September beginnings

I just returned from a brisk walk to and around the University of Washington campus, one final limbering up exercise before heading off on my Himalaya trek. While I'm now getting ready for a Tuesday departure, the university is gearing up for tomorrow's first day of classes.

It's a perfect day for a new quarter to begin. The air is cool, the sky is blue, the sun is warm. The campus was a sea of freshmen, most of them dressed in brand new t-shirts or sweat shirts, all in Husky purple -- their school pride obviously unaffected by their football team's drubbing (yes, I said drubbing) last night at the hands of my own alma mater.

The campus is also awash in their proud parents.

The parents are a relatively new wrinkle. As I walked onto the campus from Montlake, I encountered a giant tent filled with kids and their parents seated at tables chattering and eating. Signs announced this to be the President's Picnic, a meal designed to make everyone feel welcome and to let the parents experience being a part of their offspring's expensive education. (See photo above for a similar scene at Stanford -- this year's freshmen accompanied by their parents at "Freshman Convocation.")

I say it's a new wrinkle, because when I was a freshman, I don't recall parents hanging around the campus. They certainly didn't join us at freshman convocation. Those of us from out of state arrived on our own. Freshman living within driving distance of campus were often brought to the school by their parents, but after the old folks had served their primary function of helping carry stuff into the dorm, and after they spent a few minutes looking around and perhaps meeting their son or daughter's scary new roommate, there were awkward hugs, a quick goodby -- and they were gone, probably not to be seen again until at least Thanksgiving.

The university's effort to bring parents, students, and school together in a communal feast is simply an acknowledgement of certain changes in our society. Cell phones, Facebook and emails keep the generations in touch now on virtually a daily basis. Such close communication would have been considered bizarre, a sign of arrested development, when I was in college. I did know of kids who phoned home weekly, but contact of even that frequency certainly wasn't the norm.

As do many school officials, I have my worries that such continued close involvement by parents in the lives of their children may result in a "failure to launch," a delay in the student's ability to stand on his own feet -- intellectually as well as socially and financially. But this concern is probably just another one of those many worries that aren't worth worrying about. "Nothing endures but change," as Heraclitus reminds us. Change in itself is neither good nor bad -- just different. And my memories may be as accurate as my own parents' memories of walking to school barefoot through 12 foot snow drifts.

The kids on the U-Dub campus looked happy and excited. As did their folks. It almost made me wish I were 18 again. But when I shake off the deceptive glow of nostalgia and carefully remember everything about how it felt to be a freshman -- nah, I don't think so.

Being a college freshman is, I suppose, like sky diving -- it's something that's great to do once in your lifetime.

Referendum 71

Readers who vote in Washington: Remember that a vote FOR Referendum 71 is a vote to APPROVE legislation broadening the scope of protection afforded registered domestic partners.

These increased protections include hospital visitation; inheritance; inadmissibility of testimony by one partner against the other; and the applicability of community property rules, property transfer rules, and dissolution procedures. Washington already recognizes domestic partnerships -- the 2009 legislation and Referendum 71 simply broaden their scope to give domestic partners the same security and legal protections that married people take for granted .

Support for Referendum 71 should be a no-brainer. The amendments to the domestic partnership statute are all about treating people fairly. The legislation is sound public policy. It is emblematic of the basic humanity and decency of the people of Washington.

Vote for fairness. Vote FOR Referendum 71.

Local kid comes to town

And then there's Glenn Beck. He's that guy on Fox who ... well, never mind, we all know who he is. Another Fox entertainer who makes millions stoking readers' fears and anger about any fermenting thought that bubbles to the surface of his mind.

Time [magazine] further describes Beck as "a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies", proclaiming that he has "emerged as a virtuoso on the strings" of Conservative's discontent ... mining the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us."

--Wikipedia. Beck recently described President Obama as a "racist," bringing to mind images of black kettles and speaking pots.

Anyway, Beck was born and reared in Mount Vernon, Washington, a middling agricultural community lying alongside I-5, about an hour's drive north of Seattle. Mount Vernon until now was known chiefly for an annual tulip festival, and as the point of departure from I-5 when you're heading for the ferries to the San Juan Islands. These claims to fame apparently lacked sufficient drama in the eyes of its ambitious mayor, however.

On Saturday, Mayor Bud Norris will present to Glenn Beck the key to the City of Mount Vernon. As the mayor admits, the key doesn't open a damn thing, but will cost something like $50 to $80 at the kind of shop that throws together bowling trophies. Police officers will work overtime to provide Beck with security, and officers from the county and surrounding communities have been asked for assistance. The key will be presented at a ceremony with a $25 admission charge.

