Looking back

And so ends 2015.  As with most years in recent memory, it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

What was it like 50 years ago, back when another year ended not with a bang?  The year my eldest nephew (now 50!) was born?

Well, let's see. In 1965, LBJ was ramping up the American presence in Vietnam, with an increase of American troops from 75,000 to an incredible 125,000.  (They reached just under 550,000 three years later.)  The student deferment status of II-S was worth its weight in gold.

The Dow ended the year at 969 (it will end 2015 at about 17,500).  An average new home cost $13,600.  Gas sold for 31 cents per gallon, which included full service (gas pumped, oil and water checked, tires inflated, windshields washed).  Average new car cost $2,650.  Average rent was $118 per month.  Loaf of bread would cost you 21 cents.

But, of course, if you were an average worker, you earned an average salary of only $6,450.

Until 1965, our coins were 90 percent silver.  I began hoarding silver half dollars in that year, as did many other people.  The half dollar, silver or otherwise, which had until then been as common as the quarter, soon became hard to find.

The five top-grossing movies (not necessarily the five best movies) were The Sound of Music, Dr. Zhivago, Thunderball, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and That Darn Cat! (!).

The book published in 1965 that I'm most likely to remember was Frank Herbert's Dune.  But the New York Times listed only three best selling works of fiction for the year:  Saul Bellow's Herzog, Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase, and James Michener's The Source.

Fiddler on the Roof grabbed most of the Tony Awards, including best musical.

Nineteen sixty-five was the year of best-selling hits by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher -- it was clearly a transitional year between the old pop music and the new rock.  But the absolute top hit of the year, the best selling song on the charts?  That would be, of course, Wooly Bully, by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

I was living a monastic life in 1965.  My Selective Service II-S status in hand, perched on a chair in my dorm room, studying Differential Equations, Functions of Complex Variables, Advanced Mechanics, and Electricity and Magnetism -- an unpromising beginning for a future blogger.  It was also the year of my second round trip jet flight (Seattle to Los Angeles), of yet another summer working as a chemical lab analyst, and the year I realized I really needed to learn to ski. 

It was a different world, 1965 was, but it doesn't feel that different now when I call it to mind.   It seems, as the cliché runs, "just like yesterday"!

Going beyond being pleasant

Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
--Julius Caesar

Yesterday, I took one of those silly quizzes that keep popping up on my Facebook newsfeed.  Ones like "What Planet Do You Come From?"  Where each question posed by the quiz is surrounded by a multitude of advertisements.

But this quiz purported to determine my personality by asking a few multiple choice questions.  Most of those questions sought the decade, month, zodiac sign, time of month, and time of day during which I was born.  There were also a few odd questions, such as the color of my eyes.

I took the quiz, waited thirty seconds for the mandatory commercial clip to play, and then received my analysis.  It was flattering, for the most part.  I apparently love my family, am generous to a fault, and probably feel underappreciated at times.  That's just me, the analysis said -- it would be silly to try to change myself.  But be careful, don't let folks take advantage of me.

My first reaction was to roll my eyes, and to observe that virtually any old codger born during the decade of my birth might well receive the same analysis.  But then I recall that I once had an analysis of my handwriting done -- long ago, when I was younger and my personality less predictable --  with almost identical results.

While I concede that handwriting analysis probably has some basis in science, I'm hardly an enthusiast for the "science" of astrology.  But the similarity of the handwriting and astrological analyses is interesting, especially when they correspond to some degree with my egotistical self-image.

Regardless of the validity of these pop science conclusions, they raise questions in my mind -- questions that have puzzled mankind since earliest times.  What if both good traits and bad traits really are inherent in the individual -- either because of the configuration of the stars at the moment of his birth, or because of genetics, events in utero, and his early up-bringing?

If I have a naturally pleasant, loving and generous temperament, is this something for which I can claim credit or be proud?  If I'm naturally irritable, tense, aggressive, and quick to anger, are these traits something for which I should be ashamed?  Our entire concept of morality seems based on the assumption that our actions are chosen in an exercise of free will.  Instinctual goodness or badness, on the other hand, seems no more moral or immoral than athleticism or a tendency toward obesity.

I suppose the usual response would be that free will gives us the ability to rise above our natural personality.  If we are naturally loving, we can direct our natural affections in ways that do the most good.  If we are naturally quick to anger, we can bite our tongues and seethe in private, or direct our anger toward evils we find in the world.  

As a consequence, two persons may behave identically.  But one of them -- who acts nicely by instinct -- is no more virtuous than a dog who wags his tail.  And the other one, whose acts of kindness may be accomplished only by strenuous efforts to overcome his natural inclination toward anger, may well be a saint of sorts.

As Shakespeare suggested, at some times -- maybe not on a hourly basis, but some times -- we are masters of our fates.  Rising above whatever instinctual behavior is built into our brains may be the definition of heroic virtue.

Decadence

If I had my Companions here, and a few thousand warriors, I could sweep Crete from end to end.  These people are in second childhood, fruit for the plucking, finished, played out.

Theseus is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology.  Growing up as the unrecognized son of the King of Athens, Theseus is finally acknowledged as a teenager by the aging king, only to be taken by the Minoans of Crete as part of an annual tribute.  Theseus and 13 fellow Athenians were destined to die as food for the "Minotaur" -- the monstrous offspring of a mating between a bull and the Minoan queen,  kept hidden in a labyrinth. 

The myth describes how Theseus organized his fellow Athenian captives into a tightly knit group.  The king's daughter Ariadne falls in love with Theseus, and  helps him find his way through the labyrinth, kill the Minotaur, and escape with her from Crete.

I heard the story from my father as a boy.  It was a story, no more and no less realistic than Jack and the Beanstalk.  But in 1958, Mary Renault wrote her critically-acclaimed historical novel, The King Must Die, re-telling the story from Theseus's point of view, filling in the blanks she found in the myth, and adding her own twist to Theseus's nature and personality.  She offers what, we may choose to believe, were the real and somewhat more plausible facts out of which the ancient myths grew with time -- an account based on her understanding of Greek and Minoan civilizations during the time of Theseus's supposed life.

I read the novel as a youth, and I've just finished re-reading it now.  Coincidentally, my nephew, an English teacher, will be teaching the novel to his ninth grade honors classes as part of the school's prescribed curriculum.  The Renault novel has become a classic.

On re-reading, the novel was every bit as exciting as it had been the first time around, and as evocative of Hellenic civilization -- or at least of a plausible interpretation of Hellenic civilization.  But reading it now, it also brought about thoughts of our world today.

More explicitly than in the myth, every important act by Renault's Theseus is rooted in his religious beliefs -- and especially in his conviction that he is an offspring of the god Poseidon, the god of the sea, of horses, of bulls, and -- crucial to Renault's story -- of earthquakes.  Since childhood, Theseus has had an ability -- whether physical or god-given in origin -- to sense impending earthquakes.  Nothing is more natural than for him to treat this ability as confirmation of his descent from Poseidon the Earth-Shaker.  Allied to this ability is the ability to sense -- whether supernatural in origin, or self-delusional -- when Poseidon is pleased or displeased with his course of action.

Although Theseus turns primarily to Poseidon for guidance, he fully respects the other Hellenic sky gods -- especially Apollo -- and pays respect to the earth gods of the indigenous matriarchal civilization that the invading Hellenes had found on the Greek mainland and on Crete.  For purposes of this summary, it's important only to realize that Theseus and his companions were formed in a world where respect for the gods was instinctual and imperative.

Many aspects of life on Crete amaze Theseus, including the antiquity of the civilization and the incredible wealth and leisure of the ruling class.  But he is appalled by the superficiality, as he views it, of Cretan life, and by the impiety of the Cretan people, both rulers and ruled.  The teenagers brought to Crete annually as tribute for the bulls, in Renault's version of the myth, don't serve as food for the Minotaur (who in fact is merely a human prince), but as participants in the bull ring, to their eventual death as a sacrifice to the bull god, the Earth Shaker himself.  They become "bull dancers."

