"Merely a conventional sign"

"What's the good of Mercator's North     Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the    crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!"

--Lewis Carroll (Hunting of the Snark)

And indeed, as our modern Bellman -- Vladimir Putin -- would declare:

What's the good of national boundaries? It's just a line on a map. The Crimea used to be Russian.  Lots of ethnic Russians live in the Crimea.  They have been "oppressed," forced to speak the barbaric Ukrainian language.  Russia is powerful; Ukraine is weak.  We want the Crimea.  I want the Crimea.  Ergo, the Crimea is now part of Russia.

Q.E.D.

I fully understand.  And President Putin's reasoning seems fully applicable to a matter long dear to my heart, and closer at hand.  I refer, of course, to the oppressive rule of the Canadian government over our neighbors, cousins, families and close friends in "British" Columbia.

"British" Columbia was rightfully claimed by the United States, as part of our Oregon Territory.  "Fifty-four forty or Fight!" was our vow, demanding full American sovereignty up to the southern boundary of what was then Russian America.  Because of American dithering over a simultaneous war with Mexico, our weakling, Gorbachev-esque President Polk and his effete secretary of state, James Buchanan, sold out American sovereignty.  They signed the treasonous "Oregon Treaty," bisecting the Oregon country at the present-day Forty-ninth Parallel.

Many Americans live in British Columbia.  Vast numbers of Americans streamed north during the Vietnam years, claiming certain temporary advantages under Canadian rule.  Our citizens subsidize by their presence ski resorts at Whistler, hotels in Vancouver, and faux-British tea service in Victoria.  But although these American expats, and their children, may love the scenery and ambience of "B."C., they detest the oppression of Canadian rule.

They are forced to live under a Socialistic Regime that imposes "free" medical care on them, for which they pay onerous taxes.  Their schools force them to learn a foreign and distasteful French language, a language that daily assaults their eyes on federal highway signs.  Their province is ruled under an incomprehensible "parliamentary" system, designed to confuse and disenfranchise them.  They must bow down, kneel, and pay homage as subjects to a Foreign Potentate, a "Queen" who lacks even the willingness to live in the realm over which she rules.

So who are the true people of "British" Columbia?  They are Americans, that's who!  They live in a land that's historically part of America!  They are daily oppressed by rulers speaking an arcane form of French that even a Parisian finds uncouth!  They live subject to the whims of a Sovereign whose family we long ago declared to have imposed on freedom loving Americans "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object [which] evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."

America is more powerful than Canada!  And, just as Vladimir, Czar of all the Russias, feels about the Crimea -- we also feel about our long-lost lands to the North. We want British Columbia back!  We can take British Columbia back! 

We shall have her back!

To hell with the Artificial 49th Parallel of Latitude!  As the Bellman (and Putin) would cry (and we would reply), "It's merely a conventional sign."

Deconstructing Kashgar

Someday, the entire world will be a uniform strip mall.  Except for a few areas, designated as historical theme parks, preserved (or created) for the benefit of the tourist trade.  The Disneyfication of Planet Earth.

In a post last fall, I expessed my disappointment with my visits to Samarkand and Tashkent.  "Disappointment" is a bit of an exaggeration.  I was in a foreign country, immersed in a foreign culture, which was fascinating.  But I was disappointed to some extent with the physical aspect of the two cities.

As I described in my post, these two historic Silk Road cities have been heavily modernized under Soviet -- and then, even more, under Uzbek --  city planning.  The historic mosques, madrassas, and squares are dazzling in their beauty -- but they have been heavily reconstructed and renovated within the past few decades.   More disturbing still, the cities surrounding the landmark buildings are no longer the warrens of small streets and crowded markets of the Silk Road past.  They have been modernized physically to the point that a Southern Californian would feel quite at home strolling their streets.

In an effort to experience the Silk Road before it's been completely modernized into a "Polyester Road," I've signed up for a trip through China's Xinjiang province in August.  Xinjiang is historically a Muslim region, home of the Uighur people and allied culturally to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, nations lying just on the other side of the Tian Shan mountain range.  My trip will end up in Kashgar, the capital of Xinjiang, and the western-most Chinese city.

Wikipedia describes Kashgar as "the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in Central Asia," but notes that "it is currently being largely razed by the authorities to make way for 'modern development'."

I'm not even sure my visit in August will be early enough to see much of the Old City, other than rubble.  In a story today, the New York Times reports on the on-going devastation, and notes that:

What remains of the Old City is rapidly being turned into an ethnic theme park, with a $5 admission charge.

The remnants are being marketed as a "living Uighur folk museum."

Right.  Not that we can complain, without displaying some hypocrisy.  Gentrification of our own American cities often has an unstated -- at times, perhaps unconscious -- political motive.  We all recall the sarcastic slogan: "Urban renewal means Negro removal."

