Scrutiny

The lure and the danger of mountain climbing have always fascinated those of us who mostly keep both feet on the ground. In November, I reviewed Ed Viesturs's history of the conquest of K2, which included his brush with death during his own successful climb in 1992. Viesturs emphasized the climber's responsibility to assess the risk throughout his climb, turning back when the risk becomes unreasonable. The climber should never consider a prudent decision to abort the climb as a "failure."

In the current issue of Sierra, the bimonthly publication of the Sierra Club, Emmett Berg asks whether modern commercial sponsorship of climbs and the technical ease of filming those climbs are making it more difficult for climbers to call it quits in the face of highly risky mountain conditions.

The article describes last year's failed first ascent of the east face of China's Mt. Edgar. The climb, by two well-known, experienced Colorado climbers, was sponsored by a film company, and was intended to be shown as one episode on a National Geographic Channel climbing series. The company provided a photographer who was to accompany them during the lower portions of the climb.

The Mt. Edgar climb wasn't really the ideal climb to make Berg's point. Once the danger of avalanches, caused in part by unusually warm temperatures, became apparent, the climbers abandoned the climb and their equipment after establishing an advance camp about 8,000 feet below the summit. They retreated to their base camp, hoping to return when conditions improved. After waiting at base camp for three weeks, with no improvement in conditions, they gave up and decided to return home. But they made the fateful decision to climb back first to the advance camp and retrieve about $10,000 worth of equipment.

Conditions were even worse during this second climb. An avalanche swept both climbers and their photographer -- a young man shooting his last film before beginning a Ph.D. program in chemistry at the University of Washington -- to their deaths.

The climbers had made the proper decision in aborting their climb, and the attempt to recover their gear seemed reasonable, according to other climbers. But Berg suggests that the expectations of sponsors and the knowledge that they are being filmed throughout the climb does put constant pressure on climbers to present the right image, to succeed, to earn their funding.

Our world today is preoccupied with reality shows, with insatiable voyeurism into every aspect of the lives of others. No matter how used we become to being on camera, I suspect, the camera is never wholly absent from our thoughts. Lawyers increasingly not only have to satisfy the judge, the jury, and their own clients -- but, when cameras are permitted in courtrooms, also have to be concerned with how they appear before the eyes of their TV audiences.

A lawyer risks only his reputation and his client's case when his decisions are affected by the camera's eye. A climber -- hoping to satisfy his sponsor's desire for a good show -- risks his own life and that of his companions when the camera prejudices his sound judgment.

That may not have been the case with the climbers on Mt. Edgar. But it is a risk worth noting. Not all climbers have Ed Viesturs's strength of character when the time comes to make the decision to quit, especially when that decision won't be one that best amuses the television audience -- or their own sponsors.

Purgatory

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Thus should be engraved above the entrance to the downtown office of the Washington Department of Licensing. Once every five years, I'm forced to pass through that dire portal. Inside ... the land of the walking undead.

Time to renew my driver's license.

Five windows, like tellers' windows in a bank, face me as I enter. Only two windows, of course, are manned. In the open space in front of the windows, seated on ancient folding chairs like masses of frightened immigrants on Ellis Island, are huddled the uncomprehending supplicants -- Washington taxpayers hoping against hope that some obscure technicality won't bar them from obtaining their license. Many, I observe, hope in vain.

For I had time to watch their travails. Oh, I had time all right. In a rare display of bureaucratic efficiency, I'm instructed upon entering to press a button and receive a number. My number is 244. The two windows are currently serving numbers 213 and 215.

It's going to be one of those days.

As time passes, first one ghastly pale priest of the Bureaucracy and then another drifts in. They open up two of the unused windows. Several "customers" get served. For a moment, hope almost seems possible. Then two of the peoples' servants begin discussing some matter between themselves. No one new is called to either of their windows. Eventually, a hundred eyes burning holes in them, they wander off. They're never seen again.

