Driving onwards

Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north. ... As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.
--E. B. White

As we arise from the muddy ditch that was 2011, may the skies that lie ahead in 2012 shine brightly about us. May we find ourselves headed in the right direction, whatever that right direction might be and wherever it may lead us.

Happy New Year!

Suffer the little children ...

Two New York Times stories out of Illinois, this week.

The first story is that of Lamar West. Lamar was taken from his birth parents, for reasons related to drug abuse, when he was four. He was adopted by Frankie Lee West when he was five. His birth records were changed to show his adoption. His surname was changed to that of his adoptive mother. He became part of a large family, some adopted and some the natural children of his new mother.

From what I can glean from the story, he lived a normal childhood. At age 17, he moved out of the house for a few months, because of over-crowding, but kept in regular contact with his mom. He then returned to his house. It was empty. As Lamar puts it, his mother had "upped and went."

Lamar was abandoned one month before he turned 18. Eighteen is the age when adoptive parents in Illinois stop receiving state assistance. Lamar is now 20. He's had one brief phone call with his mother. She did not invite him back. He has since married and has a child of his own. He still misses the family in which he was raised.

The NYT writer points out that this is a common problem in Illinois. Abandoned children over 18 are adults. The state has no further responsibility for them, financial or otherwise. Many end up on the street, homeless.

"D.C.F.S. is aware that not all placements are perfect matches", the article notes.

The second article, also in the New York Times, reports that the Catholic bishops of Illinois have closed down most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in Illinois. Catholic Charities is one of the largest social service organizations in the nation, providing services to poor persons of all faiths. Sixty percent of its income is from government programs. Three percent comes from diocesan and parish funds. The rest comes from charitable contributions and investments.

Among the services provided by Catholic Charities in Illinois is arrangement of adoptions. Last summer, Illinois's attorney general told the organization that it must henceforth comply with the state's anti-discrimination laws. Therefore, in determinating suitability of adoptive parents, it could no longer consider whether the parents were of the same or opposite sexes.

Rather than permit Catholic Charities to place children with same-sex parents, the Illinois bishops have shut down the entire organization within Illinois.

The bishops feel their religious freedom is being attacked. "In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill.

A teacher from Marion, Ill., Tim Kee, and his long time partner, Rick Wade, both Catholic, tried to adopt through Catholic Charities. They were turned down.

I'm not sure what lesson, if any, can be drawn from considering these two stories together. Certainly, churches should not be forced to act against their principles. But what if the church were one that had religious objections to mixed marriages? How should the state react to a religious organization that refused, on principle, to allow a white male and African-American female (or vice versa), to adopt a child of any race?

Illinois is seeing skyrocketing numbers of "failed adoptions," as kids who were adopted 15 years or so ago are now turning 18. The motive for many of those adoptions, it now seems, was financial. "Not all placements are perfect matches," as the the NYT article summarizes the state's position. At the same time, the state has been providing over sixty percent of the operating budgets of an agency -- unquestionably an excellent and highly responsible provider of services -- that won't permit a school teacher and his long time partner to adopt a child -- for no reason other than that they are not of opposite sexes.

The bishops of Illinois have thus made the decision that it is preferable to allow the state's bureaucratic placement of a child with a single parent whose only motive is to receive state assistance payments -- or to allow the child to grow to maturity living in an orphanage -- rather than itself place the child with two men or women who -- presumably -- would raise the child in a loving and stable environment.

Maybe they are correct. They no doubt are acting in accord with their sincere convictions. But maybe, with a little thought and a little prayer, they could figure out a course of action that considers the immediate impact of their actions upon the lives of others, not merely their actions' conformity with abstract principles.

Knocking off No. 7

On December 24, the afternoon before Christmas, I was doing last minute shopping at a mini-mall in the town of Big Bear Lake, California. I would have felt less tired -- less stressed, perhaps -- if I'd known what a home town boy from Big Bear Lake was doing at the same moment.

In May 2010, I wrote a post praising the accomplishments of 13-year-old Jordan Romero, the boy who'd just become the youngest person ever to climb Everest. At the age of 10, when he climbed Africa's Kilimanjaro, Jordan decided to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents. Everest was number six; only Antarctica remained. He hoped to climb the Vinson Massif the following December.

His climb was delayed for a year, but on December 24, 2011, he completed the climb. At the age of 15 years, 5 months and 12 days, he was the youngest person to ever climb the "Seven Summits." According to Wikipedia, China has now joined Nepal in prohibiting climbs of Everest by persons under 16. Jordan's record therefore looks pretty safe for the foreseeable future.

The young man's steadfast determination over the past five years -- not only to complete each grueling climb, but to persist in the training required before and between climbs -- is inspiring. He demonstrates that our frequent stereotype of his age group -- a bunch of lazy kids playing with their electronic toys -- is only a stereotype. Not many young people will accomplish this much, this early -- but many of them are following their own stars, whether athletic, academic, entrepreneurial, with dedication and enthusiasm.

I haven't bothered checking the on-line comments about Jordan's latest achievement by the commentators who I found so irritating in my earlier post, but I assume they're still there, still criticizing and scoffing at anyone who dares to accomplish anything they can't or won't. The ranks of this on-line chorus have been described as bitter young adults, unemployed and wedded to their computers while living in their parents' basement. Another unfair stereotype, probably, but I can live with it.

Again, my congratulations to Jordan Romero, and to his parents who supported him so strongly in his efforts (and to Jordan's father, especially, who joined his son in making each climb).

Christmas chiaroscuro

Not a crock pot.

At least, I don't think so. The doubt I suggested earlier -- whether my new Kindle would turn out to be one of those gadgets that, once purchased, I would consign to a dark corner of the basement, never to be seen again -- was apparently unfounded.

During my train trip last week -- to Los Angeles, to join family for Christmas -- between my eating in the diner, drinking in the club car, talking to relatives who joined the train mid-journey in the Bay Area, and simply staring out the window and daydreaming -- I managed to read, in its entirety, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Once I arrived at our rented cabin at Big Bear Lake -- between my eating incessantly, drinking when not eating, talking to relatives who descended on Big Bear from all over the West Coast, and simply staring out the window at the snow, the trees and the deep blue sky -- I managed to read, in its entirety, Blue Nights, by Joan Didion.

My Kindle proved as helpful and as easy to use as I'd hoped. The two books I chose to read were well-written, fascinating, and possibly worthy of a future blog or two in their own right. Extremely Loud is about death, loss of loved ones, and the inability to know the ones you love even while they still live, told against a backdrop of (to some extent) the firebombing of Dresden and (to a significant extent) the catastrophe of Nine-Eleven in New York City. Blue Nights is about death, loss of loved ones, and the inability to know the ones you love even while they still live, told against a backdrop of the apprehension by its 75-year-old author that she not only was no longer a kid, but was, in fact, showing obvious and disturbing signs of mortality.

Ho ho ho! And a Merry Christmas to you all, boys and girls!

But like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and the tombstone etched with Ebeneezer's own name, my Kindle reading projected merely a dark background, against which the joyful revels of Christmas were rendered even sharper and more colorful -- a sense of temporality that caused one to welcome even more the warm company of close family, the renewal of acquaintance with distant family, and casual conversations with interesting family friends I'd never before met.

I'd hardly claim as an original observation that awareness of life's shortness often intensifies one's enjoyment of life's presence. Luckily for the progress of mankind, knowledge of our mortality isn't usually a debilitating depressant.

So I had a great time at Big Bear, despite (or because of) writings on my Kindle cautioning me to enjoy the present while it's still here to be enjoyed -- to shoo away the ghosts of the future, and join the guests celebrating at the banquet table of Christmas Present.

I'll have one more plate of turkey, Bob Cratchit, if I might? And God bless us, every one!

South by rail

Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.¹


Some of my earliest hazy memories are of riding on overnight trains from Portland down the Willamette Valley, to visit my great grandparents on a farm. And slightly later, I have a much clearer recollection of traveling by sleeper with my mother and brother to Sacramento, where an aunt picked us up and drove us up to Donner Lake, near Lake Tahoe.

