Deferred maintenance

If a man's house were a reflection of his physical condition, then I'd be hooked up to tubes in a nursing home.  I took possession of my present habitation yea, these many years ago.  For the most part, aside from re-roofing and replacemen of gutters, I've relied on its original good condition ever since. 

But like teeth that are never brushed, the problems of a house that receives minimal maintenance can eventually no longer be concealed. 

So what do you do when you're essentially an idle dreamer, with little interest in caring for your own possessions?  Easy answer -- you call upon the services of your experienced, energetic, do-it-yourself-er brother!

And so, my brother and his wife have trekked northward from southern California for a week, and have been sizing up what needs to be done.  He has leapt into the role of a general contractor -- lining up subs for some of the more specialized work, while planning (along with his wife) on doing some of the more basic work himself.

When the project has been completed -- sometime in mid-summer -- I'll have new insulation, newly finished floors, new bathroom fixtures and kitchen appliances, and a renovated back deck.  I'll also have the minimum seismic retrofitting necessary to obtain earthquake insurance -- in preparation (financially, if not physically or emotionally) for the Big One for which Seattle is said to be overdue.

Left to my own devices, my home would gradually crumble into ruins about me.  My brother's enthusiasm is catching, however, and the battle against Deferred Maintenance will soon be under way.

Septennial

March 20, 2007.  Aye, it was a cold and blustery day, winter turning to spring, as I sat myself  at my desk, took quill in hand, and began writing the first pages of this journal.

Actually, I have no idea what kind of day it was, and I was sitting at my computer.  I hardly knew what a "blog" was, and I recall spending quite a bit of time setting up the format that has remained unchanged since that first day.  I chose my "boy on a haystack" photo for my first illustration.  And I do recall skiing with relatives shortly thereafter, and receiving a certain amount of kidding (and a few congratulations) about my new avocation as a blogger.

I hardly knew what a blog was when I started, as I say, and I certainly didn't know what I wanted to talk about, or what tone or writing style I should adopt.  When I read back over my first couple of years, I see a lot of posts that I would have written differently today, or not written at all.  Not that they were necessarily bad posts, just different in style and subject matter from posts I would be interested in writing now. 

If you care to read them all, you'll find 659 little essays of varying lengths.  This past year has been less productive than average, with some slow months in the fall and early winter.  No idea why that was.  Some odd fluctuations in my brain's biorhythms, perhaps.  Temporary, I hope.

So, with the first day of spring, I pull down from the shelf a brand new volume of blank pages, sharpen my quill, refill my inkpot, and begin another year of enjoyable writing. 

Long ago and far away

The infinite and the infinitesimal.  It's not often that a front page news story touches upon both concepts.

But on St. Patrick's Day, newspapers across the country carried the news that gravitational waves (or particles, or gravitons,  or, as the New York Times accurately described them, "ripples in the fabric of space-time") from the first instant of creation had been detected.

I'll leave the precise nature of the observations, and their implications for physicists, to the news accounts.  (The New York Times story, at least, was unusually well-done, as news stories on abstruse scientific topics go.)

But what caught my immediate attention was our growing need not only to conceptualize, but increasingly to measure, the Very Big and the Very Small.

The Very Small first:  Physicists are now concerned with events as they developed during the first one trillionth of one trillionth of one trillionth of a second following the Big Bang.  That's one over a denominator containing a "one" followed by 36 zeros.  Or, in scientific notation that's 10 to the minus 36th (10^-36) of a second. 

A second is a short period of time.  Movies are shot at 24 frames per second -- that's so fast that the eye can't detect individual frames.  Good cameras have shutter speeds of a thousandth (1/1000 or 10^-3) of a second.  A period of time of ten to the minus 36th second is impossible for the human mind to grasp.  One millionth (10^-6) of a second is impossible for me to grasp!

So that boggles our minds.  Then, there is the Very Big:

When we talk about space travel, we're usually still talking about visiting other planets of our own sun.  But our sun is a smallish star near the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.  The Milky Way is a small galaxy of about four billion stars.   We know there are other galaxies in our universe, ranging in size from ten million stars to 100 trillion stars each.  How many other galaxies?  There are an estimated 170 billion galaxies in the "observable universe" -- i.e., galaxies not so far away that their light has not yet reached us.

So that's our universe, and that's Very Big.  But that's the kind of Very Big we've known about for years. 