Sixteen thousand persons have signed a petition opposing the honor (the town has a population of around 32,000). The seven-person City Council unanimously passed a resolution stating:

Mount Vernon City Council is in no way sponsoring the Mayor's event on September 26, 2009 and is not connected to the Glenn Beck event in any manner.

Residents of the San Juans and neighboring towns who regularly shop in Mount Vernon are murmuring about a possible boycott.

But the mayor isn't blinking. The show will go on.

Thaw towards Havana

I know I'm dog-paddling in water way over my head, but apparently there is a Latin rock musician, a native of Colombia, known as "Juanes." Juanes, who now lives on Key Biscayne, is scheduled to perform a free concert today in Havana. The New York Times reported yesterday on the divisive impact this concert is having on the Cuban-American population in Florida.

The concert has been approved by the State Department and by the Cuban government. According to Juanes:

Through culture, there is a door, there is a window. Let's go through that door.

The reaction among the Miami Cuban population reveals the expected generational split. But this year is the 50th anniversary of the Castro revolution in Cuba. The United States has had no diplomatic relations with a country just 90 miles off Florida for the last 47 of those 50 years. We have done everything possible to keep Cuba impoverished, so that no claim could be made elsewhere in Latin America that Communism "works."

The Cuban exiles in Florida remind me of the loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution. If fifty years later, in 1826, those loyalists had been still denouncing the American government -- and John Quincy Adams, its president -- as traitors to the Crown, and demanding that British North America have no economic or cultural contact with the rebellious "colonies," their demands would have seemed somewhat peculiar to the rest of the world.

And so has appeared our treatment of Cuba. It's a relief to see that the ice is finally melting, and that our government is supporting today's concert by Juanes.

Slouching towards darkness

I am talking here about finding both your husband and your daugher dead, gone from your life within months of each other. Two such deaths, while improbable and unexpected, are not I suppose a coincidence that one could call impossible. Nevertheless they are a coincidence that I somehow find troubling.

Anyone who has read Joan Didion recognizes her style, a style as tempting to parody (mine above) as the style of another superb writer, Ernest Hemingway. I've long loved both Didion's style and her paranoid ability to see the uncanny, the frightening, the apocalyptic in the trivial details of daily life, in the minor crime and accident reports she happens upon in the daily papers, in the frighteningly banal lives of the men we consider our leaders. Her books of essays -- Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album -- represent, to me at least, some of the best and most evocative writing of its kind of the past half century.

This post, however, is not to be an evaluation of Ms. Didion's writing style or her admittedly neurotic obsessions -- although they would make admirable topics for future posts. Instead, I just want to mention that I saw a dramatic interpretation of her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, at Intiman Theatre last week. I haven't read the best-selling book, but her dramatization of her own work for stage is a powerful reflection on the finality of death, on our inability to accept that finality, and on the secret efforts of our incredulous minds to disregard that finality -- our efforts to reverse death and to restore the dead to life by forcing ourselves to obey invented and self-imposed rules -- efforts similar to those of a kid who thinks he can prevent his mother's back from breaking if he avoids the cracks in the sidewalk.

Of such efforts is magical thinking.

Actor Judith Roberts strides about a sparely but tastefully appointed and sandy stage -- representing Didion's Malibu beach property -- and delivers a stunning monologue -- 1 hour, 45 minutes, without intermission. Before our eyes, she talks her way though the early stages of grief -- denial, guilt, anger, bargaining, reflection. But whereas psychologists see these stages as leading to acceptance and hope, Didion is a control freak. She has never been a woman for whom acceptance has been a normal approach to life. Resolution for her signifies not acceptance and hope, but a bitter concession that the two most important persons -- perhaps the only important persons -- in her life are indeed dead. They are dead, they will stay dead, and they aren't hanging around waiting for her to spring them by posting some form of spiritual bail. There is no action she can take, no threats she can make, no sly bargains she can negotiate, that will ever bring them back.

It's a powerful and devastating play, one that left the audience stunned and deathly silent, a play that demonstrated through the power of the spoken word why Joan Didion is one of the most memorable wielders and stylists of the English language now alive.

Mad as hell

Yesterday, in response to a question, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said:

“Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time as many people will still find that their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was.

Today, Warren Buffet has been quoted, offering his opinion that the economy has not gotten worse -- but hasn't gotten better either -- the past three months. In the absence of some "horrible event," he does not see much of a chance for a significant downturn in the near future for the overall economy.

