Safari

"Goodbye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner."
--Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child

I've never yet seen the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River (all set about with fever-trees), and I don't know when, if ever, I will.  I learned Kipling's alliterative description of the river as a kid, long before I knew such a river really exists.   (It forms South Africa's boundary with Zimbabwe, and a portion of its boundary with Botswana.)

I've never seen it down at river level, as I say, but in May I'll hop across it a couple of times by plane.  My cousin Craig has pulled together a group of twelve relatives and friends, including his wife, his sister, and me, for a safari in southern Africa.  The actual tour begins in Livingstone, Zambia, and ends in Maun, Botswana, but our transatlantic flights touch down in Johannesburg -- hence a chance to "see" the Limpopo a couple of times, albeit from 30,000 feet or so.

The safari actually duplicates, to a large extent, a similar trip my eldest nephew and I joined in 1986.  That earlier trip was somewhat more spartan -- we slept in tents, hiked, and traveled (mostly) by Landrover.  This time we'll stay in "luxury" lodges and hop from campsite to campsite by bush planes.  It will be interesting to decide which kind of travel I prefer.  I'm keeping an open mind, but sleeping in tents in the bush is an amazing experience -- memories of looking up from my reading while sitting on a camp chair and seeing two giraffes smiling down at me ... waking up in the night as an elephant seemed about to step on our tent ... hearing the distant but incredibly loud roar of lions in the night ... having a black mamba pointed out to us along the side of the trail.

It will also be interesting to determine whether Botswana has degenerated in the past 28 years from the virtual wildlife paradise it seemed my first time around.

Our tour begins in Livingstone, with a day to enjoy Victoria Falls.  Last time, our trip also started at Vic Falls, but from the Zimbabwe side of the river -- political events in the interval have probably determined the change.  (We'll walk across the Zambezi River bridge so we can say we've visited Zimbabwe, just as last time we crossed over into Zambia.)  From the north or the south, Vic Falls is one of the natural wonders of the world.  Only the Grand Canyon has overwhelmed me to the same extent on first sight.

I wish I could reproduce photos from the earlier trip, but they are all in the form of slides -- buried somewhere in my basement. 

More details about this year's trip as departure grows closer. (And, by the way, I already have a good idea of what the Crocodile has for dinner.)

Umberto D.

So you're looking ahead to retirement?  But you're worried?  You're not sure you'll have that $5 million (or whatever) in your 401k account -- that impossible amount your financial adviser keeps insisting is essential?

For a little perspective, you might want to watch Umberto D., Vittorio De Sica's 1952 masterpiece, a film shown last night as part of the Seattle Art Museum's Italian cinema series.

Umberto is a retired civil servant living in post-war Italy.  (The film is worthwhile -- if for nothing else -- for its background documentation of a much poorer, more desperate Italy, with streets filled with pedestrians and streetcars, rather than automobiles.) 

Umberto apparently has no relatives.  He lives alone with his small dog "Flike" in a modest rooming house, whose landlady repeatedly demands overdue past rent.  He exists on a small, inadequate pension.  The film opens with scenes of street demonstrations by retirees demanding increases in their miserably low pensions.  Throughout the movie, Umberto spends his days trying to sell off his few meager possessions in an attempt to stay alive.

Umberto's landlady -- a pretentious, high-strung Signora who hosts absurd soirées in her run-down flat,  entertaining her guests by singing operatic arias  -- has decided to evict Umberto from the room in which he's lived for thirty years. 

Umberto, carefully dressed in respectable coat and tie, wanders about the city, accompanied by Flike, desperately attempting to scrape up enough lire to pay the overdue rent and to postpone the inevitable eviction.  He runs into former employers and younger fellow employees, all of whom are superficially friendly, but clearly uncomfortable -- especially once Umberto begins quietly hinting at how he needs just a bit of money to tide him over.  One by one, it's "great seeing you, hope all goes well," and they're gone.  Gone about their important business, business in which he himself once shared.

As his desperation deepens, he considers joining the ranks of the city's many panhandlers, but he can't force himself to accept the necessary but humiliating  sacrifice of his dignity.  (In desperation, he has clever Flike stand on his hind legs and hold an open hat in his mouth, while Umberto hides behind a post, hoping for coins from amused passers by.)

Bit by bit, Umberto gives up hope -- as do we, his audience.  He packs his bag and surrenders his room. He gives the last of his money to his landlady's unmarried, pregnant maid. He attempts unsuccessfully to find Flike a good home.  He then picks his beloved dog up in his arms and prepares to step in the path of a passing train, a double suicide.  Flike's intelligence and desire for survival exceed those of his master; he wriggles frees and the train-- and the moment -- pass by.  The dog, now somewhat leery of his undependable master, runs off and plays with some children.

