Dreams of Persia

I suppose one shouldn't count one's eggs until they're hatched. Don't tell everyone that you're going to ask the cheerleader to the prom, or announce that you're applying for a Rhodes scholarship, or brag that you'll write the great American novel just as soon as the kids leave for college. But, dang it, some things are so exciting -- you just have to shout them from the treetops.

My sister and I purchased airline tickets to Tehran today!

We're gambling (with non-refundable tickets!) that between now and April, Israel won't have nuked Iran back to the stone age, nor will the Islamic Republic have sent its citizenry pouring out of Iran and across the Middle East in a modern day jihad. Nope, we're just hoping that everything stays nice, calm, and peaceful-like -- at least until this trip's over.

My college alumni association is sponsoring what it calls a "suitcase seminar." The announced focus of the two-week visit will be ancient Persian and medieval Islamic architectural and archeological sites, to be studied in some detail as we loop our way around the entire nation. But obviously, we'll be keeping our eyes open wide to the rhythms of modern day Iranian life, and to the thoughts and attitudes of the country's citizens. Everyone who visits Iran says that its people are extraordinarily friendly and hospitable to foreign visitors -- even to us visitors from the Great Satan itself.

Our guide grew up in India and Pakistan, the son of a U.S. foreign service family. After college, he spent 35 years as a career diplomat himself, serving as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, and (before that) Poland, under the Clinton administration. At present, he holds academic positions, specializing in modern Islamic civilization and East-West relations, at both Stanford and Harvard. I trust that his diplomatic skills will serve us well, getting us into and (especially) out of the country in one piece.

I suppose I'll have to remove my Facebook link to this blog, once I apply for my visa in January. As sympathetic and friendly as my feelings have always been toward the Iranian people -- and despite my being neither Jewish nor a disaffected Iranian exile -- I'm sure that somewhere in my 338 posts (to date) I've said something that might offend a rather paranoid Iranian leadership (e.g., this sentence itself). I'll keep holding my breath and trying to stay on my best behavior until I have my visa actually in hand.

More to come on this very interesting trip as the months pass.

September surprise

Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party favorite and Delaware's unexpected Republican nominee for the Senate, is now forced to contend with accusations of youthful dabbling in witchcraft -- and with horrified responses from her conservative erstwhile fans.

Hey, it was just high school high jinx, she states. Now she goes to church. In fact, she went to church on Sunday, after the witchcraft allegations surfaced, rather than appear as scheduled on "Fox News Sunday" and "Face the Nation."

In 1999, according to Fox News, it seems that she admitted on TV that she had

"dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven."

"I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do," she said.

No biggie. Oh there was the occasional odd date.

"One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that," she said, laughing in the clip.

"We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar," she said.

I guess she didn't inhale. And all this time, we thought "witch" was just a meaningless pejorative.

We Democrats have all kinds of loonies in our ranks. Hell, we embrace 'em! But this latest revelation may not go over well with large portions of Ms. O'Donnell's right wing constituency. As if she weren't already enough of a headache for a Republican mainstream leadership hoping for a Republican Senate come November.

Bless those cats

Loki and Muldoon, my two handsome and sophisticated cats, more or less share with me in the organization and running of our household. Not that they actually dictate terms to me, of course, or remind me when to change my shirt or mow the lawn. Nor have they sufficient manual dexterity to write out shopping lists or throw my clothes out the window when I come home late at night.

In other words, my relationship with them falls somewhat short of marital bliss. But neither are they helpless and innocent toddlers, wholly dependent on my whims for their continued survival. Aside from their small size, excessive fuzziness, and blissful silence, they are more like a couple of pre-teens. Junior partners within the household, certainly, but fully capable of expressing and enforcing their wishes.

Theologians tell us that animals -- even cats -- do not possess immortal souls (although a USA Today poll last May showed that 81 percent of responding readers believed that "good pets go to heaven"). These learned scholars maintain that animals are merely part of the furniture that we've been provided for our greater comfort here on earth, along with trees, brooks and amber waves of grain. Unlike most pet owners, I'll reluctantly go along with the "immortal" part of the equation, but to assert that my pets possess no souls at all suggests that they are automatons -- little machines responding mechanically to stimuli according to embedded programs.

If my cat -- who looks longingly at me with soulful eyes -- is merely an automaton, how do I know that my fellow humans -- Republicans, especially -- are any different? Theologians, whose intelligence is far subtler than mine, have thought through all of this, no doubt, because they agree that cats and dogs do have souls -- just not immortal souls. (Do goldfish then have souls? Ants? Bacteria? Viruses? Computer programs? Shut up! You're making my head hurt.)

My mind races today in these peculiar channels, because I see that churches are already giving advance notice of services for "the blessing of animals" on October 4, the day commemorating St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of many of the better things in life -- animals, certainly, and also the environment, Italy, San Francisco, and stowaways. I've never attended such a service, but I understand that people bring animals of every description to the church to be blessed. During inclement weather, the animals may actually be brought into the church itself.

The prescribed prayers are rather dry -- they ask God to grant that "these animals may serve our needs and that your bounty in the resources of this life may move us to seek more confidently the goal of eternal life." The prayers thus seem carefully designed to avoid the slightest suggestion that the animals, once blessed, will one day join us in Heaven. More disturbing, the prayers don't even petition that the poor animals be granted happiness during their short time with us on earth. The church's concern is all for the welfare of the human owners. The blessing might as well be for the continued high performance of the parishioners' BMWs and Porsches.

