Climbing the "Savage Mountain"

Most of us admire those strong souls whose internal code demands a certain purity of conduct -- those who strive to satisfy their own ideals, rather than seeking the world's admiration or hoping somehow to sell their accomplishments. We admire, for example, the craftsman who makes violins the way he believes they should be made, even though he knows he could make far more money selling mediocre instruments to purchasers who wouldn't know or care about the difference.

Ed Viesturs, the first American to climb all fourteen mountains higher than 8,000 meters -- climbing all fourteen without supplementary oxygen -- is such a purist. A graduate of the University of Washington and of the veterinarian school at WSU, and a resident of a Seattle suburb across the Sound, he first picked up his mountaineering skills on the slopes of Mount Rainier, where he eventually became a professional climbing guide.

Viesturs has just published K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain, co-authored with David Roberts, a professional outdoors writer. In his book, Viesturs tells the story of K2 climbing -- from the first 1902 Crowly attempt, through attempts by Americans and Germans in the 1930s, to the first successful climb by the Italians in 1954, and through later attempts, some successful and many tragic, up until the present. Viesturs examines each climb through the lens of his own experience gained climbing in the Himalayas and Karakorams, especially his own successful climb of K2 with Scott Fischer in 1992.

Although K2, in the Karakoram range on the Pakistan-China border, is second in altitude to Everest, it is second to none in difficulty. Viesturs observes that, over the decades, one person has died for every four who have reached K2's summit. (Eleven died within a 36 hour period in 2008.) Contrast that 1:4 figure with Everest, where the ratio is 1:19¹ and it becomes apparent why experienced climbers consider the climb of K2 a far greater accomplishment than that of Everest.

Statistics aside, simply reading the accounts of climbs over the years makes it obvious that -- even with great physical strength and endurance, psychological perserverance, and a goodly helping of good luck and favorable weather -- only the most technically skillful climbers can venture very far above base camp. Guides using fixed ropes now lead countless numbers of amateurs up Everest. The Everest climb still demands endurance and perserverance, but the fixed ropes eliminate much of the need for technical climbing ability and experience.

There are no permanent fixed ropes on K2.

And Viesturs shows little respect for those climbers who rely on temporary fixed ropes anchored by Sherpa or Hunza staff -- locals who, climbing largely without protection, risk their own lives by struggling up ahead of the "sahibs" in order to ease their way to the top. He has little patience with grandstanding and bragging, and even less with leaders who let others take the risks and do the work while they collect the glory. He dislikes the use of bottled oxygen. He is suspicious of climbers who take imprudent chances, knowing that they can rely on radios or cell phones to summon help when they find themselves in a jam. And he throws up his hands at the increasingly common reliance on helicopters to rescue climbers whose dreams of glory outstrip their skill and experience.

A mountain can be considered climbed only when the climber reaches the summit and returns safely to base camp. The climb down is as critical, and often more dangerous, than the climb up. To Viesturs, it is self-evident that the climber must rely on his own abilities to complete the climb in both directions. Among the climber's requisite set of skills is good judgment. The climber must sacrifice the summit and turn around, Viesturs insists, once he determines that weather conditions or his own physical condition and abilities will make continuing the climb an unreasonable risk to his own safety and that of his companions. Viesturs frankly admits he ignored his own rule and, despite the lateness of the day, failed to turn back during his successful climb of K2 in 1992. He nearly lost his life as a result. He vowed never to take foolish chances again, and stuck with that vow while bagging his 13 remaining over-8000 meter summits.

Ed Viesturs is opinionated, but his opinions demand nothing of other climbers that he doesn't demand of himself. His own accomplishments entitle him to his strong opinions.

Viesturs's ideals demand of climbers more preparation and experience than some climbers may care to demand of themselves. His judgments may, at times, seem harsh. But these same ideals also permit him to see a climb as more than just a physical challenge. He notes how climbers frequently trek the 40 miles to K2's base camp almost heedless of the scenic beauty through which they walk. By focusing only on the physical challenge that lies ahead, he feels, they miss a significant part of the overall climbing experience. He marvels at -- and to some degree envies --the hardy pioneers who made the earliest attempts on K2. Those parties trekked not 40 miles, but hundreds of miles, through roadless countryside. Their members saw themselves as explorers as well as climbers. On their way, they carried art supplies and painted landscapes, did surveying, studied fauna, and collected geological samples.

Readers of Viesturs's book are given exciting and humbling glimpses of what a human being is capable of doing -- the physical and mental extremes that a disciplined person can force himself to endure. Even if your idea of tough physical activity is a five-mile hike on a Forest Service trail, you will finish the book happy that people like Viesturs still exist -- climbers possessing not only physical skill and endurance, but also the education and sensitivity to convey to us lesser mortals some idea of the beauty and the challenge presented by high altitude mountaineering.