We are back to two windows. Well, really only one and a half. One of the two remaining workers doubles as a part time photographer. When she gets bored, or sees too many applicants crowding the photography waiting area, she shuts down her window, takes a break from paper shuffling, and begins expressing her creative side by taking mug shots.

Finally, #244 is called. I pay my money. I look deep into some governmental version of an optical instrument, and somehow prove that I can see. I wait for another ten minutes to be photographed.

It's over. For me, this Stygian nightmare comes only once every five years. But for the governmental zombies who run that dismal pavilion, it's all in a day's work. Each day. Every day. For years upon mind-numbing years.

Not Dante's Hell perhaps, but certainly Purgatory.

Have gun, will travel

Beginning Monday, you can start packing heat in our National Parks (with the exception of ranger stations and certain other governmental buildings). Yup. You can walk fully armed through the lobbies and restaurants of the massively timbered lodges. You can keep your finger on your trigger as you walk in and about the camping areas. You can carry guns on the trail. You can hike armed to the gills down into the Grand Canyon, and carry your AK-47 (presumably) to the top of Half Dome.

Not hunting rifles, I guess. You still can't hunt in National Parks -- we like to keep them natural. You can't shoot your guns recreationally. So what's the point? I guess they might be carried for "self-defense," despite the fact that our parks tend to attract peaceful, bird-watching, Sierra Club-types, along with the occasional French or German-speaking tourist.

Never mind. The NRA has spent "millions" to overturn the ban on guns in parks.

According to the Associated Press, gun owners have been rushing in "record numbers" to obtain concealed weapon permits. They suspect that Obama will find some way to get around their Congressional victory -- a rider attached to a credit card reform package that Obama signed into law -- and they want to make sure they have their gun permit in one hand and their Smith & Wesson in the other before that happens.

I know that I've promised from the outset that my blog will be devoted to critical analysis of the world about me. But I'm at a loss. How do you analyze madness, except to admit that you find no other explanation than madness -- paranoid madness -- for what you see?

Virtually everyone in my small circle of friends and acquaintances seems sane, rational, reasonably educated. They at times disagree with my political views or question my aesthetic judgments, but these are the kind of disagreements that it's a pleasure to discuss. But I apparently travel in very, very small circles. There's a significant portion of the American population -- I mean, there's a hell of a lot of them out there! -- who live in a mental universe utterly beyond my comprehension.

I throw up my hands. I consider avoiding rowdy groups or silent loners next time I venture into a National Park. I stare at my map of North America, again pondering the possibility of somehow detaching my Northwest Corner from the far, far scarier remaining 48 states of the Union.

I throw the occasional "eh?" into my speech patterns.

To the chipper

In an unforgettable scene from the 1987 movie Fargo, a character is discovered running the body of his partner in crime through a woodchipper.

I recalled the movie as I watched workers shove hunks of an old friend -- a huge laurel bush that until now towered over one side of my house -- through a similar chipper at 8 a.m. on a President's Day morning.

There are those whose natural instinct is a craving for cleanness, openness, simplicity. I, it seems, am not one of those. My house is full of strange twists and turns. I happily enclose it with overgrown shrubbery, partially protecting myself from the prying eyes of neighbors and passers-by. My laurel tree was, at one time, a small laurel bush. Like Topsy, it just grew. Finally, it almost entirely blocked access between front and back yards along that side of the house. It gradually spread its canopy over my second story roof.

The laurel had developed into a large sturdy tree, a tree that showed what laurel can do if given free reign. My kitchen, whose windows opened under its canopy, became increasingly dark over the years, forcing me to turn on the lights even during the day. More to the point, its canopy was depriving my neighbor's less robust hedge of light, causing some of her plants to die. I had to sacrifice my old friend -- to save my house from being fatally enveloped in laurel leaves, and to avoid open warfare with my neighbor.

The laurel, imposing though it appeared, put up little fight when subjected to chain saws. Workers swiftly chopped it into pieces, which were hauled to the front of the house and run through the chipper. My old friend is now a pile of sawdust, on its way to the dump. From dust it came, unto dust it has returned. The kitchen seems unnaturally bright, the side of my house sadly empty.

