Moot court

I served on a three-judge panel, representing the entire nine-judge U.S. Supreme Court, at a law school moot court proceeding Monday night.

I've done this many times before, and have commented occasionally on this blog how impressed I've been with the students' performance.  Let me say so again.

Unlike most of the moot court proceedings over which I've presided, or joined with others in presiding, this was a moot court for first year law students only.  It was the first moot court in which any of the participants had participated.  Moot courts were less common and less frequent when I was in law school.  But all first year students were required to participate once as part of our legal writing class.  I enjoyed the writing; I was terrified at the prospect of defending my opinions before three practicing attorneys.

I vowed that, once graduated, I'd become some sort of scrivener, surrounded by books in the back room of a law firm, writing briefs with a quill pen for others to argue.  Instead I became a trial attorney, with considerable experience in appellate practice.  Such are the little surprises that life springs on us.

But, although some seemed a bit more nervous than others, no one appeared terrified last night.  Arguing before us were four first-year students, two arguing that the lower court's ruling should be overturned (counsel for the petitioners), and two arguing that the lower court's ruling should be affirmed (counsel for the respondents).  They argued complex constitutional issues regarding freedom of speech and due process of law -- not the sort of issues that most students encounter during their first year of law school. 

Both sides did an excellent job of analyzing these issues.  All four students appeared poised and articulate.  All four did a good job of responding to the judges' questions.  I have argued a fair number of cases in the state court of appeals and the state supreme court.  I would have considered any one of these four students a competent adversary. 
 
Part of our job as moot court judges was awarding points for various qualities of argumentation and, finally, choosing one of the two teams the winner.  (Moot court judges do not judge the issues argued on the merits -- we judge the quality of argumentation.)   The losing party was not eliminated from the first round -- they were to face each other again last night, changing sides as to whether they represented petitioners or respondents.

I was pleased with the experience and pleased with the students.  I'm pleased that my law school is both admitting and educating superior future attorneys.

War-war more fun than jaw-jaw

So America today trashed the agreement with Iran that has prevented that country from proceeding with its nuclear program in exchange for the West's lifting of crippling sanctions.  Or rather one individual, Mr. Trump, has trashed the agreement after eliminating one by one every adviser who had advised otherwise, and after dismissing with disdain the united opposition of our European allies.

Did he do it because of his pathological hatred of Obama, who has been credited with negotiating the treaty?

Maybe.  Or maybe it's just one of those gut feelings on which he has based all aspects of his life, a gut feeling predating his election.  As Trump said, trashing the Iran deal was one of his campaign promises, and by golly Mr. Trump is a man who keeps his promises.

So we further alienate a major country in the Middle East, one whose middle classes have traditionally been friendly to the United States.  We make it more difficult for moderates to prevail, and make it easier for the radical fundamentalists to keep a chokehold on Iran's foreign policy.

While alienating Iran, whose nuclear program at least purported to be aimed at providing nuclear energy, Trump falls all over himself in seeking to reach an accommodation with North Korea -- a country led by a far more unstable Supreme Leader, a guy who has threatened repeatedly to involve the world in a nuclear conflagration, and a country of far less importance to the world economically and geopolitically.

If I felt that Trump had made his incomprehensible decision based on some skillfully developed strategic plan, in coordination with the best political and military minds our nation offers, I might be more cautious in my criticism.  But Trump is a man whose lack of curiosity about other nations and inability to focus on any matter more than five minutes is one of the wonders of our time.  At some point, something about Iran irritated him.  He probably doesn't even remember what set him off; but he does remembers that, boy, he sure doesn't like Iran.

Or Obama.

Who knows, maybe everything will work out.  Even dead clocks are right twice a day.  Trump feels that yelling and blustering and being the bully that he is by nature is prompting North Korea to consider a peace treaty.  He thus concludes that he has a technique that will work everywhere.  All that Peace on Earth has been waiting for is the advent of some streetwise real estate dealer from New York who will straighten things out. 

"You got a real nice town here, this Tehran.  It would be a shame if something happened to it."

Bullying may work in New York.  It may even work in Korea, although that's far from certain at this point.  I don't think it will work against the proud descendants of the Persian Empire, a people who, with patience, have repeatedly come back from adversity throughout their some 2,600-year history.

The Tattooed Man

In 2016, I wrote of my rediscovery of Howard Pease, the author of many boys' adventure books I read when I was about 12 and 13.  I had forgotten both the names of the books and the name of the author, until a friend happened to mention Pease's name in a way that caused the pieces to fall into place.

