An era's end, in Dallas

It was a chilly, overcast Friday in November.  Already a liberal arts graduate, I had decided to change direction radically, and earn a degree in physics from the University of Washington.  I was living in Lander Hall, a dormitory torn down this past year and rebuilt in a more modern vernacular for the more demanding students of today.

I noted vaguely that a lot of kids seemed to have their radios turned on as I left the dorm and headed out for my 11:30 chemistry class in Bagley Hall.  I became more alert out on the street where I saw other students holding transister radios up to their ears.  Finally, I asked someone what was going on.  The president had been shot, his condition unknown, was the reply.  Stunned, I continued to class, sat down in the large lecture hall, and waited for the professor.  A student walked up to the blackboard and wrote the incredible message that President Kennedy was dead.  Moments later, the professor walked in, saw the message, and asked the class if it was true. 

"I don't feel like talking about chemistry today," he said.  He walked out of the classroom.  Everyone filed silently out of the room.  As I turned north from Bagley, I saw the flagpole across from the Administration Building.  The flag was already at half-mast.

The next couple of days -- the swearing in of LBJ, the flight back to Washington, the unbelievable assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the funeral mass -- were spent in front of small black and white television sets, all over campus living groups and apartment houses.

Looking back, Kennedy now seems but one president in a group -- Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and even Nixon to a degree -- who reflected a general bipartisan consensus regarding foreign policy, and whose differences with respect to domestic policy were ones of degree and emphasis, not of basic principle.  As Milton Friedman said -- and as was later sometimes attributed to President Nixon -- "We are all Keynsians, now."

At the time, however -- for young people at least, with our shorter memories -- Kennedy represented a breath of fresh air after what seemed to us eight stuffy years of life in a musty neo-Victorian town house.  The Eisenhower era -- which in retrospect appears to represent the apogee of American success and affluence -- felt at the time intellectually stultifying, an era of enforced conformity, of McCarthy paranoia, of a fear of the unfettered intellect itself.  The "ticky-tack" houses of Levittown seemed to sum up the American dream.  The black and white morality of the TV Western represented the black and white certainties of the American myth.  To become a member of "middle management" for some corporation was a most praise-worthy ambition for an ambitious young man.

Kennedy and his wife displayed for many of us a formerly unsuspected plane of American life -- aristocratic in taste and behavior, but with a concern, at least professed, for those at the bottom of the heap.  Although Kennedy had accomplished little yet to advance civil rights, we knew ending a century of segregation, formal or otherwise, was his administration's goal.  His plan for a "Peace Corps," proposed during the 1960 campaign, electrified young people -- a government program that advocated public service as a first step for college graduates, rather than jumping into a corporate management training program.

I remember learning that Robert Frost was speaking, and Pablo Casals was playing, at Kennedy's inauguration events.  Today, such participation by cultural icons would be unremarkable.  Then, it represented an unprecedented acceptance of talent previously ignored -- often contemptuously -- into the mainstream of American society and government.

As many writers are commenting, it wasn't so much what Kennedy did as president that made his death so devastating.  It was what we felt he had represented.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

His death signaled, we feared, the nipping in the bud of America's new-found spirit of adventure, courage, curiosity, and intellectual openness.

As one friend told me, a few years later, he felt that the world for which he'd been educated, and the world he understood, seemed to collapse in upon itself on November 22, 1963.  

Our fears weren't entirely unfounded, and my friend's reaction to Kennedy's death has proved prophetic.

Go swing from the trees

Seb Oliver / Getty Images/Cultura RF

USA Today

A childhood buddy and I permitted ourselves to bore our younger Facebook friends this morning, as we reminisced about a playground back in our home town where we'd spent many happy hours as kids. 

The playground had been equipped with unusually high slides, a "jungle gym" that was chronically crowded with young monkeys like myself, doing just about anything but swing from our tails, a "push-it-yourself" turntable or merry-go-round, teeter-totters, rows of trapezes, rings, and chin-up bars, and a number of other devices that encouraged kids to explore the limits of their courage and their muscular abilities.  The playground was enclosed by a perimeter fence, and was entered through a day building that offered vending machines, offices, and a large floor where daily folk dancing lured some kids inside for a short respite from the mayhem occurring outside.

The city provided some supervision -- the law of the jungle prevailed only in part.  My friend remembered adults attempting to keep boys from shooting down the slides on pieces of wax paper for the purpose of increasing the slickness of the surface.  I do vaguely recall such efforts, but if made they were largely ignored.  Parental supervision?  In the years I played there, I don't recall any parents having ever being present.  The "old people" sent their kids to the playground, on foot or by bicycle, and reminded them to be home in time for dinner.

The morning's nostalgic dialogue reminded me of an article I saw yesterday in USA Today, discussing two studies on the present state of child fitness.  An Australian study found that the time in which American children could run a set distance had declined six percent per decade since 1970. The average American child thirty years ago ran a mile about 1.5 minutes faster than his counterpart today. Think of that! Another study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that only half of American adolescents are physically active at least five days a week.

“What we found, and others too, is the average young person is sedentary, has very little physical activity, and low levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity,” says Bruce Simons-Morton [an investigator participating in the J.A.H. study].

I've been back to my hometown in recent years, and have checked out the old playground.  Virtually all the old equipment has been removed.  It's been replaced by "safe and sane" equipment -- low in height, carefully designed to avoid injury, heavy on soft plastic rather than hard metal.  It also would have been viewed as incredibly boring and "kid's stuff" by me and my friends when we were ages 8 to 12 or 13 or so, the years when our response to a suggestion that we head for the playground was met by hopping on bikes and taking off like a posse on horseback in a Western flick.

Why don't kids get similar exercise today.  Partly, as I've just suggested, because cities and insurers are scared to death of lawsuits against the city by any kid injured in the free-wheeling play that used to be considered a normal part of being a kid.  Partly, it's because of changes in the culture of young people themselves:  Kids today have less-strenuous ways to compete and find excitement, most of it involving a computer monitor.  The Australian study blamed "lack of green space, suburbanization, changes in school-based physical education programs, and too much screen time watching TV or playing video games."  