Similarly, China is fighting strong Uighur separatist feelings.  As in Tibet, members of the Han majority have been encouraged to move to Xinjiang province, and now constitute approximately half the residents of Kashgar.  Destruction of the Old City is just one more step in that campaign.

For many Uighurs, the demolition of Kashgar's Old City is a physical symbol of the Chinese govenment's efforts to destroy their cultural identity.

Yes, the new buildings are cleaner, and better equipped with modern utilities.  Yes, they are designed to look superficially "old."  Yes, the Old City is now becoming occupied by the "right sort" of people, folks with money -- Han Chinese and prosperous Uighurs who aren't apt to rock the political boat.  Every large housing block in every city in the world has resulted in better housing for those who lived in it.

But such improvements come at a large, if less tangible, cost.

As the New York Times article describes at the beginning:

Visitors walking through the mud-brick rubble and yawning craters where close-packed houses and bazaars once stood could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar had been irrevocably lost to the wrecking ball.

I hope some parts of the city won't yet have met that wrecking ball when I arrive in August.

Ash Wednesday

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings


And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth


This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

--T. S. Eliot

Old Blue

A year ago, you read my tribute to REI, the Seattle-based outdoor equipment cooperative.  Not only do I approve of REI's co-op form of ownership, but it offers both equipment and customer service that are excellent.

Today, REI posted on Facebook a photo of a pair of 1980s ski mittens, which their young publicity writer apparently considered relics from a distant and unknown past, and invited readers to share photos of any of their own "classics."

I was happy to respond with the hastily-snapped photo that I now attach to this post.  This, my fellow outdoorsmen, is a sleeping bag I purchased from REI in 1967.  Back in those days, REI (or "the co-op," as we then called it in Seattle) often manufactured its own equipment which it sold under its own name, in addition to -- if not in preference to -- whichever brand name items it retailed.

At any rate, my photo illustrates a backpacking sleeping bag, stuffed with 2½ pounds of goose down fill, that I was then able to purchase for $55.  (In today's dollars, that's $385, but my purchase seemed cheap even at the time, compared with comparable sleeping bags from other manufacturers.)

Since 1967, the sleeping bag has been in continual use.  Backpacking in the Cascades, Olympics, and Sierras, while trying to keep the rain and drizzle off it (the effect of wetness on its insulation qualities is the one drawback to down fill) .  Sleeping in countless youth hostels in Europe, on the grass in city parks, on the banks of rivers, and on ferry decks between Greek islands.  Thrown on the floor when visiting friends who were out of extra beds.  Trekking in odd areas of the world -- most recently in Morocco (2012) and Tajikistan (2013).

One morning, four years ago in Nepal, I threw "Old Blue" over the top of my tent, letting it air out in the sun while I had breakfast, unaware that I was thus exposing my poor old friend to the ridicule of my younger fellow hikers.  My GOD!, they exclaimed.  What kind of antique is that?  I'd never thought much about its age, but I now realized that they all had sleeker, more snazzily colored (not to mention, cleaner!) sleeping bags.  Mine did look kind of tired and old-fashioned, by comparison.  Just like its owner, I suppose.

After the first cold night at high altitude, however, they were complaining about how coldly they'd slept. 

Not me.  I'd been warm as toast.

So, sure.  It's old.  It's a bit grimy.  I use a much newer sleeping bag with artificial fill, designed for warmer ambient temperatures, when I don't have to worry about either extreme cold or its carrying weight or the amount of space it occupies when stuffed (down can be compacted much more radically than artificial fill). But when it comes to the uses for which I purchased it -- I couldn't be happier.  We live in a throw-away culture, but I'd never throw Old Blue away.  We've been through a lot together. 

And we're staying in it together, right to the end!

Fall of Rome

The paperback edition
I read in college.

The Roman Empire became old and tired, corrupt and decadent.  Eventually, it could no longer defend its borders.  The Germanic barbarian tribes poured in, and by the late fifth century, the Western half of the Empire was dead, to be replaced by a new feudal economy led by Germanic peoples like the Franks .  The death of the Empire was a tragedy, but in the long run the infusion of vigorous Germanic blood created a new, more vigorous Europe.

This was the version of history I picked up in school, and is essentially the story told by Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  It wasn't until college -- where, in one of my many academic incarnations, I was a medieval history student -- that I ran into what was (and is) known as "the Pirenne thesis."  That was long ago, and I had more or less forgotten Pirenne and his historical studies until a couple of months ago.  Out of curiosity and nostalgia, I ordered from a book club a freshly formatted and nicely bound version of Henri Pirenne's seminal work, Mohammed and Charlemagne.

