"Nuance" is not a dirty word

The University of Chicago has one of the best law schools in the nation. For 12 years, Barack Obama was a part-time lecturer at Chicago, while at the same time also working for a law firm and serving in the Illinois legislature. When he lost his first try for Congress, Chicago offered him a position as a full time, tenured law professor. He turned it down, and two years later successfully ran for the U.S. Senate.

In today's New York Times, Jodi Kantor writes a fascinating account of the impact that Obama had on students while teaching at Chicago. Obama's students remember his even-handedness in discussing complex racial and other issues, his skill at forcing students to discover both sides of each issue, his ability to demonstrate:

that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.

His former students lament today that his talk on the campaign trail presents complex issues so simplistically, when they know the level of complexity of which his mind is capable and which comes most naturally to him.

That's politics, of course.

But wouldn't it be nice to have a president with a mind even capable of a complex thought or two? For a change?

O Canada!

"Why don't you just move to Canada?" When directed at me, this isn't usually a casual question, but a sneering dismissal of my political opinions. "Why don't you go live in Siberia and see how you'd like that?" is the general thrust.

I've just returned from a weekend in Vancouver, visiting Pascal and his girlfriend Ali. (Pascal will be remembered as the friend who studied for a term in Melbourne, and now attends the University of British Columbia.) What a fantastic city! Vancouver is only a 2 ½ hour drive from Seattle. It seems ridiculous that I travel there so seldom.

As soon as I arrived, we headed downtown to see a matinée performance of Spamalot, the musical, Tony-winning spin-off from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was "performed," if that's the right word, by a North American touring company of the Broadway show in the beautiful Center for the Performing Arts. The show is as impossible to describe as was the much different film itself. Does "zany" do it justice? Probably not. If you like that sort of thing, which I confess I do, it was very, very funny. If you're a Monty Python "purist" -- a concept that's a bit hard for me to put my mind around -- you might be disappointed. I wasn't.

Saturday evening, we walked out into a park overlooking English Bay, ran into some of Pascal's friends, and watched a massive fireworks display coordinated with recorded music broadcast over a local station. Vancouver annually puts on this "Celebration of Light," with different countries sponsoring displays on different nights. Saturday's show was sponsored by the United States, and began with the Star Spangled Banner. Other nights, this year, are being sponsored by Canada and China. The park was crammed with crowds who gathered on blankets, hours before the show, eating picnics, playing games -- we had our own game of hearts going, plus a serious competition to see how many rocks could be piled one on top of another to make a tower -- and generally relaxing and socializing.

Vancouver is one of the great Meccas for bicyclists, and Sunday we spent most of the day biking. False Creek is a river-like inlet from the Strait of Georgia, lined along its entire shore, north and south, with well designed promenades and bike trails. We visited a farmer's market on Granville Island on the south shore that, I have to admit, dwarfs our much more famous Pike's Place Market in Seattle, both in size and in the variety of produce, fish and meats. Both shores of the inlet are built up with rather upscale cafés, restaurants, bars, shops, museums, exhibition halls, playgrounds and parks. No matter where you are, there is always something interesting to see and do. All these attractions are connected not only by bike trails and the promenade, but also by a system of tiny pedestrian ferries that continually dart in and out of stations along both shores.

After we completed our circle of False Creek, including an hour or so touring the tiny Granville Island Brewery -- where we devoted far more time to sampling their various microbrews than to actually touring the facilities -- we biked on to Stanley Park. The park is one of the great urban green spaces in the world, one thousand acres of virgin forest on a peninsula that juts out from the downtown. We did the 5.5 mile bicycle loop around the circumference of the park, with forest on our left and fantastic water views on our right throughout the entire ride. As we circled the park, our views varied from the downtown skyscrapers to the east; to the mountains and buildings of North Vancouver across Burrard Inlet to the north; to the apparently limitless Strait of Georgia on the west (Vancouver Island lying out of sight beyond the horizon). The day was warm and sunny. The views spectacular.

Why don't I move to Canada? Don't tempt me! It's not Siberia.

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Illustrations, from top to bottom: 1. Provincial flag of British Columbia. 2. Spamalot poster. 3. Celebration of Light fireworks. 4. False Creek mini-ferry. 5. Bottle of Granville Brewery Hefeweissen beer against Granville Island Market street scene. 5. Biking around Stanley Park, with Strait of Georgia in background. 6. Aerial view of downtown Vancouver, facing southeast (a bit of Stanley Park in lower left corner, and False Creek near right edge).

A rough day in Milwaukee

Your boss yells at you. At lunch, the waitress spills coffee on you. You head home in the heat, and the freeway traffic slows from a crawl to a stop. You finally reach the house. Your wife nags you, your teenager rolls his eyes when you ask him to turn down his so-called music. You escape to the backyard to mow the lawn that you've put off mowing for two weeks.

You fill the tank, you choke the engine, you yank the cord. You yank it again. And again. You flood the engine. You starve the engine. You do everything you can think of. The mower won't start. No way. What's a guy to do?

A gentleman in Milwaukee did what most of us would like to do. He pulled out his sawed off shotgun and blew the mechanical guts out of his @&%#$ lawnmower. As he told the police, "I can do that, it's my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want."

The cops disagreed.