These early experiences -- memories dimmed by the swirling fogs of very early childhood -- may have exerted a permanent impact on my brain's later development, because I can't remember a time during my life that I haven't loved train travel. As a 14-year-old, I took the Empire Builder back to Chicago -- three days and two nights all by myself, sitting and sleeping in a coach seat -- to visit a former school friend. During college, I made three round trips a year between my home in Washington and school in California. Overseas for my university's "study abroad" program, I traveled all over Europe during school breaks -- always by train.

Nowadays, it's much faster, simpler, and usually cheaper to fly than it is to ride by train. Nevertheless, tomorrow at 9:45 a.m., I'll find myself boarding Amtrak's Coast Starlight, bound for Southern California, where I'll join family for Christmas. I'll arrive at Burbank -- the last stop before Los Angeles -- at 8:15 p.m. Thursday night. No longer a starving, penniless student -- carefully avoiding the expense of European hotels by sitting up overnight in a second class compartment -- I now allow myself the luxury of splurging on a roomette in a sleeping car.

But coach or sleeper, the basic attractions are the same. For 35 hours, I'll be isolated from the "real" world. No chores to do. Nothing expected of me. I can read in comfort for uninterrupted hours, or stare blankly out the window, hypnotized by the blur of scenery rushing past. If I feel restless, I can walk to one of the lounge cars, have a beer, and meet or observe other travelers. If I chose -- which I don't -- I could spend much of the trip staring at screens in a darkened room devoted to arcade games. Some long distance trains -- I'm not sure about the Coast Starlight -- even show movies in a small theater.

The sweet tedium of the day is broken regularly by meals in the diner -- meals that, for sleeping car passengers, are included in the fare. These meals, for the first few years after Amtrak took over from Southern Pacific, were barely edible at best, but they are now surprisingly good. Perhaps not the same haute cuisine that luxury trains like the AT&SF's Super Chief are said to have offered before World War II, during the glory days of train travel, but they're a notch above those offered by casual chain restaurants.

The seats of the roomette convert to a bed with linen, blankets and pillows at night. I find them extremely comfortable, and the rocking and swaying of the railway car conducive to a very relaxing sleep. Of course, I've always slept happily sitting up in coach, as well, so maybe you shouldn't rely on my recommendation!

I've found that mankind can be divided into two groups: those who love train travel, and those who wonder why anyone would waste 35 hours of his life to travel a distance he could reach in a little over two hours by plane. It's these little differences between people that make life interesting, right? Anyway, I'm pleased to fall into the first category.

"Coast Starlight, now boarding on Track Three, bound for Tacoma, Olympia, Centralia, Kelso-Longview, Vancouver, Portland, .... and Los Angeles. All Aboard!"

See you folks after Christmas!
------------------------------------
¹Steve Goodman, "City of New Orleans."

Sail on, Gray Lady, sail on by

Yahoo News seems to be the first on the internet with the news that Janet Robinson, CEO of the New York Times, is resigning at the end of the month. Her departure is attributed to shareholder discontent with share value, resulting from inadequate revenue from subscriptions and advertising.

I might have used this news as a springboard for discussing the woes that confront print journalism nationwide, as newspapers find themselves faced with ever-increasing competition from free on-line news sites and blogs, at the time of a poor national economy.

Instead, I choose to note the almost universal chortling of joy expressed in anonymous on-line comments to the article, declaring the Gray Lady to be a worthless liberal rag, good only for lining bird cages. The sooner she dies the better.

I have a lifelong friend, a passionate conservative, who proudly declares that he never reads the NYT -- wouldn't allow the filthy propaganda sheet in his house. As a liberal who regularly reads the Fox News website, just to see what arguments are coming from the other side, I find this attitude hard to understand.

Newspapers offer readers a continuum of quality. There are terrible British newspapers -- many of them -- that I'd never bother reading, not so much because I disagree with their editorial policy as because they're full of sensationalistic nonsense. But there are few American papers, at least ones with a national following, that arouse that response in me. Right wing, left wing, or moderate -- most papers try to walk the perilous tightrope of bringing legitimate news to the community while still making a profit for their owners or shareholders.

But they do differ in quality. If an apolitical alien dropped down from Outer Space, and did his best to expunge every iota of bias from Fox News and the New York Times -- an impossible task, apart from the opinion page, since every decision selecting stories for publication rests on the editor's subjective sense of what he considers "important" and "newsworthy" -- the disparity between the two would be obvious and dramatic. Fox News would then be seen as combining many features of USA Today with certain features of People magazine. With even a dash of seasoning, perhaps, from National Enquirer.

The NYT, on the other hand, would still come close to justifying its somewhat overstated claim of being "America's Newspaper of Record." In the Times, you find in-depth reporting of international and national news that you simply can't find elsewhere in a newspaper format. But political news is only a fraction of what you get for your two bucks at the news stand -- over a week's time, you also receive detailed news -- by writers with expertise in their fields -- of music, arts, popular culture, books, fashion, business, sports. If I were totally uninterested in politics and international relations, I'd still subscribe to the NYT for its daily reporting of those other areas of life in which I did have an interest.

I'm not sure, on the other hand, that any of my right wing friends would bother to click on Fox News (or watch it on TV) if it weren't for the political slanting that the site offers.

The New York Times is not going to die, despite the fervent wishes of on-line commentators, any more than the Wall Street Journal will die, despite my own occasional raised eyebrows with respect to its editorial policy. Both newspapers are major assets in the world of American (and world) journalism. We would be a more poorly informed nation without them.

Requiem for a refuge

Yesterday, George Whitman, 98, died in Paris. The New York Times notes that he had owned his bookstore overlooking the Seine, Shakespeare & Company, since 1951. His store, named Le Mistral until 1964, was a mecca and refuge for the post-World War II generation of American expatriate writers, and the spiritual heir of the original Shakespeare & Company, run by Sylvia Beach during the 1920's.

His death occurred, ironically, on the same date as my post announcing that I had purchased a Kindle.

These two events were on my mind today, as I walked out of Barnes & Noble in University Village. For several months, I'd been noticing that the shelves had grown smaller and smaller, and spaced farther and farther apart. I'd been worrying that B&N was focusing its attention excessively on Nook, its own version of Kindle, rather than on promoting the sale of physical books. Today I learned the worst possible news -- the Village's B&N is closing its doors at the end of this month.

My readers are undoubtedly familiar with Barnes & Noble. The Village store is a massive yet warm and welcoming establishment. Two expansive floors, which, for years, were packed densely with books covering every possible subject matter. Alcoves with easy chairs and library tables -- one of the alcoves upstairs graced with a gas fireplace. A large recordings department, carrying an impressive inventory of classical CDs. Areas where authors were invited to give readings. A mezzanine Starbucks where you could linger over the books you'd just purchased -- or might still decide to purchase.

I often spent an entire afternoon at Barnes & Noble, browsing and reading books (books that I sometimes purchased, although not often enough, it seems), ending my visit by dallying for a half hour over latte, surrounded by poster caricatures of famous authors, while watching customers wander about the first floor below. Students would crowd tables doing homework, researching from books from the store's shelves. No one was hurried or asked to leave. As did Shakespeare & Company itself, the store offered a haven, at least for the day, to anyone with time on his hands and a love of books in his heart. The store's ambience was as much library as bookstore, but a library that was far cozier and less institutional than our downtown public library.

Halcyon bygone days. Wandering about the maze-like stacks of the Village store came close to matching my own personalized image of heaven. One of those joys you never quite appreciate, unfortunately, until you lose it.

Barnes & Noble still has a large store downtown that I often visit. That outlet is a fine place to shop around and buy a book -- but it's crowded with shoppers and it's bustling. Intentionally or not, it doesn't encourage idle shoppers to linger for hours, reading books without necessarily paying for them. It's not "cozy."

With the downtown Borders having shut down earlier this year when its parent company went bankrupt, and with the closing now of the Village B&N, I wonder if it's only a matter of time until all large bookstores shut their doors.

I left the store this afternoon, picturing that moment a couple of weeks from now when the last customer walks out the door, the last latte is pulled, the gas fireplace is extinguished for good, the remaining inventory is boxed up and returned to the publishers. The sky seemed grayer, the drizzle more drizzly, as I walked away.