But the performance long ago lost its religious significance to the Cretan public.  Only the forms of religious sacrifice remained -- the performance by now is for the crowd's entertainment, similar to bull fights in today's Spain, and an occasion for gambling on the relative longevity of the young bull dancers.  Even Princess Ariadne, who is the high priestess, has no belief in anything other than a desire to perform the public rituals properly. 

Theseus, who views kingship as a sacred duty -- serving not only as a military leader but as a priest standing before the gods on behalf of his people, and destined finally to offer his own life as an ultimate sacrifice -- not only is scandalized, but is unable to see how the Minoan king, the Minotaur prince, and even his beloved Ariadne can live with themselves.

Renault's description of the Cretan aristocracy -- the folks who attend the bull performances -- anticipates by a half century Suzanne Collins's description of the citizens of The Capitol in her Hunger Games trilogy.

These young lords and ladies were full of nonsense, having almost their own language, like children's games.  And they held their honor as light as they held their gods. ...New things were their passion, and hard for them to come by.  ... They would stand on their heads for the sake of newness, if nothing else new was left.  You could see this in their pots and vases.  ... It was a pleasure only to take their pots in your hands, to feel the shape and the glaze.  But lately they had begun to spoil them with all kinds of gaudy stuck-on finery, flowers and dangles which might show their skill, yet gave the thing a look of being fit for no use and good for nothing but to gather dust.  The truth is that what had not been tried in a thousand years was not worth doing,  But even beauty wearied them, if it was not new.

Perhaps that is how today's visitors from the Arab world view us in the West?

In the end, of course -- like the exquisite but similarly trivial society in the Hunger Games's Capitol -- it all collapsed.  Poseidon became disgusted by the impieties committed before him.  He spoke, the earth shook, and the great palace of Knossos collapsed.  Only Theseus and those companions he had trained in discipline, supporting each other to the death, their mutual support reinforced by oaths mutually sworn before the gods they held sacred, escaped the island.

The Cretans considered Theseus and the other dancers in the bull ring "barbarians."  They were uncivilized, their behavior was crude and unrefined, they were like children.  They were amusing as entertainment, and as occasional invited guests in their beds. The dancers' belief in the traditional gods was charming and picturesque, but, my goodness, they took everything so seriously.  They hardly knew how to take a joke.

Theseus was not "uncivilized" -- he was a Hellene, and he himself saw non-Hellenes as "barbaric."  He took his beliefs seriously, and accepted the burdens of his duties.  He had his pleasures -- women flocked to him -- but those pleasures always were secondary to his obligation to the gods and to those he was duty-bound to defend. 

In a typical adventure story, Theseus would have had the last laugh -- but for Theseus, the deaths of thousands and the ruin of Minoan civilization came from the gods and inspired awe.  Theseus had served only as the instrument of the gods' will.  It would have been impious to laugh at what the gods decreed, even when you became -- as he ultimately did -- King of Athens and overlord of Crete as a result.

Christmas memories

After procrastinating for days, I finally wrapped the five presents I will be taking with me to California for an unusually small Christmas gathering -- but all of us family, and all wonderful company, so we'll have quality even if not quantity!  For several days I put off the onerous task of wrapping, which actually ended up taking about a half hour of my valuable time.

Somehow I felt I'd have to devote an entire evening to the project.  Probably because, as a kid, I did spend at least a large part of an evening.  Back when wrapping presents was not a chore, but a delightful activity.

By the time I was 10 or 11, my brain had matured somewhat -- to the point where Christmas wasn't completely "gimmee, gimmee."   For brief moments, I was excited about giving presents as well.  From that age, each year I made up for the small amount of money I could spend on gifts by the amount of thought and time I was delighted to devote to the project.

Looking back on those days, my gifts may have seemed odd.  Did my mom (a non-smoker) really need another ash tray, with another elf sitting on it?  Did she really need a set of six water glasses, supplementing a cupboard full of such glasses?  But I have no doubt she treasured each gift, knowing how much time I spent wandering around the main street of my small town in search of ideas.

But if the gift-buying provoked a certain amount of anxiety, the wrapping was sheer pleasure.  I was not an artistically creative youth.  I devised no original forms of gift-wrapping -- in fact, my entire hope was to wrap gifts in conformity with certain well-known standards of how gifts were to be wrapped.

Who set those standards?  Again, my mother -- without realizing what she was doing.  I doubt if she ever offered a single suggestion to me to assist me in my own wrapping.  But I had watched her wrap for years.  She was not an artist either, but she had inherited standards of wrapping from her own mother, and she was magnificently competent in meeting those standards.  Her corners were wrapped square; her ribbons were taut; her bows were symmetrical and flower-like.

I spent as much time selecting gift wrap -- just the proper design appropriate for each member of my family -- as I did in selecting the gift itself.  Once the paper was selected, the proper ribbon -- always wide, satin ribbon -- had to be chosen in the appropriate color.  And then there was the question of the gift tags -- those little tags (or, increasingly, tiny folding cards) that identified the giver and recipient of the package.  These tags had to match the paper as well -- either designed specifically for the wrapping paper I was using, or ones that somehow complemented the paper in color and theme.

All of this effort for four presents -- mother, father, brother and sister.  At the appropriate time, usually sooner rather than later, because I couldn't wait, the gifts would emerge from my room and be laid ceremonially beneath the altar of our Christmas tree.  Appropriate words of  appreciation for my wrapping were as vital to my sense of self-worth as appreciation for the present wrapped within.

I thought of all of this, ruefully, as I wrapped the presents -- swiftly and mechanically -- that I'm taking to California this year.  I no longer find richly-colored gift wrap in folded sheets, sheets that generally were the correct size for the packages I needed wrapped.  Now, if gift wrap is available at all, it comes in rolls.  And it seems "cheaper" in appearance somehow, the colors less saturated, the paper flimsier, than the paper I recall from my youth.  But the Christmas lights seemed more magical back then, as well; the crèches more reverent, the carols better sung.  The less said about the psychology behind my perceptions the better.

What's more disturbing by far than rolls of gift-wrap, is the wide-spread substitution of "gift bags" for paper.  Again, not to belabor the point, but what better suits our frenzied times than a form of "wrap" where you just drop your purchase into a bag and set it under the tree.  And so much easier to "unwrap" as well.

But -- as I've tried to hint -- what's really changed is me.  And it's a change that occurs to most of us as we grow older.  Christmas celebrations were magical as a kid because they were new to us (and because they seemed to come around far less often!).  We could have been sitting around an aluminum "Festivus Pole," and (assuming we kids got some presents, and the family was all together and showing excitement) it would have seemed like a wondrous time of year.   

So I travel to California, bearing gifts -- especially for the younger set -- and I know that I'll have the opportunity to witness excitement and joy, the same excitement and joy that I experienced back when I was struggling to force a length of inflexible wide satin ribbon into my first bow.

And some of that excitement and joy will work its way under my skin, melting my scrooge-like heart.

Merry Christmas to all -- no matter how young or how old you may be!

Take the Green Line

At some point I need to understand the metro. I have a weird mental block with it (as a Californian... we drive).

A relative's friend invited her to drop by, next time she was in our nation's capital, and visit her home, conveniently located near a Metro stop.  I wasn't shocked -- more startled -- at the above response. 

This relative is sophisticated and well-traveled, and she just turned 40.  She's no country bumpkin. But lots of folks who live outside major cities would make the same response.  Riding on a subway is apparently like using the internet for the first time -- simple enough, but somehow intimidating.

