The Marches

Hadrian's Wall, from my 2010 hike

Hadrian's Wall, constructed by the Romans from A.D. 122 to about 128, crosses northern England from Newcastle, through Carlisle, to Bowness on the Solway Firth.  In 2010, I followed the wall its entire length on foot. 

In 2011, Rory Stewart walked the same route, together with his 89-year-old father (the father driving far more than walking).  The following year, he walked a more rambling, and much longer, route from the Lake District to his father's home at the foot of the Highland Line in Scotland, exploring the puzzling region between the Wall and the Scottish border, the region called "the marches" in medieval times, and which Stewart likes to call "the Middleland."

Mr. Stewart is best known in America as the author of a best-selling book about his 32-day walk across Afghanistan in 2002, The Places in Between.  A graduate of Eton and Oxford, he has also served as a member of Britain's foreign service, working on issues in Iraq, Montenegro, and East Timor.  At the time of his Hadrian's Wall walk, he had just been elected as a Conservative party Member of Parliament, an office he continues to hold.

He has now published his account of his 2011 and 2012 ramblings, The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland.  But The Marches is far more than a travel document.  Stewart is a keen observer of flora, fauna, geology, archeology, history and pre-history.  Simply reading his account of the Hadrian's Wall walk made me realize how much I had missed, how unobservant I had been, how superficial my understanding of the history of the area had been.

Moreover, Stewart combines his trekking observations with a tribute to his father -- a man who was an amazing example of a certain vigorous type of polymath and adventurer spawned by the British Empire -- and a deeply moving, bittersweet testimonial to the unusually close relationship between father and son.  The book begins with Stewart's memories of his father as a child, and ends with his father's death at 93 in 2015.

The book has a number of themes, including the tribute to his father's remarkable life, and they perhaps do not all mesh easily together in a single volume.  But they mesh as well in writing, probably, as they do in Stewart's own mind.

One predominant theme, intended or not, is Stewart's love of Britain's "lived in" rural landscape.  The small village, the stone fence enclosures, the sheep and cattle, the neighboring farms and farm houses, where everyone knows everyone.   A certain coziness.  After the Norman conquest, the Middleland area was cleared of habitation and reserved as royal forest for the king's hunting.  Stewart looks on forest as a form of desert.

Modern agriculture, tourism, environmentalism, and reforestation are causing a rapid re-desertification, in Stewart's eyes.  Small farms held by families for centuries are being combined into large mechanized agricultural businesses.  The government is reforesting other areas, and environmentalists are undoing the farmers' work of centuries, returning the land to "non-invasive" species.  Among the many undesirable effects, as Stewart sees it, is a significant depopulation: fewer people now live in the "Middleland" than at any time since the middle ages, and deserted farm houses abound.

Another theme is the unique nature of the Middleland.  Stewart had set out on his Hadrian's Wall hike with some thought that the wall marked a separation between Scots and English peoples.  His findings confused him, and he now feels that the people of the "Middleland" -- now defined as stretching from the Humber river to the Highland Line -- make up a distinct third culture, one containing a number of sub-cultures. 

Stewart loves seeking out the etymology of place names, and notes frequently which areas of the Middleland have names deriving from Northumbrian (Germanic) roots, which from Norse roots, and which from Cumbric-Welsh roots.  He points out that what he now calls the Middleland was, before and for some time after the Conquest, shared by a number of kings representing different language and cultural regions.  Some of these distinctions still exist in local language and customs.

The book has an underlying mood of melancholy.  Just as his father -- a fascinating, accomplished, and eccentric gentleman, who still liked to dress up in Black Watch tartans until his death -- gradually weakens and fades throughout the book, so the Middleland is losing its cultural distinctiveness.  Stewart repeatedly finds that residents today -- even in small, isolated communities -- have little real organic connection to their history and traditions.  Local festivals tend to be promoted by community leaders for the enticement of tourists. Matching the cultural loss, the scenic values of the area are dying, as land use changes force a return to a dreary, pre-agricultural uniformity. 

Two states now predominated -- suburban and abandoned -- increasingly at the expense of the alternative, a living countryside.

Stewart frequently contrasts this dying of customary Britain with the vibrant survival of local village customs he encountered during his walk through Afghanistan.  I easily understand how Stewart has chosen the Conservative party.  And yet, his observations and conclusions are never doctrinaire, never set in stone.  He continually observes facts that mitigate against his conclusions.  He continually modifies his conclusions.  The Marches is a travel book and an academic study, never a political tract.

Stewart sums up his father's life, shortly after the old man's death:

It was an attitude to his life, then, and a resilience.  I was only half-conscious of the many ways in which he had modestly concealed how he was better than me -- in singing, in his languages, in his sense of engineering or art, and in his promptitude and energy in work.  In the end, I felt, his legacy was not some grand philosophical or political vision, but playfulness, and a delight in action.

Playful, indeed.

"I prefer," commented my father when I shared this [a Scot's verse, written contemporaneously, about Robert Bruce's battles with Edward I] with him, "Edward's comment on toppling Balliol -- 'bon bosoigne fai qy de merde se deliver' -- isn't it great to push out a turd."

Stewart's evaluation of his father feels entirely justified, but his self-deprecation not so much.  I suspect his father -- who continued to call his son "darling" right up to the end -- was immensely proud of his son's accomplishments, and felt he was leaving his world in good hands.