The gist of Pirenne's thesis, based on his study of all the social and economic evidence available to him at the time, was that the Germanic tribes entering the late Empire -- while causing a certain amount of local havoc, mayhem, and destruction -- actually had little effect on the on-going Roman economy.  The Empire, east and west, was a Mediterranean civilization, and its economy was based on Mediterranean shipping back and forth among Italy, North Africa, Greece, Egypt, and the Levant.  The barbarian invasions did not disrupt this shipping, Pirenne believed, and the Germanic tribes eventually, at different times in different areas, settled down and became assimilated into the Empire's social life and economy.

In 600 the physiognomy of the world was not different in quality from that which it had revealed in 400.

It wasn't until Islam unexpectedly sprang out of the Arabian peninsula, spreading its armies across North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, seizing control of the seas, that the Mediterranean unity was broken, and that the western Empire was severed from the eastern half controlled from Constantinople.  No longer having access to the Mediterranean, the Western Empire's trade ceased, the West's economy was devastated and each small region was forced to become self-sufficient -- a process lasting from about A.D. 650-750, ultimately leading to the far more primitive feudal economy. 

Mohammed and Charlemagne was published posthumously in 1937, but its basic ideas were developed by Pirenne while, as a Belgian, he was held captive by the Germans during the first world war.  By the time I first learned of the Pirenne thesis, it had been highly controversial for several decades, with national prides at stake.  Emerging German nationalism had taken comfort in the concept of a vigorous Germanic wind blowing away -- in an act of "creative destruction," if you will -- the worn-out remnants of the ancient civilization.  The concept of Germans (and other ethnic barbarians) being co-opted for two hundred years by the Roman world they had conquered, until finally the old world was blown away by a vigorous Muslim wind blowing out of Arabia, was considerably less congenial.

In her preface to my recently-purchased volume, Oxford historian Averil Cameron assures us that issues raised by Pirenne are as controversial today as they were before I first learned of them.  Many of the data relied on by Pirenne have been questioned or their importance has been superseded by newly discovered data.  I gather that there is now a tendency to conclude that the "true" version of late Roman history is an admixture of Gibbon's original description and Pirenne's attack on that position.

Dr. Cameron reminds us that history is always subjective.  Historians examine the limited evidence available, and from that evidence draw sweeping generalizations.  She reminds us that

Pirenne's questions about West versus East, antiquity versus the Middle Ages, the origins and definition of Europe, and the role of economic factors in history are issues which historians have been addressing for centuries and which are still among the great issues of today.

Why Roman civilization declined and fell, and why it was succeeded by the feudal structures of the early Middle Ages, fascinated me as a student, just as it has fascinated centuries of historians and generations of ordinary people.  We'll never have a complete answer, but as historians acquire an ever-increasing amount of data -- economic and archeological, not just literary -- their conclusions gradually inspire more confidence. 

Synthesizers like Henri Pirenne add excitement to the study of history, and prompt ever new questioning. 

Now, I really need to read the book I hold in my hand -- Pirenne's actual text, not just his concluding chapters and Dr. Cameron's preface!

Grasshopper Jungle

When I write a book review on this blog, I also cut and paste it onto the Goodreads web site.  For books that I find interesting, but not so interesting as to write a blog review, I often write a short blurb directly to Goodreads, but ignore it here on my blog.

Today, I began writing such a short blurb for Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith -- a book I read because of a very favorable review in Sunday's New York Times.  The blurb kept expanding, as I thought of aspects of the book that I liked, to the point that I've decided to reverse my usual modus operandi, and copy and paste it from Goodreads to here.

I'm not really sure yet that the book -- or the review -- is fully blog-worthy, but what the heck.

Austin Szerba is a 16-year-old, small town, Iowa boy. Through a complex series of events, he triggers the creation of a genetically designed race of six-foot tall praying mantises, with exo-skeletons as strong as those of a Naval vessel, bugs who live only to eat and to mate, both of which they do ravenously. While he observes over a period of time virtually all his neighbors being slurped up alive, Austin finds himself worrying primarily about the fact that he's deeply in love, simultaneously, with both his girlfriend Shann and his gay best friend Robby. World cataclysm can't change the fact that he's sixteen and slave to his hormones.

This summary of the plot doesn't sound promising. But a NY Times book review compared the book favorably to the best of Kurt Vonnegut. For the most part, I agree.

While dealing with teenage love and the war against the "Unstoppable Soldiers," as the kids call the mutants, Austin speaks learnedly of historiography, causation, free will versus determinism, the history of Poland and of his own Polish ancestry, the life of St. Kazimierz, the cave drawings at Lescaux, rock music, Iowa sociology, Xanax, Lutheranism, and corporate greed. He also talks a lot about the science of the giant bugs, but you shouldn't take that seriously. He talks even more about his own sexual fantasies, but they are the sort that probably would be unexceptional for a very bright -- but sexually very confused -- Iowa boy.