I love it!  I'm not bragging.  It's no accomplishment. Millions of very average residents of -- for example --New York, Chicago, San Francisco, ride the subway daily, half asleep, to and from work.  I use public transit routinely -- both in Seattle, which has light rail but doesn't really have a "subway," and as a tourist elsewhere.

I use it because it's convenient, of course, and because it's cheap.  No one with any sense rents a car at Newark or Kennedy and drives to his hotel in Manhattan.  If you don't use transit, you pay for a cab.

But with me, it goes beyond convenience.  I honestly just love transit systems, and I love riding the rails.  When visiting a new city, especially in Europe, virtually the first thing I do is get a map and master the public transportation system -- especially rail transit.

I guess I was brought up that way.  My home town of about 20,000 had, maybe, five bus routes.  When I was about 7, my mother showed me how to climb aboard a bus near our house and ride about two miles to my aunt and uncle's home.  I was ecstatic.  I was traveling on my own.  If my folks had done this today, my folks would have been charged with child neglect, and my siblings and I would have been taken away and put in foster homes.  By the time I was 9 or 10, I was boarding city buses downtown, alone and on my own, and visiting  my grandmother.  At 14, I traveled, alone and on my own, coach class, by train, from Seattle to Chicago -- two nights and three days of travel each way -- to visit a friend and former classmate.

By the time I traveled to Italy, studying for six months, at the age of 21, I traveled everywhere, on my own, by train and bus.  The London Underground and the Paris Metro became virtual playgrounds for me during my visits to those cities.

Many young people have these experiences, and then, as an adult, "put aside childish things."  But I take after my mother, I suspect.  Into her old age, she loved nothing more than planning train trips and mastering city transportation systems.  To me, like her, getting around a city is as much fun as what I find at my destination.

Within the United States, New York is of course the subway rider's dream.  Searching this very blog, I find at least six of my posts devoted, in whole or in large part, to the fun I've had riding the New York subway.  And I also find my 2009 review of the novel Lowboy, about a schizophrenic teenager who spends all his days underground in the labyrinthine New York system.

Every visit to New York finds me licking my chops over the New York subway map.

Do you need further proof regarding my fixation? 

I certainly don't expect anyone else to share my mild derangement, any more than I'd expect them to share my passion for hiking in remote areas.  Chacun à son gout, is what I always say.  It's hard to explain my passion.  Every transit system is a bit different.  How one buys one's ticket from a vending machine differs from system to system, and can be a bit of a challenge -- although, now that most machines accept credit cards, the process seems simpler.  Learning where to change lines -- a joy for those of us who love such things -- can also confuse the novice.

But let's face it -- learning how to ride the subway isn't rocket science.  At the very least, it's a tool, like using an ATM or riding an elevator.  As use of automobiles within central cities becomes increasingly difficult -- Seattle is making it deliberately more difficult -- mastery of transit systems will become essential.

If I learned -- belatedly -- how to use a smart phone, you clever people can use and enjoy riding the rails underground.  Try it.

Knee-slapping in Seattle

Is Seattle the "Least Funny City" in America?  A 2008 on-line article (I'll leave the author anonymous) so claims, quoting from GQ Magazine:

“It’s rainy and progressive and almost kind of European,” GQ observed. “It’s Norway on the Pacific. Norwegians should design wind farms and plan the health care system, but they may not roast people at the Friars Club.”

The on-line author did deny claims that we Seattleites had absolutely no sense of humor.  He gave ten examples of jokes we found funny, such as:  "Knock, knock. Who’s there? Seattle Washing. Seattle Washing who? Seattle, Washington."

As a Seattle resident with Norwegian roots, I respond "we are not amused."  Well, actually, oddly enough, we are amused.  And although I wonder how familiar this guy actually is with us benighted Northwest Corner dwellers, reading his article made me wonder -- what, really, is "humor"?

Intensive middle school level research (Wikipedia) into the sources of "humor" uncovers a revealing description by a psychologist named Peter McGraw:  "humour only occurs when something seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening, but simultaneously seems okay, acceptable or safe."  Although McGraw is a contemporary professor at the University of Colorado, his description simply elaborates on the long-appreciated understanding that humor -- when we think about it -- usually arises from some apprehension of incongruity. 

Humor may well be our way of dealing with the sense of discomfort we feel when we sense the incongruity, a way of releasing the tension.

My pondering of this question -- even before I read the "Least Funny City" article -- began this morning when regarding the behavior of one of my cats.  A cat is a repository of almost every virtue to which we humans aspire (but usually fail to achieve).  But cats do not have a sense of humor.  Not even a glimmer of one.

Nor do other animals.  Dogs may at times appear to find life funny, but that's just because of the way they open their mouths when they pant. 

Cats and other animals are similar to Biblical characters.  "Jesus wept," declares the shortest verse in the Bible, but nowhere is it recorded that Jesus roared with laughter.  It's even harder to imagine Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, or even St. Paul indulging in self-deprecating wit.  They all, like my cat, took life seriously, and understood exactly what life demanded of them.  They saw no ambiguities to be reconciled.  Something that was "wrong, unsettling, or threatening" was simply that -- wrong.  It was never simultaneously "okay, acceptable or safe."

Despite being a Scandinavian Seattleite, I find life generally funny.  I think I have a sense of humor not much different from that of a guy in Brooklyn or Dallas.  I suspect my fellow citizens in the Northwest Corner find Donald Trump at least as hilariously funny as do our contemporaries elsewhere.  But if we nevertheless appear humorless to our fellow Americans, maybe it's simply because -- like Ezekiel -- we are convinced that we have discovered all the ingredients of a life that's both virtuous and satisfying, right here where we live.  Good is good, and bad is bad.  Where's the incongruity in that, huh?

And to return to our anonymous author's on-line article -- as I mentioned, he lists ten favorite jokes enjoyed by us Norgies in the Northwest Corner.  We do have a sense of humor. And they aren't all "knock knock" jokes.

Question: How many Seattleites does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: One.

I rest my case. 

Out, out, damned signature line

"Sent from my iPhone"

This annoying phrase has been attached to every email I've sent out on my -- yes -- iPhone over the past year.  I can always delete it, of course, but it's placed down at the bottom of the page where I never notice it while typing.

I don't notice it until I read my sent email, and then it jumps out at me like a sore thumb.

What kind of impression does it create?  Primarily, I suspect, it says "Here is a jerk who is so clueless that he believes everyone is impressed by his owning an iPhone.  Whoopie!  A major status symbol."  That's pretty embarrassing.  Kind of like signing my emails with "Sent while shopping at Macy's."

Or, as someone on-line has observed, it may say, "Here is an idiot who is too lazy to change his settings to eliminate the stupid line from his emails."  Kind of like walking around wearing a new sweater with a price tag still hanging from the collar.

Or worse, "Here is an idiot who doesn't KNOW HOW to remove the line."  Ouch!!

To be honest, until I decided to write this post, bemoaning the presence of the iPhone signature on my emails, it had never occurred to me that they could be removed other than on a case by case basis.  But a quick Google search revealed that a large number of folks out there were happy to tell me exactly how to do it -- a procedure that is so simple and so intuitive that I'm embarrassed to talk about it further.

Let's just say this --  you will never see that humiliating sign-off tag on my emails again.

Posted while driving my Maserati GranTurismo.

A Writer at War

The Russian Academy of Sciences has estimated that the Soviet Union suffered 26.6 million fatal casualties in World War II, of which 8.7 million were military deaths.  Other researchers, according to Wikipedia, put the total number of dead and missing as high as 40 million, with 14 million of those being military.

In the West, we naturally focus our attention on the Normandy invasion and the battles in North Africa and Italy in determining the cause of Germany's defeat.  We overlook the huge losses and intense suffering of the Soviet people, on whose territory much of the war was fought.  But if Germany hadn't been desperately fighting on the Eastern Front throughout, especially, the early years of the war, Britain might have been overrun before American help ever arrived.

