Latin

Britannia est insula.  Italia non est insula.  Italia paene est insula.  Italia paeninsula est.

So read the first lines from the very first lesson in my ninth grade Latin text, Latin for Americans.  I've talked to others in my generation who also studied Latin in high school.  They can all recite the above lines from memory.  Something about Latin sticks with you, more than many other subjects.

This past week, I've been re-reading odd bits of Daniel Mendelsohn's memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, which I reviewed in September.  Mendelsohn recalls his father's lament that, after studying Latin for four years, he (the father) declined to take a fifth and final year in high school, a year in which he would have read Virgil's Aeneid.  Although he became a highly successful scientist and mathematician by profession, the father felt that he had turned away, for no good reason, from an experience that would have capped his otherwise successful high school Latin coursework.  His regrets continued until his death, in his eighties.  (His son Daniel, himself a classical scholar, tended to rub salt in his father's wounds by often pointing out to "Daddy" how exceptional and difficult was Virgil's Latin.)

I took only two years of Latin, because my high school offered only two.  Mendelsohn's book made me wonder whether -- with so many cuts in so many areas outside the Three Rs -- schools still taught a subject with no immediate vocational use. 

I checked on-line, and discovered that only eight public high schools in Washington teach Latin today.  Two of those -- Roosevelt and Garfield -- are here in Seattle.  By contrast, 89 schools statewide still teach German -- a language that is being eliminated from many schools' curricula.  Seven of Seattle's eleven traditional high schools teach Japanese; five teach Chinese.  Every traditional high school in Seattle teaches Spanish, which in today's world is hardly surprising.

I had a discussion on my Facebook page today about Latin, and was asked the value of studying the language.  I'm not competent to discuss Latin's pros and cons as they may apply to the entire high school population.  But I can tell you how Latin affected me.

First, I admit that I have no confidence that I could today translate anything but the simplest Latin inscription or other writing (any more than I could today prove one of Euclid's theorems!).  But at various times, in high school and college, I've taken courses in Spanish, Italian, and French.  Obtaining a limited reading knowledge of those languages was made vastly easier and faster because of my knowledge of Latin vocabulary and sentence structure.

Second, I have a good sense today of English grammar.  Without disparaging English composition classes, I have to say that most of what I know -- beyond simple definitions of noun, verb, etc. -- was learned in Latin.  I could, and probably would, have learned much of it later in advanced English classes, or through self-study and writing, but -- in my case -- I learned it in a way that stuck back in ninth grade.

Third, Latin teaches word derivations. The very first chapter of my first year Latin book contained a simple passage -- a part of which I quoted above.  The fact that "paene" and "insula" -- "almost" and "island" -- combined to form the English word "peninsula" was a revelation that delighted me.  I've been a fan of etymology ever since.

Fourth, Latin is a rigorous subject, like mathematics.  You can't really BS your way through it.  You either puzzle out a translation the night before class -- taking whatever time it takes -- or it becomes clear that you didn't do it.  I was a lazy, if curious, student.  I needed course work that forced me to work.  Latin, like math, did the trick.

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.

Fifth, you don't study Latin without learning a sizable chunk of Roman history -- even if you're working so hard on the translation that you fail to realize that you're absorbing history at the same time.  Much of second year Latin is devoted to translating portions of Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, the first sentence of which informs us that all of Gaul was divided into three parts -- that occupied by the Belgians, that occupied by the Aquitanis, and that occupied by those whom the Romans called Gauls (but who called themselves Celts).  That's a lot of interesting historical information in just one sentence.

It got worse, at times, of course.  Caesar's battles against various barbarian groups go on and on, and he is constantly "breaking camp" -- "camp having been broken" as the "ablative absolute" construction literally (and frequently) words it -- and moving on to battle another tribe.  The details get lost by the end of the term -- you're being tested on the language, after all, not the content -- but an idea of what life was like on the Roman frontier in the final years of the Republic sticks with you.

I think it's a shame that classical Greek isn't offered in some high schools, at least.  And it will be a shame if the few schools still offering Latin decide to drop it, along with art and music.  Learning -- and the ability to learn -- comes in many forms, not all of them easily subject to annual testing.

The study of Latin ties a number of fields -- history, grammar, vocabulary, military tactics, political rhetoric, classical drama and literature -- together with a rigor that few other teaching approaches provide.  It doesn't replace the function served by AP courses in specific subjects, but it enhances those courses and reveals interrelations.

Let's keep the study of Latin available to those who want it and can benefit by it.

Disappearing readers

Whither my readers?

Next month, we celebrate the eleventh anniversary of the Founding of this blog.  For the first couple of years, so far as I could tell, few people knew of its existence aside from friends and family.  But in 2010, my readership -- as revealed by Google's statistics -- began steadily increasing.

In May and December of 2012, I had over 2,300 hits for each month.  That works out to about 75 hits per day.  I jauntily became used to such popularity, viewing it as the new normal and an important step toward world domination.  Although it did seem odd that so few of my visitors ever bothered leaving comments.  Other bloggers, writing on such topics as how to get coffee stains out of fabrics, seemed deluged with reader comments agreeing, disagreeing, ridiculing, or praising each post.

December 2012 was my apex, with 2,379 hits, 77 per day.  From that point, my fan base hit a gentle but steady decline.  By January 2015, I was down to 40 hits a day.  By January 2017, it was 21 hits per day.  And during 2018, I have seen day after day with 3, 4, or 5 hits per day.

Confusing, but not obscuring, these statistics was a day this past December when I had over 6,000 hits within a 24 hour period from someone (or some THING) in Russia.  This Russian entity systematically hit, multiple times, every essay I'd ever posted -- statistically about six times per essay.  Was someone printing out my entire blog for use in English classes?  A text on how not to write in English?  Who knows.