Somehow, life of all kinds feels unnecessarily short and precarious.

Olympic carping

Conservatives used to grumble that the media always painted everything black. We need to read more "good news," they argued. (The subtext was that life in these U.S. of A. would be just dandy, if only TV and newspapers didn't keep calling attention to isolated problems and demanding public programs as solutions.)

I'm beginning to see their point, but from the opposite perspective. Time magazine has a story this week about the Olympic Village in Vancouver. Our neighbor to the north has built perhaps the finest housing for Olympic athletes ever provided, giving the athletes spectacular views out over False Creek inlet. Because of the banking disaster last year, however, the city had to provide unanticipated financing for construction of the Village, or end up staging the 2010 Winter Olympics with no appropriate housing for participants.

The private developers planned (and still plan) to sell the housing as condo units for about $1 million each after the Games are over. Once they sell, the city will recover the money it has advanced. Obviously, however, these are not the best times to be selling million dollar condos.

The development is well-designed, environmentally friendly, and close to public transportation. Aside from the cost, it's clearly a benefit to Vancouver and its residents. But Time chooses to picture the project as a boondoggle. The magazine quotes an ophthalmology professor (!), and "vocal Olympic critic," as declaring that "The whole Village fiasco leaves the city with fairly dangerous exposure." The Time article then points out that the project is only blocks away from a poverty-ridden neighborhood, where crime and drug abuse are common.

Time quotes, with apparent approval, its eye doctor source as suggesting the irony of the juxtaposition, declaring that it was the height of irresponsibility for the city to help build the Olympic Village while poverty existed so close at hand.

Yes, but. The poverty pre-existed the Olympics. Does Time believe that if the city had not guaranteed completion of the Village, it would have used the cash to end homelessness, crime, and drug abuse in that portion of town? I can't see that the city was robbing the poor to reward the athletes; combatting homelessness and poverty makes up a totally different agenda with different political and economic considerations.

I suppose Time could be commended for calling our attention to social problems amongst even the best run of North American cities, but the article strikes me as just one more attempt by the media to tear down every attempt -- by all levels of government -- to accomplish something for the community. After noting that visiting athletes were highly impressed by the Village, the article concludes by editorializing: "Rave reviews from the Olympians, for sure. But the taxpayers of Vancouver may sharply disagree."

Maybe. But maybe they don't disagree. Maybe they're hopeful that Vancouver's financing will be repaid. They may be well aware of the pockets of poverty that exist in their city, but also aware that more than doling out city money is going to be required to solve the problem.

And maybe they're proud of the fine job their city has done in hosting this year's Olympic Games.

Finally ... !!

I start piano lessons next Monday.

Odd reflections

Anyone hanging around Facebook this past week, anyone with way too much time on his hands (isn't that redundant?), is well aware that we've just passed through "Doppelgänger week." Anyone childish enough to participate¹ substituted, in place of his own profile photo, the photo of some celebrity who he supposed (hoped?) bore some resemblance to himself.

I was familiar with the German word as a term commonly used to describe one's "double," but until now had never thought about its origins. It comes from German folklore. (English folklore had a similar concept, called a "fetch"; and the Norse had something called a "vardøger.")

It seems that a Doppelgänger ("double walker") was believed to be a spectral embodiment, or projection from a different level of reality, of one's own soul. If you saw your doppelganger (using the anglicized form of the word), you didn't clown around about it. You froze in terror. The doppelganger was a harbinger of your own death.

The doppelganger was often perceived in the peripheral area of vision, or was seen looking back at one from a mirror or a darkened window. Mirrors were magical objects to the people of many early cultures. They seemed to be windows into a similar but different reality. Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass is a non-threatening description of such a world, one more than slightly askew, found on the other side of a mirror. In some versions of the superstition, the image in any mirror was a doppelganger by definition. It was not until the doppelganger was seen outside the mirror world, seen moving about in our own world, that it became frightening and a sign of disaster.