I've just finished reading a collection of the writings of Vasily Grossman, a Soviet war correspondent, nicely collected and organized into a coherent picture of his activities and observations from the time of the Germans' unexpected attack in 1941 until the conquest of Berlin in 1945:  A Writer at War with the Red Army 1941-1945, edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova.  The narrative paints a vivid picture of the heroism of the Soviet military, but also of the stolid acceptance of great suffering and loss by the common people. 

This is also a book that makes you wonder -- whatever possesses human beings to fight wars?  As Grossman ponders, after Berlin is overrun: 

Millions of our soldiers have seen the well-built roads running from one village to another and German autobahns ... Our soldiers have seen the two-storey suburban houses with electricity, gas, bathrooms and beautifully tended gardens.  Our people have seen the villas of the rich bourgeoisie in Berlin, the unbelievable luxury of castles, estates and mansions.  And thousands of soldiers repeat these angry questions when they look around them in Germany:  "But why did they come to us?  What did they want?"

Why are the wealthy never satisfied?  Why do they want even the little that the poor possess?

Grossman, a secular Jew, was not a hack journalist or party functionary.  He was a literary writer, and a Ukrainian.  He never joined the Communist party.  He survived the Stalinist purges, but frequently walked the edge of the precipice.  His newspapers at times refused to publish his war stories, where those submissions showed signs of contradicting the Communists' doctrinal approach to the war.

Much of the book relates Grossman's experiences during the Battle of Stalingrad, and during the German offensive leading up to that decisive battle.  Grossman was on the front lines, sharing the lives of the common soldiers.  As a writer, his observations and news stories -- more than those of most journalists -- described the small details that brought the front to life -- a flight of birds, a ruined home, a crying mother, the body of a dead child.  He felt -- and described -- the horror of war, for the civilian at least as much as for the soldier.  His dispatches had to be toned down at times to avoid reducing the readers back home to despair.

His mother -- a Ukrainian Jew -- died early in the war, as part of the Nazis' "final solution."  He carried his sorrow throughout the war, and it colored his sympathy for those who were suffering.  He never subscribed to Stalin's boast that a million deaths was merely "a statistic."

He was avidly patriotic.  Although not a party member, he supported the Communists' conduct of the war, although he despaired at the follies of individual bureaucrats and of self-centered, egotistical generals.  As the Germans withdrew from Stalingrad, and were defeated near Moscow in the north, he rejoiced, along with the soldiers, in the same way an American journalist would rejoice in the victories in the West.

Grossman noted -- in his own notes, if not in his published dispatches -- the brutal conduct of the Red Army, once it was marching outside the Soviet Union -- the widespread rapes, the cruelty.  He also observed a Soviet soldier fetching a cup of water from the river for a suffering German prisoner.  Would the Germans have done the same if their positions had been reversed, he wondered?

Many of Grossman's quotations are lengthy dispatches, tied together with very helpful narrative by the editor.  Especially in the second half of the book, the quotations often consist of mere notes Grossman wrote to himself; one sentence observations; small vignettes; snatches of conversation.

But one quotation, uninterrupted by editorial comment, makes up a lengthy chapter in the book -- the liberation of the death camp at Treblinka.  This chapter was neither the first nor the last of Grossman's descriptions of German atrocities.  But it's the most devastating.  The quotation concludes:

We walk on and on across the bottomless unsteady land of Treblinka, and then suddenly we stop.  Some yellow hair, waxy, fine and light, glowing like brass, is trampled into the earth, and blonde curls next to it, and then heavy black plaits on the light-coloured sand, and then more and more.  Apparently, these are the contents of one -- just one sack of hair --which hadn't been taken away.  Everything is true.  The last lunatic hope that everything was only a dream is ruined.  And lupin pods are tinkling, tinkling, little seeds are falling, as if a ringing of countless little bells is coming from under the ground.  And one feels as if one's heart could stop right now, seized with such sorrow, such grief, that a human being cannot possibly stand it.

Grossman was a writer of deep emotion, but emotion under control of a fine analytical mind. And he possessed a mind for detail and for description.

After the war, Grossman wrote a novel based on his wartime experiences.  Soviet authorities never permitted its publication during his lifetime.  But a microfilm copy of the manuscript was smuggled out to the West.  It was published under the title Life and Fate. It was first published in Russia in 1988. Some critics consider it one of the best Russian novels of the twentieth century, a finer novel than Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago.

We are entering, apparently, another period of mutual hatred with Russia.  Let's not forget that the Russians are every bit as human as ourselves, with the same hopes and sorrows.  A nation that produces a Vasily Grossman, a writer who survives the purges of a paranoid despot to become one of the best known and respected of war correspondents, without ever losing his ability to note a small, bright flower growing out of a common grave and use it to convey the sorrow of wartime -- such a nation is a nation with a soul.  We should try harder to understand the Russian people.

A modest proposal

Today is the 74th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I'm not a pacifist.  I realize that there are times when a nation must protect itself -- and sometimes others -- by force.  As in World War II.  And, maybe Korea.  Kuwait? -- maybe, maybe not.

But not always.  Not Vietnam.  Certainly not Iraq. 

The difficulty with the use of force is that -- for those who decide -- making the decision is too easy.  We're only sending in troops as "advisers," they think.  There will be a quick "mission accomplished."  The troops will always "be home by Christmas."

From the Congressional point of view, it's easy to conclude that the expected success always justifies the cost.  Not just the financial cost, but the lives lost.  The lives of American soldiers.  The lives of the people we are supposedly helping.  The "collateral damage."

Shall we send in the troops?  Sure.  Why not?  You can't go wrong by voting "yes," when the nation's on the verge of hysteria.  You can ruin a career -- or at least be forced to do a lot of explaining -- by voting "no."

Congressmen need a greater incentive to be very, very certain of what they are doing before voting "yes."  Before they vote the deaths of others, soldiers and civilians, men, women and children, who they neither know nor can  imagine.

My proposal is this.  Before a member of Congress casts a vote in favor of war, he must certify that a member of his family -- within a statutorily specified degree of  consanguinity -- is (or within a specified period of time will become) a member of the armed forces, and a member who will face combat.

Good old Samuel Johnson noted that realizing that one is to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates one's mind admirably.  My proposal should perform the same admirable service for members of Congress.

Stick

Andrew Smith writes young adult fiction. 

I've never read a satisfactory description of YA fiction, distinguishing it from adult fiction.  In Smith's case, the label may be applied because his protagonists are teenagers.  So was the protagonist in Richard Ford's Canada, but no one describes Canada as a YA novel.  Smith himself has stated that he never set out to write YA novels, as opposed to adult novels.  The label probably has more to do with the publisher's marketing plans than anything inherent in the supposed genre.

I've read six of Andrew Smith's novels, two of which I've reviewed in the Northwest Corner.  If my fondness for his books  makes me a "young adult," so be it.  I can live with it.

Aside from featuring teenaged protagonists, and from being exceptionally well written, his novels have little in common.  The two I previously reviewed contained elements bordering on fantasy (The Alex Crow) or were expressly works of fantasy (Grasshopper Jungle).  Two others were about a kid who plays rugby, describing with both humor and insight his difficulties in adjusting to his boarding school and to his classmates.  (Winger and Stand-Off).   100 Sideways Miles is an "absurdist" novel about a boy with epilepsy who has an unusual slant on the world, and about his relationship with the girl he loves and the best friend who may well be a bit insane.  The two rugby novels probably come closest to what people think of when they hear the term "YA fiction").

I've now just finished reading Stick, which is the most serious, the most moving, and the most difficult to forget of the six Smith novels that I've read.   The book is recommended for students ninth grade and above.  If I had a high school son or daughter, I would suggest this book to him or her without hesitation.  But many parents might find it objectionable.