Is it all Kindle from now on? George Whitman may have sensed that now was a good time to quietly depart the scene.

Kindling my desire

A month ago, I penned (keyboarded) a hymn to the printed page. Books were my life, I declared piously.

Today, I stand shamefaced before you and announce: "I've bought myself a Kindle."

Why would I do such a thing, you ask. I guess the proximate cause for my downfall was my experience while on trek in October. Pascal, my travel buddy, brought his Kindle in place of the paperbacks he lugged around on past trips. The device was attractive, slim, easy to hold in one hand; its screen was incredibly easy to read. He electronically bookmarked pages he found interesting, and highlighted passages, just like a college student. He instantaneously checked an internal dictionary for words whose meaning escaped him. He announced -- at least daily(!) -- the exact percentage still to go of the book he was reading. Had he needed new reading material, he would have had immediate digital access to Amazon's inventory. He even -- and this is amazing, although of questionable utility -- was able to beckon the book to read aloud to him.

I know. The decadence is breathtaking.

Of course, I had to get one. Whatever longwinded justifications I might offer you now, we all know the real reason. The Kindle was just too cool for me to resist.

I've downloaded one book from Amazon -- it cost me about $10. I've read a few pages, just to savor the experience, but I'm really saving my first "Kindle experience" for a lengthy train trip I'll be taking next week. It's while I travel that I expect Kindle to be so worthwhile and convenient. Here at home, on the other hand, I'm about half way through the new George Kennan biography -- a dense, heavy, hardback volume that I balance precariously and uncomfortably on one knee while my two cats face off for possession of the other.

The Kennan bio is a serious book, and its size and weight confirm its seriousness. It's a satisfying book to pick up and hold with both hands. I find myself constantly turning back to past chapters, confirming my recall of what I'd read earlier. The book, in all its physicality, will be a permanent addition to my library, a valuable resource to which I'll undoubtedly refer in the future.

A landmark biography of a renowned diplomat and framer of foreign policy requires shelf space. It's just not appropriate Kindle fodder.

But I think Kindle will be well adapted to reading fiction. I generally read novels straight though, without doing much searching back to re-read earlier portions. Once I've read a novel, moreover, I generally shelve it, never to be looked at again. I'll be adding fewer new works of fiction to shelves from now on, but I won't miss them.

And, of course -- (did I mention?) -- my totally awesome Kindle can store about 3,000 books: my once-read novels will all be there should I actually ever need them again.

I know it's not obvious, but I'm kind of excited, behind my calm and equable exterior. Kindle will be a new and powerful tool, and a supplement to my library of printed volumes. It unleashes all the dynamism of the future.

Unless, of course, it turns out to be no more than 2011's version of the 1970's crock pot -- an item everyone just had to own -- and one that's been tucked away, unused and out of sight, during the decades since it was purchased.

Tickling the ivories

As promised in my last posting, I won't describe my own performance at today's piano recital. Except to say that I was able to complete my piece without collapsing or requiring resuscitation.

But the recital experience itself -- my first since I was maybe 12 or 13 -- is worth a brief mention.

Ten pianists besides myself performed. They ranged in age from an unbelievably tiny young man of perhaps three, up to a boy and girl who appeared to be in their early teens. Eight of the performers were of Asian background. I mention this as but one more piece of evidence -- in one more area of life -- that Asian-American kids are positioning themselves to outshine their peers from other ethnic groups in tomorrow's America.

In the audience, besides those of us waiting to perform (or slowly reviving from our completed performance), were parents, siblings, and other proud relatives; our piano teacher herself; and an administrator from the music school who was taking photos of each cute child (and me, I presume) at the piano. In other words, it was a small audience, and not at all intimidating -- parents were all holding their breath through their own offspring's playing, and responding with appreciative applause to the performances of others.

The music ranged from Skateboard Doodle by a little tyke who obviously wished he were elsewhere, to rather sophisticated pieces by Mozart and Shostakovich by the two teenagers. I enjoyed it all: the serious efforts by the smallest kids, the stumblings by a boy about 12 who obviously hadn't practiced and was playing under protest, and the accomplished playing of familiar classical or semi-classical pieces (some in simplified arrangements) by the older half of the cast.

Here we were, two weeks before Christmas, with feverish shopping to be done. NFL games were on TV. It was a cold night, and the church in which the recital took place was also cold. But a little gathering of young people and their moms and dads made room in their lives to celebrate modest musical accomplishments. In a world of electronics and rock and roll and obsession with professional sports, parents implicitly acknowledged that the best gift and best educational experience they could give their kids was to willingly attend, listen to their children and others play, and show appreciation for their efforts by applause and hugs.

For a short time, playing the piano -- an ancient form of mastery that served as a goal for generations of kids before computer games came along -- was the most important fact in the universe.

It was nice.

Before a live audience

"And now ... Donny, in his second year, will perform Busy Beavers for us! Donny?"

The long, long walk from the front row up onto the stage. The awkward bow -- to an audience of perhaps 30, but an audience that seems vast enough to fill Carnegie Hall. The squirming about on the piano bench, trying to ignore the buzzing in one's ears.

You begin playing, making only occasional mistakes -- your sweaty fingers and your brain both on automatic pilot, until, two minutes later -- it's over! You stagger back to your seat to the polite applause of the bored parents of other young pianists.

The joys of being ten years old, at your first piano recital.

And today, the nightmare all comes back. My piano teacher has signed me up for a recital on December 11. This recital is sponsored by the music school through which I take lessons. Each teacher is expected to present two students. I'm one of hers.

She was apologetic. The notice was short. My heart palpitations were real. Her fear that I might quit taking lessons from her was not totally unfounded. She explained that she was required to place two names on the program, but that I -- as a mature and financially self-paying adult -- was not required to go through with it. Many of her students suddenly contract "illnesses" at the last moment, she assured me. It's my decision. Entirely.

I'd be playing the second movement to Beethoven's Pathetique sonata, the five-minute Adagio for which I first sought her guidance nearly two years ago. You'd think I could play it backwards and forwards by now.

She had me play it over again for her. She professed herself charmed. Perhaps a stumble here and there, a few missteps maybe. Perhaps a little excessively soft in the bass line? But, all in all, exhibiting great musicality on my part. My playing leaves her virtually in tears.

I regarded her raptures skeptically. Didn't my second year teacher say something equally soothing about my interpretation of Busy Beavers? Still, I've always been notably susceptible to flattery.

Will I actually show up? I'm going to work on my old friend from the Pathetique this week, and go over it again with her next lesson. I'll decide then.

She assures me that the music critic from the Seattle Times will not be present. Just a bunch of dewy-eyed parents, listeners who have ears only for their own precocious little dumplings.

Don't expect to hear more about this, by the way -- i.e., whether I chickened out, or showed up and shocked the audience with my incompetence. Don't expect me to tell you about it even if I actually show up and feel my performance was a musical triumph. I'm too easily deceived by a sense of my own awesomeness to be a fair judge.

No, unless a talent scout from Julliard happens to be present and offers me a scholarship, I think the outcome of this unfortunate affair will remain my private little secret.

To the barricades

If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.
--Joan Didion (1970)

The rumble of street demonstations, the flash of police batons, and the smell of tear gas (or, more likely, pepper spray) once more assaults the senses. Seattle won't be excluded. Today, Seattle commuters nervously awaited the drive home. An organization demonstrating against the state's budget and in favor of "Jobs Not Cuts" announced plans to demonstrate during evening rush hour at the Montlake bridge, near my house -- one of the few bridges, aside from I-5, that link the downtown to Seattle "north of the cut," as well as to Seattle's north end suburbs. The original organizing group has been joined by other protest movements and by labor unions.

At the last minute, the demonstrators agreed to move the protest to the University bridge, to avoid interfering with emergency hospital traffic near Montlake. The Seattle Times now reports that about 700 demonstrators showed up, and were able to shut down bridge traffic for about an hour and a half.

