction workers -- but, if you notice, no new construction has begun within the past six months, maybe even a year. The streets at lunch hour are packed with office workers, but each day the newspaper carries stories announcing new lay offs.

Washington Mutual, one of Seattle's proudest jewels, employing thousands in its glittering new national headquarters building, has collapsed and has been acquired by Chase Manhatten; eighty percent of WaMu's Seattle workforce have received their termination notices in place of a Christmas bonus.

Still, for most of us, life continues normally. The usual happy family Christmas lies ahead. We know all about the banking crisis, the stock market crash, the auto manufacturing crisis, the layoffs around us -- but so far we are safe. Our stock portfolios are down, but we'll be patient. The stock market hits a bear phase every so often, right? The bulls then return and the stocks climb even higher than before. We can wait.

And in August 1914, as the young men -- boys, really -- marched off to war, everyone cheered and said the war would be short. The boys would be home for Christmas. But it wasn't. And they weren't.

We read the news, but so far the news -- well, it just hasn't hit home. But when you're fired, as our neighbors are being fired, you don't buy luxuries, or maybe even necessities. And when you don't buy goods and services, the businesses that sell can't meet their payroll. And when they can't meet their payroll, more employees lose jobs, who in turn stop buying. Pretty soon, that wave of distress, sensed in the distance, draws close. It hits and washes over you.

It took us quite a few years, but that's the kind of economy we've ended up with, an economy that hits the rocks when people stop buying. Even when they just stop buying things they don't need. Because we can't keep a full economy going selling just goods and services that people actually need. This is the inherent contradiction of capitalism that Karl Marx said would eventually cause its collapse.

What results is called a deflationary spiral, and that's where many economists think we're heading. Once it starts, it feeds on itself, because people who are scared don't spend. They hang on to whatever money they have. Women don't buy haute couture dresses and gowns, men don't buy Hummers, when their families may need that money just to eat. Unless something breaks the spiral, we end up all unemployed and all hungry.

Christmas 1915 was not a happy time for most British families. I wonder what Christmas 2009 will be like here in Seattle? In America?

I think the lamps may be going out.

The studio saved by a dog

This blog generally aims at topics of universal interest, but its author is, after all, human. And when you have a close relative employed by a major film studio, matters related to that studio draw your attention. And so I break with usual practice, and base this brief post not on my reading of a book, but on my reading of a book review. Not a practice that I'm proud of, to be sure, but our world is entering a depression, and I'm not inclined to go out and spend the $50 list price just so I can more fully do the book justice.

When we see the Warner Bros. logo, I suspect many of us think of a certain rabbit with a carrot. "Eh, what's up doc?," and all that. But a new coffee table book, available for Christmas purchase (only $31.50, actually, from Amazon), shows that the studio -- founded by four brothers named Harry, Abe, Sam and Jack -- was once exemplified by a much nobler animal. A dog, a dog whose popularity saved the studio from bankruptcy. The dog's name? Rin Tin Tin. The famous canine hero, much later popularized in a television series, was the star of Warner Bros. in the 1920's, and the subject of 19 films, most, unfortunately, now lost to history.

According to the review, the book suggests that for most of its existence, Warner Bros. films were notable for telling bleak stories with unhappy endings: a long line of gangster films, Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, the films of director Stanley Kubrick, and even some of the later films including some of Clint Eastwood's. These films, according to the book, were marked by an "existential chill, the air of fated hopelessness."

Whether this early reputation continues for a studio that has released, in more recent years, such films as March of the Penguins, The Polar Express, the Pokémon movies, Scooby-Doo, and the entire Harry Potter series, I'll leave to the reader. Certainly, however, the Batman films and the Matrix series display a darkness of theme and ambiguity in resolution that would be worthy of the studio's Casablanca days of the 1940's.

So if you have the spare loot, buy the book, read the history, enjoy the scads of photo stills from nearly a century of movies, and -- for Tawny's sake -- plunk down the price of admission to the next WB film that shows up in your local theater!

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

Richard Schickel and George Perry, You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story, Running Press, $50. Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek in today's NY Times.

Musical legacy

Seattle is home to one of the world's finest private collections of classical violins, violas and cellos, including six violins and one cello crafted by Stradivari in the early 1700's. The collector, David Fulton, has trimmed his collection down in recent years to the fifteen instruments he likes best, including a violin built by Guarnerius del Gesù, the "Lord Wilton," valued at $10 million.