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¹K2's death/success ratio is second only to that of Annapurna, which has an incredible 2:3 ratio.

Dying small towns

Heading south on I-5, I can reach the Columbia river in about two hours. Once I reach the Columbia, I've also reached the town where I was born, grew up, and graduated from high school.

To a kid, it was a wonderful town. I assumed all towns of its size -- then, around 25,000 -- were pretty much the same. Looking back now, I realize that in many ways it more closely resembled a mill town in Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania than it did small towns in California or suburbs in other states.

In fact, it was a mill town. The economy was based on the two largest (reputedly) lumber mills in the world, a locally owned paper mill, an aluminum reduction plant, and a large port . The local mill workers were 100 percent unionized. Most boys went to work for the mills right out of high school, at the age of 18. Wages were great -- so great that you had to really want to go to college before you'd break free of the town and do so -- and employment was steady.

The town was prosperous. Workers' income supported a large commercial downtown, consisting almost entirely of locally owned and managed businesses. The daily newspaper, although biased toward local business interests, was well written and competed successfully with Portland and Seattle dailies. Unlike most mill towns in the Midwest, moreover, the town was (and still is, for that matter) attractive, with nicely maintained houses on tree-lined streets and excellent parks. The schools were also physically attractive, and I always assumed that they were providing me an excellent education -- a belief that I never seriously questioned until I went away to college and competed with students from Eastern prep schools and large suburban high schools.

I tell you all of this only incidentally out of nostalgia for my childhood. Primarily, it's my response to an article that I encountered this week in the on-line version of my hometown's newspaper -- a paper no longer locally-owned, but still apparently well written and well edited. The article described the desperate straits in which the city now finds itself.

One of the two large lumber mills is closed, and the other has drastically reduced its employment. Easily accessible timber is harder to come by, and the cost of union labor makes local lumber less competitive with that from other areas. The aluminum plant, dependent on cheap hydroelectric power, is shut down. The power is no longer so cheap -- or at least apparently not cheap enough to justify the transport of bauxite ore from far off sources such as Jamaica -- and the market for aluminum has weakened. The paper mill has cut its employment. Other smaller manufacturers have closed down, for one reason or another.

The attractive and prosperous town I grew up in now has over 16 percent of its households living below the poverty level. The typical level of education attained by residents makes it difficult for them to find employment in the new economy, and the sort of businesses that now thrive (at least in normal economic times) are not interested in locating in such an environment. The local high schools -- which probably were at least average for Washington when I attended, with virtually all entering students graduating -- are now rated mediocre at best. And only 55 percent of entering freshman graduate.

The downtown commercial area is dead. It was killed first by construction of a shopping mall outside the city, a fate suffered by many Main Streets in small towns across the nation. Now that mall itself is apparently in dire straits.

More depressing to me than the article itself was the tone of the on-line comments written by local residents. They display no optimism that the town will ever recover its former level of relative prosperity. The commentators see the town's work force, and their children, as undereducated and lacking the skills now sought by industry. The town does still contain a significant number of middle to upper middle class families (11 percent of households earn over $100,000); the children of these families will receive good college educations, but few of them will return after graduation.

The comment writers note (and statistics in the article substantiate) that the town is becoming increasingly polarized between a small affluent elite and a large majority of residents who are unemployed or just barely scraping by. The working middle class that formerly dominated the town and drove the local economy is gone.

Most of all, those commenting on the article see a lack of competence both in the local business community and in city government -- a lack of both the ability and the initiative to somehow lead the city into the 21st century. Whether justified or not, this perception itself is demoralizing to local residents. One commentator, writing on Monday, states:

We need to make this a place where people want to be. I have friends who come up from Oregon to go fishing here, but they stay in other cities, they don't even want to get a room here to fish! If this town is going to survive, it needs to be a destination, not just a gas stop along the way to something better.

Everyone sees the problems, but no one suggests plausible solutions. Maybe there are none.

I now realize that when I read about the desperation of citizens in Flint MI or Youngstown OH, I'm not just reading about remote economic disasters, 3,000 miles away. The same problems are endemic in small cities and towns throughout the country -- and not only in my own state, but in the very town where I spent a happy childhood.

We have a national problem, affecting significant parts of our nation, and we don't really know what to do about it.

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Photo above: My high school

None dare call it treason

BEIJING -- President Obama is again receiving harsh criticism from American conservatives, this time for shaking hands with Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China (or "Red China," as these critics refer to it). These latest criticisms follow the recent uproar in response to photographs of the American president extending the courtesy of a bow to the Japanese emperor.

Photographs of the American and Chinese heads of state shaking hands are being posted on Fox News and other conservative journals, accompanied by comments deploring President Obama's gesture.