On May 5, 6, and 8, 1970, University of Washington students protesting the Vietnam war shut down the I-5 freeway, marching four miles along the freeway from the University to downtown. Marchers were estimated to number 7,000, 10,000, and 15,000, respectively, on those three dates. No one in 1970 much cared whether emergency vehicles were being inconvenienced.

I doubt that the demonstrations in 1970 -- huge as they were -- hastened the end of American military involvement in Vietnam, over three years later. I have even greater doubt that the protests going on now will hasten bipartisan cooperation and national healing -- or stimulate the rise of a new and more responsible political party -- or ameliorate global economic trends beyond our ability to control.

The demonstrations in 1970 did permit students to blow off steam, and the protests occurring over the past few weeks do the same. I don't see what other purpose they can serve, other than inconvenience commuters -- also overwhelmingly part of the "99 percent" -- who just want to get home.

Sometimes, a really big protest movement does effect real change by overturning the government in power. France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Egypt in 2011. Unfortunately, such revolutions tend to be followed by unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. Even if the nation itself may, in the long run, be benefitted, the revolutionaries themselves often end up disillusioned, impoverished, and even, as the revolution feeds upon itself, executed.

Our 700 protesters at University bridge don't strike me as Jacobins or Octobrists. They seem to be nice folks who just hope for a better world for themselves and their families ... as do we all. Our problems seem insoluable at present, but maybe not. Maybe there are solutions to our dysfunctional political and economic system, and we'll find a way to muddle our way through to those solutions. I hope so.

But I doubt that blocking bridges is a step toward the answer.
---------------------
Photo: Seattle freeway protesters. May 5, 1970

Raccoon wars

The nice drugstore clerk seemed a bit surprised when I told her what I wanted: an old-fashioned transistor radio. No, I definitely didn't need earphones. Or MP3 compatibility, or whatever else they might have as options. (Nor will I be taking photos with it, or summoning up the internet.) But she had just what I wanted. Something by Sony, something you could have bought in 1970. And it cost just $19.99.

She would have been more surprised if I'd told her why I wanted it.

Persistent readers may recall my past discussions of what I like to term "the raccoon wars." If not, you may wish to click here and review the record. The raccoon who considers my house within his juridical boundaries has grown ever bolder. While I was off on vacation last month, my cat care person found it impossible to keep him from entering the cat door. He gobbled great quantities of cat food, despoiled the cats' water supply, wandered throughout the house, upstairs and down, and generally made himself at home.

Within a couple of hours of my return, he pushed his largeness in through the cat door, finding himself mildly surprised to confront me face to face. Later that week, while I was upstairs reading in bed, something large and bushy appeared in my peripheral vision. .... I looked up quickly, and there he was, my masked nemesis, mildly curious as to whether I might have stashed a little extra food somewhere within the bedroom.

But the radio, you ask? Be patient, I'm getting there. Next week, I'll be gone for four days over Thanksgiving, ok? Do I turn the house over to El Bandito? Not if I can help it. Someone told me that someone had told them that they knew of someone who kept a radio or TV booming loudly while they were out, thereby fooling their own wily raccoon into believing that someone was home.

I'm not going to leave my stereo booming for four days and nights, but I figure that a little radio with a couple of AA cells -- placed a couple of feet from the cat door -- might work. But who knows? This critter wasn't born yesterday, and he has nerves of steel. Or, should I say, brass.

If he isn't fooled, the next step will be a new cat door with electronic keys for my cats' collars. But, as I suggested in my earlier post, that would require hiring a carpenter to install a completely new back door with a properly sized cut in which to install the cat door.

If a hippie-era transistor radio works, I'd prefer to get by for a mere $19.99.

Voice in the wilderness

Belgrade, Yugoslavia. My fellow students and I -- undergraduates, naïve and excited -- were herded into a somber meeting room at the American Embassy. The Ambassador, a pleasant, middle aged gentleman, welcomed us to Yugoslavia and suggested things we might want to see and think about while visiting that Communist -- yet officially neutral -- nation.

Despite having read George F. Kennan's book, American Diplomacy, just a year earlier for a class in political science, I don't recall having been impressed by the fact that its author was now standing just a few feet in front of me, extending his welcome. Nor do I now recall anything specific that he told us.

What I didn't know about Mr. Kennan at the time would have filled a book. Several books, in fact. Over the years, I've come to realize that Kennan's importance in the shaping of post-war American foreign policy far exceeded that of his diplomatic mission to a country in the Balkans. A number of years ago, I read his two volumes of memoirs, and began to realize not only the importance of his thoughts and insights into foreign policy, but the complexity and subtlety of his withdrawn and reflective personality.

Then, yesterday, I read a feature-length review in the New Yorker of John Lewis Gaddis's new biography.¹ I had barely absorbed the New Yorker's analysis of Kennan's life, when this morning's New York Times book review section featured a similarly lengthy review of the Gaddis biography -- a review written by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Clearly the time has arrived for a new appraisal of this unusual diplomat, thinker, foreign policy analyst, and writer of careful and sensitive prose. Kennan's life and thought confronted difficult issues in American politics and diplomacy, issues that we have never resolved successfully, and probably never will.

How does a relatively transparent democracy with all its ambient noise and competing political demands -- i.e., a nation like the United States -- conduct a skillful, nuanced foreign policy that seeks to secure goals critical to its own interests -- not just goals that focus ahead a day or two, or until the next election, but ones that contemplate our relationship with the world 25 or 50 years in the future?

Kennan's fame today is as the author of the policy of "containment," a concept he first expressed in 1946 while he was posted to the American Embassy in Moscow. He explained his thoughts in a lengthy telegram to the State Department -- the legendary "Long Telegram," reputed to be the longest telegram ever received by State. He expanded his ideas a year later in an article published in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "X."

Kennan had never believed during World War II that the Soviets saw the Western allies as anything but allies of convenience, to be discarded as soon as the war ended. He was less concerned about the Soviet Union's being Communist than with its being Russian. Kennan was fluent in the Russian language. Although he loved Russian civilization and the Russian people, he had no illusions about the endemic paranoia of the Russian people, their longing for despotic leaders, and their historic urge toward territorial expansion -- national traits that shaped the character of both Tsarist Russia and the Communist Soviet Union. The Soviets should be "contained" whenever their urge towards expansion conflicted with American interests or world peace, Kennan urged. There was no need, however, to be proactive in the sense of attacking Russia -- no "pre-emptive strikes," as our present jargon would put it.

If successfully contained, Kennan argued, the Soviet Union would ultimately implode because -- ironically -- of its own internal contradictions. And so it did, nearly a half century later.

Kennan's long term analysis created a sensation both within and without the State Department, filling a vacuum in post-war foreign policy analysis in government circles. "Containment" became a catch phrase, shaping policies under the Truman, Eisenhower, and subsequent administrations. It became a justification for the war in Vietnam, a war that Kennan deplored.

Kennan soon felt that his theory of "containment" had been hijacked by militarists who used the concept to support the build-up of massive American military forces, resulting in the arms race of the Cold War. Although he believed that military force occasionally would be necessary in limited situations with limited objectives, Kennan conceived "containment" primarily in economic and diplomatic terms. Kissinger -- our quintessential "realist" in foreign policy -- seems to ignore or belittle this distinction in his review. He is attracted to the obvious realism in Kennan's own thought, but believes that Kennan "wimped out" when it came to putting it into practice.

Kennan's life and thought are fascinating as history. But more important are the questions his life and thought raise about our ability to shape and implement foreign policy objectives that are rational and directed to both the short term and the long term. Kennan strongly believed -- as does Kissinger, as indicated in his book Diplomacy -- that foreign policy is too important to be left to amateur politicians. To some degree, at least, it must be developed by experts who have devoted their professional lives to its study and practice. How to balance this need for expertise and dispassion with the demands of a democratic form of government is a question that awaits resolution.

This week's Republican debates regarding foreign policy do not offer much assurance that we have attained the proper balance.

In conclusion, Kennan's life and thought are worth study. The new Gaddis biography sounds like an excellent overview of the subject, one that I look forward to reading. I hope the publicity generated by this weekend's two excellent reviews of the biography encourages anyone interested in diplomacy and foreign policy to give it a read.
------------------------------------
¹ John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan, An American Life (Penguin Press 2011).

