Soccer (sorry, football!)

Germany 1; USA 0.

Hooray -- success for the USA!  Huh?

Yes, I realize that the United States today backed into the next round of the World Cup by relying on Portugal's win over Ghana, and on Portugal's less impressive history of goal scoring during these play-offs.  Still, the somewhat puzzling question of how today's loss can be celebrated as a victory symbolizes in a sense my overall confusion concerning the world's most popular sport.

I really like the World Cup games.  I like the fact that, unlike Olympic team sports such as hockey and basketball, almost every country has a shot at doing well.  A former champion, like Spain, can lose in the first round four years later.  It isn't exactly "parity," but World Cup teams are closer to parity than are sports such as, say, Olympic basketball (USA) and ice hockey (Canada).

I like the pageantry.  I like the good-natured nationalism.   I like the enthusiasm.  I like following the scores in the newspapers. 

I wish I could like watching the games.  A new generation of Americans has come of age, whose members played soccer as kids and who follow the fortunes of favorite European teams like Arsenal FC, Barcelona, Bayern Munich.  They know the great international players, and they know the tactics of each team.  Soccer literacy has come to them as easily as baseball statistics did to earlier generations of American kids.

I, of course, understand the general rules of the game.  What I don't understand are the tactics and strategies of the teams.  Basketball is my least favorite American team sport, and perhaps for the same reasons as I'm left baffled by soccer.  Basketball players run up and down the court, shooting baskets, and the most baskets win.  But I've never played the game or followed it closely enough to understand with any depth how the players are interacting as a team (when they do!) so as to generate those baskets. 

Basketball at least produces a lot of baskets and showy slam dunks.  A soccer game, like today's match with Germany, consists of watching players running up and down the field for 90 minutes, kicking at the ball and trying to get it under control.  Almost randomly, it seems, an occasional ball goes through the goal.  And just that one goal can be decisive, as it was today.

I tried today to focus on the play and to appreciate the literate, British accented commentary.  My mind wandered and, eventually, so did my feet.  I did happen to be watching when Germany scored its one goal.  It was exciting, I guess, but why did it happen?  Why didn't the USA do the same?  Beats me.

I never scoff at -- in fact, I am totally sympathetic with -- Europeans who can't grasp the excitement of American football.  (Although football, to me, has the great advantage of giving you time between plays to let your mind regroup, and prepare for what needs to be done next.)  But I suspect you need to have grown up playing touch football in a neighborhood empty lot, and watching your classmates play in high school and college, to really appreciate the game. 

Soccer today already is booming in the United States at the school level, and is becoming increasingly popular with the general population --  nowhere more so than here in the Northwest Corner where the Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver fans are highly vocal and at each other's throats throughout the season.  Soccer will soon become a major sport throughout America at the professional level, and our teams will eventually become World Cup contenders.

I hope to be around when that happens.  And  I hope, by that time, to have a better intuitive grasp of the game!

Outsmarting the bears

It's ever so portant how you walk.
And it's ever so jolly to call out, "Bears,
Just watch me walking in all the squares."

--A. A. Milne

I returned last night from a four-day visit to Glacier National Park.  It was the first time I'd visited Glacier since a family vacation when I was ten.  It didn't disappoint.

Glacier is a hiker's park par excellence.  And the Many Glacier region of the park where I stayed is a center of some of the best hiking in the park.  Unfortunately, June -- especially this June -- is not the best month for hiking.  Glacier Park is at a high elevation and at a high latitude, and the snow lingers.  This year, especially, when three or four weeks of unseasonable blizzards immediately before my arrival had tied up transportation in the park. 

The Going-to-the-Sun Road -- the sole west-east traffic artery through the park -- still  has not opened to through traffic, and may not for another couple of weeks.  To reach Many Glacier -- in the northeast portion of the park -- I had to take U.S. 2, a lower altitude route which skirts the southern boundary of the park, from my airport in Missoula.

Once at my destination, and checked into the Many Glacier Hotel -- built a hundred years ago, before the park had been created, by the Great Northern Railway -- I had a number of fine hiking options open to me.  But none that went above a certain altitude, where the trails were still covered by melting but unstable snow fields. 

But the primary obstacle to successful hiking was not meteorological, but psychological.  The Park Service distributes literature raving about the beauty and quality of its hiking trails.  It also warns prominantly -- both in literature and on trail signs, about the danger of bears.

Entering Grizzly Country

You are entering a wilderness area and must accept certain inherent dangers, including snow, steep terrain, water and wildlife.  There is no guarantee of your safety. 

Bears have injured and killed visitors and may attack without warning and for no apparent reason.