Who knew? I certainly didn't until last night, when I viewed a documentary ("Homage") that Fulton arranged to have filmed on the stage of Redmond's Overlake School, showing off each instrument, both visually and audibly. In the film, violinist James Ehnes chooses and plays a short piece that will best display the characteristics and capabilities of each violin and viola. Sound and cinematography are both outstanding.

Both Fulton and Ehnes were present at last night's showing of the documentary -- on the UW campus -- to subscribers of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Both offered introductory remarks and took questions following the film. Fulton explained his purpose in making the documentary as a desire to preserve for posterity the sound of each instrument as it plays in 2008. He noted that the sound of a string instrument gradually changes over time, as it ages and its physical condition changes. Musicians today would love to know what these famous violins and violas sounded like a century ago, when they were already about 200 years old.

The music was dazzling. But Ehnes's commentary, before he played each number, drove home to me how superficial my own appreciation of music remains. Ehnes observed how each instrument's musical "color," tonal volume, and relative musical flexibility or rigidity made it most appropriate for the chosen piece. I was fully conscious that he could have played the same violin number on each of the violins, one after the other, and I would have been unable to perceive the difference.

Appreciation of any composer, any performer, any musical instrument increases radically with one's study and experience. Enjoying a Schubert piano sonata as background music on the radio is pleasant, but offers a far less rich experience than listening to it with a score in hand, and then hearing it performed by different pianists. And such appreciation as an informed listener is a far less rich experience than having mastered the sonata on one's own piano, which in turn is less rewarding than having subjected one's own playing to the critique of an experienced teacher. I suppose that a defining characteristic of a piece of "classical" music is that you could study it indefinitely and always find new aspects to appreciate.

With classical music, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. The same is true with the appreciation of wine -- a dinner beverage that I tend to swill down without reflection, intent on my conversation with other more discerning guests who are themselves savoring the nuances of the particular vintage. Fine dining offers the same opportunity, as do the visual arts. And as does, to some degree, any other pursuit whose appreciation increases with one's knowledge and experience. I suppose that I do appreciate reading a well reasoned and well written legal brief more than would many attorneys. Comparing legal work with classical music may startle, but such greater appreciation, if it exists, would result from the time I have invested in writing such briefs myself.

Our age encourages a superficial enjoyment of many pursuits, and many pursuits offer much enjoyment even on a superficial level. But, as a viewing of Homage suggests, it would be a shame to go through life without finding at least one pursuit worthy of deeper study, resulting in the ability to enjoy the work of others from many angles, and on multiple layers -- that is, to appreciate fully the purpose and intent of the artist or artisan who himself has created the work.

USC flips off UCLA and the NCAA

USC coach Pete Carroll said his team will violate a NCAA rule and wear their red home jerseys Saturday against crosstown rival UCLA, thus forfeiting two timeouts since as the visiting team they are required to wear white, ESPN reported.

USC would lose one timeout per half.

"I don't care about it right now," Carroll said, in reference to losing the timeouts. "I think it's the fun thing to do, and I think the fans will appreciate it over time."

--MSNBC (12-2-08)

Hey, why not? The Trojans aren't your dad's junior college team, after all. They're a semi-pro team that just plays for laughs in the Pac-10. They used to call our conference "Southern Cal and the Seven Dwarfs," but then Arizona and Arizona State were admitted, spoiling the joke. But not changing the dynamics.

Like Pete says, "It's the fun thing to do." When you live in Los Angeles, who needs further excuse? Especially when you're USC, playing against your hapless cross-town rivals.

"We think it would be the fun thing to do if we also wore jerseys that said "BRUINS SUCK," Carroll said. "And so we will. That'll cost us two more time outs, but who the f**k cares!"

"Also, Tommy Trojan is going to join every huddle, sitting atop Traveler. We've agreed in advance with the Bruins to "kneecap" two of our running backs in exchange. I don't care about it right now. What the hell, the fans will appreciate it."

Negotiations are still underway with the Bruins to permit USC players to wear giant leis of Pasadena roses throughout the game in exchange for ceding three first round draft picks to UCLA next season.

The Trojans are favored to win Saturday's game by 33 points. They can't lose. (When they're not playing Oregon State.)

And a happy new year

Last night -- deep in the midst of my winter's sleep, while the clock struck 12, heard by no one but my cats -- we tripped quietly across the threshhold into the month of December. The time of year when a person of a certain traditional bent has thoughts that lightly turn to -- Christmas Cards!

Those who pay attention to the mores of our age assure us that the sending of Christmas cards is a dying custom, an anachronism in our age of high speed, digitalized communication. And my own experience does seem to bear out their analysis. Each year I receive fewer cards, each year I wonder if I should myself forbear sending cards and, if I did so, whether anyone would notice.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

So preaches the ever-tedious Alexander Pope. And, as always, Mr. Pope's tedious point is somewhat valid. But scratch a rabid American liberal -- such as me -- and you oft find a secret lover of tradition.