NOTE (11-14-11): The Economist's own review of Prof. Gaddis's biography, in this week's issue, points out that Gaddis has on past occasion expressed his admiration for the foreign policies of Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush. Gaddis clearly disagrees with Kennan's assessment of Reagan's foreign policy, which Kennan found to be "simply childish, inexcusably childish, unworthy of people charged with the responsibility of conducting the affairs of a great nation in an endangered world." Instead, Gaddis believes that Reagan actually brought Kennan's strategy to a successful conclusion. The Economist sides with Kennan, observing that

If Kennan's] concern for the costs of bellicose foreign policy, rather than [Reagan's] enthusiasm for imperial exercise of American power, had dominated the last decade, it would have made for a sounder grand strategy.

Amen.

Feet of clay

In a recent article discussing the growing popularity of pet care products, the Economist made the offhand and gratuitous comment that dogs

are costlier than cats, but superior in every respect.

Readers of the British magazine are, by nature, civilized and reserved. But eyebrows were raised in subsequent letters to the editor.

The Economist has long been a favorite magazine. The statement quoted above, however, made casually and neither ironically nor as the writer's quirky personal opinion but rather as the recitation of a well-established fact, is so startlingly bizarre and patently false that the journal's accuracy with respect to other matters -- as well as the good judgment of its editors -- is called into serious question.

I feel as though I had long relied upon the opinions of a distinguished Harvard professor, until -- one day -- his mask slipped, and behind the mask I discovered Rick Perry.

I'm not canceling my subscription, but will certainly read the Economist with a more skeptical eye in the future.

Caution in the Middle East

Iran is developing nuclear weapons. That seems probable, according to a report provided to the Security Council by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Some of Iran's secret work might be devoted to peaceful use of nuclear energy, according to the report, but other efforts "are specific to nuclear weapsons."

For the past several weeks, Israel has been warning of a possible bombing attack on Iran's nuclear development sites. Many observers believe that the recent assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the dissemination of a computer worm designed to interfere with operation of Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges have been the work of Israeli and/or American agents.

I am totally against nuclear weapons proliferation. I have been hoping, despite evidence to the contrary, that Iran was sincere in its assertions that its nuclear program was designed solely for the peaceful use of atomic energy. The U.N. report, a copy of which was leaked this week, makes my hope seem excessively optimistic.

Nevertheless, the idea of an Israeli attack on Iran is appalling. The United States, rightly or wrongly, would be perceived as complicit in such an attack. The statement this week by a spokesman for the Obama administration was not helpful:

"We, of course, never remove from the table any option in a situation like this, but we are very focused on diplomacy," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Instead, we should have made it clear that we would have no part in any unilateral attack on Iran or any other country. Such a statement would not preclude participation in additional international sanctions, if necessary.

We are correct in fearing proliferation of nuclear weapons. But Iran is also correct in sensing a certain arrogance on America's part, the United States possessing an enormous nuclear arsenal of its own. And Israel? Israel maintains an official stance of ambiguity as to whether it possess nuclear weapons ("nuclear opacity," they call it), but, along with India, Pakistan and North Korea, is generally believed to have developed nuclear weapons capability. (Israel, unlike Iran, has never signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.) Iran may sense a certain hypocrisy in our willingness to accept nuclear armament by nations perceived as friendly, while attacking less friendly nations for taking even preparatory steps in that direction.

Aside from the legalities of both nuclear proliferation by Iran and of a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation by Israel, exactly what is it about Iran's achievement of a nuclear capacity that we feel might justify such an attack? Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad tend to speak in tones of inflated inflammatory hyperbole, which is unfortunate for the success of Iran's foreign relations. But Iran's actual foreign policy has been cautious.

In 1980, lest we forget, Iran was deliberately and viciously attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces, hoping to defeat Iran during a moment of weakness following the 1978 Revolution. The war lasted for eight years, with a devastating loss of Iranian life. Monuments to the men and boys who died in that war can be seen everywhere in Iran today. Iran suffered an estimated one million casualties, with many survivors still suffering from Iraq's use of chemical warfare.

Iranians remember well the horrors of war. They are not apt to leap willingly into a new one. Their rhetoric may sound wild, but they are not stupid: they know that a nuclear attack on Israel would bring swift retribution from many sources.

More likely, they would use their nuclear capability to increase their own credibility in foreign affairs. After the Kuwait war with Iraq, when the United States essentially eliminated Iraq's defensive capability in one day, a spokesman for another Arab country -- I don't recall which -- commented that no country would ever challenge the United States again militarily, unless it had nuclear weapons. Iranians may have been listening -- concerned less about their ability to defy America militarily than in their own ability to be taken seriously as a major player in the Middle East.

We would find a nuclear armed Iran to be an inconvenience in our relations with Middle Eastern countries. But the prospect of future inconvenience doesn't justify an attack. We dealt with similar "inconveniences" in our relations with the Soviet Union; we face similar inconveniences today in dealing with Russia and China. We can handle the diplomatic challenges.

If we look over the history of American relations in the Middle East, one lesson we should learn is that nothing is constant. A friend today is an enemy tomorrow, and vice versa. We covertly supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran, because of the hostility of the Iranian clergy after their Revolution. Ten years later, we were attacking Iraq.

If the friendship of any nation in the Middle East today would be valuable to the United States, it would be that of Iran. The Iranian people are sophisticated, with a strong sense of pride in their nation and in its lengthy history of civilization. The country, despite years of international sanctions, is modern with a good infrastructure. Iran still has a large middle class with close ties to America and to the West in general. Today, we may feel that Iran's political leaders are impossible to deal with. These feelings can change quickly with time.

But time would not fade the memory of an armed attack so quickly. Ask any Iranian, conservative or liberal, devout or secular, and he or she will tell you that an armed attack on Iran would be a disaster for both Iran and the West. Such an attack would unite all factions against the attackers. It would unite the country behind its present rulers. It would not be forgotten, not for generations.

Let's not go there.

Bibliomania

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
~Anna Quindlen

Even as a sixth grader, I took loving delight in sorting and counting my small collection of books. I assigned certain types of books to certain locations. A series of American history books for kids (the Landmark series), for example, valued highly for the books' uniform size and consistent bindings, was displayed together on a shelf especially designed for them.

I accumulated books as other guys collect baseball cards. Unlike my similar obsession with stamp collecting, moreover, my attachment to books -- not just to their contents, but to their physical incarnations -- continued beyond adolescence.

Today, the most notable thing about the interior of my house is that virtually every wall surface of any size is lined with bookshelves. My books are in no way organized. At one time, I did dream of developing a card catalogue system -- perhaps computerized -- to help myself locate any book instantaneously. It never happened. Instead, I'm forced to rely on vague impressions that a certain book may have a red cover (or was it green?) and that I last saw it somewhere in the den.

What I now possess is partly a library, but partly the fruit of a hoarder's compulsion -- analogous, I nervously suspect, to those houses filled with old newspapers in which eccentric couples are occasionally discovered crushed to death by their own obsession.

These dark thoughts are prompted by an article in this week's New Yorker by Harvard professor James Wood. Wood recently found himself confronted with the need to clear a house full of books left behind by his deceased father-in-law. The old man had pursued many enthusiasms during his life, including travel. He had read extensively with respect to each new enthusiasm. And he'd kept all the books.

The result was an interesting and eclectic library. Unfortunately, Wood discovered, in today's world, no one wants interesting and eclectic libraries, especially ones consisting of old books. There are more old books than there are available bookshelves to hold them. No one wanted to buy the books at an estate sale. Nor could he give them away. Wood never reveals what ultimately became of the collection -- a few books were accepted by collectors who poked through the collection -- but the experience forced him to think about what book collections say about their collectors.

Not much, he decides. Who knows if the old guy even read most of them? The piles of books seemed to be mere monuments to knowledge that their owner possessed, or wished to possess, or wished to appear to possess. The fact that Wood didn't really much like his father-in-law seems to have sharpened his contempt for the gentleman's legacy.

I was struck, as I worked through my father-in-law's books, how quickly I became alienated from their rather stupid materiality. I began to resent his avariciousness, which resembled, in death, any other kind of avariciousness for objects.