We learn in the epilogue that Austin is writing his book, based on his exhaustive teenage diaries, at the age of 21 from the safety of an underground bunker, where he lives with Shann and Robby, Shann's parents, Robby's mother and her boyfriend, and Austin's own four-year-old son. So far as he can determine, the other 7 billion human beings have all become dinner for bugs. The Unstoppable Soldiers still roam the earth, seeking out whomever they can devour.

Austin wonders if humans had ever really learned anything essential, from generation to generation. How do we differ from our cave man ancestors? And how do we and those cave men differ from the Unstoppable Soldiers, obsessed only with eating and sex, other than the fact that we occasionally draw pictures on the walls of our caves in an attempt to make sense of it all? This book is Austin's attempt at cave drawing.

The book's subject is grim, but the treatment is humorous.

When he came out of the bathrooom, Grant Wallace [now transformed into an Unstoppable Soldier] ate his two younger brothers, his mother, and the family's Yorkshire terrier, which was named Butterfly.

That gives you a sense of the tone. Book is recommended for young adults, 14 and older. Most teenagers, and many adults, will love it. But I suspect that many parents of teenagers may think twice before suggesting it to their kids.

Happy William Henry Harrison Day

Happy Presidents Day.

'Twas not always thus.  Back when I was in school, we celebrated the birthdays of only two presidents:  Washington (February 22) and Lincoln (February 12).  Washington's Birthday was a national holiday.  Lincoln's Birthday was a holiday, but not (as I recall) the kind of holiday that permitted workers to stay home from work and (more to the point) students to stay home from school.

Both holidays called for the usual use of colored construction paper and crayons.  Washington's Birthday involved designing axes used for chopping down cherry trees ("I cannot tell a lie"), and (I suppose) dollar coins (for throwing across the Potomac).  Lincoln's Birthday involved log cabins (in which he was born).  We didn't draw black slaves -- whether as owned (Washington) or freed (Lincoln).

So yes, we learned a prettified and mythological rendition of the lives of both presidents.  And that's fine with me.  We were kids.  Kids need uplifting stories.  The stories we learned about Washington and Lincoln were myths; as with all myths, they expressed deeper truths through fictional or fictionalized events. 

Whether Washington really ever chopped down a cherry tree, and owned up to it with his father, wasn't important.  Learning to acknowledge one's mistakes and faults was -- as was learning to tell the truth -- without trying to absolve oneself by seeking counseling.  Whether Lincoln was really raised in a rustic cabin, and loved books so much that he damaged a borrowed book by wedging it between two of the logs may or may not have been true.  What was clearly true was the fact that many great men in our history were born in humble settings and worked hard, both physically and mentally, from earliest childhood in order to succeed.

Washington and Lincoln were -- maybe for today's children, still are -- our Ulysses, our Aeneas, our King Henry V.

Then, in 1968, Congress decreed that Washington's Birthday would thenceforth occur on the third Monday of February.  The bill originally changed the name of the holiday to Presidents' Day, but that change was not ultimately approved.  Nevertheless, the new statute cut the direct relationship between Washington's date of birth and the federal holiday celebrating it, and various states enacted laws that called the new holiday by various names -- most frequently as "Presidents' Day", with the apostrophe either before or after the "s," or eliminated entirely. 

In Washington, ironically, a state statute ignores the president of whom we're the namesake, declaring the holiday to be "President's Day."

Presidents Day (regardless of apostrophic placement) suggests a civil adoration of all U.S. Presidents, an exaltation of the executive office, rather than a celebration of any specific president -- the sort of holiday that I doubt would have left either Washington or Lincoln feeling comfortable.  So today, I suppose, we must honor not only Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln -- but also Buchanan, Arthur, Harding, Nixon, and Bush (père et fils). 

Actually, of course, we celebrate primarily the American retail industry, whose Presidents Day Sales dominate our newspapers to the exclusion of any individual president.

On the University of Washington campus, one finds a statue of the eponymous George Washington.  For generations, each Washington's Birthday someone -- during the dark of night -- would slosh the statue with green paint.  "Keep Washington Green," was the pun intended.

I walked by the statue this morning.  It stood oxidized bronze and decidedly un-green in the falling rain.  No one had bothered making a connection between the statue and the holiday. No one at all was around.  All the students had probably gone off skiing for the day.  I doubt if George Washington ever wore a pair of skis.  With the sort of bindings they had back in those days, it's just as well that he didn't.

Happy Whatever Day!

Il Posto

The dreams of our childhood never come wholly true.  Unfortunately, for many, they come far less true than for others.

The film Il Posto (1961), which I saw last night as part of an Italian film series, is a wonderful introduction to the horrors of corporate employment -- a caricature of the life of a drone, Italian-style.