Joe Sixpack faces a maximum fine of $11,000, and 6 1/4 years in prison. Possession of a sawed off shotgun, even in your own yard, is a felony it seems. Also frowned on is disorderly conduct while armed.

I'm hoping to hear the howls of righteous anger from the NRA. Where now is our Second Amendment right to bear arms? Surely if a guy can carry concealed weapons in national parks, as the NRA now argues, he can possess an unconcealed shotgun on his own property? His own land? His own private domain?? His sacred castle, where the common law declares him to be the King?

And what kind of country are we now, if a man can't shoot his own lawnmower when it refuses to mow? You're telling me that giving an inanimate object a little well-deserved discipline is "disorderly conduct"? What next? A man can't put down his own miserable hound when it won't hunt? He can't beat some common sense into his own ornery kids? He can't "explain" to his wife, in terms she'll understand, that she'd best listen up good, because he's only going to say it once? "Wives, be subject to your husbands," that's what the Good Book says. It does, read it. It surely does.

Anytime I've got to choose between my God-given Second Amendment rights, rights our founding fathers died for, and the right of a lawnmower to sit there, silent and unmolested, after being asked politely several times to do the one single thing it was bought for -- well, I'll take the U.S. Constitution, thank you very much.

When our gun rights are mowed down, only mowers will have guns. You think about that, ok? Ok. 'Nuff said.

Who knifed The Subtle Knife?

I've recently been re-reading The Subtle Knife, the second volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and the sequel to The Golden Compass.

What an amazing and imaginative piece of fantasy literature! Pullman's ability to dream up alternative worlds, and then describe them to us so convincingly as to make them seem real, is apparently boundless. But beyond inventiveness, which he shares with many other fine fantasy writers, his work displays a strong intellect, well versed in history, science, theology and literature. Most importantly, he is a writer of great skill who uses his command of language to arouse emotions of wonder, joy, horror, and deep sorrow in his readers.

He cannot be compared to J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter books are children's books, although certainly books that many adults enjoy as well. Pullman's trilogy, although child-oriented, more closely bridges the gap between children's and adult fantasy literature.

I was favorably impressed with last fall's movie of The Golden Compass, while also agreeing with fans who lamented its shortcomings. I did feel that its producers probably respected the book as well as could be expected, considering commercial considerations and time constraints. The movie ended, clearly, in anticipation of the sequel. New Line Cinema (now absorbed by Warner Bros.) had contracted with Hossein Amini to prepare the screenplay, and release was planned for 2009.

But American box office receipts did not meet expectations (although international receipts were very good). As a result, filming of The Subtle Knife appears dead.

The studio reportedly refuses to discuss its future plans for the trilogy, if any. Chris Weitz, the director of The Golden Compass, prefers not to discuss the matter so long as the studio is refusing comment.

In a couple of interviews with British newspapers this week, Pullman states that religious boycotts in the United States by Christian groups apparently hurt the film at the box office. He lamented this religious reaction, in an interview with the Telegraph:

"When religion gets its hands on the levers of power - whether to go to war, hold people prisoner or decide what they can or can't do - that is when it is dangerous.

"I find it very hard to understand how anyone can disagree with that.

"In the world we live in, both Catholics and Protestants have wielded that power to the detriment of very many people."

Although he was "hopeful" that the film ultimately would be made, he had no knowledge of any such plans by the studio at present. He noted that the child actors from the first movie were growing up, and that it would soon be difficult to make a sequel using the same cast.

As a Christian myself, I find this all very sad. Christianity should fire the believer's imagination with the infinite possibilities of the Universe. Christianity bridges the apparent chasm between our tiny lives and the creator of the billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, that we see swirling about us. Christianity is not a formula for cutting that creator -- or that creation -- down to comfortable dimensions that we can easily comprehend.

As Christians, therefore, we need to be humble. Simple intellectual humility should force us to ponder any work of human imagination, asking ourselves whether the author may have hit upon some grain of truth worth considering, some accurate glimpse into the nature of ultimate reality or the convolutions of human behavior.

The story of Galileo should remind us of what can happen when we lack the necessary intellectual humility.

I hope Warner Bros., or somebody, will eventually film The Subtle Knife. Meanwhile, the book is there -- on your bookshelf or in bookstores -- for the reading or re-reading.

Let's build an Elevator to the Stars

Let's build a stairway to the stars
A lovely lovely stairway to the stars
It would be heaven
To climb to heaven with you.
--Lyrics by Mitchell Parish (1939)

For me, I suppose the dream began in childhood. My mother read to me about the Ladder of Rickety Rungs, a surreal bridge that led from the top of the Mountain of Glimp, across space, and onto the surface of the Moon.

Later, as a more analytical teenager, a similar thought occurred to me: Why not tie a cable between the earth and the moon? Why bother with expensive multi-stage rockets, escape velocities, orbits, trajectories, retro-rockets, soft landings? Once the cable was in place, some means could be developed for creeping or climbing up the cable and ending up on the moon's surface.

The only real problem that occurred to my fevered brain -- as I walked dreamily to school each day -- was the fact that the moon was orbiting the earth and, even more problematically, the earth was spinning on its own axis. The cable couldn't just be hooked on to a hitching post somewhere in Wyoming. But if some sort of track could be built circling the earth -- around the equator, say -- the cable could be connected to something that rolled along the track at about 1,000 mph, as the earth revolved beneath it. If that "something" included a a generator, it could even produce power as it made its daily rounds. Pretty impressive, I thought, to live near that track and watch that puppy shoot by each day, right on astronomical schedule.

