Purgatory

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Thus should be engraved above the entrance to the downtown office of the Washington Department of Licensing. Once every five years, I'm forced to pass through that dire portal. Inside ... the land of the walking undead.

Time to renew my driver's license.

Five windows, like tellers' windows in a bank, face me as I enter. Only two windows, of course, are manned. In the open space in front of the windows, seated on ancient folding chairs like masses of frightened immigrants on Ellis Island, are huddled the uncomprehending supplicants -- Washington taxpayers hoping against hope that some obscure technicality won't bar them from obtaining their license. Many, I observe, hope in vain.

For I had time to watch their travails. Oh, I had time all right. In a rare display of bureaucratic efficiency, I'm instructed upon entering to press a button and receive a number. My number is 244. The two windows are currently serving numbers 213 and 215.

It's going to be one of those days.

As time passes, first one ghastly pale priest of the Bureaucracy and then another drifts in. They open up two of the unused windows. Several "customers" get served. For a moment, hope almost seems possible. Then two of the peoples' servants begin discussing some matter between themselves. No one new is called to either of their windows. Eventually, a hundred eyes burning holes in them, they wander off. They're never seen again.

We are back to two windows. Well, really only one and a half. One of the two remaining workers doubles as a part time photographer. When she gets bored, or sees too many applicants crowding the photography waiting area, she shuts down her window, takes a break from paper shuffling, and begins expressing her creative side by taking mug shots.

Finally, #244 is called. I pay my money. I look deep into some governmental version of an optical instrument, and somehow prove that I can see. I wait for another ten minutes to be photographed.

It's over. For me, this Stygian nightmare comes only once every five years. But for the governmental zombies who run that dismal pavilion, it's all in a day's work. Each day. Every day. For years upon mind-numbing years.

Not Dante's Hell perhaps, but certainly Purgatory.

Have gun, will travel

Beginning Monday, you can start packing heat in our National Parks (with the exception of ranger stations and certain other governmental buildings). Yup. You can walk fully armed through the lobbies and restaurants of the massively timbered lodges. You can keep your finger on your trigger as you walk in and about the camping areas. You can carry guns on the trail. You can hike armed to the gills down into the Grand Canyon, and carry your AK-47 (presumably) to the top of Half Dome.

Not hunting rifles, I guess. You still can't hunt in National Parks -- we like to keep them natural. You can't shoot your guns recreationally. So what's the point? I guess they might be carried for "self-defense," despite the fact that our parks tend to attract peaceful, bird-watching, Sierra Club-types, along with the occasional French or German-speaking tourist.

Never mind. The NRA has spent "millions" to overturn the ban on guns in parks.

According to the Associated Press, gun owners have been rushing in "record numbers" to obtain concealed weapon permits. They suspect that Obama will find some way to get around their Congressional victory -- a rider attached to a credit card reform package that Obama signed into law -- and they want to make sure they have their gun permit in one hand and their Smith & Wesson in the other before that happens.

I know that I've promised from the outset that my blog will be devoted to critical analysis of the world about me. But I'm at a loss. How do you analyze madness, except to admit that you find no other explanation than madness -- paranoid madness -- for what you see?

Virtually everyone in my small circle of friends and acquaintances seems sane, rational, reasonably educated. They at times disagree with my political views or question my aesthetic judgments, but these are the kind of disagreements that it's a pleasure to discuss. But I apparently travel in very, very small circles. There's a significant portion of the American population -- I mean, there's a hell of a lot of them out there! -- who live in a mental universe utterly beyond my comprehension.

I throw up my hands. I consider avoiding rowdy groups or silent loners next time I venture into a National Park. I stare at my map of North America, again pondering the possibility of somehow detaching my Northwest Corner from the far, far scarier remaining 48 states of the Union.

I throw the occasional "eh?" into my speech patterns.

To the chipper

In an unforgettable scene from the 1987 movie Fargo, a character is discovered running the body of his partner in crime through a woodchipper.

I recalled the movie as I watched workers shove hunks of an old friend -- a huge laurel bush that until now towered over one side of my house -- through a similar chipper at 8 a.m. on a President's Day morning.