I doubt if any American Congressman, of either party, displays the same sensitivity, the same curiosity, the same scholarship, the same sense of history.  The same love of lengthy, solitary walking. Or indeed, the same playfulness. 

The Trump years

I haven't posted much about politics over the past year.  Odd, perhaps, in light of the incredible surprises, and the changes to our country those surprises portend.  I've been more voluble on Facebook, but I'm trying to cut back there, as well.

Why?  Because logical argument generally works only when you're talking to those whose minds are not firmly set.  If anything distinguishes our age, it is that most minds today do appear set.  In concrete.  The famous "independent vote" now appears to be mainly a "don't want to be interviewed or polled" vote, not a swing vote.

A majority of the country voted for Hillary Clinton, but under our rules the voters for Trump prevailed.  I like to feel that Clinton voters, like myself, are somewhat open to opposing arguments, but maybe I'm kidding myself.  But I've become certain that Trump voters are not open to argument, they are not open to re-examining their decisions in light of new facts, they are not swayed by unexpected developments.

The typical Trump attitude seems to be, "We know all that stuff you're telling us, but we don't care.  We don't care if Trump carries out his promised policies or if he completely flips.  We don't care if you think he's an immature, ignorant boor.  We don't care what experts say.  We don't care what newspapers say.  We don't care what professors say.  We certainly don't care what you say.  We're not concerned with the integrity of our democratic institutions, or at least not much. Actually, we just want to break things, to smash things up, and to spit at everyone we consider better off.  Maybe we can't make things better for ourselves, but we can definitely make things worse for you.

"And that's something, right?"

It's going to be a difficult four years.  Logic and facts aren't going to count for much.  And it won't even begin for another month.

Family at Christmas



While ambling about the university campus, I often stop by the library coffee shop for a caffeine pick-up.  While there, I like to peruse the UW Daily.  (It now comes out twice a week, not "daily" -- another sign of a dying civilization.  But let's save that topic for another day.) 

A recent issue devoted a couple of pages to the issue of how to handle Christmas vacation -- specifically one's family, or separation therefrom -- during vacation.  I was amazed at the number of students who found it problematic to be with family at Christmas.  Some, of course, were foreign students who had to face being alone on campus during the holidays.  But many were kids who either stayed away from home -- "my friends are my family" -- or who went home dreading the ordeal.

Nope.  Not me.  Never a problem.  I could hardly wait to get home and resume my role as tyrant and chief tormenter of my younger siblings.  And while I've grown used to spending many holidays apart from family members, I honestly can't recall a time that I didn't share Christmas with at least a few of them.  Without old-timers to reminisce with and newly minted members to get acquainted with, it wouldn't really be Christmas.  For me.

Continuing that thought, I'll be leaving on the 23rd for Glendale, California, where this year I'll be joining my brother's extended family -- hosted by my niece Tawny and her spouse, and with my great niece Hayden (now six) as the star attraction.  It will be a short visit, returning to Seattle on the 26th.

I often joke about being the Christmas grinch, but it's the sort of joke you make to deflect attention from the fact that you're a sentimental Christmas fanatic.  Bah, humbug, and all that, but it's a week before Christmas Day and I've already done all the preparations, aside from gift wrapping (which has to be done, in part, once I arrive).  Gifts chosen and bought?  Check.  Christmas cards mailed?  Check. 

Oh.  That's pretty much it for this year, I guess, but I feel like I've accomplished a lot.  It's been a while since I've hosted Christmas up here in Seattle, but I think we're about due for it.  That's when my eyes begin rolling around in my head.  House decorations, which I don't bother about when I'm going out of town -- tree, lights, tinsel, turkey, stockings, etc.  It's been nearly a decade since I've stage managed the full production.

It's been quite cold -- sub-freezing -- the past few days.  Great weather for Christmas shopping, for walking around the neighborhood observing competitive Christmas lighting and decoration, and just rubbing shoulders with excited people of all ages.  We even had a little snow a week ago, just for atmospheric effect.

But the best part of Christmas, for me, is getting together with relatives -- whether it's been two weeks or a year since I last saw them -- and relaxing with folks who have known me long enough to be neither impressed by my cleverness nor concerned by my peculiarities.
I feel sorry for all those young students who feel differently.

Myself, it's the closest I can come to being an un-self-conscious kid again, and I love it.  "Aw, c'mon, Hayden, let me play with that toy for a while!"

Reliving childhood

Commerce Aveune: my hometown's main street.
Longview. WA, in the 1920s

You're in your late 70s, let's say.  You live in a fairly nice apartment on the 23rd floor of a tower, somewhere in Seattle.  Family members visit you every couple of weeks, which you enjoy.  But you're tired of television -- which, along with its usual problems, you find confusing and difficult to hear.  You'd love to go out for a walk.

And sometimes you do.  But everything "out there" is confusing.  You sometimes get lost.  You don't understand the products that many of the businesses actually sell.  The cars on the street all look the same, and kind of ugly.  People aren't hostile to you, but they walk by without looking at you, let alone stopping to pass the time of day.  Going downtown is obviously impossible -- you wouldn't know which bus to take, and are afraid to try.  But even in your own neighborhood shopping area, everything seems huge and intimidating.

But what if you could get into a shuttle every week or so and, a few minutes later, arrive in a small town that looks a lot like the town you grew up in.  A town square.  A small library building.  An old time pet store.  A diner where you could order a burger and ice cream soda, while listening to familiar hits from the 1950s on a juke box.  A barber shop -- not a hair stylist.  A small movie theater showing Humphrey Bogart films, where all the patrons are in your age group.  Buick Roadmasters and DeSotos parked along the street.