"Stick" is the nickname of its eighth grade narrator, a boy with a birth deformity of his ear.  Stick and his  brother Bosten, three years older, are the embattled victims of parents who apparently never wanted to be parents, and who have no way of relating to their sons other than through liberal use of the belt. 

The story contains the language that high school boys freely use.  It also contains graphic descriptions of school yard fights and parental beatings, and less graphic descriptions of sexual episodes.  It contains a suggestion, a fairly clear suggestion, of parental sexual abuse  And it contains scenes of drug use (mostly pot). On the other hand, the book also provides one of the most moving descriptions of a bond between two brothers that I've ever read, and a touching description of an eighth-grader's sudden realization that his best friend Emily is also the girl that he loves.

The book is funny, even when it's grim, and the author's use of descriptive language is often eloquent.  The book takes place largely in Kitsap County, right up here in the Northwest Corner, which -- for me, at least -- added to its charm.

Without revealing more of the plot, or of the book's conclusion, I can only say that the ending is somewhat happy -- but the conclusion reminds us that, for many people, life offers no happy ending.

Some are born to sweet delight; 
Some are born to endless night.

Strong recommendation. 

Seventh grade

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
--L. P. Hartley

My brother visited me for Thanksgiving, bringing with him a gift beyond price -- a box full of old family photographs that we had feared lost.  Included were my class photographs for kindergarten and grades 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.

I quickly digitalized the class photos, to avoid their disappearing once more, and cleaned them up digitally insofar as they had begun to fade or -- more noticeably -- discolor.

Then I allowed myself the luxury of losing myself in the photos, of studying every face, recalling names, and -- eventually -- trying to think once more as I had as a child.

All the photos bring back wonderful memories of myself at various stages -- at a time in one's life when two years growth is sufficient to change you from one person to another. 

I focused most intently, perhaps, on my seventh grade photograph -- partly because I find it easiest to identify now with the person I was then.  I see myself and my friends lined up in rows, each of us teetering on the brink of adolescence but still children in looks and -- in many ways -- in the ways our minds worked.

I can recognize almost every boy and girl in the photograph, and remember who I liked, who I disliked, and who I largely dismissed from my thoughts.  I can remember actual conversations I had with classmates, and with my teachers.  I can remember feeling more emotional at times than I would as an adult, but possessing a greater inclination to suppress those emotions. 

In fifth and sixth grades, I had been in the "band and orchestra" class -- all kids taking instrumental music instruction were placed together.  As a result, my classmates were, relative to the rest of my community, disproportionately upper middle class.  But, moving to junior high school, the deck was reshuffled and my seventh grade classmates were -- to some degree -- noticeably less motivated and "refined." 

I recall being bothered by this perceived change in social status for maybe the first month, but I established good friendships in short order.  I was elected as class president and class representative to the boys' club ("Muchachos") in seventh grade, and to student council by largely the same students in eighth grade, so I have some evidence that I got along well with classmates.

I remember facts about seventh grade, and my ambitions and dreams.  And I remember my feelings about classmates and about school in general.  But as I stare at my photo, I  recognize how hard it is to put myself now into that young boy's mind.  The gap is too great.  He knew a lot about a lot of things, but he didn't know yet the future, or his part in it.

I wish I could assure him that his future was going to be happy -- more successful and considerably more interesting than he imagined at that time.  And I wish I could warn him that he would be even happier later if he depended less in junior high on his natural abilities and curiosity, and learned to study even then in a more disciplined manner.  I wish that back then someone had thought of AP courses, where he would have competed --  would have been forced to compete -- with kids more similar to himself.  In some ways he lacked self confidence, but in others he was excessively certain of his own ability to BS his way through school.  Developing a certain amount of discipline in his studies in those early years would have paid off in the future,

So I stare at him, and I stare at him with inordinate fondness.  He was a bit lazy, but he was intelligent and possessed a curiosity that went well beyond schoolwork.  And he was, all in all, a pretty nice kid.

Good luck to you, my former self.  Rest assured that you're going to enjoy the years that lie ahead.

Aunt Janet

My Aunt Janet died earlier this month at the age of 90.  She was my dad's younger sister, and the last of the generation that we kids called "the Bigs."  She was the most eccentric and most accomplished of my relatives, and her death leaves a vacant spot in the lives of those of us who now step into "Bigdom" ourselves.

Aunt Janet was born in Westport, Washington, and graduated from Washington State College, as it was then known.  She married a classmate, Uncle Carl. The couple immediately fled the chilly Palouse and set off for Southern California, where they spent the rest of their lives.  Uncle Carl was a veterinarian and eventually owned his own pet hospital.  Aunt Janet became a model and a movie and TV actress.  She appeared in the 1958 Western "Fort Bowie," and appeared frequently in the 1950s  television series "Gunsmoke" and "Sea Hunt."

For a time, she was married to a well-known race car driver and designer, before returning to and remarrying her first husband, Uncle Carl.  Her various professional credits appear on her IMDb website.

These were her professional and public accomplishments.  To our family, however, she was our beloved if rather eccentric aunt.  We jokingly -- not to her face -- called her "Auntie Mame."

Aunt Janet always seemed surrounded by an aura of glamor and exoticism -- only partly attributable to her life in glamorous and exotic Los Angeles.  She was our only relative who would have dressed my brother and me in hula skirts that she had constructed out of the colored Sunday comics, pursuing some Hawaiian theme she had in mind.  She -- joined by one of her college friends -- was the only relative who would have obeyed a cartoon's injunction to "follow the bouncing ball," and sing loudly and alone in a crowded movie theater in my small Washington home town (embarrassing her 12-year-old nephew almost to tears).  She was the only adult relative to profess herself fascinated by a primitive neighborhood newspaper that I published, and to buy an advertisement in it. 

When I graduated from high school, and was headed off to an expensive college on extremely limited funds, she sent me a letter of congratulations, together with a sizable check with which to build a wardrobe.  Unfortunately, I now recall little about her letter, other than her strong recommendation that I learn the art of "small talk" -- an art with which she admitted she still struggled.  (I never did, but would have been better off if I had!)  She appeared unexpectedly at my dormitory room one day when I was a sophomore, having used all her natural attributes and acquired skills to appear as though she were still a college student.  My all-male dorm-mates took some time to recover from the shock to their nervous systems.  She decided that I needed a bike to get around campus, and bought one for me on the spot.

She and Uncle Carl took me, at the age of 18, to my first piece of professional theater -- two short plays by Tennessee Williams, performed in Hollywood under the title of Garden District.  

During spring break of my senior year, a group of four friends and I traveled south to Los Angeles.  She greeted our entire motley bunch, insisted that we stay at her home, fed us, and obviously had as much fun with us and we did with her. 

Years later, when I began a new job at a new law firm, Aunt Janet wrote me a moving letter of congratulations, telling me how proud my dad -- who had died shortly before -- would have been.  Even later, she insisted that I send her a copy of every journal I wrote while traveling.  She always made me feel that she found my every thought a matter of great interest.

As Aunt Janet grew older, however, her eccentricities became less endearing and a bit colder.  Her relations with her own children became problematic.  She may have developed some form of mental illness, or she may have simply suffered -- as many do -- from the growing knowledge that she could no longer fully control the world about her, or even (and especially) her own family. 

I talked to her often by phone, and my siblings saw her more often in person.  Although she seemed a bit paranoid, I doubt that she was "crazy."  I think life just became harder and harder for her as she grew older.  She had been an actress and a model, and she had kept herself looking preternaturally young.  At 85, she could easily have passed for a woman thirty or even forty years younger.  But there is no medical procedure that can alter your inner feelings or the pains (physical and mental) of advanced age.