(Emphasis in original)  This was by no means the most alarming of the warnings I encountered, merely the one I happened to photograph.  Hikers were strongly urged not to hike alone, and to make a considerable racket on the trail to warn bears of one's approach:  talk loudly, sing, clap one's hands, etc. 

I had arrived at the park alone, and had every intention of hiking -- if at all -- alone.  My inherent good breeding, as well as my inhibitions, precluded my behaving in the loud and uncouth manner suggested by the National Park Service.  Was I thus doomed to spend my time on the hotel deck -- basking in the warm sun, reading, gazing at the awe-inspiring scenery, and sipping yet another "Going-to-the Sun" IPA?

Certainly not.

The Park Service suggested -- as a supplement, not a replacement, to the above admonitions -- that the prudent hiker carry a cannister of "bear spray."  I don't believe I had ever heard of "bear spray," but it certainly exists and is available for purchase at local outdoors shops.  Carrying it into bear country is as reasonable as a young secretary's decision to carry a can of Mace into her dark parking garage when working late at night.  In fact, the similarities are innumerable.

Suitably armed with a $49.95 can of bear spray, capable of propelling a reassuring seven-second cloud of pain and confusion some thirty yards in front of me -- a cloud that would instantly cause a bear to lose interest in pursuing me as either prey or an object of fun and amusement -- I felt, if not invincible, at least more confident.  Spencer Tracy did not walk the lonesome streets of Black Rock without a weapon in his holster; nor would I walk into the grizzlies' lair without my cannister of bear spray hanging from my belt, armed and ready to fire. 

I now understand the hitherto seemingly peculiar psychology of the NRA's hordes of devotees.  When confronting a bear, one can purchase manhood for $49.95.

The Many Glacier Hotel sits on the southern shore of Swiftcurrent Lake, and on Friday I did a warm-up hike, 2.6 miles, on a tourist-oriented nature trail circling the lake.  The hiking was fun, and no bears -- either grizzly or the more amenable black -- threatened my life or limb.

The next day, I hiked to the western end of the lake, walked across an isthmus to neighboring Josephine, and proceeded along the northern shore of that long lake.  About half way along the shore, a side trail begins the climb to the Grinnell glacier.  The park ranger had earlier warned not to proceed beyond the point, about two miles in, where the trail was obliterated by late snow, and so far as I could tell no hikers were disregarding that warning.  From the high point on the trail, one had excellent views of the glacier and of Grinnell Lake below, the beneficiary of the melting snow and ice from the glacier -- water that cascaded down to the lake by numerous spectacular waterfalls.

Although I was disappointed -- with bear spray at the ready -- to encounter no ursine threats, I did run into (almost literally) a big-horned sheep grazing on the trail.  He obviously was more familiar with human hikers than I was with animals with curling horns; we watched each other for a while, and then squeezed past each other on the narrow trail.  I had no cause to visit fiery hell upon the calm animal, through an inappropriate blast of my precious bear spray.

Having returned to the Lake Josephine trail, I continued to the west end of the lake.  At this point, there is a dock maintained by a concessionaire who operates a boat service from the hotel.  For a mere $24, one can cruise the length of Swiftcurrent, undertake a quarter mile portage (of oneself, not the boat) to Josephine, and climb aboard a waiting vessel that takes you to this western end of the lake.  And returns you, in reverse order, to the hotel.  Most of the cruisers appeared of a certain age, and perhaps not ready even for easy lakeshore hiking.

Another mile took me to Grinnell Lake, with its view of the many waterfalls from the glacier.  I had pictured myself sprawled on a lakeshore meadow, blissfully eating my mid-day sandwich.  The last portion of the trail, however, passed through snow, and the snow continued right down to the lake's edge.  I still blissfully ate my sandwich, but necessarily used my daypack as insulation between my rear and the cold, wet ground.

The entire day's hiking covered about eleven miles.  Other than the moderate climb up the Grinnell glacier trail, the hiking was all on level lakeside trails (in a few places flooded by high lake levels, necessitating minor detours), and I returned to the hotel not really feeling as though I had covered that much distance.

The only bears I saw were tiny dots on a cliff, high above the hotel.  Every morning, tourists stood on the hotel's deck, staring at the dots.  Some claim they saw them move.  A ranger assured us they were bears. 

The very threat of the sight of my bear spray appears to have successfully kept the beasts at bay.

I took some great photos, which nevertheless hardly do justice to the beauties of the surrounding alpine mountains.  A very enjoyable long weekend, but next time I'll do it a few weeks later in the summer.
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  A sample of my photos of the park can be viewed by clicking here.

Return to normal

We began carrying books upstairs today. 