And no, this would not be a theme park.  It would be -- although you wouldn't have to think about it -- a treatment center for mild to moderate age-related dementia.  "Villagers" staffing the various stores would include non-uniformed nurses.

According to the Atlantic, such an enclosed "small town," with 24 buildings constructed around a village green, is being created in San Diego.  The town is designed to look as a town of similar size would have appeared during the years 1953-61.  The project will implement an approach to dementia known as "reminiscence therapy."  It will appeal to those memories of persons with dementia that are the last to fade -- memories from their childhoods up to their twenties.  These are the memories that are most likely to prompt patients to join in lively conversations with each other.

The Atlantic article doesn't discuss the validity of the therapy in any depth, but says that studies have shown that reminiscence therapy improves both cognitive function and quality of life.  A psychiatry professor at UC San Diego is volunteering as a medical adviser to the project.
   
The concept sounds a little creepy, perhaps. A vignette out of the Twilight Zone. But, hey -- although I don't think I'm demented (although, of course, I'll be the last to know) -- I wouldn't mind spending a day or so, occasionally, wandering -- physically, not just mentally -- all about the golden world of my childhood. 

Mountains exalted and valleys made low

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain.
--Isaiah 40:4

We are about half way through the Advent season, the four-Sunday period which the more liturgical churches set aside as preparation for Christmas.  Many readings during Advent are drawn from the Book of Isaiah, its language made familiar to many of us from our hearing or singing of Handel's Messiah.  Advent readings recapitulate Israel's longing, throughout its centuries of tribulations, for the coming of a savior who would not only leave Israel triumphant over its enemies, but would establish a reign of peace and justice among Israel's people.

This year, we are observing two Advents -- the Christian Advent, and the Advent of the Trump presidency.  We look forward with joy to December 25.  We look forward with fear and trepidation to January 20. 

Isaiah promises that every mountain shall be made low and every valley shall be exalted.  Trump's appointments to his cabinet, on the other hand, have -- one after another -- been the very representatives of great wealth and income inequity against which his campaign railed.  Isaiah pledges that the crooked shall be made straight.  Trump appears determined to add the United States of America as one more income-generating asset to his portfolio. 

Isaiah says the rough ways will be made plain.  But we remember the Trump of the election campaign.

It's the Christmas season.  I don't want to spoil the mood by further impeaching a president who hasn't yet assumed office.  But Isaiah himself was never a soothing prophet.  Only a few of his words were about the lion lying down with the lamb.  He had little interest in comforting the comfortable, or in letting the people of Israel go about their daily lives in peace. 

Once we get past Christmas, we need to begin seriously worrying about our second Advent.  This nation will be confronting major problems -- not just unwise policies but an incompetent, ignorant, and dangerous leader -- over the next four years.

Keeping your eye on the ball

After an unusually mild autumn, temperatures in the Northwest Corner have finally dropped.  It was 39 degrees this afternoon, as I walked home from the University campus.  Not frigid -- and the sun was shining in a cloudless, blue sky -- but cold compared with the warmer weather we've had to date.

Cold enough that I walked with my hat pulled down securely, my coat zipped up to the top, and my hands in my pockets.  But still pleasant enough that I was looking about me, to see what there was to see, and thoroughly enjoying my walk. 

What struck me, as I strolled through my extended neighborhood, was the large number of basketball hoops mounted on backboards to be found in driveways or on portable stands curbside.  Now and then I've noticed kids shooting baskets, of course, but I'd never really thought about the hoops at which they were aiming.

It was about 3 p.m., a bit before children begin returning from school, so the nets were hanging from the hoops quietly, lonely and untended.  But they reminded me of the basketball hoops my family and several neighbors had mounted in our driveways when I was in my teens.  Shooting baskets was something everyone did  -- even an unathletic klutz like me.  Sometimes we were playing horse or two-on-two games, but often we just shot baskets as something to do -- like circling in the street on bikes -- while carrying on conversations.

As I walked today, it felt too cold to be dribbling a basketball, but as a kid the low temperature would have meant nothing.  After an hour or two of messing around in the driveway, I would have wandered into the house with a runny nose and hands reddened with cold.  It would never have occurred to me to complain about, or even mention, the cold.

But if some kindly neighbor had invited me to join in a game today, I would have said "no thanks," without hesitation.  And would thus have missed out on what would have been -- or at least used to be -- a couple of hours of exercise, recreation, and conviviality.  I find this realization saddening -- not because I'm all teared up over basketball, but because shooting baskets in cold weather is simply emblematic of a lot of things I don't do as I get older.  And I don't do them not because they are activities beyond my physical capabilities or because I don't have a basketball hoop and friends to play with, but because I've grown accustomed to saying "no thanks" to many activities that once would have attracted to me.

But why?  As we get older, we seem to become less interested in participating in the world around us, and more given to contemplating our own thoughts.  Or to passive activities like light reading or television.  (Or posting in blogs!)

The author and critic James Wood has observed how we develop with age a growing detachment from the physical world of the senses.  He notes:* 

the fading reality that besets details as they recede from us -- the memories of our childhood, the almost forgotten pungency of flavors, smells, textures; the slow death that we deal to the world by the sleep of our attention.  By congested habit, or through laziness, lack of curiosity, thin haste, we stop looking at things.