These are very cautious, measured statements. Bernanke emphasizes that, using the technical definition of "recession" -- month to month decrease in the GDP -- the recession is over. This leaves us at the bottom of the hill, hoping for a future rise in GDP, leading in turn to increased employment. Buffet essentially says the same thing, in less technical language.

But read the on-line comments to the news stories reporting both men's statements. Readers call both men liars, ignorant, incompetent, selfish, unable to see what's in front of their face. How can they say the recession is over, writers howl, when times are as tough as they are.

The fault lies partly in the layman's use of "recession" to signify not a receding of the economy, but simply bad times economically. But the bitter on-line comments also demonstrate just how bad life has become for many Americans. When you're out of work and you fear that you will be permanently unemployable in tomorrow's economy, you don't stop to notice fine distinctions in technical terminology. Nor are you interested in secular economic trends, changes in demographics, or evolving life styles in foreign countries as root causes for the decline in the American economy. All you care about is that yesterday was good, and tomorrow looks like it will be bad, very bad. Someone screwed up, and "we want our country back."

Citizens who write comments on-line are not stupid. They are articulate, and they have some technological sophistication. If these writers are "mad as hell," they represent a lot of other people out there, people who may feel even angrier and more hopeless.

If the economy doesn't show definite improvement by November 2010 -- not just technically, not just in the stock market, but at the level that affects the average guy -- it will clearly play a major role in determining the results of the midterm elections. The question is -- which candidates and which party will pay the higher price?

In search of "better angels"

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
--Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

Readers may have noted a dramatic decrease in the number of my political postings since the November election. In part, this is the result of Obama's victory -- my constant howls of outrage are no longer necessary. But in part, it's because of my general sense of depression as I watch President Obama's attempts to push a moderate agenda through Congress. It's like watching a kayaker paddling upstream against a strong current.

In today's New York Times, Op-Ed columnist Charles M. Blow suggests that today's America has no room for conciliators -- like Obama.

He's an idealist in an age of cynicism, a conciliator at a time of cleaving. He strives to appeal to a dwindling body of better angels in an increasingly bifurcated country. It's noble and inspirational, but will it be effective?

In some ways, he is a throwback to a gentler time of civility and commonality, when compromising on issues wasn't viewed as compromising on principles.

We need a fighter, Blow suggests. Someone who's not so interested in persuading Republicans. More interested in crushing them.

I don't want to sound bizarrely apocalyptic, but at times the country today reminds me of America in the decade before the Civil War. Conciliation and attempts to compromise were becoming less and less fruitful. Positions were hardening, becoming more idealogical and less negotiable. Political opposition was becoming more personal, less civil.

In retrospect, Abraham Lincoln -- like Obama -- was a moderate whose primary goal was to preserve the Union. The South, consumed with fury, couldn't see it that way. Lincoln was the Devil incarnate. His election precipitated secession beginning with -- no surprise, in view of recent events -- South Carolina.

Despite journalists' tidy division of today's America into red and blue states, I suspect that the majority of Americans across the nation even now are moderate conservatives or moderate liberals -- or are unconcerned with or oblivious to political debates. Most Americans -- I suspect -- still look at health care reform pragmatically, not as an Armageddon between Atheistic Socialism and Inhuman Disdain for the Sufferings of the Poor. But, then, I suspect that in the run-up to the Civil War, political polls -- if they had existed -- would have shown that most (white male) Americans wanted a solution to the slavery issue that would gradually have ended the South's "peculiar institution" at minimal cost to southern economic interests, a solution that they hoped would have kept the nation united.

The moderate middle was unable to prevent the Civil War. The moral issue of slavery and the constitutional issue of the nature of the union were decided by force -- not by reason, not by consensus. Admittedly, attitudes at that time were more sharply defined by geography than they are today, despite the apparent clarity on political maps of the blue state - red state division. Military war between the states today thus seems unthinkable (of course it also seemed unlikely in, say, 1830), but unbending and seemingly irrational Republican idealogues may be pushing their opponents into the political equivalent of military conquest -- reliance on large majorities in Congress to ram through political solutions without bothering to consult across the aisle.

If the hotheads in South Carolina and throughout the South had given Lincoln a chance, he might have mediated a mutually acceptable solution to the political crisis of those days. Instead, they were less interested in defending their region's actual economic interests than they were in going to war over an outdated idealogy of "states rights." They insisted on battle. President Lincoln gave it to them, and they ended up with Reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment.

When you insist on a fight to the death, you'd better be damned sure you can win.

Before the lights

I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid.

I made my fateful debut as a Hollywood actor last night. High above the glittering city -- "a thousand stories, waiting to be told" -- on the romantic twentieth floor of the Seattle Municipal Building. The quiet, understated elegance of the Seattle building permit department was electric, for one night only, with technology and talent.