"The handshake is historically a gesture from one warrior to another, proof that he is bearing no arms. Frankly, I don't believe that is the sort of message we should be sending the murderous cabal in Beijing, bloated as they are with outsourced American jobs and fistfuls of underpriced yuan," exclaimed one Republican source, speaking not for attribution. "I literally vomited. I never thought I'd live to see an American president -- even one possibly not American-born --stand before some foreign potentate so openly confessing that he and his nation are disarmed."

Sailing the Salish Sea

The feds have announced that Washington's "inland marine waterways" will henceforth be known as the "Salish Sea." Huh? What's that again? ("Salish" refers to a group of American Indian --"Native American" -- peoples and languages found along the coastal areas of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.)

Well, I've lived around these here parts virtually all of my life, and I've never heard anyone mention a Salish Sea. It's apparently to be a generic name for waters now known as Puget Sound, the Georgia Strait, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and connected waterways. We are assured that the present names will continue in use, describing specific portions of the newly hatched Salish Sea. Until today, Northwesterners have usually called the entire body of water "Puget Sound," although geographers who keep track of such things assure us that this term applies properly only to the inlet south of Whidbey Island.

Well, cool. I haven't been so excited since they renamed the Gulf of California the "Sea of Cortez." And of course life's been better for us all since Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Constantinople became Istanbul, and St. Petersburg became Leningrad. Oh, wait -- it's St. Petersburg again, right? -- it all happens so fast, I can't keep track. And whatever happened to the Pillars of Hercules?

Just don't even get me started on what happened to the Stanford "Indians" ... Bah, humbug!

Still plugging away

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.
--Rainier96 (11-18-08)

Well, so much for that theory!

A year ago, you may recall, I offered you my "public resolution" that I'd teach myself to play the Adagio movement to Beethoven's Pathétique sonata -- an uncommonly beautiful middle movement preceded and followed by movements that are louder, much faster, and significantly beyond my present puny abilities. I'd tried teaching myself to play that movement once before -- as I confessed to you last year -- and hadn't gotten very far, but I was now determined to master it, mechanically at least, by sheer force of determination.

Once I accomplished this goal, proving to myself that I was serious in my endeavor and capable of sustained effort, I would once more place myself under the guidance of a piano instructor.

Those of you who know me, or have even followed this blog from its inception, will hardly be surprised when I tell you that I failed to achieve my goal in the "three or four months" that I contemplated. Travels, movie-making, a fall on my head -- well, gosh, sometimes life just conspires against you, doesn't it?

However, I'm happy to say that I've recently made progress. I can now struggle through the movement without too many embarrassing stops, stumbles, scowls, and swearing. It doesn't flow like it should, I admit. My phrasing is poor. The movement has a number of trills, trills that still don't trip lightly off my fingers without loss of tempo. I'm often unsure of which notes to emphasize. I suspect that I'm not simultaneously presenting both the treble and bass melodies, as Herr Beethoven intended.

But these are all questions of musicality, exactly the sort of questions for which you turn to a teacher for guidance. I'm at least getting close to the point where I hit the correct keys -- more or less reliably. And once I reach that point, as I promised a year ago, I plan to sign up for lessons.

The winter "term" at the music school I've used before starts in January. I think I'll be ready by then. Wish me luck.

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The second movement to Beethoven's Sonata No. 8 in A flat major ("Pathétique"), when played as I'd like some day to play it, is well worth hearing. Here's a nice interpretation, performed by a young pianist on YouTube.

Enough's enough

Last night, the Democratic majority in the House passed its version of health care reform legislation. It now goes to the Senate. "Independent" Senator Joe Lieberman immediately announced that "as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote."

It's an odd legislative system where the junior senator from the small state of Connecticut can unilaterally bring the majority party's legislative program to a standstill by threatening a filibuster. Until recently, filibusters and threats of filibusers were reserved for true "matters of conscience," although the "conscience" was usually that of Southerners defending their region's peculiar racial policies. At least, in those cases, an entire geographical region was protecting itself against what it believed to be a tyrannical Northern majority.

Now, it seems, even proposed legislative changes to the nation's system of health care insurance serves as an affront to the conscience of the junior senator from Connecticut.

Joe Lieberman, as we recall, was elected to the Senate as a Democrat, with the support of the Democratic party, in 1988 and 1994. He ran for vice president as Al Gore's running mate in 2000, hedging his bet by, at the same time, also running successfully for relection to the Senate.

In 2006, Democratic voters defeated his bid to run once more for re-election. Refusing to accept the decision of his party's voters, he ran as an Independent, announcing that "For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand." (He failed to add that it was for the sake of his own political ambitions.) He went on to defeat the Democratic nominee. In 2008, he campaigned actively for Republican presidential nominee John McCain. McCain reportedly nearly selected Lieberman as his running mate and was considering naming him Secretary of State if he won.