As one grows older, Wood suggests that the

world is one in which the adventure of the ordinary -- the inexhaustibility of the ordinary as a child once experienced it ... -- is steadily retreating, in which things and objects and sensations are pacing toward meaninglessness.  In such a world, the writer's task is to rescue  the adventure from this slow retreat ....

How did my mind (and my post) move from basketball hoops to this perceived meaninglessness of advanced age?   Good question.  As kids, a basketball hoop was an exciting invitation to run about, to test our skills, to -- if nothing else -- socialize with our peers.  Now a hoop -- an entire neighborhood of hoops -- is a vaguely noticed feature adorning some of the houses I pass every day.  It is a feature with so little interest that I was surprised today, when I turned my mind to the topic, at how many hoops our neighborhood actually contained.  Basketball hoops certainly no longer offer the "pungency of flavors, smells, textures" that I suggest they did, at least metaphorically, when I was 13 or 14.

Of course, if we were talking only about hoops, my lack of interest in them would be merely a curiosity.  But I see "hoops" as a metaphor for an entire world of objects and activities that, as a child and older, I once found fascinating and deserving of close attention.

Wood suggests that the act of creative writing can slow -- by forcing increased attention to details by both reader and writer -- this drift into unconsciousness, this drift into a kind of mental death that begins long before Death itself arrives.  Maybe.  Maybe that suggests yet another motivation for me to keep writing in my blog.  But I'm not entirely convinced that writing (at least in blogs) has the salutary effect that Wood suggests. 

Game of horse, anyone?
--------------------------------
*James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life (Brandeis Press 2015)

Codger on skis

At summit of Mt. Lincoln (8,383 ft.), highest point at Sugar Bowl ski area

Just to keep the record clear, after that last post -- yes, slopes were skied.  Even by your favorite but aging correspondent.  At Sugar Bowl, looming high above Donner Lake, with expansive views of the Sierras. 

The weather was too bright and sunny, the sky was too blue, the snow was too well-groomed, the company was too congenial -- and I was too cheerfully optimistic -- for me to even consider refusing. 

My sister and I -- the oldest two of our group of six skiers -- skied a half day, almost entirely on intermediate slopes.  We felt by then we had made our point with the youngsters, who stuck it out for another couple of hours.

As claimed and predicted in my prior post, I didn't forget how to ski during my nine years of abstention -- although it took one rather shaky run at the outset to get the feel for it again.  After that, it was like old times.  Except that when I occasionally fell, struggling back up again was more difficult than I recall from the misty past.  But the skiing itself was easy because of the spring-like weather and the way the slopes had been groomed -- almost overly groomed.  We weren't fighting moguls or icy conditions as we came down the fairly steep runs.

So I'd gladly do it again, being no doubt deceived as to my abilities by the excellent conditions.  But then I was similarly deceived, and for the same reasons, innumerable times even in my prime.

Back to the slopes

Next week, my middle nephew, Denny, turns 40 -- a hair-raising fact for his eldest uncle, if no one else, to contemplate.  But to ease the sense of horror that perhaps many of us older relatives feel, the entire clan is getting together for a birthday celebration at Donner Lake, near the north end of Lake Tahoe, this weekend.

The event is being hosted by the Birthday Boy himself.  We're gathering at a cabin he's rented for the occasion.  Weather permitting -- and it looks like the weather will be quite favorable -- many of us will head for the ski slopes on Saturday.

I throw this plan off casually, as though skiing occupies most my winter weekends.  Actually -- and I'm astounded to realize this -- I haven't been skiing since 2008, when I posted a description of my family's ski weekend at South Lake Tahoe. 

Do I dare?

It's not that I've forgotten how to ski.  Skiing's like riding a bike.  Once you've learned, your body knows what to do.  My muscles will know exactly what to do -- the question is whether they'll be able to do it.

During the prior nine years, I've done plenty of walking and hiking, much of it up and down hill.  That's a good thing, but the muscles used for skiing aren't exactly the same as those used for hiking.  Have they atrophied?  Have they aged?  Have all my leg muscles, aside from those used for walking, become a disgusting and squishy mass of gelatin?

The answer is -- we shall soon find out.  I'm confident that, even if I do just fine, I won't be skiing all day.  There's a reason that ski areas often let seniors ski for reduced prices -- we get off the slopes early.  There are warming huts awaiting us, with hot coffee and hot buttered rum.  There will be a lodge at the bottom, filled with beautiful people dressed in the latest ski gear on whose heads, mysteriously, not a strand of hair will be misplaced.  There will be giant burgers and plates of nachos available, and various IPAs served with a smile.

There are thus many ways to spend a day "skiing."  At different phases of my life, I've enjoyed many of them.  I'll report back on this particular trip -- even if (especially if) I end up breaking a leg.  After all, I'm part Norwegian -- it's all good.

Let's hit the slopes.

Happy whatever

I still have a few relatives and acquaintances for whom exchanging Christmas cards has not yet become a charming but anachronistic custom of our historic past, a practice long since replaced by tweets and posts.  And so, about this time of year, I start casting about for suitable Christmas cards to send to these hardy old timers.

For many years, I ordered fairly arty cards by mail from museums, especially the Metropolitan in New York, and the Art Institute in Chicago.  But, as I've steadily pared names from my list, I've finally ended up simply buying a box of twenty or so cards at a local bookstore.  (Speaking of dying institutions, but let's try to stay on topic.)