The hero, the teenager Domenico,¹ lives in a suburb of Milan -- the son of a lower middle class family, living in an Italy that's not yet prosperous, but that has progressed far beyond the destitution of the immediate post-war years.  Domenico has dropped out of school so that his family can afford to educate his younger brother.  It's time for him to find a job; his dreams of the pleasures and responsibilities of adulthood lead him forward with both hope and trepidation.  He seeks a job as an "administrative clerk."

Domenico, a shy and rather passive youth, dresses in his best coat and tie, and proudly takes the train into the city to interview for a job.  (The background scenes of Italian family and city life in 1961 are themselves worth the price of admission.)  He finds himself in a room full of similar slicked-up applicants for various jobs with the company -- all of whom seem equally bewildered.  They are marched through the city streets, like kids on their way to recess, to another building, where they take an absurdly easy "aptitude test," an "easy" test that many of them nevertheless fail.  The survivors are subjected to a group physical examination, reminscent of American army physicals back in the days of the draft.

The boy ends up assigned temporarily as assistant to the company's messenger, a man whose laziness and cynicism amaze him; then, when one of the older administrative clerks unexpectedly dies, he receives the job he had been aiming for.

We have seen his new fellow employees in action (or, rather, inaction) in scenes before this denouement.  A room full of men, sitting at desks facing their supervisor like boys in a classroom, whose behavior also resembles those same school boys.  They have their sinecures; they receive their paychecks.  No one seems to care that little work is being done.  The deceased employee has left behind in his desk "Chapter 19" of a novel he'd been writing on company time.  The employees stare into space.  They read.  They grumble at each other.  They compete for minor advantages.

Domenico precipitates the biggest disruption the room had seen in ages when he inadvertantly sits down in the empty desk vacated by the deceased novelist.  A middle-aged time-server in the back of the room explodes that he'd been waiting for that desk for decades -- and now some kid was going to get it?  The supervisor soothes everyone's feelings, and Domenico willingly moves to the desk at the back of the room.  The ruffled feathers begin gradually to collapse once more.

Domenico stares off into space.  He adjusts the lamp on his desk, the lamp whose bright beams the complainer had been complaining about -- no doubt for decades.  He wonders what he's supposed to do.

Domanico is only a teenager, and he already has a paying job that he can hold until the day he dies.  He's accomplished his lifetime goal.  There's no where else, no where higher, for him to go.  How does he spend the next fifty or sixty years?

Responses to my one-paragraph Facebook summary of this film suggest that Domenico's plight is common, not one suffered only by Italians of the 1960s.
----------------------------------------------

¹ Domenico is played by Sandro Panseri, an actor best known for this part, who also played roles in two later Italian movies in the early 1960s.  He plays the shy youth brilliantly, speaking far more eloquently with his eyes and his face than his character's reticence would permit from his voice.  The actor still lives in Milan, according to IMDb, currently managing a supermarket.

Let it snow

This morning, from my deck.

We woke up this morning to snow in Seattle. Only the second time this winter that snow has stuck on the ground, and here we are, nearing mid-February.  We got only about two inches, and even that's now melting in above-freezing temperatures.  But it's been beautiful while it lasted.¹ 

It's been three or four years since I've been skiing, but the memories of briskly cold air, fast skis, and breathtaking mountain scenery tempts me to the hills.  As do the televised images of Sochi that we've all been watching -- ski jumps and runs set among the dramatic Caucasus mountains.

From what we see on television, it's hard to imagine that there were ever any concerns about the amount of snow available for the Olympics.  But everyone was, in fact, worried about the temperatures and the snow conditions -- right up until the beginning of the Games.  And some concern remains even now.  The temperatures at the Sochi venues are hovering right at the freezing level, although more snow and colder temperatures are predicted for next week.

Lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the subject of global warming.  Californians have virtually no snowpack this year, and the snowpack is only fifty percent of normal here in the Northwest Corner.  One year's aberration wouldn't be significant, of course.  But an article this week in the New York Times reminds us that Europe has lost half of its Alpine ice since 1850, and that in the past 47 years, the Northern hemisphere has lost a million square miles of spring snow cover.  At the present rate of decrease, the Western United States will lose 25 to 100 percent of its snowpack by 2100.

Luckily -- so to speak -- I won't be around to witness that snow sports Armageddon, and my days of active skiing will be even more radically curtailed.   But I will still want the opportunity to walk through crunchy snow, watching my breath condense in front of my face and finding myself surrounded by snow clad peaks, for as long as possible.  And even after I'm no longer able to drive into the mountains, I'd like to know the snow's still there on the mountains, still giving pleasure to those who do reach them.