In some places, it's still a custom to cover all mirrors in the house where a person has just died. Doing so prevents the reflected doppelganger of any visiting guests from being sucked into the afterworld by the deceased's spirit.

In modern times, with our understanding of the optics of mirrors and reflections in general, the whole concept is of course ridiculous. True, Abraham Lincoln did see his doppelganger shortly before he was assassinated, but, well, he was under a lot of stress. And, of course, the poets Percy Shelley and John Donne also saw doppelgangers before their wives miscarried. But you know how hyper-imaginative and sensitive poets can be.

In the spirit of complete honesty and openness, I'll confess that -- up into my teens -- I'd sometimes cover the mirror in my bedroom when I went to bed at night and was alone in the house. Of course, back then I'd never even heard of "doppelgangers" -- with or without the umlaut. However, I had read this damn horror comic book where this guy looked into his bedroom mirror one night and saw ... Well, after he went to sleep, the reflection in the mirror came out and ....

Ah, it was stupid. You don't want to know.

Doppelgangers are part of old folklore, like leprechauns and dwarfs. They don't exist. Never have. On the other hand, who needs a mirror in his bedroom, anyway? I'd chuck it out and use the mirror in your bathroom. Keep the light turned on bright.
-----------------------------------
¹I chose Woody Allen.

Don't wait, don't study

"Don't ask, don't tell" may be on its last legs. President Obama says the law should be repealed. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have agreed, but they want a year to study the "impact" of such a change before Congress acts.

I suppose it sounds naive, but what exactly is there to study? Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland -- that's the list as of 2003 -- make no distinction between gay and straight enlistees. None of their armies has collapsed from internal dissension. Israeli soldiers, for example, are not generally considered effeminate or ineffectual; their battalions aren't torn by conflicts over sexual orientation. If we need to "study," why not simply look at the experiences of virtually all our allies?

A 2009 poll showed that 59 percent of the American public agree that gays and lesbians should be permitted to serve in the military. Today's Fox News poll shows that "only" 59 percent of its voters oppose abolishing the policy. A Fox News poll will usually show that 85 percent of its readers support "drawing and quartering" as the preferred means of capital punishment, and believe that their school children should be armed with AK-47's for both recreation and self-protection. So even the right wing is giving ground.

Public attitudes have changed, and studies have shown that those changes in attitude are shared by men and officers in uniform as well.

The Associated Press today reports an interview with a former Army staff sergeant, injured in Afghanistan, who said that most soldiers already knew that some members of their units were gay. "Nobody cares. Don't ask, don't tell is kind of a joke," he added.

The time has come. The people affected will be those gays and lesbians already serving effectively in the armed forces, men and women who are respected and trusted by their fellow servicemen. No one suggests that there will be a sudden flood of West Hollywood hairdressers and interior designers, lining up to enlist in the eager hope of being shipped out to Afghanistan. What the change will do is put a stop to the present loss of badly needed personnel, including, notably, skilled translators fluent in both English and Arabic, many of whom have been discharged over this issue during the past few years.

An election year may seem a bad time to push a socially divisive change through Congress. But every year is either an election year or almost an election year. Abolishing "don't ask, don't tell" is fair to the individuals involved; it will also be good public policy, for the military and for the nation as a whole.

So he don't see no sun shinin'

Groundhog Stew

1 groundhog

2 onions, sliced

1/2 cup celery, sliced

Flour

Vinegar and water

Salt and pepper

Cloves

Clean groundhog; remove glands; cut into serving pieces. Soak overnight in a solution of equal parts of water and vinegar with addition of one sliced onion and a little salt. Drain, wash, and wipe. Parboil 20 minutes, drain, and cover with fresh boiling water. Add one sliced onion, celery, a few cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook until tender; thicken gravy with flour.