When the Democrats took the presidency and won control of both houses of Congress, Lieberman hesitated whether to accept an invitation to join the Republican caucus, dithering in his decision until satisfied that the Democrats would allow him to retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee.

Senator Lieberman's position on many political issues has been commendable. But he won election as -- and called himself -- a Democrat. We have the right to expect commendable positions from a Democratic New England senator. Unfortunately, he often seems to confuse his political self-interest with the demands of his conscience. And he is reported to have received nearly $1 million in contributions from the health insurance industry.

There has always been room in the Democratic party for mavericks. Unlike the Republicans, Democrats do not demand slavish loyalty to the party platform. But when a Democratic U.S. Senator supports the presidential campaign of the Republican nominee, he has gone beyond the realm of being a maverick. Whether Joe Lieberman's present threats to filibuster health insurance reform are based on the imperatives of his conscience, the generous contributions received from opponents of the litigation, or simply his best guess as to what best serves his long term political advantage -- enough is enough.

Lieberman has shown no compunction about using the Democratic party to further his own interests. Just as soon as his now-doubtful vote is of no further use to the Democrats, they should likewise have no qualms about stripping him of his committee chairmanships and any other prerogatives that he now enjoys as a quasi-Democrat.

Let Sen. Lieberman become a Republican. Let's see how well Joe's conscience accepts the unsmiling authority of the Republican whips. And how long the Republicans themselves can tolerate his unpredictable presence in their own caucus.

Welcome, Maury

Ay, and while you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won’t you tell us, mother, please?


Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas.


And remember in your playing, as the seafog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one. nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!
--Robert Louis Stevenson

I returned yesterday from Sonoma. I flew down there for just one reason -- to hold Maury, my two week old great-niece, in my arms and look deep into her wondering, puzzled eyes. Babies are just babies, and to me they all look alike -- except when they arrive in my own family.

Just two weeks out in the open air, Maury still has only a few, very basic behavioral settings: she feeds, sleeps, cries, and poops. But while we adults are being delighted and/or irritated as she scrolls back and forth between these essential activities, we tend to overlook what is going on inside her small little head. Her eyes are darting around and her tiny hands are constantly reaching out for a reason: She is rapidly making mental connections between the outside world and the inner sensations given to her by her eyes, ears and skin. Her brain is multiplying synapses at an unbelievable rate, as she creates a mental map of the world about her.

She is shaping herself into a little person.

I watch her, and I think of the years that lie ahead. The joys and sorrows of childhood, adolescence and adulthood -- those joys and sorrows that may brush up against my own life, the many more that she will share only with others, and those that she will continue to experience after I'm no longer around to watch. This tiny baby reminds me that the appearance in our universe of even the dullest of human lives is an amazing phenomenon. With the kind of parents and background she has, I predict that Maury's life will be a technicolor supernova.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a famous poem in London in honor of Louis Sanchez, his godson, born halfway around the world in Monterey. The best I can manage for Maury is a blog posting. But accept it happily, Maury, and know that your uncle was already dreaming of your life to come -- while you still dreamed only of your next feeding!

Half way to heaven

Here I am, safely home from an exciting trek in Nepal. I still feel a bit jet-lagged, compounded by a cold caught on the long flight home, all of which decreases my enthusiasm for scribbling in my blog. I did write a summary email, that most of you, my readers, received. And fortunately, Pascal copied me in last night on an email he sent to his own friends and family. Relying on a couple of 2007 precedents, when Pascal wrote as a guest blogger from New Zealand and Australia -- and in recognition of the sense of excitement and enthusiasm that he brings to his writing -- I present here excerpts from his trip report, adding some paragraph breaks of my own:

[10/13/09] I just got back to Pokhara a couple hours ago. The trek was fantastic! The group was great too! The trip was very different than I was expecting, but wonderful still.For starters we spent about 75% of the trek in a lush green (and wet) rain forest! I was expecting landscapes more similar to my last trip to the Indian Himalayas: arid, very little vegetation, and a jagged range of mountains. For starters, it was raining off and on for our first day of trekking, something that we got none of in India. Come to think of it, we got at least a little rain every day. We started out trekking through hillside after hillside of rice paddies. I love rice paddies! The spectrum of green they contain is just gorgeous. My favorite color ever. We would hike through tiny villages that consist of a couple houses and their live stock (typically chickens and a water buffalo with the occasional goat). Everyone would offer up a kind "Namaste!" Such gorgeous people.