But until maybe five years ago, she remained one of the most interesting, funny, and attractive women I knew.  When she talked to you, you had her entire attention.  She was interested, seemingly fascinated, almost to a scary degree, by your own activities and opinions.  While the conversation continued, you truly felt like a more interesting person.  She may, in fact, despite what she claimed, have mastered her own form of "small talk."

At her own request, there was to be no funeral or memorial service following her death.  I think we, her family, needed such a service. We would have benefitted from an opportunity to discuss, among ourselves, her life and how her life had affected our own.

And I know she deserved a eulogy.

This is mine.

To be or not to be

Despite the usual teenager's angst and twenties' panic, I never attempted suicide.  Or even considered it, or daydreamed about it.  However miserable I might have felt at any given time, being miserable always seemed preferable to not being.

On the contrary, my aim was always directed toward living to be 120.

But suicide is a problem among certain groups of young people -- especially, according to an article in this month's Atlantic,* among high school students of the upper middle class.  A study of Palo Alto high schools -- especially Henry M. Gunn high school, a school filled with the children of Silicon Valley techies -- show levels of substance abuse and depression equal to those of the most underprivileged kids, with suicide as a frequent culmination.  Palo Alto schools in general have a suicide rate four or five times higher than the national average.  And Palo Alto young people themselves call Gunn "the suicide school."

Why suicide -- in Palo Alto?  The article points out that Gunn's student population is over 40 percent Asian, with the competitive nature of Asian parents adding pressure to their lives.  The kids live in the shadow of Stanford University.  Admission to that school is offered to many Gunn students -- but obviously, despite strong parental pressure, falls just beyond the reach of most of their equally bright and motivated peers.  Another factor, a macabre factor, is the proximity of the CalTrain commuter tracks, with trains whizzing by at high speed several times an hour.  Most of the suicides discussed in the article resulted from students throwing themselves in front of a Caltrain engine.

The author has interviewed students, and sat in on meetings of concerned parents.  Everyone is concerned.  For parents, the difficulty is in finding the right balance between encouraging their kids to "succeed," and pressuring them into unwanted stress.  And the kids themselves have often internalized their parents' goals, resisting efforts to make their lives simpler and less complex.

The question in my own mind -- to which the article alludes briefly in passing -- is why some commit suicide while the vast majority of their equally stressed classmates do not.  Clearly, pressure to get into "the right school" is unusually strong at Gunn.  Most students respond by multiplying AP courses and extracurricular activities to the point of being totally frazzled.  But being totally frazzled during high school -- while undesirable in itself -- generally leads most of them to highly successful and satisfying careers. 

But for a few, it leads to suicide.  The article points out how arbitrary and unpredictable suicide can be.  The death with which the article led off was that of a highly popular, straight-A, Asian-American student.  He was funny and had close friends.  Everyone liked him.  His closest friends saw no signs of depression, or excessive stress, or unhappiness.  And yet, he deliberately stepped into the path of a Caltrain commuter train.

The article offers no solutions, except to suggest that less pressure on kids would statistically result in fewer suicides.  Beyond statistics, however, why a few children find life not worth living remains a mystery.  Two people, unlike two computers, don't react predictably to the input of the same data.

In general, I find that fact reassuring.  But it complicates the task of keeping kids alive throughout their adolescence.
-------------------------------------
* Hanna Rosin, "The Silicon Valley Suicides," The Atlantic, December 2015.

Liberal bastion

Ohio votes against legalization of medical marijuana.  Not the recreational use of  marijuana, but its medical use.  Houston repeals its anti-discrimination ordinance.  Kentucky continues its gradual conversion to Republicanism by electing a GOP governor. 

Here in Washington, even Federal Way turns conservative as it defeats a Democratic incumbent legislator.

To paraphrase a British prime minister at the start of World War I, the lights are going out all over America.  We may not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating.  Here in Seattle -- perhaps the only American city with a statue of Lenin displayed in public -- we passed a $930 million public transportation levy, to the displeasure of our civic nanny, the Seattle Times.  We passed an initiative to provide government funding for political campaigns, in return for various commitments from recipient candidates.  We again elected a city council whose ideological split is between the progressives and the even-more-progressives, and re-elected an avowedly socialist councilman.

But the trend nationwide was decidedly conservative -- both in terms of partisan politics and in citizens' voting on issues. 

As I pointed out on Facebook, unless liberals and moderates do a lot of work during the coming year, Seattle will find itself a small blue island of progressive ideals and rational thought, surrounded by a vast sea of red, a sea churned by deep currents of visceral and atavistic emotions.

Oh boy!

I saw a revival of the musical Annie in Hollywood over the weekend, while visiting relatives in Glendale.  My family was celebrating the fifth birthday of my younger great niece Hayden, and observing the sacred rituals of Halloween.

I first saw Annie in Seattle, not long after its first appearance on Broadway in 1977.  That seems like yesterday, but we took my very young niece to that first showing; on Sunday we took her daughter Hayden.  Time flies.

I remember enjoying Annie the first time, and I recalled a few of the songs -- mainly its most famous number, "Tomorrow."  What I didn't remember were the strong political overtones to the musical, a leftist political emphasis almost as pronounced as that in the 2008 Broadway production (2005 in the West End) of Billy Elliot.

The musical is based on the comic strip -- beloved by all of us of a certain age -- "Little Orphan Annie."  As I recall the strip, it was something of an adventure series with Annie rushing around the world, together with her trusty dog Sandy -- and backed up when necessary by the somewhat shadowy figures of Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks and the Sikh bodyguard Punjab. 

According to Wikipedia -- whose entry matches my recollection -- the cartoonist's politics which

seem to have been broadly conservative and libertarian with a decided populist streak, introduced some of his more controversial storylines. He would look into the darker aspects of human nature, such as greed and treachery. The gap between rich and poor was an important theme. His hostility toward labor unions was dramatized in the 1935 story "Tonite". Other targets were the New Deal, communism, and corrupt businessmen.

The musical shows how Annie was first rescued from her Dickensian orphanage and its sadistic manager, and was subsequently adopted by Daddy Warbucks.  Warbucks was a billionaire (back when a billion meant something, to paraphrase the musical), and had the FBI, the police, and virtually everyone else at his beck and call.  Rather than being hostile to FDR, he patronized him as a somewhat ineffectual cripple who just needed to be given a little backbone.

As a result, rather than "targeting" the New Deal -- Daddy Warbucks in the musical  actually originates the New Deal.  He tells Roosevelt, in so many words, to quit sitting around in his wheelchair making fireside speeches, for god's sake, and DO SOMETHING!!  There are bridges to be built -- highways, housing, etc.  Spend some money, hire folks who need jobs, build the country.  Use government spending to make the country prosperous -- not only to make people's lives tolerable, but to make America strong enough to meet the coming war with Germany.

FDR perks up from his depression, and all sing together that we'll have "A New Deal for Christmas":

[WARBUCKS]
And all through the land folks are bawling

 

[GRACE]
And filled with despair
'Cause cupboards are bare

 

[WARBUCKS]
 But Santa's got brand new assistants
There's nothing to fear
They're bringing a New Deal for Christmas
This year.

Now that's the kind of Daddy Warbucks I like to see!

Today's Republicans are, bit by bit, detaching themselves from their support of Big Business.  Fine!  Let's see if the Warbucks theory works -- that the interests of business can be made to coincide, or at least overlap in places, with the interests of the common man.  Let's see if the slogan by a "Daddy Warbucks" figure of the 1950s, "What's Good for General Motors is Good for the USA," really might have some validity today. 

And above all, let's stop trembling with fear at the idea of government deficit spending, when that spending is an investment in the capital goods and infrastructure of America, as well as in the economic survival of its workers.

"Leapin' Lizards, Sandy!"

"Arf!"

Have a horrifying Halloween

Halloween.  (Or, as we were taught to spell it in school, Hallowe'en.)  The eve (e'en) of All Hallows Day, or as we now call it -- when we call it at all -- All Saints Day.