The models being used to predict and explain the most recent observations suggest that the Big Bang was not the beginning of Cosmic Reality -- just of the Reality of our own Universe.

Walk along an ocean beach some day and watch the waves churning in.  See how the foam consists of uncountable bubbles forming and then blowing away or popping?

Theoretical physicists suggest that that the Big Bang might be analogized to a bubble forming and rapidly expanding in the froth of an ocean.

  Most of the hundred or so models resulting from Dr. Guth’s original vision suggest that inflation, once started, is eternal. Even as our own universe settled down to a comfortable homey expansion, the rest of the cosmos will continue blowing up, spinning off other bubbles endlessly, a concept known as the multiverse.

The evolution of our universe from the instant of the Big Bang until it one day perhaps dissipates into eternal coldness and blackness may -- in the Great Scheme of Things -- seem as significant as one, tiny, evanescent bubble you observed during your ocean walk.  A bubble that may have seemed important to itself, but not to you, and certainly not to the limitless ocean from which it emerged.

Billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars.  Just a single bubble.  >Pop!<

Planets, stars, galaxies, universes ... and the Great Unknowable Ocean of Ultimate Realty.  Seconds, millionths of a second.  Billionths of a second.  Trillionths of a second.   A single second divided into 10³⁶ parts.

Whether you look at the Very Big or the Very Small -- approaching the infinite or the infinitesimal -- the exercise places in a different perspective the questions we spend our lives worrying about.  Like whether the Crimea should belong to Russia or to Ukraine.  Too bad we can't sit back at times and quietly mull over the relative importance of such matters, on our small planet of a smallish star in a small galaxy in a universe that's really just a tiny bubble of foam -- a bubble in which we play an infinitesimal role.  Don't you think?

Bear that walks like a man

I don't pretend to understand the mind of Vladimir Putin.  I've read conflicting analyses; I'm not at all sure what his motives are. 

I understand that the Crimea has historically (since 1783) been part of Russia, and I can appreciate the desire of Russians in Russia, as well as ethnic Russians in Ukraine, to see its return.  But why now?  And why is Putin so willing to sacrifice the good will Russia developed at such great expense in Sochi, as well as its economic ties with the rest of the world, in order to obtain an objective that gives Russia so little in return?

And why does Putin act so pugnacious and offensive in doing so?  Has he never heard that it's easier to attact bees with honey than with vinegar?

Senator McCain was insulting and inaccurate when he declared this week that Russia is a gas station masquerading as a nation.  Russia, whatever its political leadership, represents a great civilization.  But the insult contains a kernal of truth -- Russia's solvency, at present, is essentially that of a third-world nation.  Russia sells its natural resources.  It designs or manufactures little that the rest of the world wishes to buy.

In today's world, national greatness rests on a nation's economic strength.  And aside from "national greatness," whatever that means, a nation's natural primary objective should be the health and prosperity of its own people.  I've never visited Russia.  Admittedly, I might be pleasantly surprised by the health and prosperity of the Russians I would meet.  But, based on reliable statistics that I read, I suspect not.

Rationally, therefore, President Putin should be focusing his attention on building Russia's economy, perhaps looking to China as an inspiring example of how a once impoverished nation can swiftly improve the welfare of its people.  He is not.

Vladimir Putin reminds me of "great men" of past centuries -- Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Bismarck, and -- yes -- Hitler and Mussolini.  Men who had little interest in the welfare of the masses of their subjects, but much interest in the "glory" of their nation.  They saw themselves not as great law-givers, or business leaders, but as players at a great international game of chess.  Whether by warfare or by diplomacy, these leaders sought always to enhance their nation's power -- regardless of whether those enhancements of power paid off in any real benefit to the great majority of the taxpayers who paid for it.

Putin may have more subtle motives.  Leaders often do.  He may be diverting his people's attention from his own failures in domestic policy, adopting the time-honored method of cooking up an international crisis.  The Crimea may be Russia's Falkland Island diversion.  Or seizure of the Crimea, though of little real importance to the average Russian, may be of great importance -- for one reason or another -- to certain members of the oligarchy on whom Putin depends, to some extent, for support.