There are those whose natural instinct is a craving for cleanness, openness, simplicity. I, it seems, am not one of those. My house is full of strange twists and turns. I happily enclose it with overgrown shrubbery, partially protecting myself from the prying eyes of neighbors and passers-by. My laurel tree was, at one time, a small laurel bush. Like Topsy, it just grew. Finally, it almost entirely blocked access between front and back yards along that side of the house. It gradually spread its canopy over my second story roof.

The laurel had developed into a large sturdy tree, a tree that showed what laurel can do if given free reign. My kitchen, whose windows opened under its canopy, became increasingly dark over the years, forcing me to turn on the lights even during the day. More to the point, its canopy was depriving my neighbor's less robust hedge of light, causing some of her plants to die. I had to sacrifice my old friend -- to save my house from being fatally enveloped in laurel leaves, and to avoid open warfare with my neighbor.

The laurel, imposing though it appeared, put up little fight when subjected to chain saws. Workers swiftly chopped it into pieces, which were hauled to the front of the house and run through the chipper. My old friend is now a pile of sawdust, on its way to the dump. From dust it came, unto dust it has returned. The kitchen seems unnaturally bright, the side of my house sadly empty.

Somehow, life of all kinds feels unnecessarily short and precarious.

Olympic carping

Conservatives used to grumble that the media always painted everything black. We need to read more "good news," they argued. (The subtext was that life in these U.S. of A. would be just dandy, if only TV and newspapers didn't keep calling attention to isolated problems and demanding public programs as solutions.)

I'm beginning to see their point, but from the opposite perspective. Time magazine has a story this week about the Olympic Village in Vancouver. Our neighbor to the north has built perhaps the finest housing for Olympic athletes ever provided, giving the athletes spectacular views out over False Creek inlet. Because of the banking disaster last year, however, the city had to provide unanticipated financing for construction of the Village, or end up staging the 2010 Winter Olympics with no appropriate housing for participants.

The private developers planned (and still plan) to sell the housing as condo units for about $1 million each after the Games are over. Once they sell, the city will recover the money it has advanced. Obviously, however, these are not the best times to be selling million dollar condos.

The development is well-designed, environmentally friendly, and close to public transportation. Aside from the cost, it's clearly a benefit to Vancouver and its residents. But Time chooses to picture the project as a boondoggle. The magazine quotes an ophthalmology professor (!), and "vocal Olympic critic," as declaring that "The whole Village fiasco leaves the city with fairly dangerous exposure." The Time article then points out that the project is only blocks away from a poverty-ridden neighborhood, where crime and drug abuse are common.

Time quotes, with apparent approval, its eye doctor source as suggesting the irony of the juxtaposition, declaring that it was the height of irresponsibility for the city to help build the Olympic Village while poverty existed so close at hand.

Yes, but. The poverty pre-existed the Olympics. Does Time believe that if the city had not guaranteed completion of the Village, it would have used the cash to end homelessness, crime, and drug abuse in that portion of town? I can't see that the city was robbing the poor to reward the athletes; combatting homelessness and poverty makes up a totally different agenda with different political and economic considerations.

I suppose Time could be commended for calling our attention to social problems amongst even the best run of North American cities, but the article strikes me as just one more attempt by the media to tear down every attempt -- by all levels of government -- to accomplish something for the community. After noting that visiting athletes were highly impressed by the Village, the article concludes by editorializing: "Rave reviews from the Olympians, for sure. But the taxpayers of Vancouver may sharply disagree."

Maybe. But maybe they don't disagree. Maybe they're hopeful that Vancouver's financing will be repaid. They may be well aware of the pockets of poverty that exist in their city, but also aware that more than doling out city money is going to be required to solve the problem.

And maybe they're proud of the fine job their city has done in hosting this year's Olympic Games.

Finally ... !!

I start piano lessons next Monday.

Odd reflections

Anyone hanging around Facebook this past week, anyone with way too much time on his hands (isn't that redundant?), is well aware that we've just passed through "Doppelgänger week." Anyone childish enough to participate¹ substituted, in place of his own profile photo, the photo of some celebrity who he supposed (hoped?) bore some resemblance to himself.

I was familiar with the German word as a term commonly used to describe one's "double," but until now had never thought about its origins. It comes from German folklore. (English folklore had a similar concept, called a "fetch"; and the Norse had something called a "vardøger.")

It seems that a Doppelgänger ("double walker") was believed to be a spectral embodiment, or projection from a different level of reality, of one's own soul. If you saw your doppelganger (using the anglicized form of the word), you didn't clown around about it. You froze in terror. The doppelganger was a harbinger of your own death.

