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Husky Stadium and I go way back.

I saw it for the first time when I was 12 years old. But not for a football game. My family was taking a tourist boat ride through the locks, around Lake Union, through the Montlake Cut, and into Lake Washington. As we moved through the Cut, I saw the stadium, from exactly the same angle as shown here in the photograph. I stared in amazement.

I'd never seen circular pedestrian ramps like that, and I had no idea what they were. They looked like two giant worm drives. But what was their purpose, I wondered? They must somehow raise and lower the stadium roof, closing it up tight like a clam shell. But why? How totally weird! But then, when you're 12, much in life seems weird.

They soon will be gone. The worm drives, and the entire south side of the stadium, to which they're attached. Everything will be leveled, with the exception of the more recently constructed north stands. The existing stadium and field will be replaced by a new horseshoe stadium -- the stands moved closer to the field, with the track circling the football field eliminated. Plush new accommodations for wealthy ticketholders and end zone seating for those students who insist on attending games.

But the demolition of Husky Stadium will be more than the start of its renovation. It will also mark the end of the name "Husky Stadium."

The University has offered "naming rights" to the new stadium "in perpetuity." The school asks for a mere $50 million. If the $50 million isn't forthcoming, the school will auction off naming rights for periods of shorter duration. "Naming" is clearly the rage nowadays. For example, while the new stadium is being built, the Huskies will play downtown in CenturyLink Field, née Qwest Field, née Seahawks Stadium. And for further example, the basketball team this year will play in Alaska Airlines Arena; née Bank of America Arena; née, simply, Hec Ed Pavilion.

It doesn't stop with athletic buildings. New academic buildings are being named after corporate sponsors as quickly as they're being built. Ultimately, the sky should be the limit. Why not sell off naming rights to autumn, winter and spring quarters? To departments: DuPont Chemistry Department, GM Mechanical Engineering Department, Weyerhaeuser School of Forestry, Seattle Repertory Theatre Drama Department, FoxNews Creative Writing Department?

Hell, why not sell off the entire university? Allow our local companies to honor themselves -- for cold cash. The Amazon University of Washington? Boeing University of Washington? Or, more euphonically, Boeing State University? University of Microsoft? Yeah, that should work. And why Huskies? What have those Alaska sled dogs ever contributed to university coffers?

How about the Internet Explorers? The U. of Microsoft Internet Explorers. The IE's for short? Love that yell: Aiiiiiii-eeeeeeee!!! Go Explorers! Download the Cougs!

My wonder years -- my being a naive 12 year old -- that was a long time ago. We've come a long ways, baby.

In Everest's shadow

Just 33 days until I leave for my hiking trip in Scotland, which I discussed in an earlier post. Since that earlier post, I've been reading additional information about my planned route -- beautiful and scenic, but, as I've also discovered, wet, muddy, exposed to high winds and heavy rains, and infested with ticks and the famous midges previously lamented. Parts of the route get 100 inches of rainfall per year -- and August is frequently a rainy month.

Wow, if I'd wanted to be all that miserable, I could have stayed in Seattle!

But the Scotland hike -- assuming I survive -- will be merely a training exercise for this year's major pedestrian effort.

During the first three weeks of October, Pascal and I will once more return to Nepal, this time for a serious exploration of the Mt. Everest region. Pascal, long-time readers of this blog may recall, also joined me for Himalayan treks in the Ladakh region of the Indian Himalayas in 2005, and to Annapurna base camp in 2009. He's now 24, and surely old enough to be settling into a quiet middle age, but he seems eager to leap into yet another expedition, and, if necessary, to assist in returning my remains to my family in a body bag. We'll be part of a total party of five trekkers.

My nephew Denny and I hiked to the base of Everest in 1995, and this year's trek follows the same route for the first two or three days -- from the tiny airport at Lukla to the Sherpa "capital" of Namche Bazaar (11,200 ft.). Our trail then leaves the main "yak highway" to Everest base camp, and heads in a more northwestern direction, ending up in the Gokyo Valley. From that valley, we will view Everest from a different, more westerly perspective, rather than from the south as we did in 1995. From the Gokyo valley, we'll have excellent, close-up views of four of the eight tallest peaks on earth: Everest, Cho Oyu, Lhotse, and Makalu. Along the route, we'll also have views of other magnificent peaks: Ama Dablam, Nuptse, Teng Kangpoche, and Kwongde.