And so I wrote my review of Thunderbolt House in September 2016.  But Thunderbolt House, a story of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, was not a typical Pease adventure.  Pease is famous as a writer of sea adventures, especially the "Tod Moran series."   Pease was born in 1894 in Stockton, California, and graduated from college at Stanford.  He interrupted his education to serve in World War I, and spent two of his summers while at the university working in the engine room of cargo ships.

He published 22 novels during his career, most of them about life at sea.  He often criticized the "soft" stories that children's literature offered boys.  His books emphasized the value of hard physical labor, courage, and a sense of adventure -- in addition to intelligence and sensitivity.  As well as writing books, Pease was also a high school English teacher, and became principal of Los Altos high school, just south of Palo Alto.

All of his works have been out of print for some time.  His first published work -- and introduction to the Tod Moran stories -- was The Tattooed Man (pub. 1926), a copy of which I purchased this week.  The book went through a number of printings, but I purchased a paperback edition printed in 1948.  The 1961 paperback reprinting of Thunderbolt House, which I purchased second hand, showed a cover price of 35 cents.  My copy of The Tattooed Man, printed 14 years earlier in a similar format, probably sold for 20 or 25 cents.  I bought it used, with yellowing, somewhat fragile pages, but otherwise in reasonably good shape, for only $35 through Amazon. 

Needless to say, Pease's books aren't available on Kindle.

The Tattooed Man introduces us to 17-year-old Tod Moran as he walks out of San Francisco's Ferry Building, onto the Embarcadero, looking for Pier 43.  His older brother, Neil, had served for a couple of years as a purser on a cargo ship, sending post cards and letters home from romantic locations to a starry-eyed younger brother.  Then, the cards and letters suddenly stopped coming.  Tod plans to visit the shipping company at Pier 43, and find out what happened.

Something mysterious is afoot, and he ends up signing on as mess boy on the company's almost-derelict cargo ship, the Araby, bound for Marseilles via the Panama Canal.   By the end of the first day at sea, all of Tod's romantic images of life at sea, derived from excessive reading of boys' literature, have been dashed.  The life of a crewman, as opposed to an officer, is a life hard and brutish.

But also instructive, both to Tod and to us as readers.  Although the plot is a bit melodramatic, with skullduggery and insurance fraud afoot, the descriptions of how a ship worked -- at least in the 1920s -- and how it was manned are informative and fascinating.  And not just for "young adults."  Without trying to outline the plot, we follow Tod and the Araby through a California coastal storm and Tod's first seasickness, through the Canal, across the Atlantic, and into port in Marseilles.  Tod's adventures then continue ashore, mostly afoot, from Marseilles to Antibes, near Cannes. 

Tod is a resourceful young man, who -- despite being considered a rich "toff" -- learns to survive, living and working shoulder to shoulder with overworked, bitter, and definitely non-genteel crewmen.  He is lured into a boxing  match with a vicious, tough, and muscular engine room worker, and wins because of his high school boxing lessons and sharper wit.  Although everyone, including Tod, throws around language that we consider offensive today -- "Chink," "wop," "nigger" are examples -- and although we are assured that all the men and officers swear obscenely and grotesquely, the oaths we hear are such as "Sufferin' catfish," and "drat," and "golly." 

Needless to say, Tod does find his brother, and the forces of evil are averted.  He arrives back in San Francisco, glad to be on dry land once more.  Would he ever sail again?  He isn't certain. The book concludes:

The Araby's upper decks lay deserted.  Her funnel and foremast towered black against the blazing sky.  Gulls swooped and wheeled about them, settled upon the bridge rails, upon the lifeboats, peering with curious eyes down at the galley.  A departing cargo liner went by toward the headlands, and the gulls, with raucous cries, rose in circles and winged their way to sea.

What do you think?  Even forgetting that this was only the first book of the Tod Moran series! 

Pease based The Tattooed Man on two of his own voyages as a crew member, and on a walking trip he took as a student from Marseilles into Italy.

These were books that strongly attracted young teenage boys in the 1950s.  The fact that they have gone out of print suggests that kids now find them too dated to be interesting.  Most young adult literature is now written by women for, primarily, girls.  Those books that are intended more for boys tend to show boys how to understand their feelings and how to handle their social relationships with others.  Without disparaging that kind of story, I'd like to believe that books that encourage adventure and physical courage can still find a teenage audience -- and, in today's world, with girls as well as with boys.