Umberto sees the simple pleasures of his dog's life, and joins in the play, tossing pine cones for Flike to fetch.  Having given away all his possessions and money, Umberto is left with only his dog, the clothes on his back, and his life.  Like Flike, he grabs at the simple joys of the moment in the park, ignoring whatever the night and the days to come might bring.

And I guess that's our Guide to a Happy Retirement -- seize the joy of each precious moment, and ignore the uncertainties of tomorrow.  (Or, alternatively, I suppose, devote your life to saving up the five or ten million dollars recommended by your financial adviser.)

World class

Whenever a city describes itself as a "world class city," you can generally assume safely that it isn't.  Therefore, I cringe every time I hear local boosters make that claim for Seattle.

But let's face it.  Whatever our jokes about longing for a "lesser Seattle," whatever our irritation at too many furriners movin' in -- especially furriners from California -- we here in the Northwest Corner do crave recognition and respect from the rest of the nation.  Natives (such as I) grew up feeling isolated from the "real" America.  People "back east" considered us a bunch of loggers and fishermen (which we largely were!), a bit of wilderness still being civilized, still being "liberated" from the "Indians."

And major league sports?  The closest major league baseball team when many of us were kids was in Kansas City!  In the absence of much coverage of major league sports on television, the talk in our barber shops tended to center around the exploits of the local high school basketball team.

So, forgive us if we've seemed childishly excited about our Seahawks these past weeks.  This season's NFL success has been the biggest major league event in Seattle since the SuperSonics (since decamped to Oklahoma City) (Oklahoma City!!!)  won the NBA championship in 1979.

Yesterday we only dreamed of being a conference champion.  And now we are one!  Last night, as (we hope) most the world recognizes, we won the National Football Conference championship from arch-rival San Francisco, landing ourselves in the 2014 Super Bowl against Denver.  (Especially sweet has been the fact that the final players in this drama have all been from the western states.)

It wasn't an easy win.  For most of the game, I doubted that it would be a win at all.  But a stout defense, a reasonably good quarterback performance, and a bit of luck gave us the title.

I've read a lot about the hatred between the Seahawks and the 49ers, and between their respective fans. I don't buy it.  I don't feel that way at all.  I've been proud to back the 49ers when they represented the conference, and will be proud to so again when San Francisco's time inevitably comes again.  I like to consider it a terrific rivalry between similar cities and teams -- a love-hate relationship, if you will.

So, anyway, allow us loggers and fishermen up here in the Northwest Corner a couple of weeks to bask in our unaccustomed glory and fame.  Indulge our illusions of being "world class."

And then bring on Mr. Manning and the Broncos -- in Super Bowl XLVIII!

Italian flicks

Reflecting the destruction and chaos following World War II, as well as the rise of Communism and Socialism, postwar Italian films became known for a movement called "neorealism." 

According to Wikipedia's rather awkwardly written summation, neorealist films

are generally filmed with nonprofessional actors--although, in a number of cases, well known actors were cast in leading roles, playing strongly against their normal character types in front of a background populated by local people rather than extras brought in for the film.

They are shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in run-down cities as well as rural areas due to its forming during the post-war era.

The topic involves the idea of what it is like to live among the poor and the lower working class. The focus is on a simple social order of survival in rural, everyday life.

I first became familiar with these films as an undergraduate attending "foreign film" series.  They contrasted strongly with contemporary American movies by their being filmed in black and white, by their emphasis on their characters' social and economic milieux, and by their general pessimism and lack of romanticism. 

Also, they had subtitles!

Although neorealism was dying out by the early 1950s, the films of the succeeding decade, by directors such as Antonioni and -- especially -- Fellini, still contained some of the elements of neorealism while becoming increasingly surrealistic and decreasingly concerned with social injustices.

For anyone of college age in the 1960s and even 1970s, some familiarity with post-war Italian cinema could be reasonably expected.

And now -- the Seattle Art Museum gives us a chance to revisit nine of the landmark films of that era.  Pat and I have tickets to the entire series, but unfortunately had to miss the showing last night of The Bicycle Thief (1948), probably the film of the neorealist genre most familiar to American audiences.  But on succeeding Thursdays, we will be viewing:

Umberto D
I Vitelloni
Le Amiche
Il Posto
The Organizer
8½
Juliet of the Spirits
Amarcord

I'm looking forward eagerly to revisiting each of these films.  My thoughts concerning  some of them may find their way into this blog in coming weeks.