Am I down-hearted?  Hardly.  When I began writing this blog, I intended it -- aside from mutual entertainment between myself and another guy who had just started a blog of his own -- as an activity for my own amusement.  Over the years, I've discovered that its primary value is not, actually, practice in writing good English and organizing a good essay.  Although writing the blog has certainly proven useful for those purposes.

No.  What I didn't appreciate ahead of time was what a great value it would be for me to write out my reactions to magazine articles, movies, books, current events, and random thoughts that pop into my head.  The exercise forces me to organize my thoughts in some reasonably coherent fashion.  It also helps me to remember a book, say, or a movie, and my reaction to it, so that reading becomes more than a way to pass (waste) time.   To be pretentious, it hones my critical faculties.

I'd love to have more real readers, of course, as opposed to the robots whom I suspect constitute much of my reported audience.  But there are proven ways to develop a regular following, ways that I fully understand but am not interested in pursuing.  For example, writing regularly about a narrowly-focused subject, one that will draw the same readers back, week after week, hoping to learn more about that subject.  Instead of Confused Thoughts, I might title my blog dy/dx and All That: Fun and Games with Differential Equations.  I'm sure it would be an interesting blog, but that's not what I'm interested in doing.

So expect no changes.  I'll continue writing about anything that comes to mind.  And many things come to my mind.  If you don't like today's post, you may like next week's.  Or not.  As the man in the fable who carried his donkey across the bridge on his back discovered -- you can't please everybody.  And sometimes, you can't please anybody!

The City of Your Final Destination

You work long and hard, with single-minded determination, to achieve a goal.  Then, just as it's within your grasp, you realize you're no longer interested.  With luck, something more attractive has taken its place. 

A not uncommon experience of youth -- dispiriting, but educational as well.

Such is the moral, if there a moral, to Peter Cameron's 2002 novel, The City of Your Final Destination: A Novel.

Omar Razaghi, an Iranian immigrant, is an English doctoral student at the University of Kansas.  His thesis on the work -- a single novel, The Gondola -- by the (fictitious) Uruguayan writer Jules Gund has won an award and a fellowship enabling him to expand the thesis into a biography to be published by the University of Kansas Press.

The award is conditioned on the biography's having been authorized by the deceased writer's estate. 

The estate, it turns out, has three executors -- Adam Gund, the author's brother; Caroline Gund, the author's wife; and the younger Arden Langdon, the author's long-time mistress.  They politely respond in a joint letter, refusing to grant the requested authorization.

Omar is 28, a bookish sort, vague and passive, and a bit of a naïf.  He had assured the grant committee that he already had the authorization, because he saw no reason that it would be denied.  He now is depressed and miserable.    He shows signs of giving up, but his girl friend Deirdre is made of sterner stuff.  Go to Uruguay, she insists.  Persuade them in person. Your entire future depends on it!

In something of a daze, Omar flies to Montevideo, discovers that "Ochos Rios," where the executors live, is merely a house located in the middle of nowhere, and somehow muddles his way from the capital to their doorstep.  His arrival is quite a surprise.

Arden and Caroline both live in the Gund family home, avoiding each other as far as possible.  Caroline lives in a tower, among the mediocre paintings that she has now given up painting.  Arden, younger and more assertive, more or less runs the house.  Adam, elderly and gay, witty and literate, and given the funniest lines by Mr. Cameron, lives in a Millhouse within lengthy walking distance with his young friend Peter.

Don't worry overly much about the plot.  This is something of a novel of manners, not an exciting race to a denouement.  No villains.  Everyone is a bit confused and confusing, and years of life isolated in the Uruguayan back country has lent the characters a certain nineteenth century charm and sense of leisure.  Omar arrives from the 21st century, hoping to talk charmingly, make friends rapidly, get signatures on the dotted line, and fly back to Lawrence, Kansas.

Instead, he finds himself sucked into the leisurely life of his hosts, where every act and every comment has decades of back story.  Jules Gund had written a letter expressing his desire that his biography never be written.  Or had he?  Jules had committed suicide?  Or had he?  Peter is happy, both with living with a much older man and with life in the sticks.  Or is he?  Arden is a no-nonsense sort who has no interest in further romance.  Or is she?

Omar flounders,  All three executors must agree to the authorization, and positions keep changing.  But the land is beautiful, the food is simple but good, the conversation is genteel but intelligent.  And, in a moment of weakness, Arden kisses him.

Omar's nearly fatal reaction to a bee sting brings Deirdre flying down to Ochos Rios.  She is eager to take charge and make decisions.  Omar is no longer so sure he wants to entrust his life to her ambitions.  Nevertheless, all three executors, for greatly varying reasons, finally consent at the same time to sign the authorization.  Omar and Deidre fly back to snowy Kansas.

Spoiler Alert!  Omar and Arden marry happily and have kids, living their lives in Ochos Rios.  Omar drops out of the doctoral program and never writes the Gund biography.  Caroline ends up, to her own surprise, living in New York.  Deirdre becomes a professor at Bucknell, and does just fine, thank you.  

In 2007, I wrote a review for Cameron's later novel Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, a very funny and moving first person narrative about a brilliant 18-year-old New York City boy with a serious personality disorder.  I decided this past week to see what else Cameron had written.  The stories couldn't be more different.  But both display Cameron's beautiful sense for language, his sense for the humor that persists in the midst of difficulty, and his sympathy for -- and ability to understand -- people who are a bit different.
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The book was adapted as a movie, to mixed reviews, in 2009. 

Wild Strawberries

Who doesn't wish he could revisit his childhood home, seeing it not as it is now in the 21st century but as it was then -- watching himself and his family living their daily lives as they once did?  Or at least wishes that in his youth he had taken more home movies of himself and his family?