Technically, I suppose, they may have called me an "extra," but it's not the title -- it's what one does with it. Frankly, I wowed 'em.

Tobey Maguire was at the counter, trying to obtain a building permit from an obtuse city bureaucrat. I was first in line behind him, waiting my turn, bearing a roll of architect's drawings thoughtfully provided me by the prop department. Yes, standing immediately behind Tobey Maguire. Let's just say that I had Spiderman's back.

I listened to the tedious dialogue between naive young permit applicant and cynical city official. My face, my posture, my entire demeanor, projected ennui, impatience, disdain, restlessness, boredom. I didn't play the part of a bored bystander. I was a bored bystander. I was Everyman. I was Everyman waiting in line, delayed by banality, watching his life pass wastefully by. Stanislavsky would have gasped with admiration. No, of course I didn't steal the scene from Tobey. "The play is the thing," after all. I but provided the vibrant background that allowed Tobey to shine like a jewel.

I heard the director murmuring to his assistants after my performance. After all twenty or so takes, in fact. It was clear that he was stunned, having received far more from me as an actor than he had believed possible. He said nothing to me. He didn't need to. We're both professionals.

Filming continues for another week. I'm simply pleased that I could make my own small contribution to the success of the film. Jesse offers to help me set up my own personal imdb.com publicity page. Yes, yes. I suppose that must be the next step.

To Annapurna

Labor Day approaches. Somehow we've once again reached, all too speedily, the end of another summer. As always, the change of seasons, viewed metaphorically as I do most things, awakens my usual morbid reflections on mortality. Falling leaves; chill in the air; hibernation; snow and cold looming ahead; frozen sparrows plummeting from the sky; death, decay and desolation. All of that good stuff.

This year, however, anticipation of a timely trip to the Mysterious East keeps my spirits buoyed and my thoughts warm and summery. On September 29, I'll depart Seattle on the incredibly long journey to Kathmandu, Nepal.

Pascal and I will trek for two weeks, climbing up into the "Annapurna Sanctuary," a glacial basin (13,430 ft.) deep in the Himalayas which climbers use as their base camp for the ascent of Annapurna. From the base camp, we'll be able to view at least six surrounding peaks over 23,000 feet, including Annapurna I (at 26,545 ft., the world's tenth highest mountain). One of the peaks guarding the only entrance to the basin -- Machapuchare -- is believed to be the home of the god Shiva, and the sanctuary itself was long believed to hold gold and other treasures left there by the Nagas (malicious serpent gods in Hindu tradition). Until recently, the local people prohibited any woman from entering the sanctuary, or anyone at all from bringing in eggs or meat.

Since our group of nine trekkers includes six women, this prohibition, if still enforced, might have been problematic.

This will not be a difficult trek, climbing to only 13,500 feet over a period of five days, beginning from the town of Pokhara at about 3,500 feet. I can't say my training has been really adequate, however, due in part to the disruption caused by the great cinematic production that occupied a substantial part of my summer in one way or another. But even if I hike more slowly than I'd like, I expect to enjoy fully my exposure to fantastic Himalayan scenery and the fascinating local Tibetan Buddhist culture.

Pascal has joined me on a number of other treks, most recently on a more ambitious trek to the Ladakh area of northern India in 2005. He was a mere college freshman, but even then a worthily argumentative sort. He has since graduated in economics from UBC (including six months "study" (read "beer drinking") at the University of Melbourne), and I'm sure we'll enjoy matching wits as we hike.

I expect to encounter neither Nagas nor gold, but it's nevertheless a trek I'm eagerly anticipating. I'll report back upon my return. I can start worrying about winter then -- until then, the sun will continue to shine warmly upon my soul!

Farewell to pink

The never-ending restoration of my house, after days of shooting scenes for The Details, goes on. The producers have installed new carpeting upstairs (after ripping out my cat-dander-infested old carpeting), have obliged me by hauling away years of accumulated debris from my basement (that I've been too lazy to have hauled away myself), have restored the original paint job downstairs, and have even provided my cats with a brand new cat door. Also, they have re-sodded my backyard, and as a nice, unbargained-for bonus, will hire a gardener to trim and prune the landscaping.

But ... the most noticeable accomplishment -- the job that causes the entire neighborhood to breathe a collective sigh of relief -- has been the obliteration of the color pink from my exterior wood trim. As seen in this picture --with some difficulty because of the not-yet-trimmed shrubbery -- the trim is brown, and the house exterior once again looks halfway respectable.

There ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to loan yer house to make a movie I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more.