Or maybe the answer lies, at least in part, in Putin's own psychological needs.  A man of his high levels of testosterone -- judo practioner, hockey player, Formula-1 race driver, skier, Harley-Davidson owner, fisherman, eager homophobe -- needs an outlet for his manly aggression.  His role is not to offer a hand to the downtrodden.  He is a man of action!  (We recall our own Teddy Roosevelt, although Teddy's zeal extended to national reform, as well!)

And what better action for a national leader than to lead an attack against his country's enemies, real or imaginary?  English children are still taught to revere Henry V:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; 

Putin may see himself as Russia's Henry V, a king whose ringing phrases never touched on the daily lives of the average Englishman, the common folks who,"now a-bed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here."

Or as a Frenchman, Georges Clemenceau put the traditional "great leader" case less poetically:

My home policy: I wage war. My foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war.

Secretary of State Kerry describes Putin's actions in the Crimea: “It’s really nineteenth century behavior in the twenty-first century.”  He's right.  Unfortunately, Putin doesn't care about being au courant.  Or even "grown up," as the world now defines national leadership that is adult.  He doesn't mind throwing a tantrum now and then. 

Russia and its leaders will eventually reach the twenty-first century, but until they decide that domestic peace, prosperity and happiness are more desirable than the joys of grabbing real estate, the rest of the world needs to figure out how to avoid the threat Russia presents to international rules of conduct and how to minimize the dangers it presents to world peace.

All I want for Christmas ...

As I sat in the dentist's chair at 9 o'clock this morning, the moral of the story I'm about to relate once more ran through my mind:

When hopping from rock to rock on a cold, rainy day, take the time to pull your gloves out of your backpack.  Don't keep your hands warm by thrusting them through the pocket openings of your rain pants and down into the pockets of your jeans.

The discerning reader already sees all too well where this story is going, and really needs to read no further.

But that's too short an entry for a blog post.  So let me pad it a bit.

You see, gentle reader, the coefficient of friction between boot sole and said rocks, under conditions of great wetness, is significantly reduced -- so that your feet tend to slip out from under you.  And, should you be leaning forward, ever eager to increase your hiking speed, you will tend to fall forward.

Now, it's quite possible to remove your hands from your pockets, extend your arms in front of you, and break your fall, suffering nothing more than a few scratches on the palms of your hands.  The problem, however, is the relative times required (1) to remove your hands through two layers of pockets and (2) to fall on your face.  I lost the race.  I mangled my face, driving various crumbled portions of my front teeth deep into my lower lip, whence they emerged, bit by bit, over the coming months.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  This event happened nearly thirty years ago, in mid-"summer," deep in the frigid, sodden center of the Norwegian mountains.  I was force-marched -- carefully, there being some concern about a concussion -- to the nearest dentist in the nearest village, a kindly fellow who practiced dentistry in his home, while his wife cooked dinner in the adjoining kitchen.  My mouth was unavoidably a mess -- only about half way into the hike -- which I resumed, nauseating my fellow hikers, the following day -- but he did a beautiful job of rebuilding my front teeth.  He said that his repair was temporary, but would be good enough to get me back to the States, where my dentist could do something permanent.

Back home, my dentist saw no reason to disturb the fellow's Norwegian workmanship.  Huzzah for Norway, I say, especially since their "socialized" medicine footed the bill.  Makes me proud of my partial Viking ancestry.

But not even Norwegian craftsmanship lasts forever, and repairs have become necessary during the past several years.  Around Christmas, a hunk of artificial tooth fell off (somehow, sometime -- I never noticed it happening) from the right central incisor, giving me a raffish appearance, a look perhaps inconsistent with my otherwise mild and bookish demeanor.  My dentist did a nifty repair job. Which lasted about a month.

Embarrassed, he did a re-repair job on his own dime. Then, last week, the tooth fell apart again.

Thus I found myself in his chair once more this morning, where he attempted to anchor the superstructure (he calls it a "filling," but it's not really "filling" anything) more firmly to the tooth stub.   He worked fast, the job was painless, and the results appear quite nifty.  He actually made my "two front teeth" more symmetrical in size and shape, which will encourage me to flash a toothy smile at everyone for a few days until I forget the whole matter.  Or until my tooth falls apart once again.

Modern dentristry is wonderful.  A generation or so ago, I'd have been doomed to a gold cap for the rest of my life.  Or, more likely, to a gaping gap in my front teeth.  But, even so -- far, far better to have kept my original teeth, in their entireties.