Or would it simply be too sad to do so?  To see yourself and your family as you once were -- all still living and still young, arguing, teasing, fighting, but also showing, without self-consciousness, your affection for each other?  To see yourself as a kid, filled with eagerness to be older, to be free?  Alive with the belief that not only your life but your energy would last forever?

In Wild Strawberries, the fourth Bergman film in the current Seattle Art Museum series, Isak Borg -- a 78-year-old physician and university professor -- finds himself forced to contemplate his past life.  A grouchy, somewhat pompous and pedantic old man in failing health, he is being honored by his alma mater in Lund, Sweden, on the fiftieth anniversary of having received his doctorate.  Most of the film takes place during the 375-mile drive from his home in Stockholm south to the ceremony in Lund.

Isak has only one surviving child, his son Evald, whose marriage is on the rocks.  The wife is pregnant; Evald demands an abortion; his wife refuses. Evald's wife -- who tells Isak quite candidly, but not harshly, that she finds him, Isak, unlikeable -- drives his car while Isak sits beside her, sleeping and daydreaming.

In his first dream, he finds himself in a deserted city.  He discovers that none of the clocks, including his own watch, has hands.  He approaches the one and only visible person from the back, who turns toward him, revealing a faceless face, collapsing and liquefying at Isak's touch.  The dream clearly suggests to Isak that death approaches.

Another dream sequence finds him returning to his childhood home, where he sees his parents and his siblings, most of whom have since died.  He watches as his girlfriend Sara flirts with one of his brothers.  Sara laments later, while he observes but is unobservable, that she feels terrible about betraying Isak who is totally admirable -- brilliant, highly moral, devoted to uplifting conversations about philosophy and theology.  Isak is far above her in his intelligence, in character, in everything.  But the brother -- coarse and aggressive as he is -- is more ... well,  fun.  (I recall Eliza Doolittle's lament in My Fair Lady --- "Words!  Words!  Words!  I'm so sick of words!  ...  Is that all you blighters can do?")

Ultimately, we learn, Sara did marry the brother, and Isak ended up in an unhappy marriage with a different woman. 

As they drive south, they stop and visit Isak's mother, now a very well preserved 97.  She proves as aloof, demanding, self-centered, and formal in her speech as is her only surviving son.  But they understand each other, say little of consequence to each other, and bid each other a friendly goodbye. 

Evald's wife observes, in so many words, that the apple didn't fall very far from the tree.

They pick up a group of three college-age kids, two boys and a girl, who manage to transcend all gloomy Swedish stereotypes.  They are lively, funny, outgoing, and kind to Isak -- even as they squabble constantly among themselves.  The girl's name is Sara, and she strongly reminds Isak of his own Sara from long ago.  

They almost collide with a car occupied by a middle-aged couple, driving it into a ditch, and offer them a ride to get help.   The couple are engaged in a continuing battle between themselves, and become so disagreeable that they are finally asked to leave the car.  Isak is sadly reminded of his own unhappy marriage.

The celebration in Lund is extremely formal.  (They didn't fire cannons or pin medals when I retired!)  The ceremony  may have been meaningful to many of those in attendance --  Isak's housekeeper tells him it was the greatest day of her life -- but Isak himself appears tired and bored by the lengthy ceremony. 

By this point, I was ready to judge Isak a professional success, with a personal life that was an unmitigated disaster.

But Isak and his daughter-in-law get along well with their three young passengers, and Isak amuses them at dinner with various anecdotes from his life.  The trio hold a private celebration of their own for Isak.  And when they part company -- traveling on to Italy -- they shower him with affection  Especially affectionate is Sara, who begs him to remember her.  Isak smiles and looks after her -- so much like his own Sara, the one who got away.

Also, as they stop for gas at a filling station in the rural area in which Isak had first practiced medicine as a general practitioner, just out of medical school, the attendant still recognizes him, decades later, as his family's own doctor.  He and his wife refuse to allow Isak to pay for gas, their eyes practically brimming with tears as they remind him of the help he had given them as a young doctor.

At home, finally, Isak goes to bed, looking old, weary, but with a slight smile.  His life hasn't been perfect, but no one's is.  He did what he could with the personality that he had inherited.  He has gone out of his way to be kind to Evald and his wife, enabling the haughty son to admit that he desperately loves his wife.  He realizes that he has gone through life surrounded by an aura of aloofness, but that he has also managed, in his own quiet way, when he could, to be of help to others.

He is content.  At least, as content as any Scandinavian can expect to be.

Lonely as a cloud

This has been a typical winter, so far, in the Northwest Corner.  A winter with one or more street-clogging, school-closing, kids-rejoicing snowfalls is common, but not typical.  A winter with so little precipitation that we worry about taking baths in August is somewhat common, but not typical.  But 2018 has been typical -- some frost, some wind, a few clear days, but, for the most part, one rainy day after another.

This past week has been both windy and rainy, and the forecast for the next week is more of the same.  Today, however -- January 30 -- has been a tiny oasis.  Sunny, bright blue skies, moderate temperatures (meaning in the upper 40s, which is moderate by definition for January days in Seattle).

It's been the sort of day when I can walk my usual four miles with a smile on my face, observing at leisure people and the natural world about me -- rather than grimly leaning into the wind and rain. 

And I'm surprised.  It's still January, but Spring is already sneaking up on us.  Sneaking up on us at a date that should be -- at least by childhood memory -- still in the deepest bowels of Winter.  Green shoots poking up in everyone's yard.  New leaves coming out on hydrangea bushes.  Buds everywhere, each displaying an eagerness to burst into bloom at the slightest provocation.  Crocuses -- yes, violet crocuses, and some white -- not only blooming in gardens but even popping out through neighbors' front lawns.  And student oarsmen, members of the UW crew, sculling their swift shells through the Montlake cut.