I foresaw other practical problems to be overcome, of course, such as the weight of the 250,000 mile-long cable and the varying distance between earth and moon, but these were mere engineering details, best left to the hack engineers. I was more a Big Concept sort of thinker.

It turns out that others have had similar dreams, as a first-page story in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reveals. In fact, there is an organization called the Spaceward Foundation dedicated to constructing an elevator between earth and an orbiting space station, riding along a fixed cable. And NASA has donated $2 million in prize money to the "Space Elevator Games," being held this week in Arizona, which are devoted to overcoming challenges presented by the concept.

By anchoring the cable to a geosynchronous satellite -- one in an orbit that keeps it positioned over a fixed point on earth -- the Space Elevator concept avoids the need for my somewhat impractical rail around the earth. The two primary problems that contestants are tackling are the development of a sufficiently strong cable and a means of providing power to the elevator as it ascends thousands of miles to the space station.

The most promising development in cable technology has been the development of a carbon "nanotube," composed exclusively of carbon molecules arranged in a cylinder. According to the P-I article, such nanotubes have "stunning strength and flexibility." With respect to power for the elevator, the elevator obviously could not drag along an electrical cord some 22,240 miles into space (the distance of a geosynchronous orbit). Instead, laser techniques are being developed that could transmit power through space, from the ground to the elevator.

Ok, I know, it all sounds weird and crazy. But once we stop dreaming, once we become afraid of sounding nuts, we stop living. I, for one, love the idea. I love the fact that NASA is taking it more or less seriously. I love the fact that, even as we speak, a huge number of Space Elevator fans are blogging on the subject. One of them has even composed a song:

we’ve no need for escape velocity
we’re free
with every mile higher we lose
the weight of gravity
climb the tether together
heading for the counterweight
up the carbon nanotube
spiderweb into space.

Maybe I'll never live to climb to the moon on a ladder of rickety rungs. But I'll happily take an Elevator into Space.

Riding the rails

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewitchment; railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed and never upsetting your drink.

--Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

So begins Theroux's popular account in 1975 of his great circular adventure, his travels on a series of trains, from London, across Europe, the Middle East, India, and through Southeast Asia; and his ultimate return westbound across the vast expanse of the old Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express. As with any good travel writer, Theroux studies not only the people and places he encounters, but how they affect his own consciousness and attitudes. He evokes brilliantly the weirdness, the humor, and the pathos of the lives he encounters, lives of both locals and fellow travelers; he also candidly describes his own occasional loneliness and boredom. Passive travel, sitting, hour after hour, watching the sights appear and pass before his window, induces a state of near hypnosis, a sense of altered reality, even of hallucination.

I didn't grow up listening to the Boston & Maine Railway, but next month I will go by rail to Boston and Maine, to attend Doug's wedding. While riding the rails on Amtrak may lack some of the glamor, as well as the third-world complexities, of train travel across India, say, or down the Malayan peninsula, I do expect it to offer some of the same rewards and challenges.

I leave Seattle on a Sunday at 4:45 p.m., and arrive -- if, as seems unlikely, the trains run on time -- in Boston at 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday. That's over three straight days of rail travel, aside from a scheduled six-hour break in Chicago on Tuesday, at which time I part company with the Empire Builder and climb aboard the Lake Shore Limited.

This long, slow procession across the continent, from one ocean to the other, fills me with excitement, dismay, and anticipation. I study the timetables with minute attention, marveling that I will actually stop, at least for a moment, in such forlorn -- or at least obscure --towns, towns that to me seem to sit smack dab in the middle of nowhere: Whitefish MT, Wolf Point MT, Stanley ND, Fargo ND (unforgettable movie images!), Red Wing MN (Garrison Keillor's summer base), Tomah WI, South Bend IN (ok, football legends), Sandusky OH, Erie PA, Schenectady NY, Framingham MA.

The strange and beautiful place names of the American continent, names of places that exist only at the margins of my consciousness -- in "fly-over states," as we coastal residents so lightly dismiss them -- and yet towns and counties that must seem entirely normal and common place to the people who proudly call them "home." In their eyes, it is I who'll be the strange one, the blank face in a train window, the stranger frowning with puzzlement at a world that is so deeply American and yet that seems so foreign to my own experience -- staring out as the train stops but for a minute, and then continues onward, rushing swiftly out of sight.

I'll stare, I'll observe, I'll attempt to understand, while absorbing only the vaguest image of each train stop, whether small town or substantial city. One by one, I'll mentally scratch them off my list of places I've never yet visited, looking ahead in the timetable to see what's next.

More later on this transcontinental pilgrimage.

Decapitation and other nonsense

"Victorian," to our modern minds, suggests "stuffy" and "repressed." But the Victorians were remarkable for their nostalgic love and idealization of childhood and their interest in children's literature, including fairy tales.