And so today, I dropped by the University Bookstore on "the Ave," walking distance from my house.  Sure enough, they already had a large number of cards on display, an encouraging sign -- I thought -- that Christmas cards had not yet gone the way of calling cards and spats.

Now, maybe the Christmas card offerings of the UW bookstore are not fairly representative of card sales across America.  College crowd, liberal bubble, and all that.  But I was amazed at how much the appearance of cards had changed in the last few years.

When I first started buying my own Christmas cards, as an undergrad, about half the designs were religious in nature.  Some were rather embarrassingly literal and saccharine, but many were nicely artistic -- somewhat abstract and symbolic, as well as beautiful.  But -- being the observant lad that I am -- I realize that the demand for religious themes has been steadily declining over the decades.  But, in their place, I expected to see -- as I've seen so often in the past -- cards with Santa Claus and his elves, warm family scenes, sleigh rides across the country, presumably en route to grandmother's house, and perhaps quasi-religious scenes of deer and birds out in the woods gathering around a manger-like object with sun bursts shining about them.

But no.  I saw very little of any of this.  Nor did I see much "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."  Nor, even more surprising, much "Happy Holidays."  What I did see was lots of scenes, often snowy, of nature, with no holiday references whatsoever.  As though we were celebrating the Winter Solstice (which at least one card expressly stated).  And I saw lots of rather attractive woodcuts of interesting objects and places, with little reference, again, to the Christmas holiday, or even to winter.  You just send one of these, I guess, and hope the recipient takes it in whatever spirit makes him least unhappy.

Even as a kid, I saw and was appalled by cards showing Santa pouring himself a whiskey and soda or otherwise disporting himself in a disgraceful manner, so I'm no longer all that easily shocked.  But now many cards, regardless of art work, come with clever and ironic captions.  I saw very little that suggested that any person was expressing a sincere hope that the card's recipient's life would be happy or joyful -- other than those expressing something of the sort in a highly ironic context ("Happy and Merry and Stuff Like That, or Whatever"). 

I guess one interpretation might be that we are now too disillusioned and/or sophisticated to hope for our own, let alone anyone else's, true happiness.   But I also think the whole issue of Christmas in America has become fraught with tension.  We know that many (most) of our friends aren't Christian -- we've always known that.  But what's new is that we now feel that raising the subject of Christmas even as a secular holiday -- "hope Santa brings you good things" -- is a form of cultural imperialism.  We're imposing Western concepts -- Santa --on non-Western citizens.  Even best wishes for the winter solstice can be tricky.  Best not to include any poignant photos of harp seals or spotted owls -- someone might take political offense.  And any attempt to make our greetings more catholic by gracing the card with Buddhist or Hindu images might be deemed a micro-aggression, an attempt at cultural appropriation.

Maybe -- except in the bosom of our nuclear families -- we should all just sit around a plain pole and exchange ironic witticisms.  Or did Seinfeld beat me to it?   Happy Festivus?

Or maybe the entire nation can coalesce around a December festival in honor of Momus, the Greek god of irony, sarcasm, and ridicule.  The last god that educated Americans have in common.

Late to the party

As we all know, in 1621, our Pilgrim fathers, thankful for a good harvest, threw a party for themselves and for neighboring Indians (who, we assume, happily attended and enjoyed the company of their new and generous neighbors, with whom they hoped to forge eternal bonds of friendship and equal partnership).  The Puritan tradition, which the pilgrims brought with them from England, often observed special days of thanksgiving -- observed by fasting. 

But the pilgrims were already Americans, and Americans don't do fasting.  God loves a full stomach, we choose to believe.  Bring on the stuffed turkey, the pilgrims might have said, although they probably actually ate mainly corn and squash.

Jumping ahead 150 years or so -- most of which were unpleasantly nonfestive, as a quick reading of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter will suggest -- we see George Washington proclaiming November 26, 1789, as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.  The holiday was still somewhat embryonic -- the president made no mention of 18-pound turkeys with all the trimmings, followed by the celebrants' rolling around in pain on the floor, suffering the after-effects of their gluttony and barely able to attack the forthcoming mince and pumpkin pies..

Nor was any mention yet made of Black Friday sales commencing on Thursday evening.

In fact, no mention was made of Thursdays.  But, Wikipedia assures me, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, most states did observe the Thanksgiving celebration -- be it fast, feast, or exercise in gourmandism -- on the last Thursday of November.  Abe Lincoln made it official, nationally, in 1863, although the South -- as is its wont -- was a bit slow to go along.

By the twentieth century, the day after Thanksgiving had become the de facto start of the national Christmas gift-buying orgy.  Merchants were devastated whenever November had five Thursdays, meaning that the commercial bonanza couldn't begin until November 30 at the earliest.  Congress came to their rescue, and in 1943 FDR signed a resolution ensuring that the holiday would begin always on the fourth Thursday in November.

As must be apparent, the date on which Thanksgiving is celebrated is quite arbitrary.  It doesn't have the same logical basis in hallowed history as, say, Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Christ on the date of the Roman revelries of the Saturnalia, or of Easter, which celebrates the Resurrection on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Having noted this lack of historical basis, therefore, my family feels free to celebrate this year's Thanksgiving on the last Saturday of November.  Casting the iron bonds of tradition aside and fearlessly creating our own holiday date.  Even choosing, if we so choose, a faux turkey created out of soy and wheat protein.