Rebecca

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

British writer Daphne du Maurier is well known, but I've never read any of her stories.  Last night, however, I watched Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of Rebecca, the sixth in the current Seattle Art Museum's Hitchcock film series.

According to a Variety review at the time, the film was "too tragic and deeply psychological to hit the fancy of wide audience appeal." But the film received eleven Academy Award nominations, and was awarded Oscars for Best Picture and Best Black and White Cinematography.  In the current SAM series, Rebecca is the earliest Hitchcock film to be produced by an American studio, although it retains a British setting in Cornwall.

I have no idea whether the shift from a British to an American studio accounts for the difference, but the production values are vastly more sophisticated than in the earlier films in the series.  For those unfamiliar with the film, or the 1997 TV adaptation of the novel, aristocrat Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets a naïve young woman (Joan Fontaine) in Monte Carlo, sweeps her off her feet, marries her on the spot, and takes her to his home ("Manderley") in Cornwall.   The house -- both exterior and interior -- is breathtaking -- a neo-Gothic take on Brideshead.   Typical American film-making -- no expense appears to have been spared.

The young woman -- referred to only as the "second Mrs. de Winter" -- is intimidated, both by the house and by its enormous staff, as well might she be.  She quickly learns that Rebecca -- the first Mrs. de Winter -- was a famous beauty highly respected by all.  She encounters the frigid hostility of the housekeeper -- Mrs. Danvers -- who apparently not only was devoted to Rebecca, but had somewhat deeper feelings for her, as well.  (Hitchcock made several adjustments to the script to get the movie past the censors, but managed to supply the lesbian overtones through Mrs. Danvers's acting, facial expressions, and voice.)

How did Rebecca die?  She may or may not have been murdered, may or may not have committed suicide.  Or something else.  The last third of the movie becomes a whodunit, made unnecessarily complicated, again, because of the censors' objections to elements of the plot as written by du Maurier.  The inquest scenes are interesting, even if the plot's resolution seems to come somewhat out of the blue.

All quibbles are forgiven, however, upon viewing the magnificent final scene, as Mrs. Danvers wanders about the house, setting it on fire -- it made me think of Lucia di Lammermoor without the singing -- and the entire Gothic pile, fully engulfed in flames, comes crashing down upon her.

It's ok.  No one really liked her. Pity about the house, however.

Traveling musically

I always tell myself that I don't much care for "impressionism" in music (usually described as a style of music written between about 1890 and 1925).  And I guess I don't.  I don't hate it.  I just don't go out of my way to listen to it.

But I love travel to foreign countries.  And travel evoked by impressionism was what the Seattle Symphony's concert last night was all about.

The concert began with Jacques Ibert's haunting Escales (or Ports of Call), offering flavors ("impressions," if you will) of Palermo, north Africa, and Valencia.  The sounds of northern Africa were especially romantic, with the wailing of the oboe suggesting a stereotype of "Oriental" music, and the Valencia movement was filled with Spanish themes.

Respighi's well-known Fountains of Rome suggested the sounds of four famous Roman fountains at various times of day.  And to travel among these Mediterranean ports, one best travels by sea -- hence, the major work of the evening, the changing moods of Debussy's La Mer.

But the number that appealed most to me -- and, judging from the applause, to most of the audience -- was a piece not even on the scheduled program, a piece untouched by impressionism. Because of the illness of the scheduled pianist, the performance of Alexander Scriabin's early-career piano concerto was scratched, and was replaced by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23.  The pianist, Inon Barnatan, hypnotized me and the entire audience with his smooth, buttery, almost liquid playing of the Adagio movement, and, even more notably, of the two fast movements. 

Looking back, I realize that I enjoyed the opening Ibert number the best of the three impressionist compositions.  By the time we reached La Mer, the concluding work, the rambling style of impressionism, apparently lacking in structure -- the program notes did emphasize that La Mer does have structure, and could almost be considered a symphony, but I was having none of it -- had begun to bore me, and I was checking my watch.

It was the Mozart concerto, and the brilliant playing of Barnatan, that really made the evening worthwhile for me.  If I ever again attend a performance of La Mer, I hope it's performed nearer the beginning of the program before my mind has begun to drift.