Even the popular entertainments enjoyed by Victorian adults seem, by our standards, almost childlike, as well -- and at times even nonsensical and silly. But much of it could be appreciated on a dual level -- as aimed at both children and adults. Think of the Alice in Wonderland books in the 1860's, and of Peter Pan in 1904, just at the end of the era: "If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!" Even the plays of Oscar Wilde, in the 1880's and 90's, bear a childlike, other-worldly quality, as the writer relies on witty word-play and bizarre coincidences to the almost total exclusion of any serious plot development and characterization.

The light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, most of them also written in the 1880's and 90's, also show us how the Victorians could approach adult concerns through flights of fantasy and displays of silly, childlike whimsy. Unlike more serious literary satire, however, the silliness in these operettas overwhelms the problems being satirized, leaving us entertained, happy and amused, rather than disturbed.

The downside of Gilbert and Sullivan mania -- as an expression of the English character and attitude to life generally -- is that it can make large sections of the populace who ought to think a bit harder snigger instead.

--A.N. Wilson, The Victorians

None of that makes the G&S light operas any less appealing to us today. We can enjoy the music, the satire and the humorous nonsense without feeling guilty about ignoring problems that British society may have faced over a century ago.

Last night, Pat and I attended the opening performance of The Mikado, the most popular and well known of the G&S operettas, and this year's annual production by the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society. Last night was also "children's night," and there were a large number of children in the audience, all of them seemingly entranced by the show.

The Mikado is set in Titipu, a fantastic vision of a small Japanese village, "quite some time ago." The plot, as with most Gilbert and Sullivan plots, is contrived, absurd and highly amusing, satirizing the similarly absurd plots of Italian grand opera. Nanki-Pooh, the son of the Mikado, having escaped the matrimonial clutches of an elderly harridan in his father's court, has been wandering the countryside as a minstrel. On his last visit to Titipu, he fell in love with Yum-Yum, a yummy young village lass. He has eagerly returned, only to find that she has since been betrothed to her guardian, Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner of Titipu.

Ko-Ko, a skinny, Woody-Allen-esque figure and former tailor by profession, staggers about Titipu with a giant axe over his shoulder and a measuring tape around his neck. It seems that he's a felon awaiting death himself, but justice has been long delayed ever since the day the crafty villagers appointed him to his present exalted position, reasoning that before Ko-Ko could decapitate anyone in the future, he would first have to decapitate himself. As Ko-Ko notes, self-decapitation can be both awkward and dangerous.

This idyllic state of affairs -- from the villagers' point of view, as well as Ko-Ko's -- is rudely disturbed by word from the Mikado -- the Emperor of Japan -- that he is concerned by statistics revealing that there have been no executions in the village for too long a period of time. He demands an execution within one month. Much as Ko-Ko adores Yum-Yum, he adores his cervical integrity more. He agrees to consent to Nanki-Pooh's marriage to Yum-Yum, if Nanki-Pooh in turn agrees to be decapitated -- out of sequence, as it were -- at the end of one month.

Things can only get more complicated, especially after the Mikado arrives in the second act and discovers that his son, the heir to the throne, has allegedly lost his head. Needless to say, the show ends with no actual executions, with everyone happy (or, in Ko-Ko's case, at least appreciative of still being capitated), and with promising marriages neatly arranged.

As is customary, the actor playing Ko-Ko (John Brookes) re-wrote G&S's original list of persons ripe for execution, who "never would be missed; no they never would be missed," to cover topical references; Brookes's list included "that Senator from Idaho, discovered in the loo." The Mikado himself is played by Dave Ross, an annual favorite in the series and a local talk show host, as well as a former Democratic candidate for Congress. (Hey, we've got it all in Seattle!) A portion of the Overture was accompanied, somewhat unusually, by a ballet performed by local dance students. Charles Srisatayasunton, the lead male dancer, was especially notable for a very nice, rather sensual performance.

In fine Victorian style, we left the theater laughing, chattering, humming melodies -- with not a serious thought in our heads about capital punishment, women's rights in ancient Japan, the power of the monarchy and the aristocracy, or political and theological concerns in general. Gilbert and Sullivan would have been pleased. As middle-class Victorian society would have been, as well.

The Mikado will be performed in Seattle's Bagley Wright Theatre through July 26. It's well worth an evening.

Jesse at Davis

The detested, evil dragon of my student days was, of course, the hydra-headed University of California, my hatred reaching its peak each November during the Big Game against Berkeley. But one does grow up, one matures, and one finally comes to realize that the State of California has created probably the best public university system in the nation.

I once overheard a Cal undergrad telling a friend, while walking out of Berkeley's stadium in Strawberry Canyon, "We have a love-hate relationship with Stanford. But with USC, it's entirely a hate-hate relationship." And yeah, I guess that's how it looks from the Cardinal side as well. Mutual fear and loathing of USC, along with mutual academic (if not athletic) respect, does have a way of bonding old rivals together.

Cal and UCLA are the UC system's two representatives in the Pac-10, and everyone knows who they are. But the other eight schools are also highly selective, and also provide an excellent education. Jesse attends UC Davis, eleven miles west of Sacramento, a branch that consistenly rates as one of the best schools in the University of California system (and the eleventh best public university in the entire United States, according to U.S. News & World Reports). Average high school GPA for entering freshman is 3.94.