We do not so choose, of course.  And our break with the traditional holiday date results not from a frenzied sense of bohemian anarchy, but from logistical difficulties experienced by some of our family in reaching Sonoma, California, where the turkey -- once an actual living bird with hopes and dreams of its own, all too unfortunately ended in an untimely fashion -- will be gleefully consumed.

Next year, however, we will rejoin the rest of the United States.  Fourth Thursday in November it shall be.

Post-election blues

Whether by coincidence or by some subconscious craving for understanding, at the same time that Trump has been doing whatever it is he's doing -- does he really know? -- I've been reading a highly readable history of the Roman republic.¹  

The world has changed mightily from the first century B.C. to the 21st century A.D.  But the urges that often motivate humans -- avarice, fear, ambition -- have changed little.  I see more parallels between the final year of the Roman republic and today's America than I find comfortable.

Forty-two years ago, my graduation from law school coincided with another event involving avarice, fear, and ambition -- Watergate and the ultimate resignation of Richard M. Nixon from the presidency.  I wrote an "epilogue" to the year's final issue of my school's law review, finding another parallel between America and Rome, this time Imperial Rome.  I at least professed optimism, in this excerpt from the epilogue:

[O]ur civilization happily retains a measure of vitality.  It was said of Rome that, even while the state remained militarily potent:

The greatest political events passed over the heads of the people like black or golden clouds.  Later it was to watch even the ruin of the Empire and the coming of the barbarians with indifference.  it was a worn-out body whose fibres no longer reacted to any stimulus.²

That Americans still are capable of outrage, still avidly debate the issues of the day, demonstrates that the fibers of our civilization remain healthy.  But the shocks which have buffeted us in the decade since President Kennedy's assassination undoubtedly have exerted a dulling impact on our ability to recognize and respond to moral problems.

49 Wash.L.Rev. 1199 (1974).

The epilogue was dated August 9, 1974 -- a red-letter date in American history. 

I believed, guardedly, with the hopeful optimism of youth, that Watergate was a shock that would knock some sense into America, that politicians of both parties would lean over backward to avoid another convulsion that might further weaken Americans' confidence in their leaders, in themselves, and, indeed, in their nation itself.  And for a while, my optimism seemed justified.

Then -- just as in the days of the Roman republic, about which I'm now reading -- politicians belonging to one of the political parties apparently felt that America was drifting away from their own rigid ideology.  They apparently saw no way to persuade the voters -- in the long run, at least -- to return to their fold.  And thus began a couple of decades of political tactics that would have been unthinkable during, say, the Eisenhower years -- impeachment without constitutional basis, use of the Supreme Court to halt recounts of votes, dark claims that a sitting president was not eligible by birth for his position, that he was a secret Muslim, that he was not "one of us."  We heard a Congressman shouting "liar" during the president's State of the Union address.  And more.  We all know the sad history of the past eight years.

And then Trump comes along.  He has suggested some odd policy promises, but that's normal politics.  More troubling has been his apparent lack of serious interest in the less spectacular but more critical demands of the office.  His language has been crude and uncivil. He has threatened to jail his opponent.  He has insulted -- not criticized but insulted -- the sitting president.  He has appeared intellectually lazy and ignorant, and he seems to trust that the voters would find laziness and ignorance attractive. Proof that he was "one of us."

But he won the election, having mobilized a winning 49 percent of the voters by promises he knew were impossible to keep, and that he had no intention of keeping.  By lying without batting an eye, while calling his opponent a liar.  By -- in other words -- sheer demagoguery, by playing on emotions and deflecting attention from facts.

We've had demagogues before.  I suppose William Jennings Bryan qualified.  But we have not had true demagogues run for president since the United States became a superpower, a nation whose every move is watched worldwide, whose every move may make the difference between nuclear war and peace.

Are we still capable of outrage?  Obviously, the losing Democrats are outraged.  But approximately one half of the country voted for a demagogue, with full knowledge of every point I've made above.  Unlike Nixon and Watergate, Mr. Trump has not hidden behind masked men working in the dead of night.  His outrages have been right out in the open, for all to see.  But the voters saw, and they weren't outraged.

I don't know what the country will be like four years from now.  But the history of the Roman republic suggests that you can strain the bounds of decency and custom only so many times before those bounds no longer bind.  We may be reaching that point.  We may have reached and passed that point.

I read again what I wrote in 1974, and I'm touched by my optimism.  I wish could still share it.
--------------------------------------

¹ T. Holland, Rubicon, The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (2003)

² F. Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginning of the Middle Ages (Harper paperback ed. 1961) at p. 181.

Roll up your sleeve

I dropped by my local Safeway early this morning, planning to get my annual flu shot.  I was too early, in fact, as the pharmacy counter hadn't yet opened.  But I'll get it tomorrow.

Getting a flu shot seems so routine now -- a lot of the time I'm thinking about my next chore, rather than the needle that's being inserted in my arm.  The pain is minimal, of course.  I'd far rather receive a routine inoculation in my arm than a shot of novocaine in my gum from my friendly dentist. 