But whatever the official theological objective of sprinkling holy water on the tiny heads of kittens and puppies, I suspect the great majority of pet owners are themselves praying that their four-legged companions be granted long life and the greatest happiness of which their strictly mortal souls are capable -- not for the sake of their human owners, but for the sake of the animals themselves. As an understanding Franciscan writer -- displaying more of the spirit of St. Francis than does, perhaps, the dry language of the official liturgy -- comments:

As the prayer is offered, the pet is gently sprinkled with holy water. Believe it or not, most pets receive this sacramental spritz with dignity, though I must admit I have seen some cats flatten their ears a bit as the drops of water lightly pelt them.

But the owner is happy, and who knows what spiritual benefits may result?

I believe every creature is important. The love we give to a pet, and receive from a pet, can draw us more deeply into the larger circle of life, into the wonder of our common relationship to our Creator.

Exactly! It's a nice ritual. I'd take Loki and Muldoon to be blessed, but they refuse to be spritzed by any church that deems them inferior to humans.

And I, in turn, refuse their pleas to be taken to Wiccan rituals. It's a standoff. We'll just have to continue living together without benefit of clergy.

Small stature, big heart

Maybe I've mentioned this before ... well, yes, I know I have. But I was the tiniest boy in my class, all the way through grade school. In class photos, I was the one standing in the bottom row -- far left or right -- who held the sign: "Miss Leghorn, P.S. 67, Grade 3, 2009-10." Excessively crew cut, face all askew, as I squinted into the rare Northwest sun.

It would be overly dramatic to say that being a dwarf child cast a pall over my entire life. No, I suspect there were other factors as well: My alumni magazine this month, for example, features a lead article discussing how physical attractiveness (or lack thereof) affects virtually every aspect of one's personal and vocational life. Frankly, I'm amazed I even ended up an alumnus. If it weren't for my generous annual $15 donations to the alumni fund, they probably would scratch me off their mailing list.

But I digress. Being elevation-challenged myself has always led me to empathize with the little people. In the hope -- curiously in vain, as it turns out -- that the little people would occasionally return the favor. And so, my heart leapt with joy and excitement when I read today's news article about a Yorkshire cow named Swallow.

Now, cows aren't generally my favorite animals. "Bovine" doesn't connote -- to my mind, at least -- sharp repartee and a quick wit. But Swallow, as cows go, is remarkable, if for one reason only. She is only 33 inches long, nose to tail. That's little. If she lived in my back yard, god forbid, she could easily wander into the house through my cat door and curl up on the couch. (Cows do curl up, I've seen them, but usually way out thar in the meadow.)

Swallow seems to have swallowed her diminutive size with equanimity. It never caused her to despair of success in life. Or in matters of the heart. In fact, her romantic liasons have already resulted in nine bright-eyed youngsters, with a tenth in the oven, as it were. This does raise a question or two, if not an eyebrow. I've seen lots of, to be delicate, boy cows. They're pretty tall, huge and husky. Think "linebacker." But let's avoid idle, salacious curiosity. In her eleven years of active life, Swallow's somehow managed to experience nine blessed events, and all her youngsters have grown up to be normal sized cows, with normal cow-like intelligence.

I've seen photos of tiny Ozark women with broods of huge, cow-faced teenage sons, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, she's a happy mama, living a fulfilled life, and I rejoice for her. She reportedly spends her time, when not giving birth, out socializing in the fields, chewing the cud with her cow friends -- and, um, "listening to BBC radio in her cowshed." Seriously. I quote verbatim from the Associated Press.

God bless her, I say. An inspiration to us all. Be proud. Stand tall, albeit small.

Separation anxiety

Three more weeks until classes begin at the University of Washington. I walked across campus a couple of days ago, a beautiful late summer day, and noticed the various orientation activities for new students already in progress.

Last year at this time, I mentioned my bemusement at parents' increased involvement in the launching of their kids' college careers. I wasn't certain -- I'm still not, completely -- as to whether this is a good or bad thing, all things considered.

When I left my small home town in Washington for school in California, parental involvement was simple. My dad took a couple of hours off work to drive me and my three suitcases to the train station. My mom, who also worked, had already said her goodbyes earlier that morning. We shook hands, he told me to study hard, I boarded the train, waved, and that was it until Christmas. Just like the Norman Rockwell painting!

This year, there has been a flurry of news stories describing the difficulties parents are having in "letting go." My parents' farewells would seem incomprehensible at best, criminal at worst, to many parents today. My folks were very concerned with my education and my happiness. I would never have described them, however, as "helicopter" parents, hovering overhead.

Grinnell College in Iowa has taken the desperate step of conducting a formal "Parting Ceremony." Welcoming speeches are given to both kids and parents. Then the freshmen march through the college gates, which swing shut after them, leaving the parents outside. The separation is symbolic, but effective. Other schools, such as Colgate and Princeton, state bluntly in their program materials that orientation events are intended for students only.

Obviously, a problem exists that has colleges concerned.

College administrators tell anecdotes of parents who attend classes with their offspring for the first week or so, and take them to the registrar to help them change schedules where needed. Parents will ignore barricades and signs designed to ensure that only students handle class registration and attend orientation events. Less egregiously, but still bemusing, today's parents and kids expect to be in daily contact -- often multiple times per day -- by phone and text message.