On Sunday, I visited Jesse for the first time at the off-campus Davis apartment that he shares with his two roommates. He took me on a grand tour of the campus by bicycle (in 97-degree weather), including a ride through and around the beautiful waterway and arboretum that bisect the campus. Biking is a mode of transportation for which the school has become nationally famous -- both the university and the city of Davis are served by an excellent system of bike trails. When you have a 5,500-acre campus -- over eight square miles -- from most of which motor traffic is barred, hoofing it is not always the most sensible way to get from one class to the next.

One reason the campus is so huge is its history as an agricultural college. Davis was selected as the site of the University of California's "University Farm" in 1908, and became the site of one branch of its College of Agriculture in 1922. (At that time, the University itself was still located exclusively in Berkeley.) One symbol of the school remains a water tower, bearing the school logo, that looms over the campus. The athletic teams are called the "Aggies," and UC Davis has long been known for having one of the only two schools of veterinary medicine on the West Coast.

Agriculture remains an important focus of the school -- with the cultivation of grapes and the making of wine of obvious importance to the economy of Northern California -- but the campus has been a general campus of the UC system ever since 1959, and offers studies in the humanities and sciences, engineering and nursing, and includes respected graduate schools of law, medicine, and business.

Jesse, I should note, has no academic interest in wine, irrigation, engineering or business adminstration. As proof that UC Davis has grown far beyond its more practical roots, he will graduate (probably after one more semester) in medieval history, an excellent major with absolutely no practical application, a major that he shares with his proud uncle. There are those of us who dream of seeing Jesse next move on to law school, but as always he will choose his own path, in his own way, and at his own time.

Meanwhile, together with 30,000 other students, he continues to thrive on a beautiful campus and to receive a fine education from the University of California.

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Photos: Top, the arboretum; middle, old postcard of early "University Farm" agricultural buildings; bottom, water tower.

A lot of dog food

I love dogs. I own two cats, and I firmly believe that cats are wiser, more sophisticated, and more capable of an adult friendship with humans than are dogs. But I do also love dogs. Unconditional love, and exuberant joy in your company, are hard traits to resist. Dogs are cool.

I've now established for the record that I have nothing against dogs.

Nevertheless, the late Leona Helmsley's will causes me concern. You remember Leona? The hotel owner? The "Queen of Mean"? She who became immortal for her line, "Only the little people pay taxes"? The diamond-dripping felon, who served time for income tax fraud?

She left $12 million to her dog Trouble. Well, why the hell not? When you leave an estate valued between $5 and $8 billion, you may as well leave a trifling $12 million to the only sentient being who ever felt any real affection for you. And anyway, the probate judge reduced that bequest to a more reasonable $2 million. After all, Trouble has been the subject of death threats. Two million dollars seems reasonable, considering that round-the-clock canine security measures alone have been costing $100,000 per year. Other expenses include the legal guardian's $60,000 fee, $8,000 for grooming, $3,000 for miscellaneous expenses, $1,200 for food and anywhere from $2,500 to $18,000 for medical care -- a total of $190,000 per year. (Incidentally, how much do you earn per year at your profession or vocation?)

No, Trouble's not my trouble. My trouble is with the rest of her estate, the billions that will be poured into her charitable trust. Now, a "charitable trust" sounds great, a somewhat redeeming development at the end of one's otherwise questionable life. The "mission statement" for the trust originally indicated that its assets were to be devoted to the care and welfare of indigent people.

In 2004, one year after the trust was established, Leona changed its goal to the care and welfare of dogs.

According to a New York Times column, the assets of the trust will be worth ten times the combined assets of all 7,381 existing charities devoted to animal welfare. Oh, yeah, to be a dog.

Compare Ms. Helmsley with our local boy-made-good, Bill Gates. Bill sometimes rubbed people the wrong way, while making Microsoft the dominant producer of computer operating systems. He's shown a tendency to appear arrogant and "entitled," just like Leona. But there's a difference, a big one. Bill Gates retired last week, at age 52 and at the height of his career, to personally manage his charitable foundation, valued in the billions of dollars. Since 2000, his foundation has given away $29 billion to fight global disease, AIDS, lack of educational opportunities, and other world problems that cry out for major funding. He has set an example that is increasingly being followed by wealthy donors around the world.

Leona, after 87 years of contempt for the "little people," could find nothing more imaginative to do with her money after her death, and after she could no longer spend it on herself, than to throw it to the dogs.

As I say, I love dogs. But our world houses six billion human souls, a very large percentage of whom live out their days in misery, starvation, sickness, and ignorance -- and leave their children with no higher hopes for their own futures. A little sense of proportion is necessary.

Sometimes the way a person disposes of his estate changes our entire perception of his life. A seeming misanthrope leaves all of his money to his old high school. An old man apparently living in poverty leaves a million, hidden under his mattress, to provide scholarships for needy children. But Leona Helmsley's will and trust do nothing to change our perception of her.

It would take a lot more than $8 billion to persuade me to live her life.
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Photo: Jennifer Graylock/Associated Press

Strangers in Strange Lands

Gypsies. The word has a romantic ring to most of us. Wanderers. Folks traveling lightly, below the radar of whatever society surrounds them. Many an American RV and pleasure boat has the word "Gypsy" plastered on its side. Gypsy Biker. Sensual music and hot tempers: Think of the gypsy woman in Il Trovatore who throws a baby into a bonfire, and Carmen's passionate, dancing cigarette-girl.