I should also add a pet concern of mine -- the change in culture of American parents themselves.  Parents were once happy to let their little Indians whoop it up in the hours between meals, once satisfied that any homework was done and their music practice was completed.  I suspect, without having personal knowledge, that my mother sighed a sigh of relief once she saw the dust from our bikes as we headed for the park, or even just took off for parts unknown around town.  Parents today have developed a high level of fear regarding the safety of their children.  Many or most middle class parents rarely let their children out of sight, unless the kids are safely involved in a structured activity.

(And don't get me started on the question of "play dates"!)

As one example, I live in a very peaceful and safe neighborhood.  I also happen to live on a designated bicycle route, with streams of bike riders passing in front of my house.  If I had lived in Seattle when I was young, I would have noted that most of those bikers were gangs of kids.  Today, however, I rarely see children on bikes, unless they're out riding with their parents.  This tight family bonding may or may not be a beneficial cultural change, but I doubt that it contributes to the amount of exercise that children and adolescents get on a daily basis. 

Even if increased parental involvement in children's lives contributes to their development in various other ways, I suspect parents would do their kids a favor, physically, if they frequently said, "Get out of the house and give me some peace and quiet.  Be back in time for dinner."  Sure, there are risks awaiting unsupervised kids in today's world.  But so what?  There certainly were similar risks when I was a child; they just weren't as well publicized.

And the increasingly sedentary life of kids today has its own proven risks.  As one of the Australian researchers commented:

Improving fitness also improves self-esteem, improves mood, reduces depression and even improves academic performance. It’s just a little investment that can lead to fantastic changes now and in adulthood.

So go climb a tree, gang.  Ride a bike.  Play pick-up games in the park, games without referees or uniforms or adult coaches.  Fall down, occasionally, and scrape your knees.  Don't let your childhood pass you by with your only physical trauma being development of arthritis in your thumbs from excessive texting.

The dark rises

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

Today marks the midpoint of November.  The sky's been dark all day.  Rain fell all morning.  The rains tapered off a bit after noon -- although the skies dimmed even darker -- and so I decided to go for a nice walk. 

The world often looks strange in mid-November -- the beauties of autumn still linger to some extent, but winter hovers over us, warnng us of what lies ahead.  As I look down the street, I see trees still clothed gracefully in yellow leaves.  About my house, however, the limbs are bare, stretched out to the sky like the arms and fingers of skeletal witches, hurling down curses.  The clouds overhead are dark and threatening.  And above it all shriek the cries of the crows, millions of crows, crows flying singly and in formation, crows circling above me, landing on trees, and on telephone wires, and on the very ground ahead of me -- singly and in unison, daring me to draw closer.

"Fool!" they seem to shout. "You'll be well sorry you didn't stay warm and dry in your cozy little house before this stroll is over."  Crows lie and they exaggerate wildly, of course; nothing untoward occurred.  But the crows, and the skeletal trees, and the churning black clouds above certainly darkened my mood.

Mid-November is still autumn, still lovely in places.  Rows of trees along the ship canal, dividing my neighborhood from the university, still bear foliage with blended colors resembling those of a ripe peach, transitioning from yellow to pale red.  The air grows ever colder, but not yet bitterly so.  The southwest wind blew gently, although it strengthened as I walked, promising to blow ever worse weather up from the distant ocean.  Pumpkins still grin from porches, although closer inspection reveals their grins to have been decaying, day by day.

Nature still shows signs of life.  But death, I know, and the crows don't hesitate to remind me, lies just around the bend.  The days will be growing shorter for five more weeks, before the sun finally turns reluctantly about, and begins inching north again.  But our weather will continue growing colder for at least another month past the solstice.

Surely the crows themselves must dread the coming storms, the bitter cold?  Evidently not.  They caw maliciously, spitefully, hurling their jeers at me as I pass.  Earth herself, who last spring seemed so gracious, so loving, so willing to offer beauty and joy -- Earth herself now seems to have turned upon mankind, daring us to survive the worst she has to offer us in the coming months.

I don't believe all this silly anthropomorphism, of course.  I'm just witnessing the onset of another normal Seattle winter.  But my Norse and Anglo-Saxon ancestors tug at me.  They call  within my soul from the haunted forests and marshes of primeval Europe, warning me that nature chooses her favorites, plays with our lives. Earth is not always a benevolent Mother, they warn me; she often appears as a she-wolf, a merciless predator who  leaps for our throats. 

My walk over, I slip back into my house, chased by the mocking laughter of the crows.  Only two and a half months until Groundhog Day!

Lessons learned

Walking across campus an hour or so ago, I stopped to get a cup of coffee and grabbed today's issue of the University of Washington Daily.  In it, I found a column that I liked well enough to read two or three times.  Arriving home, I'm delighted to find the Daily on-line, including said column.
 
As anxious readers will note, I haven't done much posting recently.  This has something to do with not having done much of anything recently, including thinking.  Nothing serious, just the occasional mental desert through which I sometimes find myself wandering.  But to make up to you, in some minimal way, for my lack of product, I've decided to present you with the Daily column.
 
Is it an excellent example of the essay form, or of a newspaper column?  Beats me.  I love to write essays, but I don't pretend to know what constitutes excellence.  But, as in so many areas of life, I know what I like, and I like this.  Although the student writer's life appears infinitely less boring than my own, I still sense a kindred seeking soul within. 
 
So, through the wonders of my computer's "copy and paste" function, without permission from either writer or newspaper, but with -- hey, it's something -- full attribution, I present in full Mr. Taylor's column:

Lessons learned outside of class: You can learn a lot wandering through the halls at night

 

By Holden Taylor

 

I’ve learned how to make small talk, though it’s something with which I still struggle. I’ve learned how to wean the coke out of my whiskey and coke, and I’ve learned which pack of cigarettes to buy, and I’ve learned which pens I like — Pilot G-2 1.0 mm. I’ve learned what kind of mattress I prefer — firm — and how to wash my own sheets. I’ve learned how to clip my toenails and how to order the haircut that I want. I’ve learned how to slice an onion and when to add the greens to a stir-fry. I’ve learned that cooking for others is always better than cooking for yourself, and I’ve learned how to properly roll a joint.