And in my own "garden" -- which consists of whatever my predecessor planted some thirty years ago -- the first two or three primroses are already in full bloom. 

What a blissful sight this is for rain-drenched eyes and brain, as I wander about Montlake and the University campus.  I try not to think about the National Geographic article I read last night, an exposé pointing out the extent to which we -- all of us -- are under constant surveillance by everything from CCTV cameras to satellites in orbit.  Few places on earth, apparently, are beyond the all-seeing eye of governments and private industry.  Many of the cameras merely capture and file away our images for future reference, in case they should prove useful.  Others provide images that are being monitored continuously by human observers.

As I say, I try to forget these facts.  I wander about, naively thinking myself lonely as a cloud, as though a private world of nature, untainted by urban concerns, still existed.  I try not to envision the conversations in progress in some darkened room:

"Look, now he's leaning over and taking a photo of a primrose?  What the hell's he up to?  Is "primrose" a code a some sort?"

"Dunno, better keep an eye on him.  Maybe we should pick him up for questioning.  What's he saying now?"

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 

"Nah, he's no spy. 'Bliss of solitude'? Just a weirdo. Report him to Social Services."

Temporizing

Proust's novel is about a man who looks back to a time when all he did was look forward to better times.  To rephrase this somewhat: he looks back to a time when what he looked forward to was perhaps nothing more than sitting down and writing ... and therefore looking back.

--André Aciman, "Temporizing," Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere

This quotation from Aciman -- a Proustian scholar and enthusiast -- summing up Proust's magnum opus, may explain why I am still only 40 percent of the way through the first of the seven volumes that make up À la recherche du temps perdu.

The Seventh Seal

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
² And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.
³ And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; ...
⁵ And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast [it] into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
--Revelation 8:1-3, 5

Ingman Bergman's The Seventh Seal, shown last night at the Seattle Art Museum, was the third of nine Bergman films to be shown in the current series.  It was the first of the director's four most famous "metaphysical" films, films released in the 1950s, shortly before and during my undergraduate years: The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician, and The Virgin Spring. .  

It's hard to think of any director who would now have the same impact on audiences.  The films were black and white; the dialogue was in Swedish with English subtitles; and those four films dealt with ultimate issues of human life and destiny.  Something very different from the usual movies of that era, films specializing in heart-warming American families, cowboys, or gangsters.

For fairly unsophisticated college-aged kids with pretensions of sophistication, the films -- even more than the earlier neo-realism films from Italy -- showed us that movies could be an art form, not just entertainment.

The Seventh Seal has been re-released a number of times, and is a favorite at "art film" series.  According to Wikipedia, it is considered "one of the greatest movies of all time."  Although the film deals with a hero who questions the existence and/or beneficence of God, and leaves the question bleakly unanswered at the end, the Vatican in 1995 listed the film as one of its 45 "Great Films."

Antonius Block is a Crusader knight who has returned home to Sweden after ten disillusioning years in the Holy Land.  He is accompanied by his squire Jöns, a cynical sort who seems more modern than medieval in his thought and speech, and who provides a pessimistic commentary on the action. The Black Plague is sweeping across Sweden.

The movie begins with Block playing chess alone on a silent ocean beach, a setting that exemplifies much of the cinematography of Bergman's films -- lonely, dimly lit with the northern sun low in the sky, an unending twilight as the waves beat in upon the shore, one after another.  Block is joined by a mysterious man in a hood -- a personification of Death -- who advises Block that his time has now come.  Block, having heard that Death is partial to chess, suggests first a game.  If Death loses, he will allow Block a longer time on Earth.

The game progresses over several days, a few moves per visit.  Death asks Block what this slight delay will gain him -- he replies that he would like to perform one "memorable deed" before he dies.  He ultimately loses, although Death has to cheat to win.  But before he loses, he befriends a young juggler and his wife, and their infant son.  Before he makes his final chess move, unable to avoid a loss, he "accidentally" knocks the chess pieces off the board, diverting Death's attention while the three young people escape. 

The pieces are replaced, Death checkmates Block, and reminds him that when they next meet he will take Block and whomever is with him.  The sky is black with storm clouds -- flashing lightning and roaring thunder.  Block joins others taking refuge in his castle, where he hopes they will be safe. 

But Death enters. 

Antonius Block returned from the Crusades doubting the very existence of God and God's love for humanity.  Many terrible deeds occur during the movie that would support those doubts.  Throughout the film, Block repeatedly begs God to show himself in some way, to confirm his faith, to show him that life is not meaningless.  Death admits that he himself knows "nothing" -- he is able to tell Block nothing about what, if anything, occurs after death. 

But Block accepts death in the end, satisfied that in saving the lives of the young family, his own life has not been meaningless.  Block's satisfaction is of no more concern to Death than were his doubts.  Whatever the meaning or absence of meaning to human life, Death always wins the game. 

Maybe.  After the horrors of the night's storm, the juggler and his wife wake to a beautiful sunny morning.  The infant child is playing happily.  The couple smile at each other.  Life looks good.

In the final, iconic scene, the young juggler -- who sees images no one else can see, including Death sitting at the chessboard with Block -- looks off in the distance and sees Death leading Antonius Block and his ensemble away, silhouetted against the dimly lit Scandinavian sky. The seventh seal has been opened, and for them, judgment awaits.

Or, Bergman contemplates, perhaps nothing awaits.

What's your book club reading?

Four years ago, the New York Times carried a feature article entitled, "Really?  You're Not in a Book Club?"