Beyond these romantic images, we don't think much about gypsies in the U.S., although an estimated one million gypsies live in this country. But, as an article in this week's issue of The Economist discusses, gypsies are a serious problem in most of Europe, where similarities to our own racial discrimination against blacks are obvious.

Gypsies, or Roma, originated in Rajastan, in India, a thousand years ago. Their language (now broken into many dialects) is based on Sanskrit. (They were called "gypsies" in English, because of a mistaken belief that they came from Egypt.) They are concentrated most heavily in eastern Europe -- over ten percent of the populations of Romania and Macedonia are gypsy. They have been nomadic throughout history, although most now live in settled camps. Historically, they have had a reputation for theft and various scams on the non-gypsy population, but in today's world they often specialize as collectors, sorters, and sellers of scrap for recycling.

Gypsies today are survivors of Hitler's holocaust, which targeted gypsies along with Jews.

For the most part, gypsies are impoverished and very poorly educated, a permanent and self-perpetuating underclass. Because their racial characteristics usually aren't so distinct as to separate them from other European ethnic groups, those gypsies who do succeed in entering the middle class tend to stop identifying themselves as gypsies. They "pass as white," so to speak. While understandable, this abandonment of their origins obviously prevents these more ambitious -- or less clan-loyal -- gypsies from serving as role models for the ones left behind.

The writer in The Economist points out that gypsies are feared and shunned by middle class Europeans. (I once knew a boy whose family came from Hungary -- he would humorously shudder whenever the word "gypsy" was mentioned.) Europeans pull their kids out of schools where gypsies are admitted, an analogy to "white flight" in America. Gypsies are family and clan oriented, moreover, and have no aspiration, in general, to assimilate into the culture of their host countries.

The lack of education -- or, at least, of the kind of education that is required to flourish in modern Western society -- is a key to their poverty and to their segregation. The Economist suggests that some form of affirmative action, similar to that used by American schools -- until the recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting its use -- may be the best long-term solution to the gypsies' ills. Unfortunately for that approach, although most gypsies would love a higher standard of living, they are not willing to sacrifice their own separate culture to attain it.

The Economist article ended with little optimism that a solution to the "gypsy problem" would be found in the near future. Their plight is a plight shared by hundreds of other less well known ethnic minorities outside of Europe. Being "different" in even the most open societies, including those of modern Europe, is rarely easy.

Two wheels good, four wheels bad

"It's SUMMER! Can't we go outside?"

Don't you love lists? It seems to be an American obsession.

For example -- I read today that Seattle is the sixth most bike-friendly city in North America. Forbes Magazine says so. Good news, with gas costing $4.45 per gallon. Surrounded by six billion people, all trying to burn up oil as fast as possible, oil that took millions of years to accumulate.

And which city comes in first, according to Forbes? Our friendly rival down I-5, Portland, Oregon. (Sandwiched between the two of us are Boulder, CO; San Diego; Montréal; and Davis, CA.)

So, what's so great about Portland? Free bikes for hotel guests, for one, Forbes notes. Converting auto parking spaces into bike "corrals." The good fortune of having a dense, non-sprawling city that's easy to bike, and the good foresight to have created a system of bike trails.

The first American city to receive a Platinum Bike Rating from the League of American Bicyclists, this metropolis of 500,000 remains by consensus #1 among North America's bike friendly cities. Portland is not resting on its two-wheeled laurels however, having recently initiated a Pilot "Green Box" program that directs cars away from bikers at busy intersections. Visitors will find 164 miles of bike lanes, 66 miles of bike paths, 30 miles of bike boulevards and great access to mountain bike trails.

A Seattle bike shop owner claims that Portland is ten years ahead of the rest of the country in its encouragement of bicycling. But Seattle also has an excellent trail system of its own. The Burke-Gilman trail can be accessed just a few blocks from my house, and runs 18 miles out into the suburbs. Eventually, it will join other trails to form a 55-mile loop circling Lake Washington.

Biking is "green" transportation, but it's also recreation.

Jim B. (whom I introduced in my last post) has challenged me to ride in the "Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa" (RAGBRAI), perhaps next summer. Across Iowa?!! Four hundred seventy-one miles of corn stalks waving in the breeze for scenery? He's got to be kidding! At least it would be flat, I think to myself. Isn't Iowa flat? Uh oh! According to the sponsors, riders will ascend a total of 22,500 feet during the course of the race. That's like biking up Aconcagua in the Andes! Of course, that means coasting down 22,500 feet as well. And then there's the temperature. Iowa in July? Doesn't it tend to be a bit ... warm?

But the idea's tempting, in its madness. I'd have to train, of course. Ride my bike a lot. Where is my bike, by the way? You mean, like, right now? Um, it's sitting quietly in the basement, where it spent the winter. And why, you may ask? "It's too cold out," I whine. "It might rain. It's awfully breezy." What a revolting specimen of an outdoorsman I prove to be! It's humbling to read that the sturdy citizens of No. 9 Minneapolis routinely bike to work in the winter. The Minnesota winter!

Ok, I'll dust my little friend off this weekend, fill his tires up (I see they've gone flat) and oil his chain, haul him upstairs, and take him out for a spin. So what if it never warms up all summer? I don't need no stinking summer. I'm part Norwegian, right? I've got family roots in Minnesota. We Norsemen laugh at the weather. We bikers laugh at the fat scowling motorists.