While only the most basic and dirtiest of accommodations -- "tea houses" -- existed trailside in 1995, and our group of four hikers camped in tents, 16 years have done their bit in "improving" the wilderness. And so we'll be staying in trekking lodges in the lower and more accessible areas, such as Namche Bazaar (where Denny and I shared a tent in our guide's "front yard" in 1995, eating our meals upstairs in his house as chickens wandered up and down the stairs, and yaks made restless noises below in the first floor stables). But we'll camp in tents after Namche, as our trek takes us to higher and more remote regions.

After enjoying the lake-studded Gokyo valley (15,800 ft.) for a couple of days, we begin our climb to the high point of the trek -- Renjo La pass, at 17,880 ft. If I'm still alive once I reach that elevation, Renjo La will be the third highest elevation I've ever attained (outside an airplane). Only Kilimanjaro (19,300 ft.) and Kalapatar (18,200 ft.) at the base of Everest have been higher. I was younger for those climbs, of course, and no doubt had heartier lungs -- and more spare brain cells that I could afford to lose to the ravages of hypoxia.

Oh well, we'll just have to see how it goes!

After crossing over Renjo La, our trail loops back and descends for about three days until it re-unites with the main Everest trail at Namche Bazaar, and thence back down to Lukla (9,200 ft.), where a plane will fly us back to Kathmandu.

I'm not overlooking the pleasures and challenges of my upcoming Scottish hike, but obviously I'll be using it to check out all my bodily systems, hoping to assure myself that they'll be functioning properly in October. Both trips will be exciting, and I'm looking forward eagerly to both.

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Photo -- Everest viewed from Gokyo Valley

Libertarianism in New York

New York's approval of same-sex marriage last night is being celebrated -- rightly -- as a victory in the struggle for gay rights. From a more distant perspective, however, it also represents another step in the gradual ascendancy in America of one concept of government over another -- and equally respectable philosophically -- concept: a victory of social libertarianism over neo-conservativsm.

The balance of victory in the New York Senate was provided by four Republican senators, two of whom had voted against a similar measure two years ago. One of those senators (incidentally, a Catholic) stated that, after much personal anguish, he could not again vote to deny equal marital rights to gay citizens of his state. In other words, he now viewed the vote as one affecting civil rights. On the other hand, the Catholic bishops of New York declared after the vote:

that marriage is the joining of one man and one woman in a lifelong, loving union that is open to children, ordered for the good of those children and the spouses themselves. This definition cannot change, though we realize that our beliefs about the nature of marriage will continue to be ridiculed, ....

The bishops' statement may be slightly disingenuous -- the bill passed last night is not an attack upon their religious and sacramental definition of marriage -- but inherent in their statement is a political philosophy that in recent years has represented the social aspect of a broader package known as "neo-conservatism." But the philosophy is hardly recent; it dates back at least to Plato, and was certainly fully expressed by Calvin in sixteenth century Geneva and by the pilgrim fathers in New England. Simply stated, the philosophy asserts that one function of the state is to define and express the values of the community, and to encourage (and, when necessary, force) individuals to adhere to those values.

According to this political philosophy, if the community's accepted norms -- religious, social, cultural, whatever -- insist that marriage is limited to unions between a man and a woman, the state is fully justified in enforcing that limitation, and in providing sanctions against individuals who seek to live their lives otherwise. In its more moderate form, the neo-conservative philosophy might require some reasonable nexus between the community value being protected and the behavior being sanctioned -- e.g., does permitting unions between couples of the same sex really damage the community's traditional concept of marriage -- but once such damage is shown to be possible, the state would be justified in cracking down on aberrant behavior.