Book clubs are everywhere.  As the writer, James Atlas, pointed out, you can ask an acquaintance, "What book is your book club reading?" with a fair assurance that he or she actually is reading a book with a book club.  Book clubs even work their way into the comics: the current story line in "Crankshaft" is the disconcerting effect on a rather casual book club, composed of middle-aged or older women, when joined by two eager young high school students.

Most book clubs involve neighbors sitting around a living room, talking about books and looking forward to the refreshments.  Women seem more enthralled by the idea than men, often because of the social aspect, but that varies from place to place. 

Atlas points out the attraction of book clubs, aside from desserts and coffee:

Reading is a solitary act, an experience of interiority. To read a book is to burst the confines of one’s consciousness and enter another world. What happens when you read a book in the company of others? You enter its world together but see it in your own way; and it’s through sharing those differences of perception that the book group acquires its emotional power.

The benefits of book clubs -- but not the desserts -- are increasingly enjoyed on-line.  In fact -- and this is the point of my little blurb -- my college alumni association has been sponsoring an on-line book club for many years.

The selection for the spring academic quarter is The Grapes of Wrath.  Steinbeck's novel  is one of the classics of American literature.  It would be a shame for any reasonably literate person to go through life having never read it, but I've been on that path for far too long! 

But the alumni notice has impelled me to action.  I've signed up for enrollment and for receipt of further information.  And -- rather than wait until the last minute like the college student I once was -- I've already downloaded a copy of the book from Amazon for $6.99.

Obviously, with a large number of readers on-line, the conversational intimacy of Sally Jones's living room will be somehow lost.  But the discussion groups are interactive.  One can contribute to the conversation either on-line or by email.  And, of course, one can simply read the book, and let himself be educated by the brilliant critique and literary observations of his supposed intellectual superiors. 

(Dude, you all went to college together!)

Either way, I expect to understand and appreciate The Grapes of Wrath far more deeply as a result of the book club experience than I would if I had simply read it on my own for entertainment.  Or maybe I won't, but I will have at least given it a whirl.  Bring it on!

"King" County

William Rufus King

One week ago today was Martin Luther King Day.  The following day, Tuesday, I attended another in a series of lectures by a UW professor dealing with the political peculiarities of today's America.  In passing, and apropos to nothing in particular, he reminded us that King County -- which includes Seattle -- is the only county in America named after Dr. King.

This startled me at first, since my memory of King County goes back further than my memory of Dr. King, and I was sure it had been so named for decades before my time.  But then, I quickly remembered that in 2005, the state legislature finally granted a petition from the King County Council, one then pending for some twenty years, to name the county after the civil rights leader.

Since King County was already named King County, the only real effect observable to most of us was that the county logo was changed from a stylized king's crown to a profile of Dr. King.

But where had the pre-2005 name come from?  Surely, we were never a Royal Province?  No.  Back when we were part of Oregon Territory, the territorial legislature carved King County and Pierce County out of the pre-existing Thurston County to the south.  Pierce County was named after the newly elected president, and King County after William Rufus King, the newly elected vice president.  The following year, Washington Territory was itself carved out of Oregon, and the new territory kept the existing counties intact.

So.  Was there an enormous howl of public outrage that William Rufus King was being dishonored when the county turned its 21st century face to Martin Luthur King instead?  Not really.

King's political résumé was short and uninspiring.  He had served in the Senate from 1819 to 1852 (back when senators were chosen by state legislatures), except for a four-year absence to serve as American minister to France.  He was caught up in the pre-Civil War political battle over the Compromise of 1850.  As Wikipedia summarizes his position:

During the conflicts leading up to the Compromise of 1850, King supported the Senate's gag rule against debate on antislavery petitions and opposed proposals to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which was administered by Congress.  King supported a conservative, pro-slavery position, arguing that the Constitution protected the institution of slavery in both the Southern states and the federal territories. He opposed both the abolitionists' efforts to abolish slavery in the territories as well as the "Fire-Eaters" calls for Southern secession.

Not the sort of career that Dr. King would have applauded.

Originally from North Carolina, he owned a cotton plantation in Alabama, worked by some 500 slaves.  He was the co-founder of Selma, Alabama.

Wikipedia seems to be especially interested in the probably-romantic relationship between William Rufus King and his long-time roommate, the next U.S. President, James Buchanan, but that issue was never a factor in the decision to leave William in King County's etymological lurch.

Most significant, probably, in addition to his embarrassingly pro-Southern political stance, was the fact that he died of tuberculosis after only 45 days in office as vice president, after being inaugurated in Cuba because he was too ill to return to Washington. The shortest term for any vice president, aside from those who left the office vacant to become president upon the president's death.

Pierce County remains named after the other half of the Pierce-King administration.  Here in King County, we were forced to ask ourselves -- "What did Vice President King ever do for us?  Are we proud of the dude?"  Note that unlike Dr. King, Vice President King's image never appeared on the county's logo or seal.  A king's crown?  At least people knew what a crown was.  I suspect that 99 county residents out of a hundred could never identify William Rufus King as their county's namesake. 

And yet, in his day, he must have been proud to have been elected to the second highest office in the Nation.  Such is the fleeting nature of fame.  He remains honored in Selma, Alabama, where his body has rested since 1882.

Great Glen Way

If you take a look at the map of Scotland, you see that the northwestern corner of the country is almost an island, almost cut off from the mainland by the Great Glen Fault, a geological fault that divides the Northwest Highlands from the Grampian Mountains to the southeast.

The glen is occupied primarily by a series of lochs (or lakes), the largest being Loch Lochy and Loch Ness.  At the southwest end of the fault is Fort William, and at the opposite end to the northeast is Inverness.