Just me and my bike! The open trail!

"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ..."

"If only I could spend a year in Paris," you sometimes think. "I should have found a cheap apartment in Manhattan, right after college graduation," I've often told myself. Or, the ever popular: "A week at the beach just isn't enough!"

Sometimes, however, the most intense experiences are those compressed into an extremely short period of time. It's over before you know it, but you are left with memories that remain vivid for years to come.

Jim B., a good friend I hadn't seen for years who teaches at Purdue, is spending two weeks in Ashland, Oregon, studying how to fashion and weld titanium tubing into bicycle frames. Only an idiot would drive eight hours from Seattle to Ashland on a Friday, and drive eight hours back on Sunday, leaving only Saturday for a visit. So you might think. Idiocy is a vice, however, to which I cheerfully confess.

First of all, the drive itself, while long and tiring, was beautiful. I left behind Seattle's recent climate (see prior post). South of Portland, the weather changed to warm, sunny, delightful. The Willamette valley is green, agricultural, full of orchards. The last part of the drive climbed over a series of low mountain passes, craggy and forested. By the time I arrived in Ashland, Friday evening, I was tired but happy, and ready for a beer. And Ashland was ready for me. A string of cafés line tiny Ashland Creek, which runs through the middle of town, each equipped with outdoor tables, giving off southern European vibes of dolce vita. I downed a local ale from Oregon's own Deschutes Brewery

Ashland is known for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Several plays, not all Elizabethan, are showing at any given time in Ashland's Lithia Park. As a result, the town is packed with tourists of a literary bent, as well as with many young people, some attending the local college, and with members of what appears to be a final redoubt of the hippie culture. Everyone -- locals and visitors alike -- appears happy and laid back, in full enjoyment of a town that's blessedly far removed from foreign wars, terrorist threats, and the grosser forms of Washington political infighting. Everyone tactfully and tacitly assumes that you have the good taste to support Obama, unless you care to insist otherwise

We had tickets to A Midsummer's Night Dream, for Saturday night. We spent all day Saturday warming up for the experience by setting out on a nine-mile hike to and from Wagner's Butte, a high crag overlooking the Rogue River Valley and the towns of Medford and Ashland. The climb was exhilarating -- initially through thick fir and pine forests, and then breaking out into open gorse and wildflowers. From the butte, Ashland appears as one small outpost of civilization, nestled in a vast sea of mountains and forests.

The performance that night was entertaining -- true to Shakespeare's text, but, according to the program, set in the mid-1950's. The play, which Shakepeare had placed in ancient Greece, opened on a pimped-out set with Theseus and his lover Hippolyta, lounging on what appeared to be a pair of gigantic white leather thrones, and hectoring each other in urban street accents. Oberon, the king of the fairies, was attended at all times by his quartet of fairy attendants, young men clad in leather shorts who sang and danced their lines in the manner of disco entertainers in a rather louche gay bar. The audience frequently interrupted with laughter and applause, which is certainly more than the usual high school production can hope for.

Nevertheless, the humor of the settings and costumes and of the actors' accents were superficial pleasures. The story and the lines of Shakespeare's play were easily transplanted from ancient Athens to 1957 (or was it 1977?) Brooklyn without damage. Their appeal is universal, regardless of how they are packaged.

I was on my way home before I knew it, but I'd had a great hike, enjoyed a wonderful interpretation of Shakespeare, and had an opportunity to catch up with recent events in the life of a friend.

Also, I learned that Linn County, Oregon, is the "Grass Seed Capital of the World," and that, as we were informed by the teenager who pumped our gas (self-service gas pumps being illegal in Oregon), the Ashland area grows the best pears outside France. As they say, travel is broadening.

Even when it's over in a flash.

Bipolar disorder

Cold, cloudy, and wet! Cold, cloudy, and wet!

Faithful readers -- whose numbers I trust are legion -- will of course recall my mantra of lament back on April 6. "Silly old Rainier96," I heard you all laugh. "Of course it's cold, cloudy and wet. The doofus insists on living in Seattle!" I crawled back under my blanket of moss, with a damp scowl on my face.

Yeah, well. Two months later. Ten days shy of the summer solstice. It's still cold, cloudy and wet. And you know what, faithful readers? According to official statistics(!!!) -- official, ok? -- this June, to date, has been the coldest June in all of Seattle's recorded history. Recorded history, from a weatherman's perspective, being history that dates back to 1891, a sizable hunk of time ago.

Meanwhile -- and my mouth fills with bitter bile and gall -- Fairbanks (Fairbanks freaking Alaska, mind you!!) basked in the 70's for six of the first ten days of the month. While we Washingtonians, thousands of miles to the south, splashed around miserably, our hands and feet numb, from cold dripping day to cold dripping day.

So, what's going on, people? What would Al Gore come up with to explain this anomaly? Where is that much vaunted global warming of his, and why am I getting none of it? Why the *bleep* is my furnace still running, on June 11, almost half-way though June? Still burning oil, worth its weight in gold, while happy oblivious school kids have already finished their classes for the year, and are out dancing mindlessly in the puddles?