And yet facing similar shots was so traumatic in my childhood.  And we seemed to receive them so frequently.  Our school teacher would drop the bombshell on us -- at such and such time, we would be lining up and filing down to the nurse's office where we would be receiving shots of one kind or another.  She might as well have announced that the boxcars bound for Auschwitz were awaiting us. Terror swept the classroom.  The faces of half the class would be ashen.  Boys would begin nervously giggling and warning each other of the humongous size of the needles with which we were to be jabbed.  By the time we had reached the nurse's office and were lined up for our shots, a few kids would be crying -- their cries adding to the rapidly increasing stress and horror all the rest of us felt.

I hardly remember the actual pain of those many shots I received in childhood -- only the stress and fear experienced in the hours and minutes preceding them.  If smarter, I would have seen in this fact an allegory for much of life itself.

Housemates

Loki and Muldoon
Quickly adapting to a new home 

It's hard to believe, but it was twelve years ago this month that I adopted my two cats.  Time passes quickly when you're cleaning up hair balls.

It was a day or two after Thanksgiving.  My brother and sister and their families were visiting for the holidays, as well as Pascal, a family friend and hiking companion who was attending U.B.C. in Vancouver at the time.  They persuaded me that I had grieved long enough for my two earlier cats, the latest of whom had passed on to Catnip Heaven 18 months earlier.  Duly persuaded, I descended, joined by all my guests, on the Seattle Animal Shelter.

I understand how the admissions office at Harvard feels. So many worthy candidates, but a limited number of places to fill.  I finally settled on a perky all-black kitten, and a quieter adolescent -- both males.  Loki and Muldoon, respectively.  Loki had been picked up on the street -- one of Seattle's many homeless and hungry.  Muldoon, several months older, had been surrendered following the death of his short-time owner, a victim of cancer -- and something about that experience had left Muldoon timid and chronically anxious.

Twelve years later, they have created frequent headaches, but have proved more than worth every cranial pain I've suffeed.  Loki is still kittenish, although now more cuddly.  Muldoon, after many years, has learned to both crave and demand the affection that he at first resisted with panic.  They are well into middle age, but who knows how many years they still have left?  My last two cats had long lives:  Lyta lived well past her 19th birthday; Theseus disappeared early one morning at the age of 16, shortly after being diagnosed with a possibly operable tumor.

No one is immortal, not even those of us with nine lives, and parting with a pet is always painful.  Some people avoid the pain of a pet's death by refusing to accept the joys of a pet's life.  Carried to its logical extreme, one would wish that he himself had never been born.

Happy anniversary, Loki and Muldoon.  Hey!  I've told you NOT to scratch your claws on that chair!

To be a writer

Donald Trump, President of the United States of America.  What a surprise!  What an unexpected and unpleasant surprise! 

How did it happen?  Political scientists will be arguing about it for years, but certainly there were factors of racism, misogyny, class rivalries, and dwindling job opportunities that played a factor.  But, above all and tying many of the above together -- in my estimation -- was nostalgia for a mythical past.  A past somewhere between the end of World War II and the height of the Vietnam conflict, a period some consider the Golden Age of America.

I've been considering this Golden Age, because, purely by coincidence, I've been reading Robert R. McCammon's best selling novel of small town Alabama in 1964, Boy's Life.  A lengthy novel, apparently heavily autobiographical, narrated by 12-year-old Cory Mackenson, describing life in fictional Zephyr, Alabama, a wide place in the road southeast of Birmingham.  McCammon is known for his writing of horror stories, and there certainly are fantasy/paranormal aspects to the events related in Boy's Life.  But, in general, McCammon lovingly recreates the actual world of his boyhood, describing it in exquisite detail.

I found myself constantly exclaiming to myself, "yes, I remember that, it was like that exactly," even up here in the Northwest Corner.   And I also was reminded of a little book that I'd picked up one day in my college bookstore for reading during spring break -- Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.  Another book, less dark, about the joys and terrors of being a 12-year-old boy in small town America, a book that also had some mystical aspects but ones that simply enhanced the magical quality of the story.  I wasn't surprised when McCammon listed Bradbury, in his acknowledgments at the end of the book, as one of many influences on his life and writing.

But Cory lived in Alabama, not the Illinois of Dandelion Wine, and in 1964, not 1927.  The relationship between the races isn't the focus of the book, but it's always prominently in the background.  A strong, black woman in her 90s, something of a town shaman, tells Cory:

My great granddaddy pulled a plow by the strength of his back.  He worked from sunup to sundown, heat and cold.  ...  Worked hard, and was sometimes whipped hard.  Sweated blood and kept goin', when he wanted to drop.  Took the brand and answered Yes, massa, when his heart was breakin' and his pride was belly-down..

Cory listens with his heart in his throat.  The blacks were segregated in Zephyr, and often derided, but Cory was a compassionate kid, and his folks were kind and respectful to blacks, within the context of their time and place.

The plot begins with a murder, a vicious killing by an unknown person, of an unknown man who had been severely beaten and who had quickly sunk with his car into the depths of the town's deep lake.  It ends with a solving of the murder, a twist involving international affairs, affairs that feel unlikely -- but not impossible -- to have ended up playing themselves out in a tiny town in Alabama. Between the murder and its resolution, Cory learns about kindness and irrational cruelty, about corruption and bravery, about tolerance and hatred and terrorism.  He learns that even a small town milkman -- like his father -- has it within himself to be a hero. 

This is all a lot for a 12-year-old kid to learn in a summer.  But, as I mentioned, McCammon writes horror stories, and this is a coming of age story, but a coming of age story in the Southern Gothic tradition.  When an author writes horror stories, he asks his readers to suspend disbelief.  And when he does it successfully, they do.  