I guess an average day of hiking would be about 5-6 hours of hiking. Averaging about 8 miles a day. It's incredible to look back and see how much ground you've covered by just walking. We did a lot of vertical too. We'd be up in a village and then have to hike way down to cross a river (all swinging bridges!) and then wayyy back up the other side to continue on to our next destination. Loooots of steps. The trail is very well maintained though, it's a very popular one. You really got the sense of it because you were constantly running into other trekking groups. For most of our nights we would be camping next to little lodges that have extra grass space. So we could use their facilities and such. I had no idea it was so developed here. All along the route there were little lodges where you could stay. You could totally do it with just your backpack and stay in lodges the whole way. I was a little curious why we didn't do that, so I asked and our guide said that REI tries to support the local economy as much as possible wherever they go. So by camping we needed an army of porters, kitchen staff, assistant guides, etc. I think all in all at the beginning of the trek we had about 27 staff for us 9 hikers! Crazy huh?! We cut some porters as we went along, so at the end we had 21 staff.

[10/18/09] The first four days we wouldn't really gain all that much altitude from camp to camp... but we did a lot of vertical to get there. Down to a river and then up the other side. I really enjoyed the swinging bridges though. They gave the trek a little Indiana Jones feeling to it (minus the bad guys cutting the bridge mid-way). Most of them were pretty sturdy, but there was always the occasional missing plank here and hole there.

The camps were all pretty similar up until the fourth day when it rained... a lot. We were soaked for the entire day. It wasn't that cold when we were hiking cause you were constantly climbing stairs, but as soon as we stopped for lunch or something we got pretty chilly pretty fast. So our guide thankfully sent one of the staff ahead and set up accommodation at a little lodge in Dovan. The main idea was so that we could stay dry and maybe dry some of our sopping wet clothes. Everyone greatly appreciated it. It was a cool little place too. A cozy common room where we played Hearts, Gin, Poker (not for money though), and Scrabble. Little did we know we would be spending the whole next day in that cozy little room.

That night it POURED rain all through the night. We got up a little worried and rightfully so. At breakfast our guide, Nima, told us that he and the Sirdar (in charge of most of the staff) had hiked a little ahead and it wasn't looking good. All of the streams that were normally little creeks had over flowed. There were sections where you could normally hop from rock to rock, but now you would have to wade dangerously through. He strongly suggested we not go up that day. I was a little peeved at the time, but later that day as trekkers were returning from Machhapuchre Base Camp (MBC) and told us of their day I was very glad we didn't push through. They said they were wading through fast moving creeks above their knees and pretty much all of them were swept off their feet at some point. Soooo... we played more cards and watch the rain continue to fall... all day long.

I was quickly giving up hope of making it to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC). Even if the rain did let up a bit we would make it up there only to see more clouds. That, and it was dangerous because if we went up and then it started to pour again we might be stuck there, not able to cross the creeks. Everyone was starting to give up hope. We came up with a backup plan: we would hike back as we had planned, but make a side route to a well known vista of the mountains. Maybe if the clouds cleared we MIGHT be able to get a view. I wasn't holding my breath. Nima was relatively sure that it would be raining for the next couple of days. But it didn't!

We went to sleep drearily as the rain spattered on our tin roofs. In the morning I awoke to excited whispers of "It's not raining!!" I thought I was still dreaming. I wasn't. I ran outside and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I was PUMPED! I bounced my way through breakfast not able to hold still. The hike up was muddy, but definitely doable. We crossed creek after creek usually over logs that had been made into somewhat sturdy bridges. Rock hopped over the rest of them. But it was so worth it. We finally were able to get good views of the mountains! Machhapuchre (or Fish Tail) is a stupendous peak topping off at 22,942 ft!The clouds rolled in around lunch time, but Nima assured us that it was normal for it cloud up in the afternoon due to the moisture evaporating from the rain forest and drifting up through the valleys.

When we got to our camp at MBC it was completely socked in, but we couldn't be happier to just be there. Later in the evening we were coaxed out of our dining tent by the sounds of "Baaaaa" all around us. Sure enough there was about 100 goats surrounding us! Kids are pretty damn cute. I ended up taking far too many goat pictures. But it was a good thing they got us out there, cause the clouds ended up parting and we got fantastic views of Fishtail Mt. as the sun was setting on it. Gorgeous. A very picturesque peak which would explain my excess of pictures devoted to it.

The next morning we got up at 5 AM to hike up to ABC to catch the morning sun on the peaks. It was bright and sunny! We couldn't be happier! Just about at freezing when we started off to ABC which is about a 2 hour hike up. We were encouraged along the way by the fantastic vistas unfolding directly in front of us. Actually all around us! That's the amazing thing about the Annapurna Sanctuary is that it is absolutely surrounded by 20,000 ft mountains! Unreal. Once we arrived we just couldn't stop taking pictures. We were so in awe of the monumental size of the towering snowy peaks on all sides of us. You realize how very minuscule you really are in this world. Quite a humbling experience. There was an amazing sense of peacefulness as we sat in silence and gazed awestruck at our surroundings. Unfortunately we could only stay about an hour and then we had to start heading back. Originally we had a whole day planned there, but due to our delay in Dovan cause of the rain we had to bypass that day. But we couldn't have cared less. We were all just sooooooo thankful and lucky that we got to see it at all! I think having that rainy day made us appreciate it even more. Every thing happens for a reason, and I couldn't have been happier.