What's a parent to do? Especially after reading The Happiest Kid on Campus: A Parent's Guide to the Very Best College Experience (for You and Your Child). You're supposed to let him or her attempt to have the "very best" experience all by him or herself? I don't think so!

Not being a parent myself, it's easy for me to laugh and pontificate. But I can empathize with today's parents, parents who have been far more involved in every aspect of their children's lives all along than parents dreamed of being even twenty years ago. It makes it hard now to cut -- or even significantly loosen -- the cord. But if the cord isn't going to be cut when the young people (not really "kids," any longer) are 18, we shouldn't complain a decade from now when we find ourselves increasingly alarmed by a "Seinfeld generation" of young adults who still can't make decisions or enter into commitments with any degree of self-confidence.

"I'm supposed to shed a few tears and then send her to the world, right?" asked one incredulous mother. Yup, I'm afraid that's the way it's always worked.

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Factual information and parental anecdotes from New York Times (8-22-10) and Seattle Times (9-4-10)

Homage to Ludwig

August -- and the summer -- draw to an end. A new school year. For me, too. In another two weeks I'll be back to my weekly schedule of piano lessons. Let me indulge myself by updating my last status report.

My work during the summer, supported by two lessons, continues to be limited to Beethoven's Pathétique sonata. The second movement, the easiest and the first that I tackled, now sounds pretty decent, at least some of the time. I play it at the proper tempo, hit most of the notes most of the time, and put a certain amount of expression into it. I'm hoping for additional hints from my instructor on the latter, although I realize that musicality or musical expression ultimately has to come from within myself.

I'm pleased with my progress on the third movement. I play the movement -- almost, but not entirely -- at an even tempo, and I've ironed out a large number of speed bumps that were bothering me for a long time. There are still two or three areas that give me some trouble, but I've been overcoming those difficulties as well. Also, the movement has a number of quick runs up and down the scale that need more practice.

Having said that, I have to admit that I'm still quite far from performance speed. The third movement is played at varying tempos by different performers whom I've watched on YouTube, but it's a fast allegro, and I clearly have a way to go to reach even the slowest of their tempos. I understand that speed comes automatically with practice, and I certainly have increased my own speed dramatically, even without making an effort to do so.

I also would like to memorize both movements. A friend of mine, who performed the sonata in recital as a teenager, assures me that I can never claim to have mastered any classical piece until I've memorized it.

The first movement -- the longest and most difficult -- is still a formidable work in progress. I haven't even tried playing the last half, and I'm still awkwardly picking my way through the first half. I was hoping to have made more progress on the movement over the summer, but it remains a major project for my upcoming year.

Finally, my instructor told me during my last visit that she wants me to find another -- perhaps easier -- piece to work on, together with the Beethoven. She's afraid I'll get sick of the Pathétique, if that's all I ever play. (I suspect she may just be sick of listening to it herself every week.) Anyway, I'm looking around for something appropriate, which is kind of fun.

If it isn't obvious, I'm very glad that I jumped back into piano biz last winter.

One lump or two?

A number of years ago, I worked with a very likeable attorney. He was friendly to everyone, tried to avoid hurting the feelings of colleagues and staff, and had a good -- if quirky -- sense of humor. He was memorable -- especially for a defense trial attorney -- because of his love of Italy in general and Italian opera in particular. When we moved into new offices, he saw to it that, instead of having conference rooms prosaically designated as A, B, and C, these rooms were instead labelled Aida, Boheme and Carmen.

I knew he was a Republican, and generally avoided arguing politics with him. On one occasion, however, we did have a good natured discussion about taxes. He, of course, wanted taxes to be low, the lower the better. I pointed out that lower taxes meant decreased services. Not just aid to the arts, to National Parks, to transportation -- but to the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, widows and orphans (yeah, I pulled out all the stops!). Many people in our society, I reminded him, through no obvious fault of their own, depend completely on public assistance. Cutting taxes means taking away the life jackets that just barely keep these folks' heads above water.

He looked at me, sort of blankly, and shrugged. "So what?" he asked.

You have to understand that this guy was not the office cynic. He was not a wise guy. He didn't go around joking about the misfortunes of others. He wasn't obviously racist. That's why I was stunned into silence by his "so what." It was a conversation stopper. I wandered out of his office, and tried to on about my normal business.

This guy would never deliberately harm a flea -- if he was dealing with the flea in person. But once the "flea" became an abstraction, just one of a mass of fleas out there in the outside world, he no longer had the ability or the interest to empathize with whatever oppression and suffering rendered that flea's existence miserable. If the story of civilization is the progressive redefinition of "family" from its original meaning to encompass, first, an extended family, then the tribe, then similar social and ethnic groups, then a geographic region, then the nation, and then all humanity -- my friend was still somewhat low on the level of civilization. And yet, to all appearances, he was the very epitome of a "civilized" man.

I remember all of this when I read about the Tea Party supporters who are now massing back in Washington. They are not deliberately evil men and women. They want lower taxes. Who doesn't? They want smaller government; and what government there is, they want to make more local. These are good objectives, in themselves, and worthy goals to keep in mind when contemplating and devising governmental programs. But I sense a collective shrug, a murmurred "so what?", when Tea Partiers are reminded that their taxes aren't just money thrown down the drain -- that in part those taxes allow persons less lucky than themselves -- those dealt a poor hand in terms of brains, social skills, good parenting, good schooling, inherited character traits, or just plain bad luck during their lifetimes -- to live a life surrounded by at least the bare minimum requirements of our society: food, housing, clothing, education for their children.