I’ve learned to live without television and that I like to run long distances late at night while listening to podcasts. I’ve learned that though big headphones are nice, the unpredictable soundtrack God plays us tends to be more captivating. I’ve learned that hard work is rarely replaceable, and I’ve learned that I can write other people’s essays for easy money.

 

I’ve learned that cherry blossoms in full bloom are never not beautiful and that fall leaves are better when dry. I’ve learned that pho cures most ailments and that five stars at one Thai place isn’t five stars at another. I’ve learned that I like to wear my favorite shirt many times a week and that socks should only be worn once, maybe twice, before washing. I’ve learned that a good mustache, like raising a child or growing a plant, takes both love and time, and I’ve learned that sometimes the library is the best place to be on game day.

 

I’ve learned that cuddling is good for the soul and that a lonely bed is tough to bear at night but worth it in the morning. I’ve learned how to fall in love and out of love, and I’ve learned how to appreciate
a drunken make-out session in the basement of a fraternity or on the dance floor of a crowded bar.

I’ve learned that every home needs candles and that toilet paper is nothing to skimp on. I’ve learned that a clean home is a sane home and that one dirty dish begets another. I’ve learned that everyone has their own issues and that nobody’s perfect, although we all try to be on Instagram.

I’ve learned that getting older is scary and that hangovers are getting worse and injuries are too. I’ve learned that questions like “So, what do you want to do?” and “What do you want to be?” never get easier to answer. I’ve learned that youthful idealism is something for which we all strive, and I’ve learned that Drake is the best rapper of our generation.

I’ve learned that grocery shopping while you’re hungry is a fool’s folly and that grocery shopping while you’re stoned is a magical adventure wherein the aisles of your local Safeway become the halls of Hogwarts. I’ve learned that raves are scary places and that the Mormons on campus will always be there to talk if you need them. I’ve learned that religious groups give out the best freebies and that ultimate Frisbee is the world’s best sport.

I’ve learned to eat when my stomach grumbles, to sleep when my eyes droop, and to stop writing when an article is over.

And a child shall lead them ...

This is sci-fi with a brain, and a heart.
--Soren Andersen (Seattle Times)

A couple of months ago, I read for the first time Orson Scott Card's 1985 classic, Ender's Game.  I posted a short essay -- not a book review -- remarking on my initial reaction to the story.  Last Saturday I saw the movie, which is now showing in theaters.  I'm ignoring dismissive reviews I've read, offered by perhaps half of the film critics. 

I found it to be a stirring and moving film.  It forced me to read the book again for the second time in three months, an exercise that was well worth the time.  It also forced me to bore Facebook friends with my praises.  

The book was too well known and too frequently reviewed for me to add my own unoriginal thoughts to the clamor in the form of a formal review.  So also with the film.

Let me just suggest that readers see the movie with an open mind, preferably after reading the book.  The film illustrates dramatically on the screen the events and themes presented by the book, but the significance of those events and the importance of those themes really need the fuller exposition that the book provides.  For example, much of the "action" in the book is devoted to the "games" that Ender and his fellow students play as preparation for what is anticipated to be an apocalyptic war with an alien race.  The book shows how the games -- and the manipulations by those staging the games -- lead to Ender's growth.  The movie can only compress the games into one or two episodes -- albeit, episodes that make vivid the mental pictures arising from the book's descriptions.

The movie has to to omit, in a two hour film, one of the book's major subplots -- the machinations of Ender's older brother and sister -- as intelligent as Ender, but for differing reasons unsuitable for Ender's military role -- who use the internet (a use for computers largely unknown by the general public when the book was published) to obtain vast worldwide political influence, anonymously, while still a couple of preadolescents.

An important theme of the book is how the military authorities deliberately deprived Ender of a childhood and with calculation forced him to live in loneliness and in psychological isolation from his classmates in order to focus his attention solely on the war games he was playing.  The book shows the reasoning behind this deliberate cruelty, and the effect it had on Ender's mental state.  The movie doesn't have the time to fully explain these policies, or to show the anguished private discussions among the officers who decide upon them.  The movie, on the other hand, shows vividly their effect on the young genius who was already both sensitive and shy by nature -- but who also is coldly rational to the point of inflicting death on a bullying classmate as a calculated example to other potential bullies in the school.

In the book, Ender is six years old when recruited by the military, and eleven years old when he becomes supreme commander of Earth's interstellar military forces.  It would be difficult to find an actor or actors in those age ranges capable of fulfilling the demands of the role.  In the movie, Ender is recruited at age twelve, and his training is compressed into a much shorter period of time.  Ender is played by a young-appearing fifteen year old actor, Asa Butterfield, who proves fully capable of displaying the enthusiasm, the physical agility, the sense of loneliness, the sensitivity, and the conflicted emotions that the part demands.

As for me, I'm hooked.  I've downloaded the next book in the series, Speaker for the Dead, which I'm advised is a totally different sort of story.  No matter.  I'm willing to bet some more time on this author. 

Boo!

Tonight is All Hallows' Eve.  The vigil of All Saints Day (tomorrow) (honoring the saints in heaven), and All Souls Day (the following day) (praying for those dead wandering about and still on their way).  Just in case you forget what it's all about this evening, while you're out howling at the moon.

Halloween may indeed have originated as the aforementioned religious vigil, or the vigil may have adopted, opportunistically, the customs of earlier Celtic festivals.

In any event, Halloween -- as any kid knows -- is definitely more than just another harvest festival.  The aroma of the grave hangs over the night.  The dead, the walking dead, the undead, the ghoul, the banshee, the witch, the warlock, and the just plain, old, vanilla-flavored ghost -- they all play a major part in tonight's revels.