Ozymandias

My name is OzymandiasOzymandias Pharaoh Rameses II (reigned 1279-1213 BCE). According to the OED, the statue was once 57 feet tall., King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Abington is a small suburb of Philadelphia.  Its sole high school is named -- logically -- Abington high school.  Or, rather, was.

According to the New York Times, a Wall Street billionaire has generously donated $25 million to the school for renovation purposes.  But he has imposed a few small conditions -- (1) the school would be renamed after him; (2) his portrait would be displayed prominently in the building; (3) various areas of the school would be named after his twin brothers; and (4) he would have final approval of the school's new logo.

The school board accepted the conditions.  And the money.  A community's explosion of outrage has ensued.

I'm tempted to laugh, but "people who live in glass houses," etc."   My own high school was named after its lumber baron founder.  But then, so was the town itself.  Both town and high school, along with most of the public buildings in town, were the inspiration -- and beneficiaries -- of the founder.  The nexus between founder and high school was at least organic.

The Times article made me wonder.  What goes through the mind of a person who demands that the institution benefitting from his generosity be named after him?  (For that matter, what goes through the mind of a man who names every hotel and resort he owns after himself?) 

I suppose in part it's just a way of bragging about one's success, like driving around in an overpriced car.  But for many, I suspect -- especially those who seek to put their names on schools or opera houses or other institutions that will survive long into the future -- it's a hankering after immortality.  "Years from now," the philanthropist tells himself, "the public will remember me and my well-lived life as the cause of their great good fortune."

Hey, even I like to read published appellate decisions that have my name affixed to them as counsel!  I dream of law students two centuries from now pondering in their minds -- who was this brilliant lawyer who triumphed in this important case regarding a car's failure to stop at a red light?

It's all illusory, of course.  Even if the philanthropist's name isn't replaced after his death by the name of someone with even more money -- remember poor Avery Fisher and his hall at Lincoln Center? -- his pre-death hopes and dreams will still eventually join his body as dust.

Percy Shelley wrote his famous sonnet Ozymandias about a great Egyptian pharaoh who built a huge statue of himself in order to remind the future of his power and greatness.  A leader to be reckoned with.  A household word.  And today -- nothing left but an inscription half covered by the desert's shifting sands.

I hope the Wall Street billionaire's true motivation is to improve Abington high school.  He can buy that for $25 million.  Immortality is much more expensive.  In fact, priceless.

In memoriam

Loki

“Feline Extraordinaire”
2004-2018

 

"Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Gooood eeeevening ....

After the Seattle Art Museum's presentation of nine Ingmar Bergman films last quarter -- all cerebral, all leaving lingering questions that tormented my mind and agitated my blog -- it's something of a change to move into SAM's spring series.  Nine films from the early, British-oriented period of director Alfred Hitchcock's career.

Those of us of a certain age recall the TV program, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," a weekly Sunday night tale of the often humorously macabre.  The unforgettable introduction featured a sketched profile of the director, into which Hitchcock himself walked.  He then offered a short introduction to the night's story, often humorous even when the story itself was somewhat ghastly. 

The introductory theme was Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," which anyone who was a kid at the time could always hum at appropriate times the following day.

Unfortunately, I missed the first two films -- The Man Who Knew Too Much and Sabotage.  Last night, however, I jumped into the series for the first time, with the 1935 production of The 39 Steps. 

The film is considered something of a masterpiece of British escapist fare, but hardly requires the focused concentration  -- in the theater or in this blog -- of a Bergman film.  Man bumps into a woman in London who tells him of a secret spy conspiracy that plans to turn over British military secrets to an unnamed foe, woman murdered in his hotel room (with giant knife protruding from her back), enemies attempt to do him in as well, while Scotland Yard seeks to arrest him for the murder.

Man heads for a small Scots village circled on a map found on the murdered woman's person, zooming off to Edinburgh on a beautiful 1930s Flying Scotsman train.  Man wanders through black and white Scottish scenery in search of the village, only to discover that he's walked into the headquarters of the enemy.  He escapes, is captured by police and handcuffed to a lovely but hostile woman, escapes again still handcuffed, and improbably evades both enemies and police for most of the film. 

Spoiler alert -- police finally nab the spy, man is vindicated, and handcuffed girl looks up at him adoringly.

The plot isn't much on paper, but Hitchcock's direction is great, the photography of Scotland is stunning, and humor is injected into virtually every scene.  You leave the theater grinning, which is more than I could say for Bergman's Persona!

Six more films in the series, concluding with Dial M for Murder.