What am I talking about?  Merely giving you an update following my last post.  The end is in sight.  The house, to a large extent, once more feels like a home.  The furniture is back in the house, and resting in its proper places. 

Only the piano is missing -- due back from the movers on Saturday -- and the books.  Tons and tons of books.  (Not literally, of course.)  We began carrying some books up from the basement today, and what I refer to the media room -- from which "Confused Ideas" is written, edited, and published -- is now fully restocked.  That amounts to seven of about 21 first-floor bookcases full of books.  We'll begin work on the "library" -- I flirt with pretentiousness -- tomorrow, and the living room some time after the piano has been reinstalled in its place of honor.

It's been tedious, and would have been impossible without the extraordinary labors of my brother and his wife.  Known informally to the world -- and on their t-shirts -- as P&V Contracting.  The back deck still needs to be cleaned -- in progress even as I type -- and refinished.  And the house needs to be retrofitted seismically -- a job that can't be done until late August.

It should all be pretty much completed, except for the retrofitting, by this time next week, at which time I'll be en route to Glacier National Park for a few days of exploration. 

Then I can begin worrying about new furniture to replace the present sofa and chairs, derelict after the depredations of generations of house cats!

It didn't have to be this way.  I understand that some people handle home maintenance as the need arises, rather than defer it for half a lifetime.  I find that concept hard to grasp.  Obviously.

Empty house

"A house is not a home," as the song goes.  Dionne Warwick may have been singing about the absence of love, but her observation applies as well to the absence of furniture.

I'm typing this post hunched uncomfortably over a PC monitor and keyboard that are balanced on my piano bench.  Pretty much everything else on the ground floor is gone.  The slightest noise echoes throughout the house. 

 My floors were to be refinished beginning yesterday. Because of the fumes, my feline friends and I had to be out of the house by Sunday, and not return until Friday morning.  The piano was hauled away for storage on Friday.  Twenty-one bookcases and their books were dismantled and moved to the basement.  All the furniture was moved to either the basement or under a tarp on the back deck.

At the last moment, the contractor delayed the work until tomorrow. So my living arrangements had to be changed, and I don't move out until tonight, returning Saturday morning.  (Somehow, the contractor decided at the same time that he could do the whole job in one day less.)  I've had two days of hanging out in what is, in effect, an empty house.  The cats recoil in horror from its tomb-like ambience, and spend their time either outdoors or in the relative comfort of the still-furnished and carpeted upstairs.  They dash through the deserted downstairs as swiftly as possible, claws skidding on the bare floors as they move from one environment to the other.

I'll just be glad to have it all over by Saturday.  I realize now the degree to which furniture -- however decrepit and cat-scarred -- and art actually do make a house a "home."

Forget Dionne's lament of "no one there you can kiss goodnight" -- I'll be content with chairs, sofas, carpets, stereo playing in the background, and a good book on my lap.

Sound mind or sound body. Take your choice.

As I've mentioned on many occasions, I was a scrawny little runt when I was kid.  I ran around in circles, hyperactively, but no one ever accused me of being athletic.  No one now, for that matter, ever asks me if I used to play linebacker back in high school.

But I wasn't a complete wash-out, even as a small dude.   I did get good grades.  But I suppose some folks -- until now -- might suggest that I spent all those hours in the library simply to over-compensate for my lack of brawn, for my doubtful future as a successful hunter-gatherer.

Ha! I exclaim.  Ha, ha!  While you were watching professional wrestling on TV, I was perusing this week's copy of The Economist.   As my favorite laissez-faire publication discusses, recent studies suggest that homo sapiens has evolved as top dog on the food chain by diverting nutrients from his muscles to his brains.

Our brains use up twenty percent of our metabolic energy.  The smarter our species has become, the more energy our gray matter consumes.  To provide the brain's needed energy, our bodies have sacrificed muscle tissue metabolism.  As a result, fellow primates such as chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys are today twice as strong as humans.  Even primates who were forced to imitate humans, by living the life-style of a couch potato, retained a much stronger muscle metabolism.

The article warns that these studies represent comparisons between species, not between human individuals.  The Economist may feel it necessary to pander to the feelings of the Neandertals amongst us.  I do not. 

Those linebackers, point guards, and power hitters, over whom everyone so swooned in high school, succeeded athletically not by use of steroids -- steroids had not yet reached my small home town -- but by diverting glucose from their cerebral cortex to their overdeveloped muscles. 

Their brains shrank as their biceps bulged.  They headed back to apedom; I swam with the evolutionary current.

I've known it all the time.  And so have you.  We just needed to see proof.  Thanks, Economist.