The rest of the trip was just toppings on the cake. We hiked through this very old village called Ghandruk which was just charming. Tiny little stone walkways that zig-zagged through the town in no apparent order. We went out exploring it and would often times all of a sudden find ourselves in someone's back courtyard. I felt like I could have been back in the 17th century or something.

Pascal brings the trek to life. A sampling of my own photos are posted on Facebook.

September beginnings

I just returned from a brisk walk to and around the University of Washington campus, one final limbering up exercise before heading off on my Himalaya trek. While I'm now getting ready for a Tuesday departure, the university is gearing up for tomorrow's first day of classes.

It's a perfect day for a new quarter to begin. The air is cool, the sky is blue, the sun is warm. The campus was a sea of freshmen, most of them dressed in brand new t-shirts or sweat shirts, all in Husky purple -- their school pride obviously unaffected by their football team's drubbing (yes, I said drubbing) last night at the hands of my own alma mater.

The campus is also awash in their proud parents.

The parents are a relatively new wrinkle. As I walked onto the campus from Montlake, I encountered a giant tent filled with kids and their parents seated at tables chattering and eating. Signs announced this to be the President's Picnic, a meal designed to make everyone feel welcome and to let the parents experience being a part of their offspring's expensive education. (See photo above for a similar scene at Stanford -- this year's freshmen accompanied by their parents at "Freshman Convocation.")

I say it's a new wrinkle, because when I was a freshman, I don't recall parents hanging around the campus. They certainly didn't join us at freshman convocation. Those of us from out of state arrived on our own. Freshman living within driving distance of campus were often brought to the school by their parents, but after the old folks had served their primary function of helping carry stuff into the dorm, and after they spent a few minutes looking around and perhaps meeting their son or daughter's scary new roommate, there were awkward hugs, a quick goodby -- and they were gone, probably not to be seen again until at least Thanksgiving.

The university's effort to bring parents, students, and school together in a communal feast is simply an acknowledgement of certain changes in our society. Cell phones, Facebook and emails keep the generations in touch now on virtually a daily basis. Such close communication would have been considered bizarre, a sign of arrested development, when I was in college. I did know of kids who phoned home weekly, but contact of even that frequency certainly wasn't the norm.

As do many school officials, I have my worries that such continued close involvement by parents in the lives of their children may result in a "failure to launch," a delay in the student's ability to stand on his own feet -- intellectually as well as socially and financially. But this concern is probably just another one of those many worries that aren't worth worrying about. "Nothing endures but change," as Heraclitus reminds us. Change in itself is neither good nor bad -- just different. And my memories may be as accurate as my own parents' memories of walking to school barefoot through 12 foot snow drifts.

The kids on the U-Dub campus looked happy and excited. As did their folks. It almost made me wish I were 18 again. But when I shake off the deceptive glow of nostalgia and carefully remember everything about how it felt to be a freshman -- nah, I don't think so.

Being a college freshman is, I suppose, like sky diving -- it's something that's great to do once in your lifetime.

Referendum 71

Readers who vote in Washington: Remember that a vote FOR Referendum 71 is a vote to APPROVE legislation broadening the scope of protection afforded registered domestic partners.

These increased protections include hospital visitation; inheritance; inadmissibility of testimony by one partner against the other; and the applicability of community property rules, property transfer rules, and dissolution procedures. Washington already recognizes domestic partnerships -- the 2009 legislation and Referendum 71 simply broaden their scope to give domestic partners the same security and legal protections that married people take for granted .

Support for Referendum 71 should be a no-brainer. The amendments to the domestic partnership statute are all about treating people fairly. The legislation is sound public policy. It is emblematic of the basic humanity and decency of the people of Washington.

Vote for fairness. Vote FOR Referendum 71.

Local kid comes to town

And then there's Glenn Beck. He's that guy on Fox who ... well, never mind, we all know who he is. Another Fox entertainer who makes millions stoking readers' fears and anger about any fermenting thought that bubbles to the surface of his mind.

Time [magazine] further describes Beck as "a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies", proclaiming that he has "emerged as a virtuoso on the strings" of Conservative's discontent ... mining the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us."

--Wikipedia. Beck recently described President Obama as a "racist," bringing to mind images of black kettles and speaking pots.