Which is why, I guess, old folks always used to nag us to stand up straight and "keep your hands out of your pockets."  Especially in Norway.  When it's raining.  And you find yourself hopping from rock to rock.

"Merely a conventional sign"

"What's the good of Mercator's North     Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the    crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!"

--Lewis Carroll (Hunting of the Snark)

And indeed, as our modern Bellman -- Vladimir Putin -- would declare:

What's the good of national boundaries? It's just a line on a map. The Crimea used to be Russian.  Lots of ethnic Russians live in the Crimea.  They have been "oppressed," forced to speak the barbaric Ukrainian language.  Russia is powerful; Ukraine is weak.  We want the Crimea.  I want the Crimea.  Ergo, the Crimea is now part of Russia.

Q.E.D.

I fully understand.  And President Putin's reasoning seems fully applicable to a matter long dear to my heart, and closer at hand.  I refer, of course, to the oppressive rule of the Canadian government over our neighbors, cousins, families and close friends in "British" Columbia.

"British" Columbia was rightfully claimed by the United States, as part of our Oregon Territory.  "Fifty-four forty or Fight!" was our vow, demanding full American sovereignty up to the southern boundary of what was then Russian America.  Because of American dithering over a simultaneous war with Mexico, our weakling, Gorbachev-esque President Polk and his effete secretary of state, James Buchanan, sold out American sovereignty.  They signed the treasonous "Oregon Treaty," bisecting the Oregon country at the present-day Forty-ninth Parallel.

Many Americans live in British Columbia.  Vast numbers of Americans streamed north during the Vietnam years, claiming certain temporary advantages under Canadian rule.  Our citizens subsidize by their presence ski resorts at Whistler, hotels in Vancouver, and faux-British tea service in Victoria.  But although these American expats, and their children, may love the scenery and ambience of "B."C., they detest the oppression of Canadian rule.

They are forced to live under a Socialistic Regime that imposes "free" medical care on them, for which they pay onerous taxes.  Their schools force them to learn a foreign and distasteful French language, a language that daily assaults their eyes on federal highway signs.  Their province is ruled under an incomprehensible "parliamentary" system, designed to confuse and disenfranchise them.  They must bow down, kneel, and pay homage as subjects to a Foreign Potentate, a "Queen" who lacks even the willingness to live in the realm over which she rules.

So who are the true people of "British" Columbia?  They are Americans, that's who!  They live in a land that's historically part of America!  They are daily oppressed by rulers speaking an arcane form of French that even a Parisian finds uncouth!  They live subject to the whims of a Sovereign whose family we long ago declared to have imposed on freedom loving Americans "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object [which] evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."

America is more powerful than Canada!  And, just as Vladimir, Czar of all the Russias, feels about the Crimea -- we also feel about our long-lost lands to the North. We want British Columbia back!  We can take British Columbia back! 

We shall have her back!

To hell with the Artificial 49th Parallel of Latitude!  As the Bellman (and Putin) would cry (and we would reply), "It's merely a conventional sign."

Deconstructing Kashgar

Someday, the entire world will be a uniform strip mall.  Except for a few areas, designated as historical theme parks, preserved (or created) for the benefit of the tourist trade.  The Disneyfication of Planet Earth.

In a post last fall, I expessed my disappointment with my visits to Samarkand and Tashkent.  "Disappointment" is a bit of an exaggeration.  I was in a foreign country, immersed in a foreign culture, which was fascinating.  But I was disappointed to some extent with the physical aspect of the two cities.

As I described in my post, these two historic Silk Road cities have been heavily modernized under Soviet -- and then, even more, under Uzbek --  city planning.  The historic mosques, madrassas, and squares are dazzling in their beauty -- but they have been heavily reconstructed and renovated within the past few decades.   More disturbing still, the cities surrounding the landmark buildings are no longer the warrens of small streets and crowded markets of the Silk Road past.  They have been modernized physically to the point that a Southern Californian would feel quite at home strolling their streets.

In an effort to experience the Silk Road before it's been completely modernized into a "Polyester Road," I've signed up for a trip through China's Xinjiang province in August.  Xinjiang is historically a Muslim region, home of the Uighur people and allied culturally to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, nations lying just on the other side of the Tian Shan mountain range.  My trip will end up in Kashgar, the capital of Xinjiang, and the western-most Chinese city.