I was a kid who eagerly pounced on the daily mail each December, opening the envelopes and poring over each card before my folks had a chance to wrest them away from me. Half the senders I'd never met, or often had even heard of, but the stories of their lives for the past year, their tales of triumph or tragedy, appealed to my imagination -- as did the varied types of designs and messages that the cards themselves presented. And as a college student, I addressed Christmas cards while others were feverishly preparing for finals -- with predictable results for my GPA.

They say you can guess a man's personality by looking at his dog. Christmas cards offer even more transparent windows into the soul. Four cards, each wishing me the best wishes of the season, but each in a distinct style: a Christmas ornament and a piece of tinsel in a champagne glass; Santa with his feet on his desk, downing a beer with his elves; the Holy Family gathered around a manger, with a host of angels back-lit by a starry sky; an impressionistic view of a snowy forest in winter, with two birds and a deer in the foreground. Four senders of Christmas greetings who view Christmas from four very distinct angles.

Sir Henry Cole is said to have sent the first card in 1843, and we've been sending and receiving them ever since. We can not only judge a sender's personality by the cards he sends, but we can also sense the changing moods of society itself by the differences, from decade to decade, in the style, subject matter, and art work of the Christmas cards it creates.

But, anyway, here's a toast to old Sir Henry. If I ever decide to follow Pope's prudent advice -- to go with the trend of the times and give up sending out cards -- well, it certainly won't be this year. I've long ago purchased my cards, thank you. Next, I'll pore over last year's address list, check out who sent me cards, decide whether the year's been one of those good years when I add rather than subtract names, and draw up a final list of the worthies whose lives will be gladdened when they receive my Christmas greetings for 2008. Close friends and relatives will get a short handwritten greeting; folks to whom I haven't written all year will get whatever length of letter I can squeeze into the space available.

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

You celebrate the season your way. I'm getting ready to tackle my Christmas cards.

Rich mélange of Indian spices

Our world too often seems depressingly homogenized. With only a few changes, a street scene in Seattle resembles a scene in London, which resembles one in Paris, which resembles one in Sydney. It's therefore exciting -- in a guilty sort of way -- to watch a movie like Slumdog Millionaire, a film that reminds us that the world contains vast regions where people still live lives that are not safe, clean and well-ordered -- whose lives are, to the contrary, primal, dangerous, vivid, colorful, scary, horrifying, full of pain and hunger -- and exhilarating.

India is a country in transition. We know all about today's high tech world of Bangalore, the world of software and tech support. We also have vague images of an older India -- beggars, mystics, disease, overpopulation, starvation, and callous exploitation of starving and maimed children.

Slumdog shows us both Indias. The movie opens on the glitzy television set of a Mumbai version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." A young Indian chai-wallah (boy who delivers tea to office workers) named Jamal answers question after question correctly, reaching the highest rung of the show -- 20 million rupees. But Mumbai is not New York. Before the final round, the show's cynical and obnoxious host has Jamal arrested and horribly tortured by the police to force him to reveal just how he's been cheating. Because, really -- all middle class India knows that a boy of his status would be far too ignorant to give the answers that he does.

The police interrogation presents the framework for the story, a series of flashbacks to Jamal's boyhood and youth, re-enactments of the traumatic events that, once imprinted on his young mind, fortuitously provided the answers to the questions posed on the show. We see the squalor of the Mumbai slums, the gangs of young slum children who survive day by day by their own wits, the unbelievable cruelty of adults who live off those kids, and the rich and immensely varied background of India herself -- including even some beautiful scenes set before the Taj Mahal.

This film could easily have been presented as a depressing sociological tract, calling out the need for slum clearance and protection of children. But it's not. Instead, it's a joyous affirmation of Mumbai slum life, showing not only its chaos and all too frequent cruelty, but also the richness and small daily pleasures experienced by those who live there. Above all, the movie is a love story, the story of a boy who falls in love as a pre-adolescent and never gives up his dream, despite impossible odds and years of separation from the girl he loves.

This isn't the kind of movie where it would ever be in doubt, so let me tell you: In the end, Jamal gets his girl.

The movie has been compared with a Dickens novel. It does resemble Dickens in its portrayal of the underside of an urban society, in its focus on the goodness of children (and especially, the innocence and kindness of its hero), in its celebration of great diversity and peculiarity among human types, and certainly in its overriding theme of sucess and happiness as the reward for virtue and perseverence in the face of enormous obstacles.