The White Ribbon

In a recent post, I lamented the frenetic violence and universal despair that fill so many recent movies. And in my first year of blogging, I commemorated the death of Ingmar Bergman, who perhaps first gave many Americans cause to be conscious of cinema as an art form.

In the recently released movie The White Ribbon ("Das Weisse Band"), director Michael Haneke demonstrates that both violence (mostly off-camera) and despair can be legitimate subjects, topics that leave the audience thinking and talking, rather than merely entertained and/or depressed. His cinematography recalls that of Bergman -- black and white chiaroscuro, stationary camera, long periods of virtual silence that help to develop mood and character. The black and white photography is the most beautiful use of that medium that I've seen in any recent film, at times even reminding me of the classic photography of wilderness scenery by Ansel Adams.

The movie takes place in a small, isolated German hamlet, immediately before World War I. The social structure of the village is dominated by the baron and his family, who employ most of the villagers; the Lutheran pastor; and, to a lesser extent, the village physician. The story is told from the perspective of a young, newly-arrived schoolteacher, who, decades later, as an old man, relates his recollections.

Strange, violent events occur throughout the film. The responsible parties are never identified, although at least two possible scenarios emerge. The children of the village seem, at least at first blush, to be perfectly normal kids for their time and place. But throughout the film, they are seen largely as a unit -- a swarm of children, childlike but somehow threatening. Like a Greek chorus, they observe the life of the village and the disasters that ensue. But they are a silent chorus, one that observes but does not comment. This image as dramatic chorus is echoed in the final scene of the film as the boys of the village, gathered in the church balcony, hover over the still stoic but now devastated congregatation, singing the ironically triumphal hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

Evil obviously haunts the village, but no one person appears evil -- individual villagers appear merely weak, scared, vain, immature, or powerless. Village society is tied in knots by repression -- sexual repression, class distinctions, social conventions. (The schoolteacher good-naturedly keeps reminding the girl to whom he's betrothed to stop calling him "sir" -- in German, I suspect he's asking her not to use the formal form of address.) The adults are so inhibited in all these respects that they find it impossible to share with each other their real feelings: impossible, at least, until a dam occasionally breaks and they blurt out their long-repressed emotions in ways that hurt each other devastatingly.

The parents love their children, but can show their love only though draconian punishments, in the hopes of rearing them "correctly." (The pastor, after beating his "misbehaving" children, forces the two oldest to wear white ribbons on their arms, to remind themselves of the purity to which they must aspire.) The baron and his family stay wealthy by exploiting the villagers, lower classes whom they see as only a step or two above the farm animals, but at the same time they attempt to treat them fairly. The villagers both respect and hate the baron. The pastor repeatedly reminds his congregation of their sinfulness and their duty to live righteously. He treats his own children -- whom he obviously loves -- no differently from the rest of his congregation. The village doctor is both kind to his patients and filled with a contempt for his long-time mistress that he finally reveals in a horrific display of verbal cruelty.

This is the picture of a dysfunctional world, as dysfunctional as the worlds shown in today's pop science fiction movies. Out of such dysfunction, evil would seem to flow naturally. As it does, although we never learn precisely how or through whom. We are reminded -- not explicitly by the movie itself, but by some reviewers -- that the children who stand around and watch impassively as evil unfolds -- or perhaps are even themselves the agents of evil -- were to grow into the German generation that gave the world Adolph Hitler.

But we also see ourselves in the villagers. As would any other nation, perhaps; and any other generation. The film reminds us of something uncomfortable about our very humanity itself, not simply about the German people, and not simply about quasi-feudal society before World War I.

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

Winner, Palme d'Or, "Best Picture," 2009 Cannes Film Festival

Lack of restraint

One of the "highlights" of the State of the Union address -- from the perspective of journalists -- was President Obama's sharp criticism of the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. ___ (Dkt. No. 08-205, Jan. 21, 2010), and, even more delectable, Justice Alito's facial reaction to the criticism.