In any event, our little snowfall last night -- what I referred to on Facebook as the "Great Blizzard of 2014" -- at least assures me that we snow enthusiasts have a few good years left ahead before we find ourselves simmering all year long in an atmosphere of super-heated carbon dioxide.  As I remind global warming skeptics -- who seize on every snow storm as proof of their position -- "local weather doesn't necessarily equate with global climate." 

My little mantra works in reverse, as well -- even while the globe is warming, perhaps irreversibly, for a few more years we still will get to enjoy our occasional bits of snowy weather locally.  And now, I really should go build a snowman, before it's too late.
---------------------------------
¹  Oregon and southern Washington had much heavier snowfalls over the past day or so.

Safari

"Goodbye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner."
--Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child

I've never yet seen the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River (all set about with fever-trees), and I don't know when, if ever, I will.  I learned Kipling's alliterative description of the river as a kid, long before I knew such a river really exists.   (It forms South Africa's boundary with Zimbabwe, and a portion of its boundary with Botswana.)

I've never seen it down at river level, as I say, but in May I'll hop across it a couple of times by plane.  My cousin Craig has pulled together a group of twelve relatives and friends, including his wife, his sister, and me, for a safari in southern Africa.  The actual tour begins in Livingstone, Zambia, and ends in Maun, Botswana, but our transatlantic flights touch down in Johannesburg -- hence a chance to "see" the Limpopo a couple of times, albeit from 30,000 feet or so.

The safari actually duplicates, to a large extent, a similar trip my eldest nephew and I joined in 1986.  That earlier trip was somewhat more spartan -- we slept in tents, hiked, and traveled (mostly) by Landrover.  This time we'll stay in "luxury" lodges and hop from campsite to campsite by bush planes.  It will be interesting to decide which kind of travel I prefer.  I'm keeping an open mind, but sleeping in tents in the bush is an amazing experience -- memories of looking up from my reading while sitting on a camp chair and seeing two giraffes smiling down at me ... waking up in the night as an elephant seemed about to step on our tent ... hearing the distant but incredibly loud roar of lions in the night ... having a black mamba pointed out to us along the side of the trail.

It will also be interesting to determine whether Botswana has degenerated in the past 28 years from the virtual wildlife paradise it seemed my first time around.

Our tour begins in Livingstone, with a day to enjoy Victoria Falls.  Last time, our trip also started at Vic Falls, but from the Zimbabwe side of the river -- political events in the interval have probably determined the change.  (We'll walk across the Zambezi River bridge so we can say we've visited Zimbabwe, just as last time we crossed over into Zambia.)  From the north or the south, Vic Falls is one of the natural wonders of the world.  Only the Grand Canyon has overwhelmed me to the same extent on first sight.

I wish I could reproduce photos from the earlier trip, but they are all in the form of slides -- buried somewhere in my basement. 

More details about this year's trip as departure grows closer. (And, by the way, I already have a good idea of what the Crocodile has for dinner.)

Umberto D.

So you're looking ahead to retirement?  But you're worried?  You're not sure you'll have that $5 million (or whatever) in your 401k account -- that impossible amount your financial adviser keeps insisting is essential?

For a little perspective, you might want to watch Umberto D., Vittorio De Sica's 1952 masterpiece, a film shown last night as part of the Seattle Art Museum's Italian cinema series.

Umberto is a retired civil servant living in post-war Italy.  (The film is worthwhile -- if for nothing else -- for its background documentation of a much poorer, more desperate Italy, with streets filled with pedestrians and streetcars, rather than automobiles.) 

Umberto apparently has no relatives.  He lives alone with his small dog "Flike" in a modest rooming house, whose landlady repeatedly demands overdue past rent.  He exists on a small, inadequate pension.  The film opens with scenes of street demonstrations by retirees demanding increases in their miserably low pensions.  Throughout the movie, Umberto spends his days trying to sell off his few meager possessions in an attempt to stay alive.

Umberto's landlady -- a pretentious, high-strung Signora who hosts absurd soirées in her run-down flat,  entertaining her guests by singing operatic arias  -- has decided to evict Umberto from the room in which he's lived for thirty years. 

Umberto, carefully dressed in respectable coat and tie, wanders about the city, accompanied by Flike, desperately attempting to scrape up enough lire to pay the overdue rent and to postpone the inevitable eviction.  He runs into former employers and younger fellow employees, all of whom are superficially friendly, but clearly uncomfortable -- especially once Umberto begins quietly hinting at how he needs just a bit of money to tide him over.  One by one, it's "great seeing you, hope all goes well," and they're gone.  Gone about their important business, business in which he himself once shared.

As his desperation deepens, he considers joining the ranks of the city's many panhandlers, but he can't force himself to accept the necessary but humiliating  sacrifice of his dignity.  (In desperation, he has clever Flike stand on his hind legs and hold an open hat in his mouth, while Umberto hides behind a post, hoping for coins from amused passers by.)