I did. I was too mesmerized to do otherwise.

Corey also meets a young woman far from town, out in the country, whom he not only develops a crush on, but whom he worships.  Only later does he learn that she works at the local whorehouse.  He learns from this, too.  He learns not to judge others, because he has no way of looking into their hearts and seeing what makes them who they are.

Like Gordie Lachance in the movie Stand By Me, Cory has three close friends with diverse personalities, kids with whom he is inseparable.  Unlike Gordie, Cory learns the sorrow, the incomprehensible sorrow, of losing one of those friends in an accident --  the boy who was perhaps the kindest and most gentle of his friends.  He sits beside the grave, telling his friend about how life up on the surface has been going.  His friend doesn't reply, but Cory never expected him to.

I remember hearing this somewhere: when an old man dies, a library burns down.

As he recalls his friend, and compares his memories with the dry obituary of his friend in the local newspaper, he realizes that it's not only "old men" who are "libraries."  He ponders the hundreds of stories represented by the tombstones in the cemetary.

I wished there was a place you could go, and sit in a room like a movie theater and look through a catalogue of a zillion names and then you could press a button and a face would appear on the screen to tell you about the life that it had been.

Near the beginning of the book, his dad asks him if he wants to be a milkman like his father -- "The world'll always need milkmen," his dad reminds him.  Maybe, Cory replies.

I'd like to be everybody in the world," I said.  "I'd like to live a million times."

Later, his favorite teacher --a teacher who was dying, unknown to him -- gives him her advice:

I have seen plenty of boys grow into men, Cory, and I want to say one word to you.  Remember."
"Remember?  Remember what?"
"Everything," she said.  "And anything.  Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure.  Because it is.  And memories are sweet doors, Cory.  They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians.  When you look at something, don't just look.  See it.  Really, really see it.  See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it, too.  ...  You can live a thousand lifetimes if you want to.  You can talk to people you'll never set eyes on, in lands you'll never visit."  She nodded, watching my face.  "And if you're good and you're lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have the chance to live on long after --"  she paused, measuring her words.  "Long after," she finished.

We realize, early in the book, that McCammon is showing us not only the world of his boyhood, but the early signs of his vocation as a writer.

We are all nostalgic, nostalgic for our youth.  Nostalgia can be good or bad.  Trump has evoked a nostalgia twisted by a longing for a time when men were men, when blacks lived apart from whites, and when to be a white man was to rule.  McCammon shows us a true picture of that Golden Age in the Alabama of 1964. But he also shows us, through Cory's narration, that -- even in the Alabama of the 1960s -- not everyone surrendered to racial bigotry and hatred. He also shows us that far from all hatred and cruelty in the South was racial in nature.  

Robert McCammon shows us Cory -- he shows us himself, as he remembers himself through the filter of time -- struggling to understand the world he lives in, to know and to appreciate townspeople of all classes and races, to be brave when it would have been easy to run, to be curious and to follow through on that curiosity when it would have been simpler and safer to "leave well enough alone." 

Cory at 12 was already, in other words, developing those traits that led him -- and his alter ego, his creator -- to a journalism degree at the University of Alabama, and later to becoming a best selling author.  And the nostalgia that Boy's Life evokes is the simple nostalgia we all feel for the age when life was new and every day was exciting -- not nostalgia for a time when some folks had unlimited power over others.

World champs

Wrigley Field, Chicago.  Where I saw my first major league baseball game.  I was still just a boy, barely in my teens, visiting a friend in the north Chicago suburb of Wilmette. 

As I recall, we two kids went to the game on our own, by rapid transit.  Back when kids did things like that.  Before parents managed their children's daily lives, even their college lives, and ventured on campus to debate their offsprings' low grades with their professors.

But I digress.

The Cubs played the Giants that afternoon.  The Giants, then calling the New York Polo Grounds their home, won.  Of course.  They went on to win the pennant, and to sweep the World Series.  Against whom?  Against the Cleveland Indians.

The Cubs hadn't won a World Series in 46 years.  They were already considered lovable losers.  I bought a Cubs pennant on a stick that I flew at half mast whenever the Cubs lost.  It was usually at half mast.  But I doubt that even Chicago pessimists realized that another 62 years would pass before the Cubs redeemed themselves.  Young men of 25, attending that game with my friend and me, lamenting the past 46 years of futility, would become feeble elders of 87 before their team was once more crowned World Champions. 

Last night the Cubs won -- against Cleveland -- despite themselves and despite a couple of questionable pitching changes.  I had already composed the announcement "Cubs Coug It" for my Facebook page.  But the Cubbies ultimately pulled through.  Only in the tenth inning, and only by one run, but none of that matters now. 

My early enthusiasm for the Cubs faded, especially after the Giants became the San Francisco Giants.  It was miraculous to have major league baseball -- always an eastern phenomenon -- anywhere on the West Coast.  The Northwest Corner -- home to no major league team, and still considered Indian-infested wilderness by the rest of the nation -- happily adopted the Giants as their own.  Until the Mariners came to town.

The Mariners.  While they can't compete with the pre-2016 Cubs in the antiquity of their futility, they perhaps approach the Cubs in its intensity.  But hey, give us another hundred years, and who knows what may happen?

But somewhere deep inside, like much of the nation, I've always retained a soft spot in my heart for the Cubbies. Congratulations, Chicago!