Sharing coffee

Gregory and I had coffee at Starbucks on Tuesday, lingering over our drinks for a couple of hours as we talked and watched the University District crowds pass by on the sidewalk outside.

I first met Gregory over four years ago, when he was a high school student living in my neighborhood.  Now he's a sophomore at a university in New York City, back home in Seattle for semester break.  His family moved out of my neighborhood shortly after he left for college.  We've kept in touch on Facebook, but this was the first time I'd seen him in person since he first went back East to the Big Apple.

Our conversation was satisfying -- from my point of view -- from several perspectives.  Gregory's doing well, of course, and seems to be making the most of the opportunities that college and life in New York offer him.  But I knew that already, just from following him on Facebook, although of course I loved the chance to talk it all over with him in person.

But our conversation was also reassuring on some level beyond the personal.  It was reassuring to be able to carry on a serious conversation with someone many years my junior without feeling any need to lecture him from the heights of my great wisdom and experience, and without his feeling (so far as I could tell) any need to remind me how totally out of touch I truly was with today's world.

Partly, of course, I could empathize with his excitements and concerns and worries, because I so easily recalled my own identical feelings at his age.  More interesting, even surprising, was sensing how his concerns as a 20-year-old were clearly mirrored in analogous concerns in my own life.  I may not have to worry about choosing a major, but I have to make similar choices about how to best use my own time.  Feelings of insecurity, some degree of shyness, concerns about one's own abilities, bafflement by politics and by the mysteries of the universe itself --  the importance of each of these may fluctuate as an individual passes through life, but their existence is shared by each of us at some level of consciousness, independently of our age or experience.

It's wonderful to go overseas, talk to a native of the country you're visiting, and realize that differences in language and custom are superficial -- you both share the joys and predicaments of the human condition.  In the same way, it's deeply reassuring for someone my age to talk with a university student and be hit with the same realization.  These feelings of community between oneself and students who are much younger must be one of the appeals of the teaching profession, at least for those who really love teaching.

As I think back, I realize that this sense of community between generations has been one of the great pleasures of the many trips I've taken with young nephews, nieces, and family friends:  to see the world, and our travels through that world, through their younger eyes, and to realize that we mainly shared the same perceptions and excitement -- and that where our perceptions differed, we could both learn by understanding and appreciating the other's reactions.

Finally, talking with Gregory gave me -- as did travel with my young relatives -- an intimation of earthbound immortality.  Even if we can't live forever, we in some sense live through the generations who follow us and who recapitulate our own hopes and fears within the context of their own times.  This sense of immortality is most strongly felt between parents and their children, of course, but it's also felt on a grander scale between one entire generation and the ones that follow. 

So, any time I can be assured over a cup of coffee that -- in some sense, at least -- I'll live forever, it's well worth my spending a couple of hours (of very enjoyable conversation) to get that assurance.

Karma

As an insurance lawyer, I've spent much of my career scoffing professionally at "whiplash" injuries (the quotation marks often discernible in the sneering manner with which I pronounce the words).

These "injuries" result in subjective and unverifiable pains that seem to last forever, morphing at times into strange entities like fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndrome, diagnoses requiring questionable (to me) and expensive (to the insurers) "modalities" like chiropractic, massage therapy, acupuncture, and so forth.  The "so forth" descending the scale of credibility into such absurdities as herbal and aroma therapies.

The usual cure was the "green poultice" -- application of  hundred dollar bills to the affected areas -- I sneered.

But -- what goes around, comes around.

In early October, I began developing a mild stiff neck.  The stiffness gradually spread to my shoulders and upper back.  By the beginning of December, I was feeling sharp pains in my left shoulder blade area.  The pain now is fairly constant -- although varying greatly from hour to hour in intensity -- and bounces around from one part of my neck and upper back to another.

A week ago, I had a physical therapy session.  The therapist assured me that there was nothing seriously wrong.  But she didn't seem to know quite what the problem was.  She gave me some home exercises to work on.

The home exercises may help in the long run.  They hurt in the short run.

But my purpose in writing this post isn't to complain about my aches and pains -- as richly satisfying as my so complaining actually proves to be.  I merely reflect on the irony that the mythical complaints of those many whiners whom I've derided over the years have now sprung full-blown into existence within my own body.  The "whiners" at least had an auto accident or a slip and fall on which to pin their troubles.

I can blame nothing but the peculiar sense of humor of the gods. 

Karma.  How amusing!  Not.