Depressive states

Loki on the prowl
April 3, 2018

My birthday dinner at Café Lago,
right here in the Montlake
neighborhood

Yeah, I know.  It's been nine days since my last posting.  You know I haven't been on vacation, because I always brag about my vacations long in advance.

Ok, two things.  First, my sister, her middle son Denny, and Denny's girlfriend Jessie were visiting the better part of four days.  That's a decent excuse.  The other problem you don't want to hear about -- the protracted death of my cat Loki.  Which, incidentally, is still a work in progress.


Bloedel Preserve on Bainbridge

Situational depression.  That's like clinical depression, but with an obvious cause and of limited duration.  That's my basic trouble right now, I suspect.  Embarrassing, because I have confronted many problems in my life with a certain insouciance, or at least appearance of insouciance, and it seems odd that now -- in my dotage, if you must -- I would be laid low by the impending death of a cat. 

Hiking in Interlaken Park,
a couple of blocks from
my house. 

But such is the case, and I've talked about it too much already.  Loki himself is being far more mature and circumspect about the matter -- he isn't making Traviata out of it, lying in bed with one forearm over his eyes, singing interminable arias.  So I will attempt adulthood, and trouble you no more about the matter.


Ferry ride to Bainbridge Island

The visit by relatives was very enjoyable.  Rather than bore you with what was really just a family affair, I'll throw in a few photos (plus one of Loki as he was today) and call it a blog post.

Enjoy.

Loki agonistes

"I want everything to be like it was!"

Those were the heartbreaking words my mother spoke to me shortly after being persuaded to move from her apartment to an assisted care facility.  It was a beautiful facility, but it was not her home.  She understandably longed for her days of being independent and in control of her  own life.

I'm reminded of those words by my cat, Loki, who is dying from an incurable colon tumor.  According to the veterinarian, he has about two weeks to live; I suspect it may be less.

Loki boarded at the veterinary hospital while I was in the Southwest, and while he was there he received the ultrasound testing that confirmed the diagnosis.  When I picked him up Thursday morning, he was overjoyed to come home. He spent the rest of the day cuddling with me, expressing his gratitude for rescuing him.  He was all over me, and objected to even short periods of separation.  He was like his old self, but twice as affectionate.

Now, three days later, he is more quiet, more reserved, less outwardly affectionate.  He's still alert when awake, although he is napping for much longer periods.  He still likes to go outside and investigate the yard.  He's still curious.  He still sits next to me and stares at me.  He doesn't seem to be in pain, but I suspect he isn't entirely comfortable.  He doesn't feel like the cat he was in the past.  He's happy to be near me, but he isn't all that happy with life.

I know I'm being anthropomorphic. But when he stares at me, he seems to be saying, "I want everything to be like it was."

And that's one of the great human laments, isn't it -- why do things have to change?  Even when we're young and the changes are exciting and evidence of growth, part of us resists.  Moving from one house to another made me nostalgic for the old house.  Going to college made me nostalgic for life back home.  And it only gets worse, much worse, later -- when the changes are for the worse.  When you wish you could still climb a mountain, literally or figuratively.  When you wish your joints weren't stiff when you jumped out of bed in the morning.  When you wish you didn't have to take medication to avoid unfortunate health problems.

And even later, recalling when taking medication was still enough to avoid unfortunate health problems.

Helping your pet die peacefully leads -- as you can see -- to morbid thoughts about your own life.  At least a cat lives -- so far as we know -- only in the present.  He doesn't brood over the loss of past happiness; he doesn't fear the future.  He only knows that at this moment he is not feeling as well as he feels he should. 

It will be enough for Loki that I can keep him from experiencing pain, even if some discomfort may be unavoidable.  I can do that. 

Road to El Paso

It's 44 degrees in Seattle, and raining.  In Tucson, it's 82.  And sunny.

Today I'm in Seattle.  Yesterday, I was wandering amongst saguaro cactuses in Tucson.  Such are the vagaries of life.

Back in January, I accurately forecast that by mid-March, I'd be needing a weather break.  A short one, perhaps.  But one where I'd see things I don't usually see.  Often, when feeling cold and wet, I plan a hike somewhere in the southland, but this time I decided to cover more miles and make it a road trip.