Anyway, Beck was born and reared in Mount Vernon, Washington, a middling agricultural community lying alongside I-5, about an hour's drive north of Seattle. Mount Vernon until now was known chiefly for an annual tulip festival, and as the point of departure from I-5 when you're heading for the ferries to the San Juan Islands. These claims to fame apparently lacked sufficient drama in the eyes of its ambitious mayor, however.

On Saturday, Mayor Bud Norris will present to Glenn Beck the key to the City of Mount Vernon. As the mayor admits, the key doesn't open a damn thing, but will cost something like $50 to $80 at the kind of shop that throws together bowling trophies. Police officers will work overtime to provide Beck with security, and officers from the county and surrounding communities have been asked for assistance. The key will be presented at a ceremony with a $25 admission charge.

Sixteen thousand persons have signed a petition opposing the honor (the town has a population of around 32,000). The seven-person City Council unanimously passed a resolution stating:

Mount Vernon City Council is in no way sponsoring the Mayor's event on September 26, 2009 and is not connected to the Glenn Beck event in any manner.

Residents of the San Juans and neighboring towns who regularly shop in Mount Vernon are murmuring about a possible boycott.

But the mayor isn't blinking. The show will go on.

Thaw towards Havana

I know I'm dog-paddling in water way over my head, but apparently there is a Latin rock musician, a native of Colombia, known as "Juanes." Juanes, who now lives on Key Biscayne, is scheduled to perform a free concert today in Havana. The New York Times reported yesterday on the divisive impact this concert is having on the Cuban-American population in Florida.

The concert has been approved by the State Department and by the Cuban government. According to Juanes:

Through culture, there is a door, there is a window. Let's go through that door.

The reaction among the Miami Cuban population reveals the expected generational split. But this year is the 50th anniversary of the Castro revolution in Cuba. The United States has had no diplomatic relations with a country just 90 miles off Florida for the last 47 of those 50 years. We have done everything possible to keep Cuba impoverished, so that no claim could be made elsewhere in Latin America that Communism "works."

The Cuban exiles in Florida remind me of the loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution. If fifty years later, in 1826, those loyalists had been still denouncing the American government -- and John Quincy Adams, its president -- as traitors to the Crown, and demanding that British North America have no economic or cultural contact with the rebellious "colonies," their demands would have seemed somewhat peculiar to the rest of the world.

And so has appeared our treatment of Cuba. It's a relief to see that the ice is finally melting, and that our government is supporting today's concert by Juanes.

Slouching towards darkness

I am talking here about finding both your husband and your daugher dead, gone from your life within months of each other. Two such deaths, while improbable and unexpected, are not I suppose a coincidence that one could call impossible. Nevertheless they are a coincidence that I somehow find troubling.

Anyone who has read Joan Didion recognizes her style, a style as tempting to parody (mine above) as the style of another superb writer, Ernest Hemingway. I've long loved both Didion's style and her paranoid ability to see the uncanny, the frightening, the apocalyptic in the trivial details of daily life, in the minor crime and accident reports she happens upon in the daily papers, in the frighteningly banal lives of the men we consider our leaders. Her books of essays -- Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album -- represent, to me at least, some of the best and most evocative writing of its kind of the past half century.

This post, however, is not to be an evaluation of Ms. Didion's writing style or her admittedly neurotic obsessions -- although they would make admirable topics for future posts. Instead, I just want to mention that I saw a dramatic interpretation of her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, at Intiman Theatre last week. I haven't read the best-selling book, but her dramatization of her own work for stage is a powerful reflection on the finality of death, on our inability to accept that finality, and on the secret efforts of our incredulous minds to disregard that finality -- our efforts to reverse death and to restore the dead to life by forcing ourselves to obey invented and self-imposed rules -- efforts similar to those of a kid who thinks he can prevent his mother's back from breaking if he avoids the cracks in the sidewalk.

Of such efforts is magical thinking.

Actor Judith Roberts strides about a sparely but tastefully appointed and sandy stage -- representing Didion's Malibu beach property -- and delivers a stunning monologue -- 1 hour, 45 minutes, without intermission. Before our eyes, she talks her way though the early stages of grief -- denial, guilt, anger, bargaining, reflection. But whereas psychologists see these stages as leading to acceptance and hope, Didion is a control freak. She has never been a woman for whom acceptance has been a normal approach to life. Resolution for her signifies not acceptance and hope, but a bitter concession that the two most important persons -- perhaps the only important persons -- in her life are indeed dead. They are dead, they will stay dead, and they aren't hanging around waiting for her to spring them by posting some form of spiritual bail. There is no action she can take, no threats she can make, no sly bargains she can negotiate, that will ever bring them back.

It's a powerful and devastating play, one that left the audience stunned and deathly silent, a play that demonstrated through the power of the spoken word why Joan Didion is one of the most memorable wielders and stylists of the English language now alive.

Mad as hell

Yesterday, in response to a question, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said:

“Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time as many people will still find that their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was.