Contrary to the neo-conservative philosophy, and living along side it during most of American history, has been a strand of social libertarianism -- "keep the government out of my life." In simplistic terms, libertarianism holds that unless my acts directly harm someone other than myself, the government has no legitimate interest in controlling what I'm doing. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has often been interpreted to promote a form of libertarianism, preventing the government from controlling individual behavior that has no reasonable nexus with a legitimate governmental objective.

American society and government have swung back and forth between the two inconsistent poles. The trend since World War II has been, fitfully, toward social libertarianism. The cause for this trend has been the increasingly fragmented social consensus in a population that is no longer descended primarily from Anglican and Nonconforming immigrants from Britain to the East Coast, but that now draws from every geographical region, cultural background and religious belief in the world. With such diversity -- itself increasingly seen as one of America's strengths -- there are fewer areas of genuine social consensus that the government can legitimately enforce.

In the absence of such consensus, the cultural aspects of neo-conservatism become less and less relevant philosophically, and appear more and more as simply the imposition of the values of one minority group (or, at times, those of a bare majority) on the lives of the rest of the population. When cultural and religious consensus breaks down, libertarianism becomes an increasingly attractive alternative philosophy, even for those to whom neo-conservatism might be attractive under different conditions.

After all -- and churches themselves might well ponder this -- do I want to set the precedent of imposing my beliefs on others today, while I'm part of a bare majority, when tomorrow I may well be in the minority?

We appear to be at the point in American history, therefore, when the balance is tipping to social libertarianism. The tipping will never be complete, and we needn't fear radical changes in legislation. Where a clear consensus as to appropriate conduct exists, it can and will still be enforced. Cock fighting and bear baiting will continue to be outlawed; marriage between humans and orangutans, the possibility of which seems to have alarmed some writers, will still be outside the pale. Recognition of a family headed by two men or two women today won't lead ineluctably to another Caligula tomorrow appointing his horse as consul.

And churches -- themselves not subject to the government's need to balance individual rights against consensus values -- will still be free to define marriage for their members in accord with their own beliefs and values, and to seek new adherents to their beliefs.

Evolution of values in a society shouldn't be equated with disappearance of values; it simply reflects the fact that healthy societies themselves change. In diverse societies, values compete freely among themselves for acceptance; the government's thumb doesn't try to tip the scale.

Perchance to dream?

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
--The Tempest, act iii, scene 2

Those of us who have struggled through some of Shakespeare's plays -- notably The Tempest -- have sometimes wondered to ourselves: What was that dude smoking?

We may soon have an answer.

Paleontologists are about to descend on Stratford-on-Avon and run DNA tests on the Bard's bones. While they're at it, they plan to check out rumors that our boy William was an enthusiastic pot smoker -- rumors based on the discovery of a couple dozen odd pipes in his garden, together with the fact that marijuana was cultivated in England during his years on earth. Investigators will have to brave the curse that Shakespeare placed on his tomb, a curse on anyone who disturbed the remnants of his mortal coil.

Meanwhile, four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, here in our soberly Scandinavian state of Washington, an unusual coalition of public figures yesterday filed a statewide initiative that would legalize and regulate (through the Liquor Control Board) the sale and use of marijuana. The initiative is being supported by the Seattle City Attorney, by a former U.S. Attorney, by a former president of the Washington Bar, and by travel writer Rick Steves.

If voters aren't sufficiently convinced by the policy arguments that are being offered for legalization, they may at least conclude that if toking up was good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for them. Some of the most beautiful and meaningful writing in the English tongue came, after all, from the pen of a guy who may have been flying high as a kite.

Flout 'em and scout 'em
And scout 'em and flout 'em
Thought is free.
--The Tempest, act iii, scene 2

That's what I say. See what I mean? Hey, wait a minute? What?

Thou deboshed fish thou.
--The Tempest, act iii, scene 2.

Huh? What da? What's that dude smokin', anyway?

The eyes of youth

A decade ago, I spent a short two weeks wandering around Central Europe -- eastern Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. That would be a lot of territory to see in two weeks, of course. More truthfully, I should say that I spent two weeks visiting large cities in those countries: Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Budapest.