The ending is, as you may have gathered, happy. The police interrogator allows that Jamal's explanations are just barely plausible -- and that Jamal is too absurdly honest to have been cheating. Jamal returns for the final round and, of course, wins.

And in case the audience remains in any doubt as to whether the movie ends happily, Jamal and his girl friend -- after being reunited in freeze-frame with a chaste kiss -- suddenly join together with a cast of thousands, singing and dancing their way through the streets of Mumbai (and the closing credits) in an improbable homage to every Bollywood film you've ever seen.

Only in India. Go see it.

Twilight

No. No review of Twilight. Not in the Northwest Corner.

Even though it takes place in Forks, Washington. (Maybe especially because it takes place in Forks.)

I don't read vampire books. I don't watch vampire movies. I don't review vampire books or movies.

Why not? Because ...

Vampires suck.

Fox finds werewolf

We all know Fox News, of course. The troglodyte channel, the world as seen by angry old white men (and a few even angrier, tight-lipped young white women). The sort who "Lexington," in this week's Economist magazine, says belong to the "party of 'white-trash pride,'" and who "are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders."

But I digress.

Whatever else you may say about Fox, it's a business and a successful business at that. It knows its clientele, and it knows their needs and interests. As a result, a perusal of its website reveals news items that never see the light of day on grayer, more boring media such as CNN and ABC.

For example: today's photo article about Pruthviraj Patil, the 11-year-old wolf boy in India. What? You knew nothing of this phenomenon? Well, I didn't either, but now I do. It seems the lad is covered with fur from head to toe, palms of his hands and feet only excepted. According to the story, he suffers from hypertrichosis, a "rare genetic disorder," more felicitously known as "werewolf syndrome."

The story was newsworthy, apparently, because of an anticipated "cure": Columbia University physicians are experimenting with testosterone injections. Too early for news of any progress, but not too early for a nice head shot of the young werewolf. Thanks, Fox News.

The Northwest Corner is proud to pass on this breaking development.

Tickling the ivories

I took piano lessons when I was a kid, but -- like an idiot -- stopped in 9th grade. I still like fooling around on the keyboard. Maybe I'll take lessons again some day.

When I started this blog, twenty months ago, I wrote those words on my profile. Since then, I've continued, at times, "fooling around on the keyboard." Now I want to do more -- more than just fooling around.

If you want to quit smoking, tell everyone you're quitting. The humiliation of breaking such a public resolution may be just the incentive you need to stick with it. Using that trick as an analogy, I now declare to you, my vast reading public, that I plan to give the old piano another whirl.

During my hours of "fooling around," I've managed to work up a fairly acceptable rendition of the first movement to Beethoven's Moonlight sonata. By that, I mean I've learned to play the notes and I've tried to imitate the phrasing and emphasis that I hear in recordings. I haven't had a teacher to provide feedback. And I still don't feel ready to start lessons.

What I do plan to do is to continue working on the Moonlight sonata, and at the same time learn to play the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique sonata. I tried to learn the Pathétique once before. While the second movement is one of the easier Beethoven movements, it is more difficult than the Moonlight. I got discouraged, and didn't master even the first page.

This time, however, I will not get discouraged. I will work on it every day. Sooner or later, I will learn to play it.

Once I do, my self-confidence will increase. I'll find a teacher and arrange for lessons.

Wish me luck. No, not luck. Wish me determination and perseverence. And maybe even a little bit of musicality? I'll report back in three or four months. If I don't, ask me how it's going. Shame me, if necessary!

Post-electoral depression

Twelve days now, since the big election: the "defining moment" of our times. Where now is the elation?

I gaze out the window at the gray sky ... nah, I went running yesterday, I can't do it again today. I glance at the pages of the New York Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, spread all over my living room floor ... no, I've read it all. I flip on the TV, but the world has not changed. Stories about gang murders and drug busts and wild fires and earthquakes ... along with still more footage of a perky Sarah Palin. Even the Faux News anchors, their pre-electoral fury momentarily doused by reality, sound too dull to be interesting.

Same old, same old.

Every December, the young Rainier96 would count down the days and hours to the magic moment of Christmas. And every Christmas evening, or the next day at the latest, our young hero would feel the same vague, inevitable sense of disappointment. "Is this all there is? I waited so long!" So also feels the corporate employee, I imagine, after he finally makes vice president, and the author after he finishes celebrating the conclusion of his book. Doctors even give a medical diagnosis to the sadness felt by some mothers after giving birth, ending nine months of waiting for their child: "post-partum depression."