So he spent his life buying books, Wood thinks. So what?

After all, can I really contend that my collection of books, ranged on shelves like some bogus declaration of achievement ..., tells my children anything more about me than my much smaller collection of postcards and photographs?

I feel somewhat devastated, reading these lines. Are my books simply a fraudulent assertion of my erudition? I walk about my house, gently carressing the covers of a few favorite, carefully-bound volumes.

I long ago promised a fellow book lover (Pat) that I'd leave him all of my books, should I move on to that Great Library in the Sky ahead of him. In fact I actually have that bequest written into my will. It was all in good fun for a long time, but lately, whenever the subject of my books arises, Pat nervously discusses the small amount of space available in his own home. My mind leaps forward, to those dread days following my hypothetical funeral; I see Pat wandering about my house, wringing his hands, wondering whatever he'll do with this unwelcome bounty. His wife would never allow him to haul them all into their home, even if there were room for them. Must he pay to put them into storage? He'll find no library or bookstore interested in them. Wood convinces me of that. But dare he -- a lover of books himself -- consign my gorgeous collection to the dump? I have bequeathed him a conundrum and a curse.

I pull myself together. Pat will just have to work it out on his own.

Wood is a good writer, and he managed to depress me, momentarily, with his certainties. And yet, I have certainties, too. My book collection, accumulated year by year since childhood, is an intellectual resource, a proven provider of amusement, and an anchor that gives my life -- with its ever-changing phases and interests -- a sense of continuity.

I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.
~-Petrarch

Books are my friends, and, as with human friends, I'm not tossing them out simply because I don't know how they'll some day get along without me.

When the going was different

Trekking overseas always has its down times -- hanging out in airports, sprawled on the ground after a day's hike, snuggled up at night in your sleeping bag with a headlamp on your forehead -- times for relaxation when reading seems the perfect complement to the day's adventures. And books about travel seem most enjoyable when I myself am a traveler.

I took three such books with me to Nepal. One I've only begun reading. One was requisitioned by Pascal to press an unusual flower he discovered. But the third -- a sizeable tome -- I read from cover to cover.

Mark Twain, among his other claims to fame ("All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.'"--Ernest Hemingway), has been praised as America's first travel writer.

Until 1867, Twain was known merely as a humorist, lecturer, newspaper writer, and author of a highly popular collection of short essays called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. But in that year, promoters organized a five-month tour of Europe and the Middle East -- perhaps the first organized American tour of foreign lands. The tour was by cruise ship -- the Quaker City -- a side-wheel steamer, with a leisurely schedule. Stops at ports of call were lengthy, allowing its seventy passengers to do extensive travel on their own before returning to the ship and proceeding to the next port.

Twain persuaded the editors of the Daily Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, to pay his costs, in exchange for his weekly column to be dispatched from overseas. His dispatches, together with some additional concluding reports to the New York Herald and the New York Tribune, became America's first travel book -- The Innocents Abroad.

Twain's book makes great vacation reading. Leisurely and humorous, Innocents Abroad evokes a world where travel was slower, and where Americans were less aware of how life was lived abroad -- even in Western nations, such as France and Italy.

Crossing the Atlantic was in itself a lengthy endeavor, and not always pleasant. Twain discusses with relish his pleasure in being the only man within sight not flattened by seasickness. The Quaker City put in at the Azores, whose somewhat slow moving (and thinking) Portuguese inhabitants were themselves the object of Twain's curiosity and ridicule, before finally reaching the European continent at Gibralter.

Twain shared many of his nineteenth century compatriots' prejudices: contempt for European customs different from those of America; dislike of most great works of art and architecture, which he often considered dusty and boring; a rather startling Protestant boosterism and accompanying contempt for Catholicism. But, as his weekly dispatches reveal, Twain also showed growth and increased tolerance for cultural differences as the trip progressed.

To us today, perhaps, the most interesting portion of the book is the final third -- covering the visit to Turkey and, especially, the Holy Land. Most of the Middle East at the time was ruled from Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, as it had been for centuries. European influence was minimal. Britain and France had not yet acquired their mandates as the spoils of World War I. Jews were a small minority group within Arab Palestine. The area was untouristed, dirty, impoverished, sleepy, and -- to Twain, at least -- often appalling.

His party worked its way down from Damascas, through the Holy Land, and finally to Egypt. What impresses today is that -- to his group, at least -- the term "Holy Land" was not simply a geographical description. His fellow travelers, like perhaps most Westerners for years to come, were visiting Palestine as religious pilgrims as much as tourists. They were in awe to find themselves walking in the actual footsteps of Jesus himself, actually visiting places they had been reading about and viewing in illustrations since childhood.

Even Twain, the cynic -- but a cynic who generally refers to Jesus as "Our Savior" --was often impressed, even as he scoffed at the multitudes of splinters advertised as relics of the True Cross, and at the claims by religious orders to have determined the exact location of various events from the Bible, locations on which they built their churches and chapels.

Innocents Abroad captures a picture of the Holy Land at a time when it had changed little physically since Biblical times; it also captures an image of Americans who, whatever their professed religious beliefs at the time of the trip, were profoundly moved by a visit to this legendary part of the world, Americans who almost universally had been strongly influenced by Protestant childhoods and years of attendance at Sunday School.

Finally, the book is interesting as marking Twain's transition from a popular humorist to a serious literary writer. As Jane Jacobs, who wrote the introduction to my edition of the book, concludes:

Without falsifying the distinct American sensibility that singled out Twain, then and now, as the quintessential American author, he stepped from -- or alongside -- his culture into a larger and different context. The Mark Twain who, by upbringing was Tom Sawyer and a Connecticut Yankee, became the mature Mark Twain who could inhabit both Huck, the orphaned redneck, and Jim, the runaway slave.

Mark Twain's mental growth, observable throughout his five months of newspaper essays, is emblematic of America's own similar growth and increased maturity in the nearly century and a half since Innocents Abroad was published.

It also suggests an excellent reason to encourage travel abroad by all Americans.

A year after his return, Twain concluded the book with a retrospective newspaper account of the trip, expressing sentiments with which all travelers can sympathize:

Nearly one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage was ended, and as I sit here at home in San Francisco thinking, I am moved to confess that day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more and more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encumbered them flitted one by one out of my mind -- and now, if the Quaker City were weighing her anchor to sail away on the same cruise again, nothing could gratify me more than to be a passenger.

Mark Twain is always a good travel companion, and never better than when sharing his own thoughts and feelings while he himself is traveling.

Trekking to Renjo La

The Yak & Yeti isn't your typical Kathmandu hostelry. It's a palatial hotel, at least by local standards, set amongst beautifully landscaped grounds -- a Western oasis separated by only thin hedges from the surrounding noise and grit of central Kathmandu. Pascal and I were more than ready to embrace Nepali life, but it was perhaps appropriate that, at this early moment of transition, we met our fellow trekkers at the Yak & Yeti.

There was Anne, a rheumatologist from Kansas; her son Tom, a college graduate working in Kansas as a bartender during these times of bad unemployment; and her brother Bill, a very early retiree who lives in California. There were also David, a civil engineer from the Seattle suburb of Bainbridge Island, and his wife Caroline, an artist. We met as seven strangers, but would soon know each other's strengths and foibles more intimately than those of many long time friends. And there was Lhakpa, our Sherpa guide, who knows the Khumbu area of Nepal like the back of his hand, as well as the names and faces of virtually everyone living there.

We had a day in Kathmandu before the trek to get acquainted -- some Hindu cremations beside the river, a Buddhist stupa, pizza in Thamel, the trekker's paradise that is central Kathmandu. Some of us realized we weren't in Kansas anymore! As it were.

I had duplicated significant portions of the trek in 1995, but sixteen years can be a long time in this part of the world. Physically, there has been little change, but the Sherpa people seem better off, better dressed, more familiar with the outside world. Nowadays, the cell phone is ubiquitous. Also, the number of Western trekkers must be at least ten times what it was in 1995. Our trek was early enough in the season to beat most of the crowds, but two weeks later, as we came down from the mountains, we met virtual hordes moving up the trails -- hordes that, at lower elevations, created literal traffic jams.