But in each large city, I did try to get out of town a bit, so that I wasn't locked into a "Famous Capitals" sort of tour. While in Vienna, for example, I made a special effort to hop a train to the little town of Melk. Melk is most famous as the site of Stift Melk -- a very large Benedictine abbey, located scenically on a hill overlooking the Danube.

Why Melk? The power of the written word. Not long before my travels, I had read, entranced, A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, the first of two volumes describing his wanderings on foot in 1933-35, at the age of 18, from the English Channel to Constantinople (Istanbul).

Leigh Fermor was quite a kid. He had been kicked out of what in America we would call prep school, after he'd been caught smooching with the local grocer's daughter. He nevertheless was already well educated at 18, self-taught to an extent that's difficult today for us to believe. Moreover, he had a sense of self-confidence that permitted him to feel equally at ease with the workers and peasants among whom he traveled and the European aristocrats and diplomats who often took him in, offered him food and shelter, and found him fascinating and agreeable company.

Like a fair number of other English youth in that era, he had a fine sense for both literature and art. And it was his vivid description, in musical metaphors, of Melk abbey that put me on the train from Vienna, headed up the Danube for a day's exploration of Melk:

Overtures and preludes followed each other as courtyard opened on courtyard. Ascending staircases unfolded as vaingloriously as pavanes. Cloisters developed with the complexity of double, triple and quadruple fugues. The suites of state apartments concatenated with the variety, the mood and the décor of symphonic movements. Among the receding infinity of gold bindings in the library, the polished reflections, the galleries and the terrestial and celestial globes, gleaming in the radiance of their flared embrasures, music again seemed to intervene. A magnificent and measured polyphony crept in one's ears.

And so on, and on, and on.

Melk Abbey was indeed beautiful. I studied the same sights described by Leigh Fermor. But my trip journal, after having quoted the above passage, suggests my mild disappointment. And why wouldn't I have been a bit disappointed? A traveler needs a highly trained eye to view architecture as Leigh Fermor did; it also helps to be 18 years old, if you wish to feel it as emotionally and to express it with as little restraint as did this unusual young man. I once again learned the sad lesson that a sense of awe in the presence of magnificent art, architecture or music results only in part from the object that's being contemplated; much depends on the education and sensitivity that the viewer himself brings to the experience.

Leigh Fermor had little to say in his writings about the political currents that already were rocking the regions through which he traveled, but war was already looming ahead. Patrick Leigh Fermor was himself to play a part in that war. He was, in fact, the hero of W. Stanley Moss's memoir of the Cretan resistance, Ill Met by Moonlight. Moss, who was Leigh Fermor's second in command, tells the story of how his superior, as a daring young British Special Operations officer, led a group of partisans hiding in the Cretan mountains in an audacious kidnapping of the German general who was in command of the island.

According to a full page obituary in this week's Economist, Leigh Fermor never talked much in later years about his role in this sensational strike against the German occupation. He seemed far more pleased with the fact that when the German general, now Leigh Fermor's prisoner, one day quoted -- quite unexpectedly -- a line from Horace, "Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte,"¹ Leigh Fermor was able to come right back and complete the thought by reciting from memory the next five stanzas.

Patrick Leigh Fermor died last week at the age of 96. I suspect he is irreplaceable. I imagine, in fact, that his entire generation of eccentrically educated amateurs is irreplaceable, and that their passing is a sad loss to humane civilization.

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¹"You see how [Mount] Soracte stands out white with deep snow..."

Warped in space

After I finish writing each gem-like entry in this blog, I look around for an appropriate photograph or drawing to illustrate it. This time, however, I fell in love with the drawing (by NASA) first. The text that now follows is merely a pretext -- as it were -- for publishing the drawing.

The drawing shows Earth surrounded by a schematic of the space-time continuum. The little dragon fly-like doo-hicky swimming in space-time around the Earth is Gravity Probe B, an orbiting satellite launched jointly by Stanford and NASA in 2004. The purpose of the probe was to determine whether Einstein's theory of general relativity could be verified empirically. The final empirical data were received early last month.