Justice Kennedy's opinion on behalf of the Court in Citizens United is 64 pages long (in slip opinion format), accompanied by separate concurring opinions from Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas -- each with a different take on what was being decided -- and by a 90-page dissenting opinion from Justice Stevens on behalf of the four so-called liberal justices. The combined length of this multitude of opinions is 183 pages. The whole mess will be analzyed at great length in law review notes and articles over the coming months and years. I won't presume to attempt an analysis in a multi-paragraph blog posting.

I just want to comment on a basic point brought up in Justice Stevens's dissent, and on its implications. Justice Stevens points out, at some length, that the Court generally follows certain rules in accepting and deciding appeals -- it avoids overruling its own prior decisions unless circumstances have changed sufficiently to make such an overruling necessary, and it decides issues as narrowly as possible (e.g., it doesn't declare an entire statute unconstitutional if the statute can be saved by invalidating just one clause). Neither rule is unbreakable, but the Court generally gives a good reason for breaking them. (For example, in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, overruling an 1896 opinion upholding equal but segregated schools, the court held that events since that date had made it clear that separate schools were inherently unequal.)

In Citizens United, the Court stretched to resolve a matter that it did not have to resolve, and it overruled a century of developing constitutional law, including a decision it had handed down as recently as 1990, and a portion of one decided in 2003; it also, in effect, overruled all subsequent decisions relying on the 1990 ruling. As Justice Stevens points out:

The only relevant thing that has changed since [its earlier contrary decisions in] Austin and McConnell is the composition of this Court. Today’s ruling thus strikes at the vitals of stare decisis, "the means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion" that "permits society to presume that bedrock principles are founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals."

What's interesting is that the rallying cry of both political conservatives and judicial conservatives has long been "judicial restraint." By judicial restraint, lawyers mean judicial non-activism -- deference to the decisions of Congress and reluctance to hold legislation unconstitutional; adherence to existing law and past judicial decisions when interpreting and applying that law; insistence on resolving any specific appeal on as narrow a ground as possible, giving maximum deference to the fact-finding functions of the trial judge.

That the Roberts court ignored these principles in Citizens United, suggests that the Roberts court is not a "conservative" court but a "radical" court. It is unwilling to let the law develop in a slow and orderly manner. It is unwilling to give deference to its own past precedents. It is unwilling to give deference to Congress.

It thus shares certain characteristics with the "liberal" courts of the past, such as the Warren court that abolished segregation in schools and, subsequently, in other aspects of public life. Its "conservatism" is not a judicial conservatism, but a radical political conservatism. The Roberts court is willing to bend the rules, to be activist, to overrule Congress, and to rebuke trial courts -- not in pursuit of individual rights and liberties, however, but in order to promote the business and political interests of certain elite segments of the population, segments of the population that seemed to be doing just fine without the aid of the Supreme Court.

The Court has returned, moreover, to an approach made infamous in the early 20th century -- that because the law chooses to treat corporations as "persons" for certain purposes, in order to protect their investors from unlimited financial liability, corporations must therefore be treated as persons for all purposes. Corporations, therefore, are to be guaranteed first amendment rights identical to those protecting you and me and Mr. Jones across the street. The Court abandoned this approach at least by 1936, during the New Deal. Who'd a thunk it would return to haunt us in 2010?

For any voter tempted to throw up his or her hands at the frustrations produced by our political system, to shout "a pox on both your parties" and refuse to vote -- I suggest that he or she consider how much difference the appointment of just one new justice can make to the future direction of our legal institutions -- and of our Nation.

The look on Justice Alito's face while listening to the State of the Union was the infuriated expression of a politician being challenged It was not the dispassionate restraint of a scholar and judge.

Trekking memories

I finished off my little exercise against the combined forces of local high school students this evening. Too exhausted to write, but nevertheless tingling with the urge to blog, I post a few photos from last October's Annapurna trek -- mostly not duplicating the ones posted on Facebook -- for my audience's amusement.