I understand the concerns of the Tea Party. But I also sense this total failure on their part to empathize significantly with others -- with those to whom they aren't related by blood, friendship, or similar ideology -- a failure so total that the very real hardships of others appear of little consequence compared with their obsession to shrink government and lower taxes.

As I was when I confronted my attorney friend, I'm left speechless. Not this time out of shock, however, but because I realize that argument is useless. The typical Tea Partiers have a different mindset, a different way at looking at life. Their philosophy is not alien to me, not incomprehensible -- but it doesn't represent the best this country has to offer. It's a more primitive way of thinking, one that we should all have been growing beyond by now, and I think, if pursued, one that will lead to enormous future problems. Not just problems for the so-called underprivileged, but for our country and our civilization. For all of us.

Through a glass darkly

A bright, warm, sunny day in Seattle. After a week or so of gray skies and cool days, summer finally returns -- temperatures in the 80's, birds chirping, voices of kids playing in the streets.

But, as that philosopher Buddy Holly once said, "it's raining, raining in my heart."

I'm afflicted with a summer cold. It came on gradually, tickle by tickle in the back of my throat. I ignored it. It would not be ignored; it insisted. By Sunday, I'd stopped doing anything productive. I sat and stared into space. I gazed at my unengaging Facebook screen. I picked at my piano keys. I went to YouTube for musical inspiration and fell asleep listening to Horowitz. I couldn't stay awake during the day; I couldn't stay asleep at night.

Yesterday was worse, today not much better.

Telling folks you have a cold earns you no respect, no sympathy. Why would it? When I was nine or ten, I had a cold most days of the year. So what? Life was to be lived. Now, I get a cold maybe twice a year, and the experience undoes me. Whenever it gets near me, the wuss-o-meter goes off the scale.

No matter how beautiful the day outside, no matter how moving the music I hear and attempt to play, no matter what exciting events I see beckoning in the future -- with a cold, everything's in black and white. Or, more accurately, gray. A cold leaves you alive to limp through daily life, but drains all of the joy and all of the beauty out of the experience. If love provides us intimations of immortality, a cold offers sober insights into the flat, cold world of clinical depression.

But, as many webpages have advised me over the past day or so, the worst symptoms of a cold generally are over within three days. I should be about there. Do I see a bit of color at the end of the tunnel? -- like viewing Oz from the gloomy depths of a Kansas tornado?

I'm not sure. Who cares? I'll get there when I get there.

One further observation: clinical depression (The Bell Jar notwithstanding) generally doesn't cause one to churn out gripping and memorable writing.

Neither does the common cold. And I guess that's all I got to say. So yeah.

Brotherhood in America

On page A14 of today's New York Times, there's a large photograph of five attractive teenaged boys and girls, sitting on a front porch (stoop, I suppose they call it) in Queens. They're laughing and joking together. They look like they might be your own kids, or maybe those of your neighbors next door.

The NYT hasn't pictured them because they've been accused of mugging someone; nor are they there because they're promising young rocket scientists. They are newsworthy only because they're all Muslims, and they're just killing time while somewhat hungry, waiting for sunset. They are observing Ramadan.

As one of the girls comments, discussing what fasting for Ramadan means to her:

It's all about being mad mellow. It's cool, too -- it lets you find out who you are, too. You have more time to look at yourself.

Pretty scary, huh?

I remark on this small story only because, in today's Seattle Times and in newspapers across the land, one finds the latest diatribe from columnist Charles Krauthammer. He continues to be aghast at the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

Krauthammer, to give credit where due, seems not to claim that Muslims have no legal right to build the mosque, only that to do so would be both "insensitive" and "provocative." The Japanese wouldn't "plant their flag" at Pearl Harbor, he conjectures, even though few Japanese alive today have any personal responsibility for the 1941 bombing. Why can't the Muslims be equally sensitive?

But the Japanese -- those who live under the Japanese flag -- are not Americans. The Japanese flag represents a foreign nation. A mosque does not represent a foreign people. Those five kids laughing in the photo are just as American as Mr. Krauthammer.

To say that Muslim symbols or places of worship are not welcome near Ground Zero, because the attack on the World Trade Center was the work of Muslim extremist fanatics, is like saying that Catholic churches should not be built in California because of the cruelties committed by Spanish conquistadores in the name of Catholicism.

I suspect that Krauthammer sees those five Muslin teenagers as young people entitled to the legal protections of citizenship, but I suspect also that he does not see them as "American" in the same sense as Dick, Jane and Baby Sally, who live next door to him in Happytown, USA. He can't believe that those kids are equally appalled by what happened on 9-11, that they may see little connection between the god to whom they pray and for whom they fast and the "god" that animated Osama bin Laden's hatred of America.

Whether a mosque is built in Lower Manhatten is symbolic. Krauthammer and I agree on that. Do we recognize the estimated 7 million Muslims who live in the United States as our fellow citizens? Do we accept them as every bit as "American" as Dick and Jane? Do we acknowledge that their religion is just one more thread in the complexly woven fabric of American religious life? Or do we hold them -- including those happy, devout youngsters in the photo -- at arms' length, acting polite, perhaps, but viewing them in our hearts as nothing more than local representatives of a small group of diabolical Middle East fanatics?