So Sunday, I flew down to Tucson.  Monday, I drove I-10 to El Paso.  But while still in Tucson, I received an email from Jim B. -- a biking aficionado with whom I'll be hiking in Scotland in a couple of months.  He wrote from Silver City, New Mexico, knowing nothing of my own travels.  He was with a biking group, and would arrive in El Paso on Thursday.  Today.  The coincidence was amazing.  (They plan to end their biking in St. Augustine, Florida, in early May!)

I actually made a bit of a detour off I-10 to Silver City, having never heard of the town before, to see what the attraction was.  And also to see if I might bump into his biking gang.

The answers were "not much" and "no."

I stayed Monday night in El Paso, checked out UTEP -- a beautiful university campus -- to see where this Sun Bowl was located: the bowl where my favorite football teams so often end up in post-season play.  I then returned to Tucson, not by I-10 but by a highway that skirts the Mexican border, under varying highway numbers in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, from El Paso to Bisbee.

Bisbee is the site of an enormous open pit copper mine, and the highway from El Paso follows the discontinued route of a railway built specifically to ship ore from Bisbee to El Paso.  The route is bleakly beautiful and oddly divorced from the 21st century.  In the few ranching hamlets where you do see men walking about, they look like extras in a 1930s Western movie.

Bisbee is also a well-preserved mining town, where one has no trouble finding Italian gelati and artisanal coffees.

A final night back in Tucson, and a morning spent hiking around in Tucson Mountain Park, and Gates Pass.  Wild West country, saguaro cactuses and all.

It was a relaxing -- despite the long drives -- and enjoyable four days.  Sadly ended at the Tucson airport by an email received from my veterinarian.

My cat Loki -- discussed in a recent posting -- has been diagnosed with a colon tumor which almost certainly is untreatable.  I'm waiting for a call from the doctor to discuss further.

A reminder, I suppose, that for cats as well as humans, life is short and should be appreciated.  Carpe diem.  Hey, even the Seattle rain in your face can be enjoyable if you want it to be!

Undecennial

Today, of course, is the eleventh anniversary of the first publication of this blog.

When I published my first entry in 2007, I announced to a nonexistent readership that I had finally managed to format my blog in a way that felt esthetically pleasing.  But I also admitted that I really had no idea what I would be writing about.  Blogs were still in their relative infancy.

But chatting with strangers in chatrooms had grown boring. MySpace -- which I sometimes looked in on but never joined -- was a mess and  moribund. And while I knew that Facebook existed, it was an entity whose nature and uses weren't yet quite clear to me.

But I had read about blogs.  And I knew how to write essays.  And a young guy with whom I'd chatted had just started up his own blog, right here on Blogger.  So I decided to give it a try.  And the rest is history.  Last month, I achieved something -- I say "achieved" after groping for a more accurate word -- that I never expected to achieve back in 2007.  I posted my one thousandth post. 

That's a lot of essays, even conceding a variation in quality.

Since 2007, quality has improved in my estimation, and quantity -- after a bit of a slump -- has rebounded.  I wrote 108 posts in 2017, just one post off my record from 2008, when excitement over the Obama-Hillary primaries and the general election encouraged me to convert my fevered partisanship into frenzied essays.

Despite a lot of writing this past year, readership is -- as I've complained -- drastically down.  But since much of my "readership" back in the "Golden Age" of, say, 2012 and 2013 was, I suspect, robot-fueled, I probably haven't really lost all that many human readers.  In any event, during this past year, whatever the overall hard numbers, the statistics again show certain posts as having drawn a larger number of readers than others.

The winner is -- the envelope please -- my November post describing my travels in Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia.  Interest may have been piqued by my advance warning that I would be living for a week at the base of Agung volcano, a volcano that was expected to erupt momentarily.   (We're still waiting.)

Crowding it, however, and coming up fast is my September review ("Sailing to Ithaca")  of a memoir by Daniel Mendelsohn, in which he describes what it was like to teach a seminar on Homer's Odyssey to college freshman, while his elderly and irascible father sat at the seminar table throwing in his own querulous two bits. 

Other posts with better than average readership were my remarks on a visit to Manhattan last March; a discussion of a classic British book for kids about lake sailing in the Lake District; memories of my childhood stamp collection; a remembrance of a two-week bike trip my brother and I took as teens; a discussion of  teenage bullying; reflections on why studying Latin is worthwhile; and -- more recently but already showing impressive popularity -- my discussion of Ingmar Bergman's 1960 film based on a medieval ballad, The Virgin Spring.  (Some readers may have found my discussion of seven of the nine Bergman movies I saw this winter tedious and boring.  But they serve one purpose of this blog -- to help me myself to remember certain experiences and how I reacted to them at the time.)