Einstein's theory indicates, first, that any body of mass warps the time-space continuum surrounding it (thus creating what we view as its gravititational field), and, second, that as such a body rotates, it drags time-space around with it in a circle.

Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey. As the planet rotated its axis and orbited the Sun, the honey around it would warp and swirl, and it's the same with space and time," said Francis Everitt, a Stanford physicist and principal investigator for Gravity Probe B.
--Stanford Report (5-4-11)

The gravity probe satellite contained four highly precise gyroscopes. Gyroscopes have the quality of maintaining an invariable orientation, pointing in the same fixed direction in space once operational. These were originally aimed at a single distant star. As they circled the Earth, the gyroscopes departed from their original orientation very slightly -- but measurably -- in almost precisely the amount predicted by Einstein's theory.

The differences in the actual data accumulated by Gravity Probe B from those expected from Newtonian physics -- differences attributable to relativistic "swirling" effects -- may seem miniscule, but it's been important that these differences be understood and recognized in developing precise applications for the GPS system. Measurements from the satellite have provided support not only for Einstein's theory, moreover, but for the Big Bang theory as well.

The schematic illustration showing directions in time-space being warped by the Earth's mass and rotation is figurative. The warping actually occurs in four dimensions -- three dimensions in space plus time. But it makes a pretty picture. And, from now on -- whenever I swirl a spoon around in a jar of honey -- I'll think of Dr. Everitt's evocative metaphor.

Man without a country

I spent my first year after law school clerking for a federal judge in Honolulu. One day, the judge's secretary asked me to talk to a gentleman who had come to chat with the judge.

The visitor, a friendly, articulate, middle aged fellow, had some interesting ideas. My main recollection now is that he firmly believed that he was not obliged to pay income tax, because -- essentially -- he had received no money as income. He had been paid only in federal reserve notes, which, in his estimation, were not legal tender and therefore not taxable.

He had some legal arguments, which I now forget, but what surprised me was that he had no interest in the views of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the federal reserve system. The Supreme Court, I gathered, was simply part of the problem.

I was reminded of this introduction to the strange world beyond academia by a story in today's Spokane Spokesman-Review. It seems that there is now a group of individuals, hitherto unknown to me, who deny that they are citizens of the United States. Ok, you say, lots of people fit that description, even among American residents. But members of this group deny that they are citizens of any nation. They call themselves "sovereigns," and each is apparently a nation unto himself.

The newspaper story was prompted by the appearance of Adrian Shannon before a Spokane judge on charges of possession and distribution of marijuana. Mr. Shannon, like other "sovereigns," denies the legitimacy of all federal, state and local agencies. They believe themselves exempt from needing drivers' licenses and birth certificates, paying taxes, and being held accountable under criminal law.

No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
--John Donne

Actually, not so, Mr. Shannon and other sovereigns would assert. They want no part of any continent, of any main. Each sees himself as a one-person St. Helena or Easter Island.

“People call it a movement, but it’s individuals, literally sovereigns, that are all learning, ‘Hey we don’t have to put up with these ridiculous laws, because we are the government,’ ” Shannon said.

Apparently sovereigns do not always rely on profound philosophical arguments to win their points, however. Mr. Shannon, for example, claimed that his case was not properly on the day's court docket. Why so? Because his name had been written entirely in capital letters on the docket. Names written in all-caps do not apply to individuals, to his way of thinking, but only to some sort of corporate entities assigned governmental codes.

Judge Price ruled, more or less informally, on this contention:

“Well, whatever your name is, sir, get up here,” Price said.
“May I retain all my rights?” Shannon asked.
“Sir, get up here or you’re going to jail,” Price said.

"Sovereign" may simply be a more recent name for a fairly well-known type of legal species known as a "crackpot." (And I mean that in the best possible way.)