A time, traditionally, when bad things came out of the woodwork. Remember "Night on Bald Mountain," as interpreted by Disney's Fantasia?  Disney at least got the tradition right, as the Satanic Halloween orgies expressed through Mussorgsky's music segued with dawn into the purity of Schubert's "Ave Maria."

Halloween in later years became a day for kids to go trick or treating and to scare themselves visiting grave yards and haunted houses.  In our own time, adults also have gotten into the act.  I can't imagine any adult dressing up in a Dracula costume when I was a kid, but, nowadays, grown-up gotta have fun, too.

So what does the well-dressed adult Halloween reveler wear these days?  According to USA Today, the ten most popular costumes for adults are:

1.  Harley Quinn
2.  A character from Star Wars 
3.  A super-hero ("Take your pick and find some Lycra.")
4.  Pirate
5.  Batman (I guess he wasn't a super-hero)
6.  Minnie Mouse (?!)
7.  Witch
8.  Minions
9.  The Joker
10.  Wonder Woman  (see comment to #5)

Well, I have no idea who Numero Uno, Harley Quinn, might be, let alone #8 Minions.  But I dressed up as #7 Batman when I was about ten, so I can see the appeal there. 

But shouldn't there be a greater representation of the supernatural, the spirits that traditionally come out to play once a year?  No ghosts?  No one wants to just throw a sheet over his or her head?  I guess nowadays, everyone would rather be a pop culture figure than Frankenstein's monster or a dancing skeleton.

But #7, the Witch, represents the true spirit of Halloween.  Not the misunderstood and heroic witches of The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight, which I reviewed earlier in the month.  But witches as they were perceived by those who lived in fear of them.

I'm talking, for example, of the 19 witches who were hanged in Salem in 1692, as described in an article in this month's Smithsonian magazine.  The colonial prosecution's prime witness alleged that witches flew through the skies at night, and had animal "familiars," including "translucent cats."

She had seen a hog, a great black dog, a red cat, a black cat, a yellow bird and a hairy creature that walked on two legs.  Another animal had turned up too.  She did not know what it was called and found it difficult to describe, but it had "wings and two legs and a head like a woman."  A canary accompanied her visitor.

Now these were true terrors, something that made your skin prickle and your hair stand on end, if you lived in a tiny Massachusetts village surrounded by the howling wilderness.

I suggest to you that Minnie Mouse and the Joker and Luke Skywalker don't embody the true spirit of Halloween, the seeing of things unseen and the fear of Evil with a capital E.

So I was relieved to see that witch costumes were still in vogue.  Until I read the suggestions for appropriate witching dress:

What you need: Anything goes. The witch costume is a classic, in part, for its versatility. Go seamlessly from cleaning to trick-or-treating (carry that broom right out the door!). Go old-school with green face paint or a wart. Go low-maintenance by not plucking that chin hair. Pointy hat and striped socks are a plus.

Gentlemen, you make a farce of witchcraft, and a travesty of the true spirit of Halloween.  May you wander drunkenly by accident into a graveyard at midnight and stub your toe on a tombstone beside an open grave. 

Feel free in that moment of truth to exorcise your fear and horror by irony and whimsical utterances.  If you're still capable of speech. 

Leitmotifs in New York

Central Park

As a teenager, when I first began listening to classical music, I far preferred bombast to subtlety. Themes from Wagner were therefore high on my list of preferences, including, of course, the overture to Tannhäuser.  But opera was still an unknown land, and these stirring themes were largely divorced in my mind from the operas for which they were written.

I had the opportunity this past weekend, during a brief visit to New York, to attend the Metropolitan Opera's performance of Tannhäuser. While Wagner might have devised a more compelling illustration of the conflict between sacred and profane love than a minstrel's inability to choose between enjoyment of eternal subterranean orgies with Venus on the one hand, and high-minded and musically uplifting raptures with the Blessed Virgin on the other -- still it was an impressive, memorable, and certainly musically stirring experience. 

The opera's various musical themes, including that of my beloved overture, kept running through my mind for the rest of the weekend.

That evening was topped off, after 4½ hours of musical exaltation, by my discovery that my alma mater's football team was ahead by 17 points at half time on the West Coast.  A more contemporary contrast between the sacred and the profane, perhaps.  But I grab happiness wherever I can find it.

Prospect Park, Brooklyn

I make these quickie jaunts to New York fairly frequently.  I've seen most of the major tourist destinations, but I now enjoy just immersing myself for a few days in a world that is similar to the Northwest Corner's (as opposed to, say, Mumbai), but just different enough to be interesting. 

In a constant quest for affordable housing, I keep seeking hotels ever farther north, but still within my favorite part of the city, the Upper West Side.  I was up to W. 95th this time, an area of the Upper West Side that is only slightly less opulent than that twenty blocks farther downtown.  Same small, interesting shops, same busy sidewalk life, same well-dressed, well-behaved children walking hand-in-hand with a parent on their way to school.  

Brooklyn Bridge
Pedestrian deck

Sunday, I walked from my hotel up to Columbia University.  I wandered around for a while in that attractive Ivy League school, its (for the most part) traditionally-styled architecture sequestered from the urban world about it by a fence with open (but guarded) gates . 

I then re-walked the High Line from the just-opened No. 7 subway stop at Hudson Yards (behind Penn Station) down to 14th Street in Chelsea.  The High Line's landscaping is growing ever more mature and attractive, but the crowds of tourists are becoming ever more oppressive as it becomes a "must-see" destination.  And the on-going construction around the High Line -- in what had been a somewhat derelict post-industrial area of town -- is truly amazing, illustrating how public works of this sort can attract private investment in surrounding residential and office construction.

I spent a couple of hours at the Metropolitan Museum, in the 19th and 20th century paintings area. Later, I did my traditional tramping about and photography in Central Park, and did similar walking and clicking in a return visit to Brooklyn's equally beautiful Prospect Park.  I didn't walk across the Brooklyn bridge this time, but I did stroll out as far as the tower on the Manhattan end of the bridge to take a couple of photos.

In addition to all of this walking, I plowed a substantial amount of money into the MTA subway system, enjoying not only the convenient travel but my observations of my fellow passengers -- "a million stories waiting to be told."  You may recall my review a few years ago of Lowboy, a novel about a schizophrenic teenager who essentially lived on the New York subway, learning all of its moods and secrets intimately.  Hey, I could do that.  You don't have to be crazy to love traveling hither and yon through the subway's labyrinthine tunnels.

I don't think.

Eastern European nationalism

Day by day, heart-breaking images of Syrian refugees appear in the newspapers.  Syrian families pour into Europe, reminding us of those photos of immigrant hordes who once passed through Ellis Island.

Why can't today's Europe make room for them, we ask, just as we once made room for refugees from yesterday's Europe?  We understand, of course, that we had (and still have) enormous empty spaces, compared to Europe's far greater population density.  We also are silenced by the noisy opposition expressed by so many Americans to the relatively lesser inflow of Latin American migrants across our own southern border.

But I suspect that Europe has another reason, besides lack of room, for resisting the entry of large numbers of immigrants, especially immigrants pouring in through southeastern and eastern Europe. 

The United States is a nation founded on certain principles:  first, its geographic separation and its fought-for political independence from Britain, and second, self-governance as a democratic republic.  Even in 1776, we were not ethnically homogeneous.  We didn't see ourselves, at least consciously, as a homeland in the western hemisphere for people of British ancestry.

But European nations are all about ethnicity.  Each country's distinct language, customs, religion and/or "blood" are the reasons each nation exists.  A century ago, eastern and southeastern Europe were governed by two cosmopolitan empires -- the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman.  Each granted varying amounts of autonomy to different nations within its empire, but subject to the ultimate sovereignty of the emperor or sultan. 