Move your chairs up closer, my friends. Here's my theory. While everyone's eyes were on the antics of Britney Spears, or on the Obama-Clinton duel, our planet did a little dance. Just a little jig, a quick little step. One of those dances it does every few eons.

There has been a polar shift. The so-called "North Pole," I conclude, based on careful study and observation, is no longer the north pole. The Space Needle is now the north pole. We here in Seattle are gently revolving around our very own local icon, while our temperatures drop, and our tempers and oil bills rise. It makes sense, yes? The new north pole (née Space Needle) is far more impressive, magnificent, nay, polar, than was the old barber pole that reputedly stuck out of the ice cap covering the Arctic Ocean.

So if the north pole is in Seattle, where does that put Fairbanks? In the tropics? Look at your maps, kiddies, and do some measuring. It is 1,518 miles from Seattle to Fairbanks. And now that Seattle owns the new north pole (whether it wants it or not), the direction from Seattle to Fairbanks -- hell, the direction from Seattle to anyplace -- is south. Every degree change in latitude represents 69.17 miles. Therefore, Fairbanks is 21.94° south of Seattle, which works out to 68.06° N. latitude, under Seattle's new polar sovereignty. Since before the polar shift, Fairbanks was located at about 65° N. latitude, it's actually been nudged about 200 miles farther north.

Which is an excellent place for it, as far as I'm concerned, but admittedly doesn't explain why it's been having 70° temperature.

But global warming does explain it. Excellent. Everything fits.

So what's going to happen to the old lopsided barber pole that artists always show jutting out of the ice to mark the former North Pole? We'll put it on the registry of historical landmarks. It's no longer the north pole, but we can call it the West Pole. Why not?

You remember how he [Pooh] discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of this that he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such as a Bear of Little Brain might discover. "There's a South Pole," said Christopher Robin, "and I expect there's an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them."

So, see? There you are. Someone else already thought of it. And now, if you'll excuse me, these scientific posts are quite tiring to write, and I think I'll go stretch out on the sofa for a few minutes.

Wrapped in a blanket, of course. A heavy wool blanket.

I'm a peaceful guy, you know?

George Bush has expressed regret that his rhetoric in the run-up to the war in Iraq may have created the impression that he was a warmonger.

"I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric," Bush told the Times as he flew across the Atlantic on Air Force One.

The phrases he used to win support for the war such as "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive" he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace."

--The [Manchester] Guardian (U.K.) (6-11-08)

No comment.

With her head held high

Hillary Rodham Clinton finally conceded today, graciously and warmly, throwing her full support to Barack Obama.

Now that the infighting between the two is over, a civil war within the Democratic family that certainly caught me up in it as much as it did anyone, it's time to stand back and view her candidacy more objectively. We who supported Obama have tended to view everything through a single prism -- how did each of Clinton's actions affect Obama's chances in November? We tended to disregard the historical significance of her campaign, the first serious -- and very nearly successful -- attempt by a woman to become President of the United States.

To her female supporters, and especially to those over the age of 45 or so, supporting Hillary meant more than choosing the strongest candidate to oppose McCain in November, although they certainly believed that's what she'd be. Her vigorous battle for the nomination was also a celebration of their successes in their own careers, and an emotional compensation for their failures and humiliations -- careers spent fighting against male bosses and fellow employees who would simply never take them seriously.

For these women, this was an emotional campaign, displaying rawer and less joyful emotions than those demonstrated by Obama's exuberant youngsters. And it wasn't just her supporters who had a psychological stake in her campaign. While Hillary had succeeded well in a man's world, she, too, was a female who had suffered her own set-backs and humiliations throughout life.

For me, it's easy to forget this aspect of her campaign. I live in a state where the governor is a woman, and where both U.S. Senators are women. Our last governor was a Chinese-American male, and my county's last chief executive was a black male. Over the decades, Washingtonians have become so used to diversity that we often forget -- we're the only state, so far as I'm aware, that has ever had women serving as governor and as both senators, all at the same time.

Diversity of this sort is not the rule in most of the nation.

Gail Collins has written a moving and intelligent column in today's New York Times, entitled "What Hillary Won." She concludes:

So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before. By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

And this was, in fact, a major victory. Regardless of Ms. Clinton's future success or lack of success electorally, it may well be the accomplishment for which history gives her the greatest credit. Viewed from this perspective, her achievement was worth forcing her campaign through every primary, all the way to June. She may have created some temporary problems for Obama's campaign, but she showed that a woman can fight for her political goals and for her ideals as fiercely and as forcefully as any man. She didn't surrender the castle. She fought until superior forces overcame it, and defeated her in battle.

At times, I may have questioned her judgment in fighting so long and so fiercely. I may have been irked by her personality. That's all right. There have been few male leaders in history whose judgment couldn't also be called into question. There have been few who did not have their obnoxious moments. Hillary Clinton didn't set out to prove that she was superior to every man alive. She sought to prove that she was their equal.

In my mind, at least, she succeeded. An historical campaign, one that will be long remembered. To be governed by strong women, as well as by strong men, will from now on seem as normal to most of the country as it does already to those of us living in Washington state.

Hillary's future path may still lead to the presidency. If not, the woman who first does become president will do so by standing on her shoulders, by harvesting the crop that Hillary has sowed. That in itself is a remarkable and respectable legacy for her to leave to the nation.

And now, on to November!