Why do I explain this?  Because I plan to hike from Fort William to Inverness, 73 miles, at the beginning of June.

I will join Jim B., a good friend from my pre-law days in graduate school, his wife, and his brother and sister, together with their own spouses.  Our band of seven will walk for six days, an average of 12 miles per day, although the final day will be a lengthy 18 miles.  We will take a one day rest break at Fort Augustus, at the point where we first encounter Loch Ness.  I suppose I should bring large nets and other paraphernalia to capture the Monster, should he appear -- but maybe a quick photo over my shoulder on my phone while running away will suffice.

The hike ends in Inverness, the de facto capital of the Highlands, with a population of about 45,000.  Inverness is at roughly the same latitude as Sitka, Alaska.  The climate is moderated by the Gulf Stream, but the hours of daylight should be of Alaskan length as we near the summer solstice.

The hike will be fairly easy, with not many ups and downs.  Most of the time, we will be hiking along the shores of the lochs -- although I've discovered that such "easy" shore walks often end up requiring some extensive climbs up and over hills adjoining the lakes.

Before the trek begins, we plan to spend several days in Fort William, with one or more day trips over to the nearby Inner Hebrides.  Diligent readers will recall that in 2011, I hiked the West Highland Way from Glasgow to Fort William.  I had hoped to climb Ben Nevis* -- the highest peak in Scotland (4,411 ft.) -- at the end of the hike.  The weather didn't permit it.  Jim and I hope to make the climb this year, warming ourselves up by a strenuous climb for the days of hiking that follow.

I bought my round trip tickets from Seattle to Glasgow last night.   I'm ready to go!
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*"Ben Nevis" is an Anglicization of the Gaelic words Beinn Nibheis, usually translated as "Venomous (or Malicious) Mountain."

Omens

A gray Seattle day in January.  Not raining, but rain threatening.  Not cold, but colder than yesterday.  Cats comatose, lying about the house. 

I had plenty of sleep last night, but after lunch I felt drowsy and lay down for a quick "power nap."  After drifting off for maybe ten minutes, I awoke with a start.

I'm not sure I'd been dreaming.  But at the time I woke up, I had a large Ace of Spades filling my entire field of vision.  "Huh!" I thought to myself, and drifted off again.  I again awoke with a start.  And another huge Ace of Spades.

I don't believe in fortune telling, or tarot, or horoscopes.  Or, for that matter, studying the flights of birds or the entrails of chickens, or the casting of runes. I believe that the universe, at least as far as it is observable to mankind, proceeds in an orderly fashion.  Cause and effect.  Yeah, I'm big on cause and effect.  On Newtonian physics, at least where quantum physics and relativity don't require otherwise.

Still.  It was a giant Ace of Spades.  Undisputedly.   And twice, within, say five minutes.

The image looked ominous, but what do I know?  I looked up its meaning, as understood by those canny in the art and science of fortune telling.

Ace of Spades Misfortune; sometimes associated with death or, more often, a difficult ending.

That's the fast and dirty description given by a simplified "Fortune Telling for Dummies" article.  A more detailed explanation is given by a more professional and "scientific" article:

The Ace of Spades is known for being baleful and sinister, and there is certainly some basis for this reputation. It's essential meaning links it with the ancient concept of karma and destiny, however. Certain things must come into being, or pass away, for they are part of the larger pattern decreed by fate. In the ancient Greek worlds the three Fates (Atropos, Clotho and Lachesis) answered to no one, but sat spinning the thread of destiny over which even the gods had no influence.

Similarly, the Ace of Spades cannot lightly be dismissed. In its most positive manifestation it promises worldly power and influence, but at a price. Generally, it augurs a challenging phase ahead, in which obstacles must be overcome by the power of positive thinking, faith in oneself and, if necessary, a stoic acceptance of present difficulties and reversals of fortune. This is not a good time to initiate any kind of legal battle, nor to expect a favorable outcome to any kind of dispute.

 Equally ominous, perhaps, but with some caveats.  Worldly power and influence?  I like the sound, but I think not.  I suspect I've passed the age when that is possible.  But challenging times ahead?  Now that I can accept.

I offer you my weird phantasm, primarily as a hedge against the future.  Abraham Lincoln may or may not have had dreams that foretold his imminent death.  Maybe everyone has similar dreams all the time, and wisely dismisses them.  Wisely, because such dreams mean nothing and nothing comes of them.  But when you're the President, dreams give way to myths and myths become enshrined in our collective consciousness.

Still.  The Ace of Spades.  I didn't have to read anything about fortune telling to sense that the news wasn't good.  I've been procrastinating in updating my will.  Not good.  And maybe I should double my Vitamin D intake.

If anything unfortunate happens to me in the near future ... well, I warned you..

Call Me by Your Name

When I reviewed André Aciman's first novel, Call Me by Your Name, on this blog, in July 2009, it never occurred to me that anyone would make a film based on the novel. 

The novel is the story of the six-week summer romance between a highly intelligent and precocious teenaged Italian boy (Elio) and a visiting graduate school student from America (Oliver), set in and about a small beach town in northern Italy.  The story is told by Elio, looking back as an adult, and told from his highly subjective viewpoint.  Aciman is an authority on the writings of Proust, and his own writings -- fiction, memoir, and essay -- all deal with Proust's concerns with detail of observation, memory, and the consequences of choices made and not made.

But the story was compelling, if slow-moving, and the Italian setting was well-described, sumptuous, and captivating.  The temptation to film the novel was apparently irresistible.