Today, Warren Buffet has been quoted, offering his opinion that the economy has not gotten worse -- but hasn't gotten better either -- the past three months. In the absence of some "horrible event," he does not see much of a chance for a significant downturn in the near future for the overall economy.

These are very cautious, measured statements. Bernanke emphasizes that, using the technical definition of "recession" -- month to month decrease in the GDP -- the recession is over. This leaves us at the bottom of the hill, hoping for a future rise in GDP, leading in turn to increased employment. Buffet essentially says the same thing, in less technical language.

But read the on-line comments to the news stories reporting both men's statements. Readers call both men liars, ignorant, incompetent, selfish, unable to see what's in front of their face. How can they say the recession is over, writers howl, when times are as tough as they are.

The fault lies partly in the layman's use of "recession" to signify not a receding of the economy, but simply bad times economically. But the bitter on-line comments also demonstrate just how bad life has become for many Americans. When you're out of work and you fear that you will be permanently unemployable in tomorrow's economy, you don't stop to notice fine distinctions in technical terminology. Nor are you interested in secular economic trends, changes in demographics, or evolving life styles in foreign countries as root causes for the decline in the American economy. All you care about is that yesterday was good, and tomorrow looks like it will be bad, very bad. Someone screwed up, and "we want our country back."

Citizens who write comments on-line are not stupid. They are articulate, and they have some technological sophistication. If these writers are "mad as hell," they represent a lot of other people out there, people who may feel even angrier and more hopeless.

If the economy doesn't show definite improvement by November 2010 -- not just technically, not just in the stock market, but at the level that affects the average guy -- it will clearly play a major role in determining the results of the midterm elections. The question is -- which candidates and which party will pay the higher price?

In search of "better angels"

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
--Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

Readers may have noted a dramatic decrease in the number of my political postings since the November election. In part, this is the result of Obama's victory -- my constant howls of outrage are no longer necessary. But in part, it's because of my general sense of depression as I watch President Obama's attempts to push a moderate agenda through Congress. It's like watching a kayaker paddling upstream against a strong current.

In today's New York Times, Op-Ed columnist Charles M. Blow suggests that today's America has no room for conciliators -- like Obama.

He's an idealist in an age of cynicism, a conciliator at a time of cleaving. He strives to appeal to a dwindling body of better angels in an increasingly bifurcated country. It's noble and inspirational, but will it be effective?

In some ways, he is a throwback to a gentler time of civility and commonality, when compromising on issues wasn't viewed as compromising on principles.

We need a fighter, Blow suggests. Someone who's not so interested in persuading Republicans. More interested in crushing them.

I don't want to sound bizarrely apocalyptic, but at times the country today reminds me of America in the decade before the Civil War. Conciliation and attempts to compromise were becoming less and less fruitful. Positions were hardening, becoming more idealogical and less negotiable. Political opposition was becoming more personal, less civil.

In retrospect, Abraham Lincoln -- like Obama -- was a moderate whose primary goal was to preserve the Union. The South, consumed with fury, couldn't see it that way. Lincoln was the Devil incarnate. His election precipitated secession beginning with -- no surprise, in view of recent events -- South Carolina.

Despite journalists' tidy division of today's America into red and blue states, I suspect that the majority of Americans across the nation even now are moderate conservatives or moderate liberals -- or are unconcerned with or oblivious to political debates. Most Americans -- I suspect -- still look at health care reform pragmatically, not as an Armageddon between Atheistic Socialism and Inhuman Disdain for the Sufferings of the Poor. But, then, I suspect that in the run-up to the Civil War, political polls -- if they had existed -- would have shown that most (white male) Americans wanted a solution to the slavery issue that would gradually have ended the South's "peculiar institution" at minimal cost to southern economic interests, a solution that they hoped would have kept the nation united.

The moderate middle was unable to prevent the Civil War. The moral issue of slavery and the constitutional issue of the nature of the union were decided by force -- not by reason, not by consensus. Admittedly, attitudes at that time were more sharply defined by geography than they are today, despite the apparent clarity on political maps of the blue state - red state division. Military war between the states today thus seems unthinkable (of course it also seemed unlikely in, say, 1830), but unbending and seemingly irrational Republican idealogues may be pushing their opponents into the political equivalent of military conquest -- reliance on large majorities in Congress to ram through political solutions without bothering to consult across the aisle.

If the hotheads in South Carolina and throughout the South had given Lincoln a chance, he might have mediated a mutually acceptable solution to the political crisis of those days. Instead, they were less interested in defending their region's actual economic interests than they were in going to war over an outdated idealogy of "states rights." They insisted on battle. President Lincoln gave it to them, and they ended up with Reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment.

When you insist on a fight to the death, you'd better be damned sure you can win.