But once above Namche Bazaar, we were back in a lightly populated, spiritually intense world that has changed little over the centuries since the Sherpa people first migrated here from Tibet. Tibetan Buddhist rituals continue unchanged at monasteries and in villages. Trails pass on either side of manis and chortens -- monuments that must always be passed on the left, even when doing so increases the difficulty of passage. Juniper branches burn in the morning in tiny shrines, offering their pungent fumes to heaven. Lachpa tells us stories along the trails of strange happenings, whether centuries ago or just last year -- encounters with yetis, place names based on a pregnant woman's unsuccessful attempt to find help for a difficult child birth, zombies. Yep, zombies.

Do you know why the doors in Sherpa houses are so low? For protection. Because zombies are unable to bend down when they try to enter. Zombies in the Himalayas. Lachpa tells stories of a lama who ordered the inhabitants of an entire village burned to death because of a zombie "infestation."

Does Lachpa -- an educated and worldly man -- really believe his own stories? We can't tell. Cognitive dissonance? Maybe.

Above Tengboche Monastery (12,664 ft.) we begin following the Dudh Kosi river upstream toward its source. This is all new country to me. The trail, on the east side of the river, is one rarely used by trekkers. We walk for hours without encountering another Westerner. The third day above Tengboche, we cross the river to the western bank. But not by a bridge. The river is now a broad glacier, covered by glacial till, and we cross it gingerly, climbing up and down, reflecting the 15,000 elevation in our gasps for breath. Ahead, to the north, Cho Oyu -- world's sixth highest mountain -- beckons us on. Keep at it, guys, he says. I'm worth seeing.

Having crossed the glacier, we arrive at the tiny trekker's hamlet of Gokyo (15,580 ft.), in the shadow of Cho Oyu. We spend two nights at Gokyo, acclimatizing. During our "rest day," we climb an adjacent hill, Gokyo Ri, a relentless zigzag up a barren slope to the summit at 17,990 ft. It ain't an easy climb, but the view from the top is incredible. Everest is in front of us, together with Lhotse (world's fourth highest peak). To the right, and in the distance, is Makalu. To the left of Everest is Pumori, from whose lower slopes -- the hill of Kalapatar -- Denny and I viewed Everest in 1995.

Denny and I climbed above 18,000 ft. to reach Kalapatar. Pascal has never been that high. Gokyo Ri is just ten feet under 18,000. Pascal is 6'2". He raises his hand. He leaps. His hand arguably pierces the 18,000 barrier. A personal best!

The following day, we climb to 16,700 feet -- Renjo La base camp -- where we sleep at the highest elevation at which I've ever spent a night. A beautiful camp site. We watch Everest and Lhotse glow in the sunset, and keep watching until the last beams of sunset die from the very tip of Everest. Hard to explain now that I'm back in Seattle, but it was a transcendent moment.

From the base camp, we "scampered" (yeah, sure!) over Renjo La (17,880 ft.), lingering in a small area at the pass from which we gazed at a reprise of the view from Gokyo Ri -- our final close-up view of Everest before descending steeply the western side of the pass into a new valley system with new and unfamiliar snowclad peaks. Once past Renjo La, we were definitely on our way home. It was all downhill, so to speak, to the monastery town of Thame, and then on down to Namche Bazaar, completing our loop. After a night in Namche, we trekked in a single day the entire path back down to the end of the trail at Lukla, from which we flew back to Kathmandu in our tiny and seemingly insubstantial Twin Otter.

My re-visit to the Khumbu was a richly rewarding experience, giving me perspectives on the area that I'd not experienced before. Traveling with a good friend, and meeting one of the most enjoyable group of fellow hikers I've ever trekked with. Lots of laughs, lots of political and economic discussions, interminable gin rummy tournaments at every altitude. We finally found ourselves back at the Yak & Yeti, eager to get back to our homes and families, but reluctant to separate from the like souls we'd grown so close to over a three week period.

The weather had been perfect. It had been raining in Kathmandu -- delayed monsoon -- up until the day we arrived. After we returned to Kathmandu, we learned that it had started snowing -- snowing! -- up at Namche. We trekked in a window of ideal weather. The gods had been kind to us. We must have displayed plenty of good karma.

And -- thank god -- we never did have a run-in with the zombies! It's good to be home, but I sure hope to return.

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To view 40 photographs of the trek that I've posted on Facebook, click here.

Don't go away, folks

And all that he could see,
And all that he could see,
Was the other side of the mountain,
The other side of the mountain,
The other side of the mountain,
Was all that he could see.

Our abject apologies to our readers. The Northwest Corner will not be found on your favorite news stands for the next three weeks or so. We have no rational excuse for this temporary shut-down, other than the fact that our Publisher has once more been seized with the compulsion to go over the mountain, to see what he can see. This happens on occasion. He returns to Seattle each time with noticeably fewer brain cells -- the result of totally predictable hypoxia.

Nevertheless we wish him well, and we look forward to rejoining Time, Newsweek, and National Enquirer in late October as a premier source of the nation's news and commentary.

With Francis in Nepal

Trekking in the Khumbu region of the Himalayas is about stunning scenery. And, with almost all of the trek taking place above 12,000 feet, it's about challenging hiking. But it's also about exposure to a foreign culture, the Tibetan Buddhism of the Sherpa people.

The Sherpas, originally from Tibet, belong to the Nyingmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. This sect emphasizes mysticism and -- contrary to most Westerners' concept of Buddhism -- has adopted many ceremonies, gods and demons from Bön, the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. Among the deities worshipped by the Sherpas are ones similar to the minor deities worshipped by the common people in ancient Rome and Greece -- local gods of mountains, streams, forests, and caves.

After a couple of days in Kathmandu (a predominantly Hindu city), we begin our actual trek on October 4 -- coincidentally, the date on which Christians honor the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis was a fairly sophisticated man for his time and place, but his time and place were early thirteenth century Italy. I suspect, therefore, that he would have been appalled if he had ever encountered the religious practices of the Sherpas. And the dramatic representations of gods and demons in Khumbu monasteries would have seemed Satanic.

But Francis was also a strong believer in the brotherhood of all men, not merely of all Christians. He visited the Sultan of Egypt in 1219, in an attempt to convert the Sultan to Christianity. He did not succeed, but he was received warmly and is said to have left a very favorable personal impression, a lasting favorable impression not only of himself but of his Franciscan order. He embraced poverty and simplicity. He believed that nature was the "mirror of God." He called the animals, as well as humans, his brothers and sisters.

I suspect, therefore, that he would have found much to admire in the Sherpa people, and much to respect in the spiritual values of Tibetan Buddhism and the manner in which it affects the lives of its adherents -- although not, of course, in its actual beliefs and practices. He would have sensed his kinship with monasteries that pray for the happiness of "all sentient beings."

St. Francis never wavered in his devotion to Christianity, but he sought out the good in all people. I can easily imagine his joining us, trudging along the trail beside us, ever interested in the lives and scenes he saw about him. Perhaps surprising one of the local monks by sitting down beside him with his own begging bowl, enjoying together a simple meal of dal bhat.

I'll keep him in mind next Tuesday as I begin my trek.

Back to campus

Class began today at the University of Washington. And, right on schedule, the Northwest's month-long drought splashed itself to an end. The rain poured down pretty much all day.

I wandered across campus in late afternoon, one of a few final days of fast walking I'm giving myself before leaving town Friday for my trek. All seemed calm and quiet.

Quiet as far as unusual activity went, I mean; but not devoid of noise. As my purposeful strides drew me closer to Red Square -- the heart of the campus -- I was practically knocked out of my hiking shoes by blasts of amplified sound. Whoever organizes such things had chosen to welcome students back with a performance by Macklemore, a Seattle hip hop performer. No complaints about the music itself, but the decibel level would bring tears of joy to an audiologist as he calculates the increased demand for hearing devices another forty years down the pike.