As always, the year brought forth a lot of book and movie reviews, some expressions of amazement at scientific developments, some memories of childhood joys and pains, plus descriptions of my travels and/or hikes wherever possible and appropriate.

Surprisingly reduced output on politics.  If I were blogging in Nero's time, I would similarly have been unable to adequately capture the emperor's antics in writing, and I would have been depressed past measure to watch my homeland, the Roman Empire, sinking into the mire because of malfeasance at the top and apathy below.

But enough of that.  Onward into my twelfth year of blogging.
---------------
(Posted from El Paso, Texas)

Persona

"Today I feel that in Persona — and later in Cries and Whispers — I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover."
--Ingmar Bergman

The Seattle Art Museum's Bergman series ended with a bang last night -- Persona (1966), claimed to be one of the greatest movies ever filmed, and -- after Citizen Kane -- the film having received the most critical analysis.   The organizer of SAM's film series reminded us that we had seen only nine of Bergman's 45 or so films; another series is planned for next winter.

I'm at a loss as how to analyze this film, or even how to describe its confusing plot.  Or, most basically, what it all means.   I'll just describe some of the impressions that watching it made on me.

The movie begins with a surreal series of bizarre images flashed on the screen, accompanied by screeching, atonal music.  This prologue alone is enough to unnerve the viewer.  The opening credits play over a portion of this prologue.

Next we see a young adolescent boy -- played by the same Jörgen Lindström who played the boy in last week's The Silence, but by now three years older.  He wakes up in a bed (or is it a slab in a morgue?), tosses around, and ultimately discovers a large unfocused screen with a woman's face on it, a woman who turns out to be his mother.  He runs his hands over the screen, attempting to feel, to caress the face.

Then the primary narrative begins, with a doctor explaining to a nurse (Alma, played by Bergman favorite Bibi Andersson) that she has been chosen to help care for a patient (Elisabet, played by Liv Ullmann). Elisabet is a famous actress who stopped in the middle of a performance, and now refuses to speak.  Tests show that she is both physically and mentally normal; she simply prefers to remain silent.

Alma and Elisabet retire to the doctor's country house on Faro island, and become close companions.  Alma talks, Elisabet listens.  Alma -- in a particularly intense scene -- tells of a beach orgy she and a woman friend had with two very young teenage boys, an experience which gave her great pleasure and left her with strong feelings of shame and guilt.  Liv Ullmanm-- who, having no lines, was free to interpret her part as it occurred to her -- reacts with a highly expressive face showing a play of a number of emotions, most of them ambiguous.

Eventually, Alma seems to lose track of who she is -- which part she's playing -- her role as a nurse, or Elisabet herself.  She somehow perceives experiences from Elisabet's past that Elisabet has not described to her.  She knows that Elisabet has a son -- the boy we saw at the outset -- whom she had tried to abort and whom she has hated and found disgusting ever since his birth.  A son who, oddly, loves his mother with an intensity that she also hates.

Because of a letter by Elisabet that Alma has read, Alma feels that her confidences have been betrayed; her newly arounsed hatred for Elisabet now overlays her simultaneously intense love for her. She feels that she and Elisabet are two aspects of the same person.  The actresses have said that they had agreed to play their parts as though they were, in fact, two sides of the same personality and that the personality of which they were two sides was that of Bergman himself. 

The intense relationship between the two women apparently causes Alma to panic, and she walks away from her employment. As she leaves the beach house, we see a film crew -- apparently Bergman's film crew -- filming her departure.

Bergman, characteristically, has refused to interpret the film, preferring that each viewer find in it what he will.

The film ends with the boy once more watching the screen, once more reaching for his absent mother.

Everything one says about Persona may be contradicted; the opposite will also be true.

--Peter Cowie, film historian.

And, I suppose, that is one aspect of one sort of  "great film."

Cat mortality

Loki, one year ago

Many years ago, a co-worker showed me around his house.  He was sharing his house with two or three attractive cats.   As I admired them, he reminded me that, among their many talents, cats teach us the meaning of mortality.

Since then, I've had three cats of my own "pass away."  One was 19 and died of kidney failure.  One was 16 and simply disappeared within a week or so of being diagnosed with a tumor.  The third died at the age of 7 under mysterious circumstances -- possibly internal injuries from being hit by an automobile.  By now, I should be learning that cats, while having nine lives, do run through them rather quickly.