The pumpkin?  Or more precisely, the "jack-o'-lantern"?  According to Irish legend, Jack was a guy who made a bargain with the devil that he would never be accepted into Hell.  Unfortunately, he wasn't admitted to Heaven either, and he forever roams the earth with a hollowed-out turnip -- yes, turnip -- lit up by an ember from Hell that Satan hurled at him in disgust.  We do things bigger in America, hence the replacement of turnips with pumpkins.

Halloween used to be -- at least in my provincial home town -- a day for children's parties (bobbing for apples, wearing cute costumes, and drinking unfermented cidar) -- and, of course, for trick or treating by candy-crazed urchins, kids often accompanied by their resigned parents.  In our more enlightened era, Halloween has become also an excuse for adults to join in covertly or overtly pagan celebrations, roaming the streets, usually inebriated and usually dressed far less innocently than were the skeletons, witches and princesses of our youth. 

No harm, I guess.  It's all in fun, for the most part.  And it's only one night a year.  But, if he had his druthers, this curmudgeon would happily hand the holiday back to the kids.

Under the Bosporus

The first time I saw Istanbul, I had arrived by bus from Beirut, through Syria, and across the long, flat reaches of Anatolia.  The bus came to its final stop at what was announced as "Istanbul-Asia."  In front of us was the Bosporus.  To go farther, to reach the more tourist-oriented "Istanbul-Europe," required a ride on a ferry.

I couldn't have been more excited.  A ferry from one continent to another!  A ride that, at least in my mind, left the Middle East behind and re-connected me to the more familiar world of European civilization.  But a ride that also displayed the stunning skyline -- domes and minarets -- of traditional Istanbul.  The skyline of a world neither Arab nor Christian, but, sui generis, Turkish Muslim.

The next time I visited Istanbul, the Bosporus was spanned by two graceful suspension bridges.  The so-called First Bridge was visible from the old city and, eventually, has come to seem an integral part of the Istanbul skyline.

And now, this week, Asian and European Istanbul are being knit together by an 8.5-mile rail tunnel under the Bosporus.  At first, the tunnel will serve commuter traffic, but eventually will also carry high-speed inter-city trains, integrating the European and Turkish rail systems.

For those living in and about Istanbul, construction of the tunnel, like the earlier construction of the bridges, represents nothing but progress.  For traveling romanticists -- like myself -- feelings are more mixed.  Would a high speed rail journey from Beirut that ended at Sirceki station on the European side of the Bosporus seem as glamorous to a young traveler as did my own arrival?  Would the journey still be remembered as intensely years later?

Hard to tell.  Maybe walking off the train into the heart of Sultanahmet -- the "old town" -- would be every bit as dazzling to the first-timer as the ferry ride from the Asian side was to me.  I always remind myself that many contemporary French denounced construction of the Eiffel Tower as a monstrosity that would ruin Paris.  Change isn't always bad.

And yet -- as convenient as is today's just-over-two-hour train ride through the Chunnel from London to Paris, it certainly lacks the excitement and sense of adventure of transferring to a ferry at Dover for the crossing to Calais.  And closer to home, I remember the excitement of the train ride to San Francisco, where we caught the ferry from the Oakland terminal to the Ferry Building across the Bay.  (Yes, the Bay Bridge was there -- the ferry crossed under it -- but the Southern Pacific for many years continued to use their own ferry, before eventually crossing the bridge by bus.)

I need to remember that for a young traveler, the first time he views a new place is always exciting.  And I also need to remember that, as we age, we always resent changes from a world we found exciting in younger days.  I loved my first visit to England, when you could reach virtually every small village by rail.  But nineteenth century writers lamented the loss of an earlier, pastoral and seemingly larger England, an England not yet knit together by rapid trains. 

Woody Allen got it right in his movie, Midnight in Paris: Every generation has its romanticists who envy those who lived in earlier generations.

But, even making every attempt at objectivity, I still feel that the world loses something as it becomes ever easier to reach the most remote areas, as every major city becomes less distinct from others, when arrival in Istanbul (or Singapore, or Hong Kong, or Tehran) becomes little different from arrival in Los Angeles or New York.

But that's the way it is.  No one, including ourselves, is willing to resist changes that will make his life easier and more pleasant -- certainly not for the sole purpose of preserving his unique exoticism for the appreciation of jaded foreign tourists!

Ooops!

I visit strange foreign lands, and I hike at high altitudes in remote wildernesses.  I must be a total daredevil, an insatiable thrill seeker.  Right?

Ha!

I'm terrified of amusement park rides.  Not just those new coasters that twist and loop and spin you upside down, all in an apparent effort to turn your body inside out.  I'm talking about Ferris wheels.  I'm talking about carnie rides like octopuses and tilt-a-whirls.  I'm talking about anything that takes me up high, or that spins me around in a manner that could potentially hurl me some distance into thin air.  I'm especially talking about rides that remind me, while on them, that my life depends on some unknown carnival employee's engineering and/or mechanical skills. 

I've even wondered -- looking above me while riding -- what would happen if the cotter pin holding a carousel pole in place snapped.  Would I ride my horse off into space, Pegasus-like, on a death ride to oblivion?

But, yes, surprisingly enough -- I have in fact paid my money and forced myself onto roller coasters.  The old-fashioned kind, I hasten to add.  The kind that just goes up and down and around hairpin turns.  Not the kind that in any way forces you to travel upside down.  I've maintained my sanity during these occasional experiences because the ride is so fast and over so quickly that I don't have time to analyze the enormous variety of things that could go wrong -- at least, once the agonizing climb, dragged by a chain up the initial hill ("why am I doing this?  what was I thinking of?"), is over.

All this is prefatory to today's story about the roller coaster incident in Orlando, Florida.  The ride where the car stalled at the top of a vertical hill, suspended seventeen stories in the air.  The front of the car apparently reached the top of the hill in a roughly horizontal orientation; the seats toward the back, on the other hand, were hanging straight down vertically.  Those unlucky rear riders found themselves facing uphill, staring at the sky, but one look over their shoulder gave them a nice view of Earth from a height of 140 feet.  They were trapped for two hours before amusement park employees found some way to extricate them from the car and bring them safely down to earth.