Dancing out of China

I'm depressed by a movie whose premise seems promising -- a premise that leads me to watch it despite mediocre reviews, suspecting that the reviewers either just didn't get it, or were overly focused on technical aspects that would appear less important to a cinematic layman like me -- but that so fails to live up to its promise that I leave the theater feeling cheated.

Last night I attended the Seattle opening of Mao's Last Dancer, a dramatization of the real-life story of Li Cunxin, a Chinese ballet dancer who defected to the West in 1981. Li's life is the very stuff of drama: born to and raised by a peasant family in provincial China; selected almost arbitrarily to study ballet in Beijing at the age of 11 (because Madame Mao decided she wanted a ballet company); forced to undergo strenous physical training for an alien art form that he didn't understand and didn't enjoy; transformed as a teenager from a hitherto lackluster dancer by his viewing of a videotaped performance by Soviet defector Mikhail Baryshnikov; and, finally, his realization as one of the top performers at the Beijing Dance Academy, contrary to early expectations by his instructors. This rags to riches story alone would have made a fascinating movie.

But, wait, there's more. During a period of warming in Sino-American relations, Li's dance group was visited by officials of the Houston Ballet. The director was strongly impressed by Li's dancing, and invited him to spend three months with his company in Houston. Chinese officials were concerned with Li's "political readiness," but reluctantly agreed to the visit. In Houston, Li fell in love with another dancer, married her secretly, and decided to defect. He insisted on visiting the Chinese consulate to explain his decision. While there, he was seized, held captive, and was about to be flown back to China. Enormous adverse publicity, plus intense diplomatic discussions (then Vice President Bush was a patron of the Houston Ballet (who knew?)), led the Chinese to release Li, with the admonition that he'd never see China, or his family, again.

Years later, with liberalization in China, Li had become a hero -- although a politically unreliable one -- in China itself. His parents were secretly flown to the United States where they watched from the audience as Li danced an interpretation of Le Sacre du Printemps. They were brought up on stage to meet their astonished and emotionally overwhelmed son during curtain calls. ("Why are you dancing naked?" his father asks in Chinese. "Let's talk about it later," his son grins.)

All of this should have been great cinema. Somehow, however, it sounds a lot better on paper than it appears on film. The scenes shot in China are dramatic and seemingly authentic. The hardships suffered by all Chinese during the Cultural Revolution are touched on lightly, but convincingly. But the film's opening scene depicts Li's arrival in Houston, with subsequent flashbacks revealing his childhood and adolescence. These opening Houston scenes apparently were designed to contrast America, land of plenty and of freedom, with Maoist China, land of poverty and oppression. Li is shown bedazzled by the skycrapers and modernity of Houston (now eclipsed, of course, by the excesses of Shanghai), and marveling at the consumer goods heaped upon him by his host, the director of the Houston Ballet.

To me, the Houston scenes appeared pure, cheap Hollywood dreck. More footage was devoted to the director's leading Li around from store to store, buying him merchandise, and to showing him the wonders of Houston's disco scene, than was to the director's efforts to integrate him into his own ballet company. I confess to a strong distaste for Texas, at least to the media's routine portrayal of Texas, and most of all to Houston. The cultural elite looked and sounded like a bunch of moneyed snobs out of any one of a number of TV series set in that state. The entire Houston cast looked like a bunch of mediocre Hollywood actors. America in general came across as a country with too much wealth and far too much self-satisfaction.

Li's relationship with the woman he married was touching, at least in the early scenes, but by the time of his defection it was unclear whether he was staying in the U.S. for the sake of love, or for the sake of greater artistic freedom and much greater prosperity. Both, probably, but I couldn't help wondering if he wouldn't have made more of a contribution to ballet by returning home to his company in Beijing.

Li's marriage did not last -- according to the movie, because his wife's own dancing career could not be fulfilled in Houston. During his 18 years with the Houston Ballet, he remarried and finally moved to Australia, where he lives today and where he wrote the best-selling autobiography on which the movie was based. An interesting interview with Li appears on the first page of the Arts section in today's New York Times.

I wish I'd forgone the movie, and read the book.

P.S. -- But some of the ballet scenes, danced by a principal of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, are admittedly spectacular. Too bad the movie didn't present more ballet and less disco.

Hadrian's Wall

I returned late Wednesday night from my cross-England hike, following Hadrian's Wall from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. I can now say I've walked in the footsteps of Roman legionaires. Less preciously, perhaps, I can say that I've spent two weeks -- hiking, riding on trains, and staying at Bed and Breakfasts -- rubbing shoulders with the English people of today, an altogether pleasant and enjoyable experience in itself.

But we all know already that the English tend to be intelligent, quietly witty, endlessly patient, and more or less good-naturedly tolerant of us American buffoons. So I don't need to linger on that aspect of the trip.

My hike was arranged through a British provider -- the company reserved the B&B's at which I would stay each night, and arranged for a local company to move my luggage each day, while I was hiking, to my next destination. They also provided maps, a guide book, and detailed instructions on how to find my accommodations each evening. The trip was unguided. I had to hike (roughly 14 miles a day) and carry a daypack.

I have rarely worked with a travel vendor that was as quietly efficient or that did so precisely everything that it promised to do at the time I paid (quite inexpensively) for the package. I'd be happy to give the name of the vendor and further details to anyone who is interested in this hike (or one of the many others, all over Britain, provided by the company), together with my unqualified recommendation.