Luca Guadagnino's film -- released gradually nationwide and internationally over the past two months -- avoids many of the pitfalls I would have foreseen.  He eliminates -- except perhaps by inference -- Aciman's philosophical and literary concerns.  Rather than have the story told by Elio in retrospect, he presents it in the present tense.  The point of view remains primarily, but not rigidly, that of Elio -- but the film is an objective presentation of a story, not Elio's subjective interpretation.

The story as told by the film ends with Oliver's return to classes in America, departing by train while Elio chokes back tears, and -- most dramatically -- by Oliver's telephone call to Elio at Christmas with the "happy news" that he was now engaged to be married to a girl he had been going with all along.  The film ends with an unbroken 3½ minute shot of Elio's staring into the flames in the fireplace, trying desperately -- and unsuccessfully -- not to cry.  As the closing credits roll.

The movie takes some other liberties with what was a fairly long novel, but the essential story remains the same.  The movie is effective in converting Elio's interior thoughts, emotions, and reactions, as related in the novel, into something that could be filmed without the use of distracting voice-overs, but it is effective only because of the exceptional acting by Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet's face portrays Elio's interior thoughts and feelings with great sensitivity, even while his lips utter only reticent, polite, common-place remarks.

Chalamet is a leading contender for the Oscar for Best Actor.  He deserves it.

Summer with Monika

Girl meets boy, girl persuades boy to run away with her, girl gets bored and leaves boy holding the baby.

This may not be the usual Hollywood formula, but it is the plot of Ingmar Bergman's 1952 film, Summer with Monika.  The film was offered last night as the first in a series of nine Bergman films, to be shown weekly in chronological order, by the Seattle Art Museum.

Monika and Harry meet while employed by the same Stockholm company.  Harry, a shy lad of 19, has a dead end job in the shipping department.  Monika, 17, essentially woos Harry, and eventually persuades him that they should run away from their jobs and motor around Sweden on his indulgent father's tiny, live-aboard motor boat.  I was never quite clear where their money (or gasoline) came from, but they spend a blissful summer together camping and living off the land. 

As fall approaches,Monika reveals she is expecting a blessed event.  The Swedish weather is becoming colder, and the couple have run out of food and money.  After a desperate attempt to scavenge -- Monika steals a family's roast off their table before their very eyes -- Harry discusses returning to the city, and getting married.  He proposes studying engineering (more like technical training) in order to support the family.

Monika at first is entranced, but then refuses to return to city life.  She also complains bitterly about the hardships of living on the boat.  Harry tries to find out what she does want to do, but she screams that she now hates living on the boat and she refuses to return to the city.  Then what does she want?  "I don't want anything!" she yells bursting into tears.

Finally, she agrees to Harry's plan.  The couple gets married, Harry goes to class daily, and Monika (with the help of Harry's aunt) cares for the baby.  Actually, the aunt cares for the baby during the day, and Harry spends the night up with the crying child.  Things come to a head when Monika uses the rent money to buy new clothes for herself.  The rent can wait; I want to have fun, she argues.  Shortly afterward, she walks out of the apartment, and out of Harry's life, leaving Harry cuddling the baby and daydreaming of the happy times they spent together during the summer.

Movie's a bit of a downer, at least from my male perspective, but Bergman's black and white cinematography -- scenes of urban life, scenes of nature, close ups of Monika's troubled and changing face -- is stunning. 

No one had heard of Bergman when the film was released in America in 1953.  The distributer publicized it as the story of a "bad girl."  "The devil controls her by radar," read the lurid posters.  To the contrary, the film is a tragic story of marriage between an immature young girl and a boy who is serious, loving, and conscientious -- but far too dull for the girl he married.

Maiden Voyage

The [Salisbury Cathedral] Lady Chapel was dark and glittering; the brown and yellow Victorian tiles shone like a wet bathroom floor.  I sat down on one of the oak chairs and started to pray.  I grew more and more unhappy; there was nothing that I could do.  I could not go back and I could not stay away for long; my money would run out.  I felt hopeless and very lonely; I longed for someone to talk to me but nobody did; they were all too busy looking at the sights or praying.

Denton was sixteen -- but small enough and immature enough in appearance to still travel half fare -- when he decided he couldn't bear another year at Repton, a prestigious "public" school in Derbyshire.  He stood up his older brother (and fellow Repton student) who was waiting to join him at London's St. Pancras station, where they were to catch the train back to school.  With five pounds in his pocket, he instead departed from Waterloo station for the cathedral city of Salisbury.

It was 1931, and the painfully introverted (but grimly determined) Denton had flown the coop.

His money and his nerve lasted several days.  Negotiations with his family finally resulted in his agreement to return to Repton -- for the current term, at least.

Denton's adventures "on the road" and his ensuing term at Repton make up only the first quarter of Denton Welch's highly autobiographical novel Maiden Voyage, published in 1943.  The rest of the novel relates to his subsequent voyage to Shanghai to visit his loving but remote father, and his adventures in pre-war China.  But that first section of the book, set in England, establishes the young man's persona in the reader's mind.

He leaves London for Salisbury because he loves architecture, and has happy memories of visiting the cathedral with his deceased mother.  He stays at hotels, avoiding embarrassing questions from skeptical desk clerks.  He eats in restaurants, self-consciously solitary among the diners.  He is paranoid in his fear that every police officer is looking for him.  Growing short of money, he stays at a hotel he finds disgusting and dirty.  He gathers up his courage, enters a pawnshop and pawns his watch for a fraction of its value.  He finally spends a night in a jail cell, offered him by a sympathetic cop. 

What some reviewers have called descriptions of behavior that is odd,  perhaps mentally unbalanced, I would describe as honest self-revelations by a shy, young boy.  As a young-looking 21-year-old myself, traveling alone about Europe, I recall many of the same worries, nervousness, and repeated need to screw up my courage.  The first time walking alone into a hotel and asking for a room, walking into a restaurant and dining alone under the gaze of curious eyes, wandering around an unfamiliar city, short of money, and buying the cheapest train fares I could get to the next.  Everything, perhaps, but Denton's paranoia about the police.