Bit by bit, Umberto gives up hope -- as do we, his audience.  He packs his bag and surrenders his room. He gives the last of his money to his landlady's unmarried, pregnant maid. He attempts unsuccessfully to find Flike a good home.  He then picks his beloved dog up in his arms and prepares to step in the path of a passing train, a double suicide.  Flike's intelligence and desire for survival exceed those of his master; he wriggles frees and the train-- and the moment -- pass by.  The dog, now somewhat leery of his undependable master, runs off and plays with some children.

Umberto sees the simple pleasures of his dog's life, and joins in the play, tossing pine cones for Flike to fetch.  Having given away all his possessions and money, Umberto is left with only his dog, the clothes on his back, and his life.  Like Flike, he grabs at the simple joys of the moment in the park, ignoring whatever the night and the days to come might bring.

And I guess that's our Guide to a Happy Retirement -- seize the joy of each precious moment, and ignore the uncertainties of tomorrow.  (Or, alternatively, I suppose, devote your life to saving up the five or ten million dollars recommended by your financial adviser.)

World class

Whenever a city describes itself as a "world class city," you can generally assume safely that it isn't.  Therefore, I cringe every time I hear local boosters make that claim for Seattle.

But let's face it.  Whatever our jokes about longing for a "lesser Seattle," whatever our irritation at too many furriners movin' in -- especially furriners from California -- we here in the Northwest Corner do crave recognition and respect from the rest of the nation.  Natives (such as I) grew up feeling isolated from the "real" America.  People "back east" considered us a bunch of loggers and fishermen (which we largely were!), a bit of wilderness still being civilized, still being "liberated" from the "Indians."

And major league sports?  The closest major league baseball team when many of us were kids was in Kansas City!  In the absence of much coverage of major league sports on television, the talk in our barber shops tended to center around the exploits of the local high school basketball team.

So, forgive us if we've seemed childishly excited about our Seahawks these past weeks.  This season's NFL success has been the biggest major league event in Seattle since the SuperSonics (since decamped to Oklahoma City) (Oklahoma City!!!)  won the NBA championship in 1979.

Yesterday we only dreamed of being a conference champion.  And now we are one!  Last night, as (we hope) most the world recognizes, we won the National Football Conference championship from arch-rival San Francisco, landing ourselves in the 2014 Super Bowl against Denver.  (Especially sweet has been the fact that the final players in this drama have all been from the western states.)

It wasn't an easy win.  For most of the game, I doubted that it would be a win at all.  But a stout defense, a reasonably good quarterback performance, and a bit of luck gave us the title.

I've read a lot about the hatred between the Seahawks and the 49ers, and between their respective fans. I don't buy it.  I don't feel that way at all.  I've been proud to back the 49ers when they represented the conference, and will be proud to so again when San Francisco's time inevitably comes again.  I like to consider it a terrific rivalry between similar cities and teams -- a love-hate relationship, if you will.

So, anyway, allow us loggers and fishermen up here in the Northwest Corner a couple of weeks to bask in our unaccustomed glory and fame.  Indulge our illusions of being "world class."

And then bring on Mr. Manning and the Broncos -- in Super Bowl XLVIII!

Italian flicks

Reflecting the destruction and chaos following World War II, as well as the rise of Communism and Socialism, postwar Italian films became known for a movement called "neorealism." 

According to Wikipedia's rather awkwardly written summation, neorealist films

are generally filmed with nonprofessional actors--although, in a number of cases, well known actors were cast in leading roles, playing strongly against their normal character types in front of a background populated by local people rather than extras brought in for the film.

They are shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in run-down cities as well as rural areas due to its forming during the post-war era.

The topic involves the idea of what it is like to live among the poor and the lower working class. The focus is on a simple social order of survival in rural, everyday life.

I first became familiar with these films as an undergraduate attending "foreign film" series.  They contrasted strongly with contemporary American movies by their being filmed in black and white, by their emphasis on their characters' social and economic milieux, and by their general pessimism and lack of romanticism. 

Also, they had subtitles!

Although neorealism was dying out by the early 1950s, the films of the succeeding decade, by directors such as Antonioni and -- especially -- Fellini, still contained some of the elements of neorealism while becoming increasingly surrealistic and decreasingly concerned with social injustices.

For anyone of college age in the 1960s and even 1970s, some familiarity with post-war Italian cinema could be reasonably expected.