I arrived in London on July 28, spent a night trying to sleep despite disruption of my circadian rhythms, and took the train the next morning to Newcastle, a ride of about 3 ½ hours. A transfer onto one of Newcastle's excellent rapid transit trains and I arrived at Tynemouth, a beach town on a cliff overlooking the North Sea. I located the first of the B&B's that my provider had reserved for me -- on Tynemouth's main street, and a half block from the sea -- and knew immediately that I was going to enjoy the hike. The B&B was a small building, crowded in with other buildings on the street. I rang the bell, and was greeted by a kindly, elderly woman, a genteel lady who seemed to have stepped out of a 1940's British movie.¹ She had been expecting me, she said, and offered me tea, gave me a key to the front door, showed me to my room, and then tactfully disappeared.

I next saw my hostess in the morning in the small dining room where she served me, together with a few other guests, the amazing meal called an English breakfast -- eggs, ham, bacon (British style), mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, and toast presented in that strange English rack designed to make sure the toast is cold by the time you eat it. This process, with some variation, was to be repeated every morning for the next eight days.

I finished my meal, more than adequately fueled up for my first day's walk, a walk that began at Segedunum Fort (which I toured) where Hadrian's Wall begins, continued along the Tyne riverfront through downtown Newcastle, and ended up at Newburn, a suburb just west of Newcastle. My first day's hike was eleven miles, just to warm me up, the next day was 14, and the days varied only slightly in distance from that day on.

The path for the first three days was fairly flat, often following the "Military Road" -- a road constructed along side, or actually on top of, the wall in the 1740's, as an emergency means of getting troops from Newcastle to rural areas where the Scottish forces favoring Bonnie Prince Charlie were making incursions. The wall was here visible only in isolated pieces, although the "vallum," a ditch just south of the wall, dug as part of the wall fortifications, was nearly always visible. By the fourth day, however, as the path climbed into the hilly central part of the country, the wall was gloriously intact (although at reduced height since Roman times) for long stretches. Roman milecastles also could be seen through much of this hilly area, as well as the foundations of Roman forts built into the wall.

I had arranged for a one-day layover near Twice Brewed, at the central point of the hike, an area that had some of the best stretches of the wall. I took advantage of this free day to hike to the ruins and archeological works at Vindolanda, a Roman fort pre-dating the wall and located about a mile or so south of it.

And the hike wasn't all about the wall. The scenery was magnificent. A geologic formation called the Whin Sill cuts across Northumberland and Cumbria in northern England, resulting in gradual uphill slopes from the south, falling sharply by rock cliffs to the north. The Romans took advantage of the Whin Sill in designing their defenses, building the wall along its ridge. The rocky crags, and the lakes that form at the base of the cliffs, add drama to the already beautiful green, rolling hills.

The dramatic portions of the hike end at the small city of Carlisle, and many wall hikers end their hikes at this point. I went ahead and hiked the final 16 miles to the actual termination of the wall at Bowness-on-Solway, a tiny town on the Solway Firth, an inlet of the Irish Sea. There are no surviving Roman ruins along this last 16 miles, but the very flat walk alongside the Firth is attractive -- although the day seemed very long by the time I reached Bowness!

All in all, an easy hike, compared with, say, the Himalayas. But the daily distances were greater than I'm used to, and my feet paid a price. Unfortunately, I had developed a hot spot on one foot before leaving home -- some problem with my shoes -- and this translated into blisters on the hike. I had plasters stuck over both heels and was hobbling somewhat painfully for several days. But the experience reminded me that low grade pain is something that you can push into the back of your mind if the experience is otherwise interesting and enjoyable enough. Character-building, as my parents' generation would have said. I do suggest well-broken-in boots or shoes, plus a supply of Second Skin, to anyone planning such a hike.

And the weather, that had greatly concerned me before departure?

At some point on your walk it will rain; if it doesn't, it's fair to say that you haven't really lived the full Hadrian's Wall experience properly.

--My (obviously British) guidebook

Despite all my forebodings (see prior blog posting) and despite threatening skies daily, the rain didn't really fall (a few drops, maybe) throughout most of my hike. I was beginning to fear that I therefore wasn't "properly" experiencing everything that Hadrian's Wall had to offer. Luckily, I was hit by a shower near the end of the final day, a shower strong enough to force me to dig my windbreaker out of my daypack.

I was less than two miles from my final destination. I just grinned as the heavens opened.

After sleeping at a delightful B&B with a view from my window of the ancient and rather spooky graveyard next door, I took a bus back to Carlisle, and the train to London, where I spent four nights recovering from my exertions. London is always fun, and I took in a couple of West End shows, as well as visits to the British Museum (greatly renovated inside since my last visit) and the National Gallery.

A truly interesting and relatively inexpensive two weeks, an experience I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys both history and the outdoors. (If you're anxious for more, I've posted photos of the hike on Facebook.) (For map of hike, see earlier post.)

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¹I learned on my return that my Tynemouth B&B has undefined "associations" with Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Lady Byron. I did sense that I felt literarily inspired while I slept.

---For Immediate Release---

The Northwest Corner will be closed until August 12, while Rainier96, (its publisher) sets off on a quixotic quest, hiking coast to coast across England. Rainier96 observes that, at this very moment and for the next few weeks, the climate of Seattle and its surroundings has (and will have) achieved its peak of perfection. Few places on earth can equal the Northwest Corner for beauty. Few places have a better and more elaborate network of hiking trails.

Rainier96 also takes care to point out that the forecast over the next two weeks for that portion of England to which he adjourns calls for rain showers virtually daily, with temperatures never to exceed 65 degrees.