Denton Welch, in real life, also quit school at Repton, and studied to become a painter.  After a severe cycling accident at the age of 20, he began writing instead.  He had been born in Shanghai in 1915, the son of a mixed English-American marriage.  His autobiographical novels and other writings enjoyed a certain vogue in the 1940s; they now seem to be in the public eye once more.  I had never heard of the writer until Sunday, when classical scholar and writer Daniel Mendelsohn, in an interview published in the New York Times Book Review, mentioned that he was currently reading  Denton Welch's journals, and was a long-time fan of his novels.

Don't read Maiden Voyage expecting an exciting plot and superb characterization.  The novel is more a fictionalized memoir, based very closely on the author's own life.  In many ways, Maiden Voyage is a more readable Proustian novel than those of Proust himself (although Proust's lovers would probably sneer!).  After I became bogged down forty percent of the way through the narrator's protracted ponderings over the minutiae of life in a small French village, as found in Swann's Way, Denton Welch's obsessions and thoughts, in a more global context, came as a welcome relief. 

Like Marcel in Swann's Way, young Denton has keen eyes for the small details of the world about him, and especially architecture, home furnishings, art works, and nature.  He also -- like Marcel and like many other introverted teenagers -- has an obsessive concern with the reactions (real or imagined) of those about him.  He overthinks almost every social interaction.  The slightest criticism or frivolous remark from others is the occasion for hours of brooding, and often by Denton's explosive admission that he has "now begun to hate" the offender.  These hatreds sometimes blow over; other times, the relationship has been poisoned forever.

He seems to have been liked by most adults and peers, if in a somewhat patronizing fashion.  They recognized a boy who was overly intense, idiosyncratic in his interests, and a bit of an odd duck.  But many obviously enjoyed his company.

If for no other reason, the novel can be read for its honest and exacting picture of England between the world wars, and especially the "public" school life of the upper classes.  Even more, the book offers a devastating picture of China -- at least as viewed by Denton -- as a cruel, dirty, and barbaric country, and of Shanghai as a European colony where the European "masters" rule with contempt over the Chinese masses, and are despised in return.

Welch's best-known novel, I understand, is the similarly autobiographical In Youth is Pleasure, written from the perspective of a 15-year-old.  Sooner or later, I plan to read it.

Denton Welch died in 1948, at the age of 33, from spinal tuberculosis, the result of injuries from the cycling accident thirteen years earlier. 

Caw

"The noise from the rookery was louder, even though the daylight was beginning to die.  They could see the dark birds thronging over the treetops, more agitated than before, flapping and turning to and fro."
--Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

Readers with excellent memories will recall that I opened a post in November 2013 with that the same quotation.  I was discussing the onset of autumn, finding myself beset as I walked through my neighborhood by the spiteful shrieks emanating from hordes of crows: "They caw maliciously, spitefully, hurling their jeers at me as I pass." 

I learned this week that those crows are almost as intelligent as I feared, and that they come to my neighborhood from far away.  According to a front-page article in the Seattle Times, crows from all over Seattle and surrounding areas return each night to their 58-acre roosting grounds in Bothell -- at the north end of Lake Washington -- adjacent to the Bothell satellite campus of the University of Washington.  Some 16,000 crows, every night.  A UW biology team is taking advantage of their proximity to study the crows' behavior and language. 

Yes, they actually have a language, or at least a number of sounds -- "elaborate vocalizations," with complex meanings -- most of whose meanings have so far eluded researchers's ability to translate.  Crows have been known to identify human beings by their faces; they will remember the face of a kind or unkind person for years.  More startling, they are somehow able to pass on descriptions of such noteworthy humans to other crows, causing these other crows to approach or shun the humans when encountering them for the first time.

That shows more ability to recognize and remember human faces than I possess myself.

They also mate for life, and are thought to hold "funerals" for their dead.  I was once deafened in my house by the cawing of crows in my front yard.  They were lamenting a crow that lay dead -- from unknown causes -- on my front lawn.

Crows fly at some length each day to reach their central roosting ground -- up to thirty miles for the Bothell roost -- for reasons that are partly due to "safety in numbers," one researcher notes, but also due to "a social component that we don't understand very well."

The Bothell roost -- large and impressive as it is -- is small compared with roosts in other parts of the country -- gatherings that often attract 75,000 crows.  A roost in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, has been estimated to number two million crows.   But, then, what else is there in Oklahoma?  Aside from the former Seattle SuperSonics?

Until ten years ago, the Seattle area's central roost was on Foster Island, only a few blocks from my house.  But habitat restoration efforts in Bothell, including tree growth, caused the entire extended crow family to pull up roots and head for the 'burbs.  Maybe the growth of the right sort of trees attracted the birds.  Or, I would suggest, it may have just been an example of urban "black flight."

In any event, when you walk out of your house into a mass of crows cawing at each other, just remember -- they're a lot smarter than other birds, and a lot smarter than you'd like to believe.  They have things to say -- some of it about you -- and a means to say it.  And they may be commuting thirty miles each day, just to keep an eye on you in your local habitat. 

As one Bothell university student observed, unscientifically:

“There’s some crazy things with these crows,” sophomore Aliyanda Harris said. “I think they’re starting to wonder who we are and communicate that to their homies. It’s creepy.”

So smile at your local crows, and -- if so inclined -- offer them a few delicacies to eat.  It never hurts to have a few friends.
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Facts and quotes from the Seattle Times (1-3-2018) and the Everett Herald Net (4-29-2016).