Even worse for me than the ride, and the untimely stop, would have been the extrication.  How it was accomplished wasn't explained.  How it was done, I don't even want to contemplate.

Only one person was hospitalized, with neck and back pain.  I would have been hospitalized in the mental health care unit, foaming at the mouth and babbling nonsensically.

My steps in Central Asia*

With some trepidation, I approached the departure gate at Istanbul's airport on the evening of September 8, after two relaxing and interesting days puttering around the city. I was bound for Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and hardly knew what to expect. With relief, I spotted Maeve, a fellow trekker from an earlier trip, who greeted me with a hug and an incredible account of how her passport and visa had reached her at San Francisco airport only hours before departure.

So we were off, on one of Turkish Airlines's twice weekly flights to Dushanbe, the Tajik capital. We landed at 3:45 a.m., were given a few hours to rest in a hotel, taken on a short tour of the limited sights of Dushanbe (an attractive, modern, Soviet-era city), and then driven into the Fann Mountains over perilous roads with breathtaking switchbacks. In less than 24 hours, I'd been transported from the urbane pleasures of Istanbul to a small tent in a huge, primitive, mountain wilderness.

I was one of twelve hikers -- all British except myself and Maeve. We were accompanied by a Welsh chief guide, a Tajik "translator" who also served as an assistant guide and jack of all trades, a couple of cooks, and a varying cast of "donkey boys," most of them teenagers, who handled our pack donkeys and pitched and struck our tents each night and morning.

Tajikistan, bordering Afghanistan to its south, is the poorest of the former Soviet republics. It's also the only one in Central Asia that speaks a form of Persian, rather than a Turkic language. Ethnic Tajiks represent an interbreeding of Iranian and Mongol peoples, but not all Tajik citizens are ethnic Tajiks -- there are plenty of ethnic Russians, Uzbeks, and other Central Asian peoples living in Tajikistan -- nor do all Tajiks live in Tajikistan. The ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan have always been dominated by ethnic Tajiks, and Tajikistan long pleaded with the Soviet government, unsuccessfully, to transfer those cities to the Tajik republic.

Central Asia, as we learned, is really a stew of various nationalities that once roamed willy-nilly about "Turkistan." It wasn't until Stalin's time that an effort was made to carve the Turkistan region into various republics, each dominated by a distinct ethnic group. The effort was only partially successful.

Tajikistan was, unsurprisingly, once part of various Persian empires. Like Persia, itself, it was largely Zoroastrian (together with local minor religions) until the Arab conquest forced Islam on the people in the seventh century A.D. Since then, it has been part of whatever empire was dominant in the region, ending up with the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Present-day Tajikistan, independent since 1991, has inherited a few modern cities from the Soviet era, along with reasonably good health and education systems. The vast majority of the land, however, is dominated by mountain ranges -- notably the mighty Pamirs in the southeast and the Fanns (actually an extension of the Pamirs) -- where we did our hiking -- in the west.

The Fanns, although perhaps small in size compared with the Pamirs proper (highest peak, Chimtarga, is 18,000 feet), to me appeared awesome in their jagged silhouettes and plunging valleys, in their sweep and vistas, and in their virtual emptiness. We hiked roughly six to seven hours a day, usually from a lower campsite over a pass and down into the next valley -- usual elevation gain between 2,000 to 2,500 feet. We camped every night, except for one night about half way through the trip when we reached a small village and stayed in a "gite," or primitive hotel, several hikers to a room, sleeping in our sleeping bags.   We met one other party of hikers -- an Israeli couple -- and a few shepherds tending flocks of goats and sheep.

After eleven days of hiking, we finally emerged on the opposite side of the mountain range, bid our local staff farewell with the usual presentation of tips and participation in orgiastic singing and dancing before a giant bonfire, and were hauled back to civilization in the morning by two vans that, happily, rendezvoused with us as planned. Our destination was Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, not far from our mountain point of egress, but ethnic disputes had closed the local border crossing. So we drove five hours north to Khujand (née Leninabad), a pleasant city, where we visited a market, checked into a tiny (but honest-to-goodness) hotel, and had much-needed showers!

We crossed the border the next day -- a fantasy of bureaucratic delights -- much filling of forms and stamping of documents. The crossing had been projected to take three hours, and we all felt oddly delighted and relieved that we were in fact able to cross the national border -- between two countries that used to be fellow states like Oregon and Washington -- in a mere two hours. We drove another five hours south to Samarkand through endless fields of cotton  (Uzbekistan is the world's second largest exporter of cotton, after only the United States.  The Soviet government, unfortunately, drove the fields to partial soil depletion by setting ever higher annual quotas, with no crop rotation permitted.)

I don't want to be harsh on Samarkand. Samarkand is a remarkable city with an amazing history. A history nearly as complex and power nearly as great -- during its heyday under Tamarlane -- as  Rome or Florence. The problem, from a tourist's perspective, is that -- unlike Rome or Florence -- its antiquities were reduced virtually to rubble by the passage of time, repeated earthquakes, and Soviet distrust of ethnic pride in local history. Once again, the Soviet government created a modern city -- a very attractive city -- but didn't do much, for many years, with the historical monuments.

But in recent years, Uzbekistan has done an amazing job of rebuilding the ancient mosques and madressas, with their characteristic blue barrel domes and complex ornamentation. Exhibits show the "before" state of the ruins, and explain how the buildings have been accurately rebuilt. Unfortunately, to me, reconstructed buildings in the midst of a modern city are beautiful and instructive, but they lack the feel and smell of history. I could never ignore the fact that most of the work to create what we were viewing had been done in the past twenty years.

In any event, we were given a very satisfactory tour of the city by a native of Samarkand, an ethnic Russian whose grasp of history and architecture seemed several notches above what one generally expects in such tours. After two nights at a pleasant small hotel, with meals in an open courtyard over which loomed the blue dome of a major mosque across the street, we took the train to the capital city of Tashkent, some 3½ hours to the north. A quick afternoon tour of Tashkent (about which I had the same complaints as I did about Samarkand), a final group dinner at a local restaurant, a fast night's sleep -- and we found ourselves saying goodbye to each other as we flew back to Istanbul, and thence to our respective homes.