His dampish hike, and his departure from the Northwest Corner, thus become what can only be called a bitter and dismal study in irony.

But a man's got to do what a man's got to do. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Note your calendars for mid-August.

Amor vincit omnia

When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

In a song that may sum up the careers of more than one cabinet minister (and not just in Britain), The Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., describes how -- by assiduously polishing apples as well as doorknobs -- he rose from lowly office boy to First Lord of the Admiralty.

Yes, it's July and it's Gilbert and Sullivan time again. Two years ago I reported on the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society's production of The Mikado. This year, they are doing H.M.S. Pinafore, which I viewed last night.

As noted in my earlier post, you don't show up at a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta expecting either musical experimentation or philosophical profundity. These musicals were written as escapist fare. They served the mid-level tastes of Victorian society, just as Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical comedies served middle brow audiences in mid-twentieth century America.

But the operettas are unforgettably tuneful, they give a snapshot photo of the social and political currents of the day, and they both satirize public figures and parody the peculiar conventions of grand opera. Most of all, Gilbert's lyrics are just plain funny, even to us today. Think, perhaps, of an amalgam of Glee and Saturday Night Live, if that thought is even thinkable.

The entire production takes place on the deck of the H.M.S. Pinafore. The plot? Well, in a nutshell, if a large one: Ralph Rackstraw, a deckhand, is in love with Josephine, the captain's daughter (who, of course, lives aboard ship). She secretly returns his affections, but the romance is impossible because they are not of equal classes. Then Sir Joseph arrives to inspect the vessel, and -- being an absurd dandy, and a member of a (no doubt) Liberal cabinet -- reminds both captain and crew that class distinctions are only an accident of birth. ("A British sailor is any man's equal, excepting mine.") Sir Joseph also has a personal, non-official reason for his visit: to seek the hand of fair Josephine in marriage. The captain is delighted, Josephine is appalled, and Ralph is devastated.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Cripps (aka "Little Buttercup"), a woman of a certain age who brings supplies in a "bumboat" to peddle aboard ship, has her matrimonial eye on the captain. Her attentions are secretly reciprocated ("A plump and pleasing person!" he muses, as she walks away.) But, again, a loud and jolly vendor is hardly a proper spouse for a ship's captain -- class again stands in the way of true love.

Sir Joseph, his affections unaccountably rebuffed by Josephine, is about to leave in a huff, when the captain suggests that his daughter may well have felt too dazzled by his superior rank to accept his offer of marriage. This is an argument that is highly agreeable to Sir Joseph, and so he assures her, in his official capacity and as an "official utterance," that "love is a platform upon which all ranks meet." Thus reassured, Josphine turns away from Sir Joseph and throws herself into the arms of the delighted Ralph.

The outraged father shouts "damn," and the First Lord of the Admiralty, shocked at such language from an officer in Her Majesty's service, confines the now-disgraced captain to his quarters. He then commits Ralph to the ship's dungeon for his presumption in wooing a lady of gentle birth.

At this point -- deux ex machina -- Little Buttercup steps forward with a dreadful confession. She had cared for both the captain and Ralph in their infancy, and had mixed up their identities (cf. the absurd plot of Verdi's Il Trovatore, first performed just 25 years earlier). Ralph, therefore, is actually of upper class birth, while the captain belongs to the dismal lower classes. This changes everything -- Ralph emerges from the dungeon wearing the captain's uniform; the captain appears with a mop to swab the deck.

Sir Joseph immediately loses interest in Josephine. (When reminded that love levels all ranks, he replies, "It does to a considerable extent, but it does not level them as much as that.") Josephine, now being free of her unwanted suitor, joins Ralph in singing of their divine love for each other. The former captain, instantly reconciled to his new estate in life, joins hands with Little Buttercup as they sing a somewhat earthier serenade.

The entire cast sings a reprise of one of the best known songs of the production, a hymn to their common status, a status that transcends all bounds of birth and breeding.

For he might have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!

For he is an Englishman,
And he himself has said it,
And it's greatly to his credit
That he is an Englishman!

On that high note, last night's entire cast, now on stage, broke into a rollicking chorus of Rule Britannia! -- as a gigantic Union Jack descended from above and the audience whipped itself into a frenzy of applause. The subsequent curtain calls were rousing, but, by that time, could only be viewed as anti-climactic.

We all staggered out of the theater -- exhausted and not quite clear in our minds how the plot had arrived at Point B from Point A, but nevertheless exhilarated, our heads full of melodies, and untroubled by any doubt whatsoever, as I suppose intended, that the late lamented British Empire was indeed the best of all possible worlds.

Consider the Lobster

There they were, still stacked on my table, those partially unread books I mentioned a couple of posts ago, and so I thought I'd try to find places for them on my bookshelves. But -- like a child supposedly cleaning his room -- I quickly got sidetracked. I just had to re-read an essay in one of them, an essay I'd read while traveling, four months ago. On re-reading, I find it stands the test of time. At least the test of four months' time.

I don't read as much fiction as some of you, and so I'd never heard of David Foster Wallace when I bought the little paperback volume of his essays, Consider the Lobster. But Wallace has been considered one of the finest young authors of our time. According to Wikipedia, he was a regionally ranked tennis player as a teenager. He went on to study English and philosophy at Amherst, where he graduated summa cum laude. His philosophy senior thesis was a discussion of modal logic (Richard Taylor's "Fatalism" and the Semantics of Physical Modality), and his English senior thesis became his first published novel (The Broom of the System). Three novels, three collections of short stories, numerous essays. An endowed professorship at Pomona.