Beginning at least with the Greek war of independence in 1821, subject nationalities struggled to govern themselves, free of tribute to an imperial government.  "Nationalism" increasingly became the ascendant ideology throughout the nineteenth century, and led eventually to the assassination of an imperial archduke by a Serbian nationalist -- and the beginning of World War I.  At least five of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points dealt with recognition of national sovereignty along ethnic lines.

Yugoslavia was the last entity in Europe to attempt to bridge ethnicities -- and even its ethnicities were all Slavic.  Yugoslavia's breakup in the early 1990s, along with the independence of the three Baltic states, finally accomplished the goal of nation states of single ethnicity throughout the region.

We may not feel that creation of such states is a particularly admirable goal, but -- especially among the more recently created states -- it is a goal for which they had long strived.  Diluting their ethnically uniform populations now with the influx of a large number of new Syrian residents may seem to undo in part that accomplishment.

It's notable that the European nations most certain of their long-time and well-established ethnic unity and sovereignty -- France and Germany -- have been those most willing to accept new residents from Syria.

I have no solution to the Syrian refugee problem.  No one seems to have a solution.  But a feeling for the history of eastern Europe should help us understand fears and emotions of the region's citizens and rulers.  Eastern Europeans are no less caring or empathetic than we in the West; they don't resist helping the suffering Syrians simply out of cruelty or lack of charity.

Now she is six

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever. 

Maury at 2 weeks

My eldest great niece, Maury, turned six this week.  It hardly seems possible that it's been six years since I posted my first greetings to her, quoting Robert Louis Stevenson's greetings to his godchild.  Or that -- in that blink of an eye -- she has covered almost half the distance from birth to teenager.

If I greeted her birth with words from R.L.S., it seems even more fitting to celebrate her Sixth Birthday with Milne's poem, "The End," from his book of children's poetry, Now We Are Six.  The poem marks "the end" of Milne's book, but only the beginning of Maury's exciting life to come.

Golden autumn

Autumn -- in our poetic tradition -- generally symbolizes waning, aging, ending, a premonition of death.

And yet it's so beautiful.  A beauty not always shared by our own waning and aging human bodies.

I mulled over these thoughts this afternoon while making my daily four-mile walk through and around the University of Washington campus.  We've had a warm year, here in the Northwest Corner, and the warmth has continued into the fall.  A day of rain now and then, finally, but the "rainy season," as we know it in these parts, still hasn't begun.

It was sunny, as I left the house shortly after 3 p.m.  Not the blazing sun we have at that time in summer, but a golden sun filtered through additional layers of atmosphere.  But sunny, nonetheless.  The sky was blue, the sun was gold, and the shadows were already lengthening in mid-afternoon.

I wore a t-shirt and a light sweater, because my phone told me it would be in the mid-50s outside.  But the sun was still warm, and when not in shade I felt a bit overdressed.  Some folks on campus were wearing coats and jackets they probably had grabbed before leaving home in the chilly morning; others were wearing shorts and t-shirts.

The light was golden.  Autumn flowers -- I always forget how many flowers bloom in autumn -- colored the landscape.  Horse chestnuts (buckeyes if you're from the wrong part of the country) rolled underfoot, reminding me of childhood wars and battles.  Leaves on some trees were just beginning to change yellow, pink, red.  The air was crisp, even as the sun was warm -- that same peculiar combination of temperatures one experiences at high altitude. 

The campus was crowded with students.  These days, students' faces display seriousness of purpose combined with displays of quiet friendliness among themselves.  Observing them makes me happy, relieved that whatever future lies ahead probably will be in good hands.

As I often do, I stopped at the coffee shop just inside the front door of Suzzallo library, and ordered a coffee and muffin.  Kids packed the room, drinking coffee, talking, and poring over electronic gadgets in what -- back in my day -- was, as I recall, a "reserve book room" where students were granted short-term checkouts for certain books assigned in classes.  Books to be read in a hushed atmosphere.  In those days, I would have found it incredible that coffee drinking would be not only permitted, but enabled -- on the first floor of Suzzallo. 

After a half hour, I resumed my walk, circling through the dormitory areas on the eastern side of campus, looping back to Suzzallo, and then toward home through the recently renovated Rainier Vista. 

The campus has changed much since I first began graduate school -- but in many ways it has remained remarkably the same.  I enjoyed it in the spring time of my life, and enjoy it even more, perhaps, now in the fall.  I arrived home feeling happy with school, happy with the students, happy with myself -- and happy with the beauty of Seattle in Autumn.

Oliver Sacks, a month before his death this past August, recalled the story of a friend who had gone out for a walk one beautiful day with Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright (Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, et al.) -- that same cheerful fellow who directed that his tombstone should be "any colour, so long as it's grey."   Sacks's friend casually asked, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?”

Beckett replied, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.” 

I love the story, but I'm totally with Oliver's friend.  Today, I realized, wasn't an autumn day for worrying about waning or aging.  It was an autumn day that made me supremely grateful to be alive. 

Flying high

Being manipulated by advertisers to buy something I don't really need is nothing new.  At least for me.

But I'm only now getting used to being so manipulated, knowing exactly how I'm being manipulated, accepting the manipulation -- and enjoying it.

Like most airlines, Alaska Airlines has an "MVP" status for flyers who accumulate a certain number of miles on Alaska and on partner airlines with which Alaska has some sort of treaty arrangements.  In recent years, this has been no problem for me.  I travel overseas at least once a year, which in itself -- together with the domestic flying I have to do just to keep in touch with family members -- has given me the necessary miles without my thinking much about it.

In 2014, for example, I traveled round trip from Seattle to Johannesburg on Air France -- an Alaska partner -- which alone gave me nearly all the miles I needed, and at a surprisingly low cost.

That -- and many trips by others like mine -- may have been the final straw.  The airlines are getting wise.  MVP status was intended as a special anointing for their valued business clients -- not a freebie handed out to moochers who used the internet to find low-cost, high-mileage flights for their once-a-year vacations.

As a result,  most of the major airlines have begun awarding elite status based on amount of cash spent rather than miles flown.  Alaska hasn't done that.  Yet.  But its partner airlines are allowing Alaska mileage plan members  only "partial credit" for flights bought at bargain rates.

This year, I flew to London on British Air, and to Beijing on Delta.  Until this year, those two round trips probably would have pushed me into MVP status easily.  But not this year.  British Air gave me only one-fourth of my actual miles flown, and Delta gave me only one-half.  As a result, as 2015 comes to an end, I'm scrambling around for enough miles to continue MVP status next year.

After adding up all the qualifying miles I've earned this year, and those anticipated for my remaining travel, I discover that I'll still fall 610 miles short.  What to do?  If only I needed a one-way trip between Seattle and Oakland -- a frequent destination of mine -- I told myself -- I'd be over the top.

To make a boring and crazy story short, I've booked a December Amtrak trip down to Oakland, arriving in the morning, and flying home that same evening on Alaska.  That will give me my MVP status, and also fulfill my recent craving for a train trip somewhere, anywhere.

What do I get out of this legendary MVP status for which I work so hard?  Not much, really.  I just like the idea, really.  I do get first crack at a certain desirable section of the cabin reserved for MVP flyers (I choose seat 7A whenever possible).  I get early boarding.  I'm allowed to check two bags without paying a fee.  I occasionally get bumped up, at the last moment, into first class -- an always unexpected treat.  I'm yanked out of the sordid cattle car of the rear section into paradise.  Sort of a secular version of the Rapture, I guess.

It ain't much, but I fly fairly often, and just the early boarding -- together with my TSA Pre-check -- takes a lot of the stress out of the experience.  And even if it didn't?  Well, I guess I just enjoy the quest for MVP, a quest that engages my competitive instincts.  I enjoy it,  even though I know it's ridiculous.