Not only a wonderful hike, but an opportunity to get a quick introduction to a part of the world about which I knew very little indeed.  I have an urge to return -- if not to Tajikistan itself, at least to the general region of Central Asia.
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A selection of photos will be available for viewing for the next month on Facebook, regardless of whether the reader is a Facebook member. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151940762454602.1073741839.761679601&type=1&l=4bb84c1e1b

* Half-hearted apologies to Alexander Borodin.

Dushanbe-bound

The Northwest Corner will shut down temporarily while its editor/publisher flies to Central Asia to carry on his own private version of the "Great Game," hiking boots slung over one shoulder.  With any luck, he will return on September 27; publication will resume after that date, whenever he pulls himself together long enough to focus his eyes on his computer monitor.

In his absence, readers are referred to the New York Times which, while hardly the same experience, must serve temporarily as a source of news and entertainment.

Eagle Peak Trail

It's been the kind of summer in the Northwest Corner that almost defies belief.  The kind that makes you think, "well, if this is global warming, bring it on!"  And, as my posts suggest, I've made good use of the weather, doing more day hiking in the hills hereabouts than I do most summers.

This past week was a bit showery, leading up to a drenching downpour with thunder and lightning on Thursday. I was resigned to the idea that all good things had to come to an end, including the Summer of '13.  But then, the sun returned, and on Saturday the temperature was back up in the low 80s.

And I was off for the hills once more (my final day hike of the year before I head off trekking in other climes on Thursday).  I returned to Mt. Rainier National Park, and attacked the Eagle Peak Trail hike.

The hike begins near Longmire Lodge.  Longmire itself is an interesting destination, the first major facility one comes to when entering the park from the west.  James Longmire was an early entrepreneur who, in 1883, built his wagon trail up from the town of Ashford to some mineral springs he had discovered.  These were the days of spas and "taking the waters," and he hoped to entice health seekers and fashionable folks -- arriving in Ashford by train -- up his road by wagon.  He built a small hotel and a bunch of cabins and other facilities near the springs, all of which eventually were taken over by the park service after the National Park was created in 1899.  The present lodge was built a bit later by a concessionaire.

I knew approximately where the Eagle Peak trailhead had to be, relative to the Longmire lodge, but finally had to ask park employees for assistance.  A spur road heads south a short distance from the lodge parking lot, through housing built for Park employees, and across a picturesque, one-lane bridge.  The trail heads off to the left, almost immediately past the bridge, but is marked by only a small sign that sits close to the ground and is not easily spotted from a car.

Round trip from the trailhead to the end of the trail (at a saddle just below the peak, the peak itself being a semi-technical scramble) is 7.2 miles, with an elevation gain of 2,955 feet.  The trail is steep, but very well maintained throughout its length -- broad, smooth, cushioned by soft dirt and evergreen needles -- as it switches back and forth through old growth timber.  Therefore, the final half mile or so, when the trail emerges into the open, comes as a bit of a shock --  extremely steep, sharp switchbacks eventually becoming a long series of crude steps formed out of scree held in place by horizontal timbers. 

But the reward is worth the final effort.  Views of Adams and St. Helens in the distance, to the southeast and southwest respectively, and the enormous bulk of Mt. Rainier, staring right in your face from the opposite side of the Nisqually valley.  The road from Longmire to Paradise Lodge is steep and winding, and Paradise itself is a major take-off point for summit climbs.  Therefore, I was surprised to discover that Paradise and its parking lots not only were visible from the Eagle Peak saddle, but that I had to look downward to see them.  A calculation or two convinced me that I wasn't seeing things.  Longmire's elevation is 2,761 ft., and I had climbed 2,955 ft.  Therefore, I was viewing Paradise (5,400 ft.) from an elevation of 5,716 feet.  That fact gave me even greater respect for the distance I'd climbed.

The trail was so good going down -- once past the hellish switchbacks at the top -- that I was back at my car in only 55 minutes.  The climb up took 1 hour, 45 minutes.

An enjoyable hike, and a beautiful day.

Anthems

O Canada! our home and native land!
True patriot-love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
And stand on guard, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
 

 

O Canada! where pines and maples grow,
Great prairies spread, and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western sea.
The land of hope for all who toil,
The True North strong and free!

Now, that's a national anthem to be proud of.

A few weeks ago, I attended a game between the Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays.  (The Mariners' first pitch was hit out of the park; they committed three of their four errors in the first three innings.)  Both national anthems were performed, of course, with the lyrics to both displayed on the screen. 

First "O Canada."  One notices immediately that the song is actually singable!  You don't need to be trained professionally in opera.  But beyond that, the lyrics are -- for the most part -- stirring and meaningful.  True North, indeed!  Great prairies, lordly rivers, land of hope.  These are attributes in a country that arouse pride.

Then the "Star Spangled Banner."  What can I say?  I don't want to belabor its problems.  Folks have complained about it for years.  Its musical range makes it difficult to sing, of course.  But beyond that, it was never intended to be a national anthem.  It was written as a poem commemorating a specific battle in the War of 1812 -- not one of our better wars .  It was set to the tune of an English drinking song, "Anacreon in Heaven" -- that's ok, lots of tunes are cannibalized for various reasons.  But still!  It didn't even become our national anthem until 1931.

What do we think of when we recall the lyrics?  Rockets red glare!  Bombs bursting in air!  Right?  Wars are sometimes necessary, as are bombs and rockets.  But do we really want to perpetuate these military images as the supreme image of America? 

The anthem has four verses.  We are nearly always subjected only to the first -- which goes on quite long enough as it is.  We need not ponder lines from later verses:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.

And the minds of our chronically warlike presidents probably would not be additionally inflamed by recalling:

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

I don't propose scrapping "The Star Spangled Banner."  Its use is sanctified by history; too many citizens would be outraged and grieved if we were to jettison it at this late date.