Cat people

That guy next door with the big golden retriever is friendly and gregarious. The woman across the street with the three Siamese cats is obsessive, anxious and secretive. Those are the stereotypes. Any basis in fact?

The answer is "yes," according to a University of Texas professor of psychology. Sam Gosling has published a study showing personality differences between "dog people" and "cat people."

According to his findings:

• Forty-six percent of respondents described themselves as dog people, while 12 percent said they were cat people. Almost 28 percent said they were both and 15 percent said they were neither.
  
• Dog people were generally about 15 percent more extraverted, 13 percent more agreeable and 11 percent more conscientious than cat people.
  
• Cat people were generally about 12 percent more neurotic and 11 percent more open than dog people.¹

According to the study, people who say they like both dogs and cats are essentially dog people, for the most part, with some neurotic traits.

This study tells me all I need to know about both popular psychology and the University of Texas. (I assert, neurotically.)

As I've mentioned, I prefer cats, and I live with cats. I also like dogs. I suspect that I actually relate to dogs with greater empathy than do their own masters, who themselves are too busy running around being extroverted and agreeable and wagging their own tails to have developed any real understanding of the emotional needs of their adoring pets.

I maintain -- and do stop me if I've told you this before -- that dog people like dogs primarily because they can dominate them. Even if a guy spends all day at work staring at a computer screen and saying "yes sir" meekly to his boss, he can come home and be the alpha male in his dog's small pack. He can yell at the dog; he can put the dog on a leash and drag him around. His dog is also appealing, I suspect, because of a faux parent-child dynamic. The dog, he fantasizes, is that unusual child who is loving and unquestioning and obedient, and -- above all -- respectful.

Cats are esthetically pleasing, of course. They're graceful. They're clean. More important, their personalities are everything that a dog's is not. Your cat relates to you as an equal. He will, of course, gladly accept your food and your bed, but only rarely your rapturous hugs. He offers you his friendship only when a certain level of mutual trust has been attained. When you come home from work, don't expect your cat to rush up and grovel with joy at your arrival, any more than he would expect you to pounce on him with abandon as he enters the cat door.

A cat is an adult, and he honors you by presuming the same of you.

What a cat will do, with half-open eyes, is study you all evening while you're reading or computing, and then, when the proper moment arrives, steal up next to you and brush his tail against your leg. He will sit on your lap, when he so chooses, and reach around the book you're reading to brush his paw against your face. He will observe the signals, and silently move upstairs ahead of you as he sees you prepare for bed. A cat's affection is more moving than a dog's, because it's based not on some genetically programmed urge to submit to the rule of the leader, but on a gradually developed sense of affection and trust, arising out of his experience with you and yours with him.

Dogs are fun. They're great company, and obviously are far better designed than cats for going out for a romp in the countryside. But friendship with a cat is an accomplishment, an achievement that pays emotional rewards for years, for the rest of the cat's life -- a life that is fortunately longer than that of a dog.

And if all this proves me neurotic, well, I can live with that.

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

¹University of Texas at Austin News (Jan. 13, 2010) The article has drawn a large number of on-line comments, almost all negative, including a claim that the published paper is an embarrassment to the University of Texas. The comments are far more entertaining (and intelligent) than the the article itself. (Almost half the comments concern the spelling of "extraversion." The word is properly spelled with either an "a" or an" o.")

Photo above: Loki, age 5

Trial by student body

If I hadn't become an attorney, as I've intimated in earlier posts, I might have drifted into teaching. I've also acknowledged that the realities of trying to teach bored, apathetic youngsters probably would have quickly exhausted my limited reserves of patience and empathy for people radically different from myself, as well as my tolerance for prolonged frustration.

In other words, I doubt I could have handled the kinds of students who desperately need skilled teaching -- the kinds of students who aren't apt to find a way to learn on their own anyway, and for whom formal teaching is almost superfluous. If were to teach successfully, the kids I taught would have to be the right kind of kids.

The high school students I worked with Wednesday, helping them prepare for their mock trial competition in March, were the right kind of kids.