I also encountered a number of sadly scruffy figures shuffling about campus, gentlemen well past the average age of matriculation and seemingly carrying all their possessions on their backs. Some of the homeless have migrated to the U District from downtown in recent years. They may dimly recall having heard that students are more laid back than the general population, more welcoming, cheerfully communal with their possessions and cash. If so, I fear their arrival on campus comes a decade or so too late.

My take on today's UW students is that they are the product of much higher admissions standards; of a general increase in competitiveness within the student population; and of child rearing by parents who scheduled their kids' every free moment with studies and activities, an intense and active approach to life that the students have pretty well internalized. I hear a lot of articulate talk about classes, readings, problem sets, and exams. Nice kids, abstractly sympathetic to the homeless, but probably too busy to hang out with persons less motivated than themselves, let alone offer to share with them their pizzas and beer.

But then my mind returns to that crowd of young people, packed in tight around the Macklemore stage. Their faces appeared trance-like. They were waving their hands in the air. I cautiously wondered if there was some Golden Calf on the stage, something receiving their pagan worship. But this was the first day of school. Summer 2011 wasn't exactly the Summer of Love. A few kids may have been discreetly smoking a joint or two, but no clouds of incense-like smoke hovered over the crowd. No one called the Police "the Pigs," or suggested storming the Administration Building. The performance seemed politely received by students who -- behind their apparently entranced faces -- probably were half wondering where each of tomorrow's classes would be held.

Sure, it was noisy. But, I didn't really mind. As those bumper strips read: "If my radio seems too loud, you're too old." I sighed, pondering the profundity contained in that claim. I crept quietly off campus and walked quickly home.

Their man in Moscow

In our eyes, the Cold War tended to reduce the 1917 Russian Revolution to a morality play, with characters like Lenin and Trotsky marching about like cartoon villains.

The plot was thus: The Tsar was overthrown by the good revolutionaries, headed by Kerensky; the evil Bolsheviks stole the revolution and murdered all their opponents; the Western allies, appalled by the threat of World Communism, sent support to the good "White Russian" counter-revolutionaries. The tragic result was well known, and half the world map had been painted Red under a hammer and sickle.

The reality was more complex and more interesting; we in the West may now be ready to consider it more dispassionately.

The Western observer best qualified to analyze the Revolution -- by his background and training, and by his being in the right place at the right time -- was a young British diplomat named R. H. Bruce Lockhart. Lockhart was the British Vice Consul in Moscow at the outbreak of World War I, eventually assuming the role of Acting Consul-General when his immediate superior was transferred. When the Western allies failed to recognize the revolutionary governments after the fall of the Tsar in 1917, Lockhart remained in Moscow as a British agent, treated as a diplomat at times by both the British and the Soviets, but lacking diplomatic immunity. Following an assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918, critically injuring the Soviet leader, Lockhart was arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial. He was released in exchange for the release of Bolshevik detainees in Britain.

In 1932, Lockhart wrote a memoir of his years in Russia, based on his extremely detailed diaries, entitled Memoirs of a British Agent. The book became a best seller when released, and was made into a movie by Warner Bros.

Lockhart's memoir is well worth reading now, simply as his candid account of his early years as a young, personable and sociable vice consul, and for his descriptions of Russian landscapes, personalities, and pre-Revolutionary society. He became highly fluent in Russian, which gave him a significant advantage over other British diplomats, including the ambassador himself in St. Petersburg (the tsarist capital).

But even more interesting to us today are his observations of the causes and course of the March and October Revolutions. The cause of the Tsar's forced abdication, to Lockhart, was simple: the ineptitude and corruption of the tsarist government, qualities that lead to enormous Russian losses in the war, and disastrous defeats.

What it is important to realize is that from the first the revolution was a revolution of the people. From the first moment neither the Duma nor the intelligentsia had any control of the situation. Secondly, the revolution was a revolution for land, bread and peace -- but, above all, for peace. There was only one way to save Russia from going Bolshevik. That was to allow her to make peace. It was because he would not make peace that Kerensky went under. It was solely because he promised to stop the war that Lenin came to the top.

Alexander Kerensky, the Social-Revolutionary leader after the March revolution, was, for the first four months, "worshipped as a god." But he and his government made the fatal mistake of trying "to drive back to the trenches a nation that had already finished with the war."

The sole concern of the British Foreign Office throughout this period, with respect to Russia, was to keep Russia from making peace. Britain was fighting a war of attrition on the Western Front. She was desperate to keep Germany distracted by a threat on its Eastern Front. But Kerensky eventually lost the confidence of the people by his support of the war, and Lenin struck at the opportunity. ("History will not forgive us if we do not assume power!") Promising to end Russia's involvement in the war, the Bolsheviks seized control in November 1917 (by our calendar).

The British at the time did not oppose the Bolsheviks because they were Communists -- they didn't take Lenin and his party seriously, believing they were a rabble that would fall within months. (Many in the Foreign Office -- showing their total ignorance of the political situation in Russia -- suspected the Bolsheviks of being German agents.) Britain's sole concern with the revolution, again, Lockhart emphasizes, was that it not prejudice Russian status as an allied belligerent.

After the Soviets signed a separate peace with the Germans (Brest-Litovsk, Feb. 1918), Lockhart remained a lonely voice in Moscow, urgently trying to build ties between the Western allies and the new Soviet rulers. He argued that Britain had nothing to lose in maintaining correct relations with the newly neutral government, especially since its leaders showed some interest in leaning as neutrals toward the West and away from Germany. The Allies, however, since before the revolution, had troops stationed in Archangel and Murmansk to protect allied shipping, troops that they now used to occupy and control those critical Arctic ports. The Foreign Office insisted that Lockhart pressure the Soviets into permitting intervention of allied forces against the Germans, passing from those ports through Soviet territory to the German front.

While Lockhart attempted to deal with Trotsky (at that point, his primary Soviet contact), the Allies were secretly planning to intervene in Russia, with or without Soviet permission. Lockhart's reasonably friendly personal relations with the Soviet leaders faded as suspicions grew as to Allied intentions and, therefore, as to his own integrity. The planned Allied intervention was wholly unsuccessful, the number of forces committed to the action being ludicrously small. In the summer of 1918, the assassination of Lenin was attempted, almost costing him his life. Lockhart and other foreign nationals were arrested, and "the Terror" against suspected opponents of the government was underway, a campaign conducted in direct retribution for the shooting.

The unfolding in Russia of these threatening and historic developments, described against the background of Lockhart's personal life and his rapidly deteriorating relations with his own Foreign Office, makes gripping reading. His observations of many of the well known Russian and Bolshevik leaders¹ -- such as this description of the contrasting personalities of Lenin and Trotsky -- are perceptive:

Trotsky was all temperament -- an individualist and an artist, on whose vanity even I could play with some success. Lenin was impersonal and almost inhuman. His vanity was proof against all flattery. The only appeal that one could make to him was to his sense of humour, which, if sardonic, was highly developed. ... Trotsky was a great organizer and a man of immense physical courage. But morally, he was as incapable of standing against Lenin as a flea would be against an elephant.

When Lockhart returned to Britain at the age of 31, after being released from Soviet detention, he had virtually no allies left in the Foreign Office. Playing Cassandra is no way to make friends among your superiors, especially when your views and advice have been proved correct in virtually all respects and your powerful superiors' obstinancy and blunders have resulted in disastrous consequences for your nation.

Lockhart performed occasional services for the British government during his remaining years -- but his career in the foreign service was ruined and finished. He had been sentenced, in absentia, to death in Russia. He could never return to the country he loved, in which he had spent the most exciting and productive years of his life, and in which he had left behind many friends. He died in 1970 at the age of 83.
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¹Also perceptive are his portraits of Allied, including American, officials. Although American troops did contribute to the joint occupation of the Arctic ports, America in general played little part in the Russian drama during the time Lockhart was there. In general, the Soviet leaders were less hostile to the Americans than they were to the British, French and Italians. Lockhart describes the American ambassador, David R. Francis:

He was a kind, old gentleman, who was susceptible to flattery and swallowed any amount of it. His knowledge of anything beyond banking and poker was severely limited. He had a traveling spittoon -- a contraption with a pedal -- which he took with him everywhere. When he wished to emphasize a point, bang would go the pedal, followed by a well-aimed expectoration.