But if only Congress had chosen "America the Beautiful," instead, back in 1931.  That lovely song is as singable as "O Canada!"  And it points to the qualities of America that truly arouse pride in all citizens:  "amber waves of grain," "purple mountains majesty," "the fruited plain," "brotherhood, from sea to shining sea."

Some phrases might seem tinged with irony: "thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears."  But these lines at least represent our aspirations, if not yet our accomplishments.  And in 2013, our cities do gleam compared with 1931; human tears, although still plentiful, now perhaps result more from frustrated aspirations than, as they did then, from existential problems of starvation, disease, and abject homelessness.

In any event, with the rest of the crowd, I was happy to stand for both anthems before the Toronto game.  It's been another bad year for Seattle.  More than half the fans appeared to be British Columbians sporting Blue Jay colors, fans who had driven all the way down for a midweek game.  They showed lots of enthusiasm. 

Which makes me wonder why Major League Baseball still hasn't expanded to Vancouver?

Where's your visa?

Less than two weeks until I fly to Istanbul and thence, after a couple of days to regain my composure, onward to Dushanbe (the capital of Tajikistan) (no, don't pretend you already knew that).

I wrote a few weeks ago of my joy in receiving my necessary visas.  Although one's always uncertain, I'm sure I conveyed my confidence that, whatever the delay, the visas would in good time be duly issued and stamped securely into my passport.  I never really worried that a tourist visa would not be issued.

But such, apparently, is not always the case.

Maeve, a fellow trekker I met four years ago while trekking in Nepal, is signed up for the same trek.  In fact, it was her recommendation that finally tipped me into choosing the Tajikistan trek rather than another one I had almost decided on, headed for Kyrgyzstan.  I've been looking forward to having a familiar face greet me amongst the ten other hikers.

I applied for my two visas (to Tajikistan and then Uzbekistan) in late May and mid-June.  She applied for hers shortly thereafter.  I had my visas within weeks.  She is still waiting.

She writes today that her passport isn't even in the hands of the local consulate, but has been referred back to the Motherland for review.  She some time ago submitted supplemental information requested by the consulate.  Both the trekking company and the American visa service that she uses have been attempting to push matters along.  She understands that the consulates, here in the U.S., will not accept an expedited processing fee because she travels on an Irish, not an American, passport.

So, nothing is certain in life.  Even bureaucratic red tape that one considers merely time- and effort-consuming can sometimes jump up in front of you and force life to grind to a complete stop.  When a government wants to look things over again, the fact that you are about to lose non-refundable airline fares and trekking company cancellation fees is quite immaterial to that government.

These are the complaints that non-Americans have made about travel to the United States for decades.  The refusal to hurry, the refusal to explain, the denial of visas without further comment -- these are experiences with American bureacracy of which most Americans may be unaware, but are all too familiar to tourists, students, and businessmen from other nations.  So, it's difficult to protest when another country adopts the same modus operandi in deciding whether to permit travel to their nation. 

To a Tajik official, protection of Tajik security no doubt looms as high in priority as do similar concerns to American State Department officals facing an application from a Tajik citizen.

It's simply too bad that it's an Irish citizen who's been chosen to show us how it feels.  The trekking company says not to panic.  Things may all fall into place at the last minute.  It's harrowing, but I hope they're right.

Brewster

Stories with an atmosphere of gothic horror are usually set in the rural South, not in familiar places like Putnam county, New York.  Brewster, by Mark Slouka, is an exception.

Slouka's Brewster, N.Y., is a working class town existing -- physically only, not socially or economically -- between New York City and Westchester county to the south and Woodstock to the north. The story is set in the late 1960s.   Bands of Woodstock-bound "hippies" hitchhike their way past Brewster on their way north.  The town and its residents are touched neither by the sophistication of the nearby big city, nor by the times in which they live.  They are people still dwelling in the 1940s, living in a cold, incurious world with narrow horizons.

Stop, children, what's that sound?  Even if we'd stopped, we wouldn't have heard a thing.

This frigid -- both physically and emotionally -- environment is the setting for Jon's story, the story of two high school students growing up in Brewster, and of their doomed friendship.  The narrator, Jon, is the son of Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps.  Jon's older brother had died in an accident when Jon was four, a second calamity in his parents' life that had left them cold and detached.  Jon and his parents go through the motions of living together, walking about the house like unseeing ghosts.

Jon tells his story in terse, self-deprecating sentences.  He says that he does "all right" at school, but  he eventually is accepted at Columbia University.  He's not a "jock," but during the course of the book he is essentially drafted onto his school's track team, where he becomes an outstanding relay runner.

A loner, Jon drifts into an intensely close friendship with Ray, an odd, caustic guy who wanders about the school in a dark coat.  Ray is a fighter, a brawler, really.  He's neither jock nor scholar.  He exists on the fringes of high school society, looked down on by classmates.  We learn that he is beaten routinely by his single father, an ex-cop, an ex-soldier from World War II, a guy whose life has been on one long downhill trajectory. 

Stories about friendship between high school "brains" and "losers" aren't that rare.  I've never found these friendships convincing; nothing in my own high school experiences suggested their likelihood.  But Slouka makes it work.  Jon is a Jewish intellectual, but he's not timid, he's not overly "refined," and he's totally adrift from any security and sense of belonging that his own family might have offered him.  Ray's no scholar, but he's not stupid, and his reputation for brawling is, to a large degree, merely a cover for the obvious injuries he receives from his own father.  Ray's efforts to shield his infant brother from his father's abuse are touching, as is the romantic relationship that he eventually develops with Karen, a classmate who initially attracted Jon until Jon realized that Karen's feelings for him did not go beyond simple (but close) friendship.

Jon, Ray and Karen form a triumvirate of friendship, outside Brewster society, joined by an unlikely (but likeable) devout Christian -- Fred.  Except for Ray, these teenagers participate to some degree in Brewster student life without ever becoming part of it.  Each of them, in his own way, looks forward to the day they escape Brewster.  Jon and Ray dream of restoring an old car and driving off with Karen and maybe Fred to California -- the classical dream of disaffected American youth.