When I arrived at the high school at 5 p.m., a large group of students was already chattering in front of the locked library door, waiting for the adviser to arrive and let them in. By 5:10, virtually every student signed up for the program -- probably 30 at least -- had arrived. The adviser, a young attorney from a downtown firm, has spent every Wednesday evening (and some weekends) of his own time since October working with these kids. He obviously enjoys working with them, and they were relaxed and friendly with him. Watching this attorney and the kids interact, I couldn't think of any way the legal profession could possibly present a more likable face to the community.

The kids are divided into two prosecution teams and two defense teams. Wednesday's "scrimmage" cast me as an assistant U.S. Attorney, trying the case against one of the two student defense teams, with the adviser as judge, ruling on motions and objections. We presented opening statements to the jury, and then direct and cross examination of the government's four witnesses. Next Wednesday, the defense will present its own four witnesses (including the defendant) for direct and cross, and we will wind up the trial with short closing arguments.

Those students from the three teams not directly participating in Wednesday's scrimmage occupied the jury box, ran several video cameras, or simply watched and took notes for their own use later.

This same "scrimmage" process will be repeated, in the weeks to come, with other practicing attorneys working with the other teams.

The kids were well prepared, enthusiastic, articulate, intense and serious while playing their parts. They were funny, exuberant, and in typically high teen-aged spirits before and after the "performance." They are the kinds of kids you'd expect to find involved in orchestra or debate or the school newspaper, if not signed up for a mock trial competition. They are the kinds of kids most parents hope for.

I was delighted, and I was impressed.

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

Photo is a stock photo of mock trial participants, not one of the Seattle participants

Fleetly-presented Homer

One of the many advantages of living near a major university is the ability to attend events aimed at the non-student population. Last night, a friend and I attended the first lecture in a three-part series sponsored by the University of Washington Alumni Association, entitled The Treasures of Greece. The speaker was Carol G. Thomas, a UW history professor specializing in classical studies.

Sometimes these series are outstanding, sometimes merely interesting. After hearing last night's lecture, I suspect that Professor Thomas found herself being talked into delivering an extremely broad topic in a very limited period of time. Last night's two-hour lecture was to cover Greek history up to the classical period; next week's will "do" the Hellenistic era; and the third and final lecture will cover Greece in modern times. In light of the fact that Professor Thomas began her lecture last night twenty minutes late, that there was a 15-minute intermission, that there were persistent problems with her microphone and the visual projection equipment, and that 15 minutes were reserved at the end for questions from the audience -- well, there wasn't much time remaining in a two hour period to discuss Greece in all its splendor.

Professor Thomas asked and addressed the question of whether Homer's world really existed, an issue that I thought had been fairly clearly answered, at least in part, since Schlieman's excavations at Troy early in the last century. Nevertheless, she did show some interesting photos of the excavations. She also discussed some recent discoveries in ancient Hittite writings -- the Hittites had achieved a form of writing while the Greeks were still pre-literate -- that appear to confirm the existence and economic importance of a number of locations in Asia Minor that are described in the Iliad.

She also played a recording of an excerpt from the Iliad recited in ancient Greek, demonstrating the rather hypnotizing effect of poetry composed in dactylic hexameter, and she reminded us how the catch phrases that are repeated over and over in Homer -- "rosy-fingered dawn," "wine-dark sea," "fleet-footed Achilles" -- together with the regular meter helped ancient bards to memorize lengthy epics like the Iliad before writing was available.

The UW, until recently, presented these history series almost every academic quarter, usually eight to ten lectures per series. It's unfortunate that they are now being offered only once a year, and that the series this year has been truncated to three lectures.

Greek history before the classical era is, taken alone, a fascinating subject, and a subject of general appeal -- an appeal revealed by the large attendance last night, completely filling one of the largest auditoriums on campus. It's unfortunate that the university is unable to provide a lengthier and more in-depth series on the topic, aimed at general alumni audiences.