And now -- the Seattle Art Museum gives us a chance to revisit nine of the landmark films of that era.  Pat and I have tickets to the entire series, but unfortunately had to miss the showing last night of The Bicycle Thief (1948), probably the film of the neorealist genre most familiar to American audiences.  But on succeeding Thursdays, we will be viewing:

Umberto D
I Vitelloni
Le Amiche
Il Posto
The Organizer
8½
Juliet of the Spirits
Amarcord

I'm looking forward eagerly to revisiting each of these films.  My thoughts concerning  some of them may find their way into this blog in coming weeks.

Sharing coffee

Gregory and I had coffee at Starbucks on Tuesday, lingering over our drinks for a couple of hours as we talked and watched the University District crowds pass by on the sidewalk outside.

I first met Gregory over four years ago, when he was a high school student living in my neighborhood.  Now he's a sophomore at a university in New York City, back home in Seattle for semester break.  His family moved out of my neighborhood shortly after he left for college.  We've kept in touch on Facebook, but this was the first time I'd seen him in person since he first went back East to the Big Apple.

Our conversation was satisfying -- from my point of view -- from several perspectives.  Gregory's doing well, of course, and seems to be making the most of the opportunities that college and life in New York offer him.  But I knew that already, just from following him on Facebook, although of course I loved the chance to talk it all over with him in person.

But our conversation was also reassuring on some level beyond the personal.  It was reassuring to be able to carry on a serious conversation with someone many years my junior without feeling any need to lecture him from the heights of my great wisdom and experience, and without his feeling (so far as I could tell) any need to remind me how totally out of touch I truly was with today's world.

Partly, of course, I could empathize with his excitements and concerns and worries, because I so easily recalled my own identical feelings at his age.  More interesting, even surprising, was sensing how his concerns as a 20-year-old were clearly mirrored in analogous concerns in my own life.  I may not have to worry about choosing a major, but I have to make similar choices about how to best use my own time.  Feelings of insecurity, some degree of shyness, concerns about one's own abilities, bafflement by politics and by the mysteries of the universe itself --  the importance of each of these may fluctuate as an individual passes through life, but their existence is shared by each of us at some level of consciousness, independently of our age or experience.

It's wonderful to go overseas, talk to a native of the country you're visiting, and realize that differences in language and custom are superficial -- you both share the joys and predicaments of the human condition.  In the same way, it's deeply reassuring for someone my age to talk with a university student and be hit with the same realization.  These feelings of community between oneself and students who are much younger must be one of the appeals of the teaching profession, at least for those who really love teaching.

As I think back, I realize that this sense of community between generations has been one of the great pleasures of the many trips I've taken with young nephews, nieces, and family friends:  to see the world, and our travels through that world, through their younger eyes, and to realize that we mainly shared the same perceptions and excitement -- and that where our perceptions differed, we could both learn by understanding and appreciating the other's reactions.

Finally, talking with Gregory gave me -- as did travel with my young relatives -- an intimation of earthbound immortality.  Even if we can't live forever, we in some sense live through the generations who follow us and who recapitulate our own hopes and fears within the context of their own times.  This sense of immortality is most strongly felt between parents and their children, of course, but it's also felt on a grander scale between one entire generation and the ones that follow. 

So, any time I can be assured over a cup of coffee that -- in some sense, at least -- I'll live forever, it's well worth my spending a couple of hours (of very enjoyable conversation) to get that assurance.

Karma

As an insurance lawyer, I've spent much of my career scoffing professionally at "whiplash" injuries (the quotation marks often discernible in the sneering manner with which I pronounce the words).

These "injuries" result in subjective and unverifiable pains that seem to last forever, morphing at times into strange entities like fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndrome, diagnoses requiring questionable (to me) and expensive (to the insurers) "modalities" like chiropractic, massage therapy, acupuncture, and so forth.  The "so forth" descending the scale of credibility into such absurdities as herbal and aroma therapies.

The usual cure was the "green poultice" -- application of  hundred dollar bills to the affected areas -- I sneered.

But -- what goes around, comes around.

In early October, I began developing a mild stiff neck.  The stiffness gradually spread to my shoulders and upper back.  By the beginning of December, I was feeling sharp pains in my left shoulder blade area.  The pain now is fairly constant -- although varying greatly from hour to hour in intensity -- and bounces around from one part of my neck and upper back to another.

A week ago, I had a physical therapy session.  The therapist assured me that there was nothing seriously wrong.  But she didn't seem to know quite what the problem was.  She gave me some home exercises to work on.

The home exercises may help in the long run.  They hurt in the short run.

But my purpose in writing this post isn't to complain about my aches and pains -- as richly satisfying as my so complaining actually proves to be.  I merely reflect on the irony that the mythical complaints of those many whiners whom I've derided over the years have now sprung full-blown into existence within my own body.  The "whiners" at least had an auto accident or a slip and fall on which to pin their troubles.

I can blame nothing but the peculiar sense of humor of the gods. 

Karma.  How amusing!  Not.