Even "defining moments" in history cause only incremental changes in our daily lives. Yes, political decisions have real consequences. They will effect real long-term improvements in our lives and in our children's lives. But the political victories themselves do not validate our lives in any satisfying manner, any more than do the successes of our favorite sports teams. As always -- whether we live within a democracy, a monarchy, a dictatorship, or a tribe -- contentment comes from a sense of belonging within our universe, and from our community with other people.

And even with the most integrated of personalities, with the best adjusted of lives, enjoying the warmest of friendships, we may feel discontent following long-awaited triumph, a discontent apparently hard-wired into our brains.

Some folks handle it by going shopping. Others find it helps to add a post to their blog.

Let's make tracks

Weird, isn't it? "Elitists" used to be a term for fat cat Republicans -- symbolized by top hats, cigars, yachts, and the kids off in prep school playing lacrosse. Now, the term has somehow transmogrified into one of Republican scorn for any Democrats with advanced degrees -- scorn expressed as latte sipping, arugula eating, Volvo driving, and NY Times reading.

And, the latest pejorative is -- believe it or not -- "light rail riding"! Yeah, I read that devastating slur in some right wing article, cast hard on the heals of "latte (or was it Chardonnay?) sipping." And some irascible gent in, I believe, Texas, was quoted as declaring that light rail was just one more cog in a liberal elitist conspiracy to turn us all into Europeans. Not for him, by golly. The good old U.S.A. would do just fine, thank you. "I've never been on a light rail," he declared self-righteously, "and I never will."

W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R!! Anyway, this is all just my grumpy introduction to the great news that the Seattle metropolitan area voted -- finally -- to tax itself to pay for extension of our fledgling light rail system. Readers will recall my anguished lament last fall, when voters defeated a combined rail/highway funding issue. This year's measure, named Proposition 1, scaled back the 2007 proposal slightly, and stripped it entirely of the highway funding component opposed by the Sierra Club The measure was submitted to voters in the three-county (King, Pierce, Snohomish) Sound Transit region.

Proposition 1 passed with about 58 percent of the vote! The measure, along with virtually all taxation measures in the Puget Sound area, passed easily, despite the tanking of the region's economy. The large turnout of Democratic voters supporting Obama may well have produced the needed votes to push all these tax measures over the top.

As a result, Sound Transit's light rail transit line under construction at present, running from the University, through downtown, and out to the airport, will be extended an additional 34 miles -- extensions to the north and south, and a new line across Lake Washington to the east. Commuter train and bus service also will be expanded. Forty years after Seattle first voted down a heavy rail transit system, we finally will be undertaking construction -- at far more expense than the system originally planned in 1969 -- of a comprehensive light rail network that will serve the needs of the three-county metropolitan area.

In Seattle, patience is a necessary virtue for those of us favoring major municipal improvements to our infrastructure. But sometimes, patience is rewarded.

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

Photo: Light rail train on test run through downtown Seattle tunnel.

Bury me on the lone prairie

A glance at the electoral map shows that the Republican party has become increasingly a regional party, finding its home in three rough groupings of states:

1. The Old South, excluding Virginia and Florida, and (barely) North Carolina, with an Appalachian sailent running from Tennessee, through Kentucky and West Virginia, and up into southwest Pennsylvania.

2. The central plains, a tier of states stretching south from North Dakota to Texas.

3. Mormon territory, which includes Idaho in addition to the fatherland of Utah.

Other Western states, such as Montana and Arizona, voted for McCain, but are trending blue.

This division of the country leaves the Republicans in control of a lot of red acreage, as shown on the map, but much of that acreage is depopulating (the northern plains), or dying economically (Appalachia, and parts of the South).

If livestock could vote, the GOP would be in a lot better shape.

Republican moderates are now urging the party to repackage its traditional core principles of financial responsibility, small government, and individual self-reliance in ways that could appeal to a new demographic -- young people, blacks and Hispanics, and educated, suburban middle class voters. Something also needs to be done to reclaim traditional Republican blocs (such as business leaders and conservative intellectuals) that are drifting off toward the Democrats. But most Republican spokesmen reply that the party must swing even further to the right, and thus attract voters by force of its idealogical purity. A continuing hemorrhage from the ranks of corporate executives and conservative intellectuals seems almost to be welcomed by a party whose heart lies with small town and rural white voters.

Parties always pull themselves together after electoral disasters, and come back within a decade or two. But the current spokesmen for the Republican party -- one can hardly still call what's left "leaders" -- seem to show little interest in making such a recovery easy.

President Obama

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.