For example. I once had the pleasure of representing a relatively minor defendant in a lawsuit brought by an Idaho plaintiff, a lawsuit that had ballooned, step by step, from a small legal claim to one against an enormous number of defendants. The lawsuit ended up asserting claims in excess of $1 trillion, and eventually named a number of federal judges, from districts all over the country as additional defendants (any judge who ruled against him on any issue soon found himself part of the lawsuit). By the time I became involved, this intrepid plaintiff from Idaho was seeking, among all his other claims, to have the State of Idaho declared improperly admitted to the union, with an injunction issued returning it to territorial status.

What I learned from that lawsuit (the plaintiff lost, by the way) was that judges are human, too, and they will put up with only so much time-consuming idiocy. Before Mr. Shannon proceeds much further down this trail, engaging himself in an adversarial posture with the judiciary, I suggest that he think through his options carefully.

Statehood?

When President Obama arrives in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, he will be the first president since Kennedy to visit the island for the purpose of meeting with its people, rather than simply using it a conveniently warm and sunny spot to meet with other world leaders. So reports the New York Times today.

One topic on which the president will certainly face questions is Puerto Rico's future status relative to the United States. At present, it is characterized as a "Commonwealth," as is the Northern Mariana Islands. Its residents are citizens of the United States, but are not represented in Congress (aside from a non-voting "resident commissioner"), and have no vote in presidential elections.

According to the NYT, Obama promised in 2008 to resolve the island's political status during his first term. Accordingly, a presidential commission has recommended two votes during 2012: First, to determine whether the island should become independent; and second, assuming the answer to the first is "no," the nature of its future political association with the rest of the nation. Polls suggest that approximately 50 percent of its residents favor statehood.

Suppose the result of the two elections were to unambiguously support statehood? This would put pressure on Congress, and would confront the Republicans with a difficult dilemma. The island probably would be a predictably Democratic state. Statehood would give the Democrats two more senators. The island's population is only slightly less than that of Oregon, which means that it would be entitled to approximately the same number of six representatives in the House. If the size of the House of Representatives were to remain fixed by statute at 435, those six representatives would have to come from other states. Reapportionment after each decennial census is hard enough already, especially for those states that lose House seats.

Statehood would also give Puerto Rico approximately eight electoral votes in presidential elections.

The reflexive reaction of the Republicans would be to vote against statehood. After all, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii -- especially Hawaii -- was rejected repeatedly, despite referendums supporting statehood in both territories. The two territories were noncontiguous with the rest of the country, opponents argued. Hawaii was racially different from the mainland and its inhabitants seemed "foreign," many pointed out. (And the races often intermarried in the Islands, to the horror of Southern politicians in the 1950's and earlier.)

But opposition to Puerto Rico statehood would pose its own political risks for the Republicans. The hispanic vote is becoming an enormous factor throughout the country; party line Republican opposition to statehood would further alienate hispanics. Moreover, Florida is a critical state in presidential elections. There are now more Puerto Ricans living on the mainland than on the island itself, and many of the more recent migrants have moved to Florida. The new Florida residents tend to be educated and middle class; they would be expected to constitute a swing vote in that state, not a dunk shot for the Democrats. They also strongly favor statehood for Puerto Rico.

How many more groups around the country can the Republicans -- increasingly Southern, Mid-Western, rural, and evangelical -- afford to alientate and write off? This is a question that will keep their strategists up late at night, worrying.

When Congress finally granted statehood to Hawaii, it was a status for which 93 percent of the territory had voted. If only a slight majority of Puerto Ricans favor statehood in a plebiscite, that might be a factor justifying a "wait and see" approach before making an ultimate political decision. Commonwealth status does have some advantages for Puerto Rico -- it's not as though the island were being treated as a subject colony.

In the end, I'll gladly support whatever the voters of Puerto Rico decide is best for their future. But will the Republican Party?

There's a new day comin'

This is the most unkindest cut of all.
--Julius Caesar, act iii, scene 2

Finally. For too long has our Nation been distracted by matters of foreign policy, terrorism, immigration reform, unemployment, civil liberties, environmental protection, health care reform, and the Congressional tweeting of inappropriate photos. These matters, though weighty, should not be used to shield from view a more urgent matter, a form of domestic terrorism that, generation after generation, has striken an intimate blow at half our population.