This plot synopsis doesn't do justice to the book, because so much of the book is a presentation of mood.  The loving description of all the markers of American "hip" civilization in the late '60s -- a civilization surrounding the kids but one that never really makes an impression on them.  The sense of Brewster as a a prison: a cold village, isolated from major trends in society, hostile to curiosity, to excitement -- where dreams go to die. 

And over all, the looming sense of danger -- hanging over the other senses of futility, of the impossibility of finding any joy or hope in one's life.  From the first chapter, we sense some menace threatening (not necessarily physically) Jon's life  -- threatening all four friends' lives -- a menace alluded to over and over as the narrative continues.  We gradually gain some idea of the source of the menace, and even of its nature.

But when we ultimately face the menace face to face, we're still shocked.  Shocked by Jon's graphic description of what he witnesses.  Shocked by its effect on each of the four friends' lives.  Shocked by the devastation visited on their friendship.

And shocked by our own appreciation -- an appreciation rarely encouraged by contemporary fiction -- that Evil sometimes actually exists.  Evil not subject to being minimized by our ability to be "understanding"  -- Evil fully worthy of being written with a capital letter.

North Rim

The magic of an outdoors weekend began Thursday night -- indoors, ironically -- at the Grand Canyon Lodge.  Having just arrived at the North Rim after a long day's drive from the Vegas airport, I was milling about with other guests in the sun room as the twilight deepened, enjoying a panoramic view of the canyon.  An historic piano, dating back to the lodge's early years, sat in the room with a "Display Only" sign on it.  Disregarding the sign without batting an eye, a scrawny kid -- very early teens in a ratty t-shirt and shorts, hair in his eyes -- plunked a few notes, and then dragged a chair over.  I was about to move outside to escape the inevitable "Chopsticks." 

But I froze in place as, from memory, the kid lit into the entire final movement from Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata.

The magic ended yesterday with a thud at the Las Vegas airport, where I was forced to hang out for eight hours surrounded by slot machines, as lightning storms delayed all flights.  I arrived home after 1 a.m. last night.

From the sublime to the frustrating.  But in between, happily, almost everything else was sublime.

The North Rim is remote, which is why it gets only ten percent of the park's visitors.  Six hours from Las Vegas, where I rented a car, by way of Zion National Park.  (Coming home, I discovered that the alternative route, by-passing Zion through the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation, is about an hour faster.)  Although the North Rim is only about seven miles "as the condor flies" from the South, it's a five hour drive by car or a twenty mile hike by trail.  The North Rim, at well over eight thousand feet, is about a thousand feet higher than the South -- and consequently cooler, greener, and more heavily forested.

Because of the travel time, I had only two full days -- Friday and Saturday -- at the park.  Friday, I spent exploring the lodge and its environs, walking a couple of trails that connected the lodge with a campground and general store a mile and a half away, driving three miles to Point Imperial (highest point on either rim at 8,803 ft.), and in general letting my body acclimate to elevations in the 8,000's.  The big event came the following day -- the descent into the canyon along the North Kaibab trail.

The North Kaibab runs from a point (8,250 ft.) about 1½ miles from the lodge down to the Colorado river at Phantom Ranch, 14 miles away.  Avid followers of my self-puffery will recall that a couple of years ago, I descended from the South Rim to the Colorado (to a point near, but not quite at, Phantom Ranch).  But that was a round trip of only 15 miles, not 28.  And that was in April -- snowy at the top, and maybe 70 at the river.  In August, the temperatures are about 75 at the top and close to 110 at the river.  Let me assure skeptics -- temperature does make a difference.  A big difference.

And so I decided to hike down only as far as Roaring Springs (5,200 ft.), about three thousand feet below the rim, and 9.4 miles round trip by trail.  Ground water percolates through successive layers of water-permeable sandstone and limestone until it reaches the layer of impermeable Bright Angel shale.  Unable to soak in any deeper, it pours out the side of the canyon as a large waterfall (several waterfalls, actually), dropping to Roaring Springs at the base of the Bright Angel shale stratum.  The strength of the falls, in such a dry canyon, is impressive.

The Park Service recommends that anyone doing a day hike to Roaring Springs begin no later than 6 a.m.  I fumbled around, grabbing a fast coffee and danish at the Saloon (opening at 5:30 a.m. as a coffee house), and driving to the parking lot 1.7 miles away.  I'd been told that the parking lot fills early, and I might have to walk from the lodge.  It was virtually empty.  I was on the North Kaibab trail at 6:20 a.m., and had the trail almost to myself all the way down.

The falls were impressive, as I've mentioned, and even more impressive was the hike back up as the sun rose ever higher in the sky.  I met many hikers on their way to Roaring Springs as I climbed back up, sleepy-heads who obviously hadn't hit the trail until near 9 a.m.  I pity them.  Under normal thermal conditions, the hike up would not be difficult, certainly not much more difficult than the Bright Angel trail between the South Rim and Indian Gardens -- but in August, the heat made it a killer.  Especially, that last mile from the top, after the Supai Tunnel.

I found myself resting and sipping water every few hundred yards, and I usually consume less water while hiking than do most.  I felt quite fatigued by the time I dragged myself up to the Rim.  One consolation for anyone planning to repeat my experience in August is that piped spring water is available at both Roaring Springs and the Supai Tunnel (1.7 miles from the top).  I did fine on the two liters of water I was carrying, even without reliance on these sources on the trail.

Total round trip time -- just over five hours.

Good dinners at the lodge, relaxation and reading on the lodge's terrace (where friendly waiters happily refresh your beer glass), people-watching (I could write a separate essay on the varieties of Americans and foreigners who gravitate to the North Rim), and, in general, a long, magical weekend.

The magic enhanced, of course, by my sense of accomplishment -- Roaring Springs in August!  (But I talked to enough fellow hikers, with greater ambitions, to give me a real hankering for what appears to be a very feasible Rim to Rim backpacking trip.  Some day in the future.  Maybe?)