Wikipedia describes Kashgar as "the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in Central Asia," but notes that "it is currently being largely razed by the authorities to make way for 'modern development'."

I'm not even sure my visit in August will be early enough to see much of the Old City, other than rubble.  In a story today, the New York Times reports on the on-going devastation, and notes that:

What remains of the Old City is rapidly being turned into an ethnic theme park, with a $5 admission charge.

The remnants are being marketed as a "living Uighur folk museum."

Right.  Not that we can complain, without displaying some hypocrisy.  Gentrification of our own American cities often has an unstated -- at times, perhaps unconscious -- political motive.  We all recall the sarcastic slogan: "Urban renewal means Negro removal."

Similarly, China is fighting strong Uighur separatist feelings.  As in Tibet, members of the Han majority have been encouraged to move to Xinjiang province, and now constitute approximately half the residents of Kashgar.  Destruction of the Old City is just one more step in that campaign.

For many Uighurs, the demolition of Kashgar's Old City is a physical symbol of the Chinese govenment's efforts to destroy their cultural identity.

Yes, the new buildings are cleaner, and better equipped with modern utilities.  Yes, they are designed to look superficially "old."  Yes, the Old City is now becoming occupied by the "right sort" of people, folks with money -- Han Chinese and prosperous Uighurs who aren't apt to rock the political boat.  Every large housing block in every city in the world has resulted in better housing for those who lived in it.

But such improvements come at a large, if less tangible, cost.

As the New York Times article describes at the beginning:

Visitors walking through the mud-brick rubble and yawning craters where close-packed houses and bazaars once stood could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar had been irrevocably lost to the wrecking ball.

I hope some parts of the city won't yet have met that wrecking ball when I arrive in August.

Ash Wednesday

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings


And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth


This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

--T. S. Eliot

Old Blue

A year ago, you read my tribute to REI, the Seattle-based outdoor equipment cooperative.  Not only do I approve of REI's co-op form of ownership, but it offers both equipment and customer service that are excellent.

Today, REI posted on Facebook a photo of a pair of 1980s ski mittens, which their young publicity writer apparently considered relics from a distant and unknown past, and invited readers to share photos of any of their own "classics."

I was happy to respond with the hastily-snapped photo that I now attach to this post.  This, my fellow outdoorsmen, is a sleeping bag I purchased from REI in 1967.  Back in those days, REI (or "the co-op," as we then called it in Seattle) often manufactured its own equipment which it sold under its own name, in addition to -- if not in preference to -- whichever brand name items it retailed.

At any rate, my photo illustrates a backpacking sleeping bag, stuffed with 2½ pounds of goose down fill, that I was then able to purchase for $55.  (In today's dollars, that's $385, but my purchase seemed cheap even at the time, compared with comparable sleeping bags from other manufacturers.)

Since 1967, the sleeping bag has been in continual use.  Backpacking in the Cascades, Olympics, and Sierras, while trying to keep the rain and drizzle off it (the effect of wetness on its insulation qualities is the one drawback to down fill) .  Sleeping in countless youth hostels in Europe, on the grass in city parks, on the banks of rivers, and on ferry decks between Greek islands.  Thrown on the floor when visiting friends who were out of extra beds.  Trekking in odd areas of the world -- most recently in Morocco (2012) and Tajikistan (2013).

One morning, four years ago in Nepal, I threw "Old Blue" over the top of my tent, letting it air out in the sun while I had breakfast, unaware that I was thus exposing my poor old friend to the ridicule of my younger fellow hikers.  My GOD!, they exclaimed.  What kind of antique is that?  I'd never thought much about its age, but I now realized that they all had sleeker, more snazzily colored (not to mention, cleaner!) sleeping bags.  Mine did look kind of tired and old-fashioned, by comparison.  Just like its owner, I suppose.

After the first cold night at high altitude, however, they were complaining about how coldly they'd slept. 

Not me.  I'd been warm as toast.

So, sure.  It's old.  It's a bit grimy.  I use a much newer sleeping bag with artificial fill, designed for warmer ambient temperatures, when I don't have to worry about either extreme cold or its carrying weight or the amount of space it occupies when stuffed (down can be compacted much more radically than artificial fill). But when it comes to the uses for which I purchased it -- I couldn't be happier.  We live in a throw-away culture, but I'd never throw Old Blue away.  We've been through a lot together. 

And we're staying in it together, right to the end!