At present, I have two cats, both 13, both adopted in infancy.  One still seems robustly healthy.  The other, not so much.

Loki is a black, medium-haired cat who weighed about 14 pounds when he reached his full growth.  Because of the fluffiness of his fur, he always felt lighter than expected when picked up.  Loki has always been the adventurer, the social animal, the cat who would see me coming from several houses away and dash at me like a dog.  His brother, a few months older, has always been the shy, retiring sort -- the guy who disappeared upstairs when a stranger came in the door.

Both cats gradually lost weight as they aged.  A common phenomenon, although my other cats had tended toward increased obesity.  But muscles of lazy house cats atrophy and lose weight, even as they do with us humans, and the appetites of these two cats became less hearty with less exercise.

But by January, Loki's weight had dropped under 12 pounds, and I took  him to the veterinarian.  The vet ran some tests on him (all normal), gave him an appetite enhancing drug, and gave me a supply of antibiotics to force down his gullet (because of suspicions that his gut was harboring a parasite).  This approach seemed to work.  He didn't gain much weight, but he stopped losing it.

Then a week or so ago, I discovered that his weight had dropped below 11 pounds.  This week, he has been tired and apathetic, but with intervals of energy.  I weighed him today, and he was down to 9.6 pounds.  I called the vet.

The veterinarian made room for an appointment tomorrow, an "evaluation of quality of life" appointment.  This is the euphemism for an evaluation of whether to euthanize the animal.  I take hope in the fact that, at this point, the vet knows nothing about Loki's health other than the weight loss.  But I'm emotionally preparing for the worst.

Those of you who don't live with a pet, or whose pet is on the periphery of your daily life, won't grasp how emotionally taxing the decision to end a cat's life can be.  I'm hoping for the best.  I'm going to be out of town Sunday through Wednesday, and I'm hoping that Loki can be pepped up well enough to survive my absence in good health. 

Thirteen is only 64 in cat years.  The Beatles may have sung about "when I'm 64," as though it represented old age.  In today's world, it does not.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Like a bridge over friendly waters

Bike lane, looking east,
with rest stop

Walking across the lake is kind of a kick, even if you have to use a bridge to do it.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the near-completion of the new State Route 520 bridge across Lake Washington, a bridge replacing the prior floating bridge constructed over a half century earlier.  Much of the bridge hadn't yet been opened to traffic -- the new and the old bridges ran side, with traffic moving from one to the other at one point.  Nevertheless, the Department of Transportation had thrown a gala celebration of the bridge's near-completion, and invited the public to walk across.

Which we did, in large numbers. 

The new bridge has been fully functional for some time, now -- and the old bridge removed -- but the bike lane opened only recently.  Today was our warmest day of the year so far, and I decided that now was the time to give it a  try -- not by bicycle, but by foot.  I'm pleased to report that the walk is scenic and fun.

On the west end of the bridge, the lane begins at 24th Avenue N.E., a few yards from the site once occupied by the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) -- torn down to make way for the widening of SR 520 but with the museum relocated in splendid facilities at the southern end of Lake Union.  The bike lane -- separated from vehicular traffic, and as wide as a traffic lane -- continues alongside the length of lengthy Foster Island (I never realized how long and narrow the island was when hiking it), and then into open waters and across Lake Washington.  I'm not sure where the bike lane qua bike lane actually ends on the east side, but I stopped at a nicely landscaped lid over the SR520 freeway, just west of the cameras that scan your car for toll collection purposes.

Mt. Rainier and Lake Washington
from bridge

The bike lane has a number of rest stops with benches and informative displays describing the history and geology of the area, as well as the engineering of the new bridge.  I would say that three-fourths, at least, of the bike lane users were actually riding bikes -- often quite fast.  Hikers like me were a minority, even when you include runners.  But there's plenty of room for all.

From start to the landscaped lid was about 2.6 miles, according to my phone's pedometer.  That made it a 5.2 round trip, with another 1.6 miles getting to the trail from my house and back again.  If you do the hike from west to east, as I did, I'm happy to let you in on a secret -- if you're exhausted after reaching your eastside destination, there's an elevator from the landscaped lid down to transit lanes on SR520, where you can quickly catch a bus back to Seattle.

But not for me.  Not today.  Sun was bright, the air was warm, and the walking was good.