Mr. Wallace: A young man of some considerable talent.

But I knew nothing of him. The book I hold in my hand contains a number of essays, all quite amazing for varying reasons. But most memorable -- to me, when I read it earlier -- was the eponymous essay, "Consider the Lobster," originally prepared for and published as an article in Gourmet magazine.

Wallace was asked to tell Gourmet's readers something about the Maine Lobster Festival, which had recently been praised on CNN by an editor of Food & Wine magazine. And so he did. He certainly did. His article began like a typical travel article discussing a typical American event, an event like a county fair. The MLF organizers couldn't have been too pleased, however, as he described in detail the tackiness, the discomfort, the long lines awaiting one at the festival, his description winding up memorably:

Nothing against the euphoric senior editor of Food & Wine, but I'd be surprised if she'd ever actually been here in Harbor Park, amid crowds of people slapping canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children.

In a footnote, he admits that he probably was not the best person to describe the tourist-packed lobster festival, since he detests tourism in general: "As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."

As for lobsters, he notes that they are essentially large, sea-going, insect-like creatures dating from the Jurassic -- related to spiders and centipedes (in Maine, they call them "bugs") -- that were considered food for the poor, folks who couldn't afford anything decent to eat, by the early New England settlers.

But these observations were all preparatory. Although the festival was a nightmare, and lobsters somewhat suspect as a food, he acknowledges that he is writing for gourmets who profess their love for the refined and nuanced flavor of the giant crustaceons. Gourmets, by definition, love fine cooking. So, he discusses in exquisite detail how lobsters are cooked. Or more specifically, how they are boiled. Alive.

Wallace admits that he's no vegetarian himself. He acknowledges that he loves meat as much as the next man. But he's uneasy. He's uneasy about the claims that lobsters feel no pain as they are thrust into a pot of boiling water. He discusses in some detail -- with some scientific sophistication -- the neurological system of the lobster. He observes its neurological differences from a human, and its similarities. He observes that arguments could be made either way, neurologically, as to whether and to what extent the lobster senses pain in the same manner as we sense pain. He observes the philosophical impossibility of knowing whether even highly evolved mammals sense pain as we do, in the absence of their ability to speak.

He does note disturbing lobster behaviorial traits, however, for what they're worth:

However stuporous a lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you're tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container's sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle's rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof.

I'm just saying, Wallace seems to say.

The lobster seems intelligent enough -- sentient enough -- to be expressing a preference, Wallace notes. A preference -- a preference we might expect, a preference we might express ourselves -- that it not be boiled alive.

And yet, he muses, boiling a lobster really is no more cruel than what we do to cattle, pigs, sheep, all the animals we eat daily, is it? In the final paragraphs of his essay he asks Gourmet's readers, essentially, how do you people live with yourselves? Do you have an ethical system that justifies inflicting this massive amount of suffering on innocent creatures? Or do you just not think about it? And if you just don't think about it, why not?

I'm genuinely curious. After all, isn't being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one's food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet?

The article was paid for by Gourmet, and it was published. Its editors got far more than they bargained for, I'm sure. I can't imagine the reader reaction. But they're probably sophisticated readers; maybe they recognized a great piece of writing.

Four years later, David Foster Wallace hanged himself. He suffered from severe depression, it's been reported.

Now, back to sorting my books. You know, I really do need another bookcase.

Oh, by the way ... Bon Appetit!

Arcadia lost

For a number of years, a musical highlight of the summer has been attending performances of the Seattle Chamber Music Society's summer festival at the Lakeside School in north Seattle.

As I discussed three years ago, a major part of the attraction (for me) has been wandering around Lakeside's bucolic campus -- reminiscent of a New England prep school -- on a warm summer evening, enjoying a picnic before the concert, and mingling with the many non-paying music lovers who chose to sit on the lawn outside St. Nicholas Hall, enjoying the music as it was piped out to them over speakers.

Unfortunately, those days are now over. Lakeside now needs to use its campus facilities for its own students, even during summer. The relationship with the chamber music festival ended at its close last year. For the first time, the summer festival, like the society's winter festival, is being held downtown at the Nordstrom recital auditorium in Benaroya Hall.

I attended a performance last night. Nationally prominent musicians performed works by Kodály and Frank Martin, and an especially beautiful quintet by Dvořák. The performances were outstanding and the acoustics are reportedly improved, but the ambience is that of a more formal winter concert, not that of a summer quasi-outdoor festival. Rather than pouring out of St. Nicholas Hall into the warm summer air at intermission (where free lemonade awaited us), we poured out into the cramped second floor lobby where we found the traditional wine and $2 Starbucks coffee being offered for sale. Before the concert, rather than stroll around a silent campus, aglow in the dying rays of sunset on a warm summer evening, we strolled around the less pastoral streets of downtown Seattle.

Granted, "different" isn't always "worse," and shouldn't be sensed that way. "Different" is merely "different," and I know we'll all learn to love the festival's new urban surroundings. After all, who'd complain, when attending a concert at Carnegie Hall, that the building's not surrounded by acres of green lawn?

Still, I feel nostalgic. The final two weeks of the festival continue to be held at Overlake School, east of the lake in Redmond. I may struggle across the bridge next year for just one of those performances. I've heard the campus is beautiful.