I refer, of course, to the horrors of male circumcision.

The clear-sighted voters of San Francisco will have a chance this November to put a total and complete stop to this barbaric practice, an end to this bodily mutiliation that has resulted in so much physical suffering, psychological turmoil, sexual dysfunction and locker room humiliation to our nation's trembling men and boys.

Is it any wonder that males fall further and further behind in education and employment? Should we be surprised that teenaged boys are consumed by free-floating, unfocused rage? That males far outnumber females in the prison population? That male legislators have proven incapable of thinking like adults?

"Why is it illegal to mutilate girls, but not boys?" An anguished cri de coeur heard across America. So simple a question; such insightful reasoning. This is indeed the burning question that consumes men's minds, turning all thoughts away from supposedly weightier, but less personally compelling, matters -- like getting an education, earning a living and caring for a family.

By the time a boy reaches the age of 10, his days and nights are haunted by one overarching thought: "First they circumcised me. Then they took away my tonsils and adenoids. Then my appendix. What part gets harvested next? I can't remember it happening, but hot damn! -- I sure bet I hated it. I'm so angry at being mutilated, I'm gonna go get tattooed from head to foot, and lotsa body piercings, as well"

A supporter of a similar measure in Santa Monica announced today that she is dropping her campaign because of Jewish protests that the measure would outlaw a religious practice deeply ingrained in Judaism and ordained by Holy Scripture. I trust that no wishy-washy deferral to a minority group's religious scruples -- or to bizarre claims that circumcision should be a decision left to the parents -- will hinder the efforts of the historically more enlightened San Francisco community.

Maybe, just maybe, in a happier future world, boys will be able to grow to adulthood without suffering the horrific trauma to which my generation was subjected. Yes, a new dawn lies ahead -- too late for me, but giving promise of happier lives for those yet unborn.

Now, let's talk about parents who force kids to go the dentist while they're still below the age of consent ..... I say: Let's also ban childhood orthodontics!

Mount Si

Forty-five minutes east of Seattle is the town of North Bend, and rising above North Bend is the massive shape of Mount Si -- the crumbling remains of an ancient volcano, rising out of flat pasture land just before you reach the Cascade range.

I climb Mt. Si virtually every year, usually in the spring as soon as the snow melts. This year, the snow melted late. But here we are in June, and today I made my climb. My achievement is hardly remarkable around these parts; Wikipedia estimates that between 80,000 and 100,000 hikers visit the mountain annually.

Which is not to say that they all reach the summit. A well-maintained trail leads to the top, but it's a steep trail and it goes only up. And up. The trail is 4.0 miles in length, with an altitude gain of 3,500 feet. The summit elevation is advertised on trail signs as 4,167 feet above sea level.

The trail follows an endless series of switchbacks upward, passing through beautiful and very mature second growth timber that gradually becomes less dense as you climb. At the top, you break out of the trees onto a boulder field, with views all the way to Puget Sound and Seattle to the west, and -- on a clear day -- Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams to the south. This year, moreover, many of the surrounding hills stood out sharply, still covered with snow.

But I do this climb less for the scenic beauty -- although that's certainly appreciated -- than as a conditioning tool to prepare for other hikes during the summer. I also surreptitiously keep track of my time -- just to see if I "still have it." I made the climb in 1 hour, 40 minutes and the descent in 1 hour, 20 minutes (crowds of fellow climbers coming down slowed my descent). I'm thus hiking as well as I ever have -- at least on Mt. Si -- so I'm pleased.

Above the summit boulder field is "The Haystack" -- a rocky dome that can be climbed only by a rather tricky scramble. I've scrambled to the top with friends lots of times with no particular concern. There have also been times, however, when I've unpredictably melted into a state of acrophobic panic about 2/3 of the way up, and -- shamefacedly -- slithered back down without reaching the top. The scramble is steep and exposed in places, and one slip could quite possibly be fatal. I was hiking alone today, and had no intention of doing the scramble without someone else along to keep an eye on me.