The doppelganger was often perceived in the peripheral area of vision, or was seen looking back at one from a mirror or a darkened window. Mirrors were magical objects to the people of many early cultures. They seemed to be windows into a similar but different reality. Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass is a non-threatening description of such a world, one more than slightly askew, found on the other side of a mirror. In some versions of the superstition, the image in any mirror was a doppelganger by definition. It was not until the doppelganger was seen outside the mirror world, seen moving about in our own world, that it became frightening and a sign of disaster.

In some places, it's still a custom to cover all mirrors in the house where a person has just died. Doing so prevents the reflected doppelganger of any visiting guests from being sucked into the afterworld by the deceased's spirit.

In modern times, with our understanding of the optics of mirrors and reflections in general, the whole concept is of course ridiculous. True, Abraham Lincoln did see his doppelganger shortly before he was assassinated, but, well, he was under a lot of stress. And, of course, the poets Percy Shelley and John Donne also saw doppelgangers before their wives miscarried. But you know how hyper-imaginative and sensitive poets can be.

In the spirit of complete honesty and openness, I'll confess that -- up into my teens -- I'd sometimes cover the mirror in my bedroom when I went to bed at night and was alone in the house. Of course, back then I'd never even heard of "doppelgangers" -- with or without the umlaut. However, I had read this damn horror comic book where this guy looked into his bedroom mirror one night and saw ... Well, after he went to sleep, the reflection in the mirror came out and ....

Ah, it was stupid. You don't want to know.

Doppelgangers are part of old folklore, like leprechauns and dwarfs. They don't exist. Never have. On the other hand, who needs a mirror in his bedroom, anyway? I'd chuck it out and use the mirror in your bathroom. Keep the light turned on bright.
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¹I chose Woody Allen.

Don't wait, don't study

"Don't ask, don't tell" may be on its last legs. President Obama says the law should be repealed. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have agreed, but they want a year to study the "impact" of such a change before Congress acts.

I suppose it sounds naive, but what exactly is there to study? Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland -- that's the list as of 2003 -- make no distinction between gay and straight enlistees. None of their armies has collapsed from internal dissension. Israeli soldiers, for example, are not generally considered effeminate or ineffectual; their battalions aren't torn by conflicts over sexual orientation. If we need to "study," why not simply look at the experiences of virtually all our allies?

A 2009 poll showed that 59 percent of the American public agree that gays and lesbians should be permitted to serve in the military. Today's Fox News poll shows that "only" 59 percent of its voters oppose abolishing the policy. A Fox News poll will usually show that 85 percent of its readers support "drawing and quartering" as the preferred means of capital punishment, and believe that their school children should be armed with AK-47's for both recreation and self-protection. So even the right wing is giving ground.

Public attitudes have changed, and studies have shown that those changes in attitude are shared by men and officers in uniform as well.

The Associated Press today reports an interview with a former Army staff sergeant, injured in Afghanistan, who said that most soldiers already knew that some members of their units were gay. "Nobody cares. Don't ask, don't tell is kind of a joke," he added.

The time has come. The people affected will be those gays and lesbians already serving effectively in the armed forces, men and women who are respected and trusted by their fellow servicemen. No one suggests that there will be a sudden flood of West Hollywood hairdressers and interior designers, lining up to enlist in the eager hope of being shipped out to Afghanistan. What the change will do is put a stop to the present loss of badly needed personnel, including, notably, skilled translators fluent in both English and Arabic, many of whom have been discharged over this issue during the past few years.

An election year may seem a bad time to push a socially divisive change through Congress. But every year is either an election year or almost an election year. Abolishing "don't ask, don't tell" is fair to the individuals involved; it will also be good public policy, for the military and for the nation as a whole.

So he don't see no sun shinin'

Groundhog Stew

1 groundhog

2 onions, sliced

1/2 cup celery, sliced

Flour

Vinegar and water

Salt and pepper

Cloves

Clean groundhog; remove glands; cut into serving pieces. Soak overnight in a solution of equal parts of water and vinegar with addition of one sliced onion and a little salt. Drain, wash, and wipe. Parboil 20 minutes, drain, and cover with fresh boiling water. Add one sliced onion, celery, a few cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook until tender; thicken gravy with flour.