Today was supposed to be Seattle's warmest day of the year to date, and the sky was clear when I left home. By the time I reached the base of the mountain, however, the sun was obscured by a high overcast. (The overcast was high enough that Mt. Rainier was clearly visible beneath it.) I arrived at 10:30, thinking I'd beat the crowds, but for the first time ever (for me) the parking lot was jammed. Lots of folks going up and down -- and lots of dogs going with them -- but people-watching is half the fun on Si. No one climbs Si for a solitary wilderness experience.

So I'm happy that lots of people -- including lots of folks under 30 -- still enjoy vigorous hiking, and I'm happy that my strength and endurance still seem good. I'm also happy that Rainier, reigning majestically over all the lesser peaks, consented today to make herself visible.

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Photos, from top to bottom:

1. Mt. Si from the town of North Bend
2. Mt. Rainier, viewed from the top of Mt. Si
3. Climbers beginning the scramble up the Haystack.
4. Hikers on the trail, near the bottom
5. The Haystack, from the boulder field below

Lost generation revisited

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
--Hemingway

When I think of Woody Allen, I think of college kids and young people lined up for a block waiting to see his latest movie. We learned to love him for his slapstick comedies. We later felt more adult, with quasi-Jewish sensibilities, watching Annie Hall, Zelig and Manhattan. We puzzled our way through his Ingmar Bergman phase. And then, we sort of lost touch. Now, when I review his list of movies, I realize that he kept directing films, but somehow I was no longer watching them.

But he remains in my mind as a filmmaker who appeals to young people. So it was a bit of a shock to go to the theater tonight, to see Midnight in Paris, and find myself surrounded by silver-haired baby boomers -- to find myself watching his ageing fans struggling up the aisle, easing themselves into seats. Where were the college kids, I wondered? Where were all the young couples?

Well, I guess they're watching Thor. Or Scream 4. Or X-Men: First Class. Or at home on their computers. It's a different generation, with different interests. For me, it's tempting to look back on the 60's and 70's -- when Woody Allen's star first rose -- as a long-lost Golden Age of Cinema.

But, of course, the moral of Midnight in Paris is that there were no actual Golden Ages, that every generation fixes upon some earlier time as its own Golden Age, an imaginary world that it creates in its own mind and imagines with nostalgia.

That may be the film's stated moral, but the cinematography totally undermines this lesson. Paris in the Twenties, in Allen's imagining, is visually a shining display of street lamps reflected from wet cobble stone streets. It's a city of smoky cafés and nightclubs filled with beautiful, clever people, and of salons attended by the greatest concentration of talent ever gathered together in one city since the Renaissance. Allen's Paris is, indeed, a moveable feast.

The film's rather loopy hero, Gil -- acted by Owen Wilson, who looks nothing like Woody Allen, but does an amazing job of imitating Allen's phrasing and tone of voice -- stumbles somehow back in time, and hangs out, improbably, night after night, with Hemingway, Scott and Zelda, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Buñuel, Cocteau, Dali, and the full complement of writers and artists who lived and worked in the Paris of the 1920's.

The plot is silly, the acting often seems a bit stilted, and Gil's present-day fiancée and step parents-to-be are right wing Republicans so stereotypically dull and xenophobic that you wonder what ever possessed Gil to propose to her in the first place. ("We both like pita bread," he explains, trying to find something they have in common.) But the portrayal of celebrities from the Twenties is irresistably interesting, as well as funny. Hemingway speaks in short, "true" sentences -- the way he wrote and the way I doubt he ever spoke. "Anyone want to box?" he asks loudly, as his friends say goodbye and leave the cafe in which they had been drinking.

But most of all, the film is worth seeing just as a romanticized but almost painfully beautiful re-creation of Paris in its by-gone days of glory, as well as a breathtaking travelogue to the Paris of today, a Paris that seems pretty darn "golden" even now.

Maybe Allen's moral is correct. Maybe Paris's Golden Age wasn't really all that golden, maybe every period of history only seems golden to subsequent generations. But you don't really believe it as you walk out of the theater, humming a Cole Porter tune and wondering where you can find yourself a glass of Pernod.