Feeling guilty -- but not too guilty

Back when I was a college freshman, I would sometimes find myself sitting up late at night writing an English theme "to be no less than four pages long."  Perhaps comparing a poem by Yeats with one by Longfellow.  Yikes!  How to wring four pages out of an attempt at such a ridiculous comparison?  Finally, I would find myself hitting a wall at three and a half pages.

I learned that a small adjustment of the margins on my typewriter (yes, typewriter) would convert my 3½ pages into four full pages with little change in their appearance.  (Fudging is even easier now, with a slight increase in font size on your computer.)

Earlier, as a much younger child, I faced an even more exhausting task than literary analysis when told to clean up/straighten up my room.  "Have you cleaned it up, yet?"  Well, yes, I had.  By cramming items into any available drawer, even if that meant stuffing a number of toy tanks, a half-eaten Hershey bar, and some empty pop bottles into my sweater drawer.

Back as a young piano player, I was required to practice a given piece each day a prescribed number of times.  I was far too honest a kid to claim I had done the required practice if I hadn't.  But when a piece became tedious enough, I might rationalize that playing a piece did not require me to honor all the "repeat" signs included in the score.

What's my point?

My point is that all of the above were, at least arguably, small transgressions.  But they ranked far below the list of the seven deadly sins.  They were behaviors I can look back on now with humor, rather than with embarrassed horror.

And now to the real point.  Today, I discover that if I publish just one more post for this blog, I will have published a total of 110 posts for the year 2018.  Which will rank as a new personal best.  But I have to publish it within the next 4½ hours.  And I'm already tired and cranky, and unable to think of anything at all to write about..

But -- suppose I write about having nothing to write about?  Admittedly, this violates my own vow that every post I publish will be in some way significant, even if only humorously or satirically significant.  But it's a small violation.  And maybe not even a violation.  Maybe the acknowledgment that even I -- Mr. Un-hip Nerd -- can occasionally fudge a self-imposed rule is in itself significant?

So, voilá.  Here it is.  And hooray for 2018 Post No. 110!  And double hooray for me!

And Happy New Year!

Trekking with Pascal

Pascal and me with
Cho Oyu (26,864 ft.) in the background

Back in October 2011, Pascal and I traveled to the Mount Everest region of Nepal, where we trekked and climbed over a pass called Renjo La.  A pass that afforded a magnificent view of Everest.  I summarized our trek in a  post dated October 24, 2011.

Pascal is the son of some good friends in California.  We first hiked together in 2002, in the Andes, when Pascal was only 16.  Over the next nine years, we traveled together another five times.  The Renjo La trip was our final adventure together -- he was by then 25, and on the verge of marriage and serious professional employment. 

Pascal was an excellent travel companion, adventurous and fortunate (?) enough to share my own sense of humor.

At the conclusion of the trek, while we were hanging around Kathmandu for a couple of additional days before heading home, Pascal wrote an email to his family and friends summarizing the trip, discussing many of the same events that I discussed later in this blog, but in more detail and from his own individual point of view.  I thought it would be interesting -- for me, at least -- to preserve his insights by cutting and pasting his email into my blog.

In his email, of course, he is writing informally for friends and family, not for publication.  But in so writing, he perhaps captures his feelings and reactions with more immediacy than if he had composed something more deliberately, weeks later after returning home.
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Hi all,

So! Where to begin? I guess at the beginning? That'd make sense.

So our first full day in Kathmandu after we arrived we went to this Hindu site, Pashupatinath, right along the holy Bagmati river where they do open air cremations of deceased people. Yeah. Kind of intense for 9am in the morning. The site itself was quite nice. Lots of shrines etc. Some monkeys here and there. And then we saw the cremations. That was quite the scene. I actually saw them bring a deceased person up and place them on this platform of logs and grass. Everyone walked around clockwise paying their respects... and then they lit it on fire. People were wailing, smoke was everywhere in the air. It was a little shocking. It's supposedly one of the most sacred places to be cremated if you're a hindu. They actually have a hospice there where people can come and die so that they can be cremated withing 24 hours (I think that's the time frame). It's also interesting/kind of depressing that after they're done they throw everything in the river (mattress, all the clothes, etc). As you can imagine this very holy river was pretty disgustingly polluted. At any rate, it was quite the site.

Then we went to this HUGE Buddhist stupa called Bodnath right in the middle of the city. Just the scale of it was pretty impressive. All around it was built up into restaurants and little shops. It almost had a European feel to it... minus the huge rounded white stupa in the middle of it all. So that was pretty interesting. Both of those things were different from what we saw the first time we came here. I think they took that into consideration when choosing where to go, which was nice of Mountain Travel.

The next day we were up bright and early to catch the flight to Lukla. On the way everyone shared their various stories of the airport. Donny had flown there back in the late nineties when they were remodeling it so he had to fly in a huge Russian helicopter. Some other people remembered when it was still a grass and dirt runway. Tom (the son of the two that were from Kansas) had recently watched a history channel show on the most extreme airports in the world... and Lukla took the title of #1. Not exactly what I wanted to hear when getting ready to board the tiny Twin Otter propeller airplane to take us there. After an hour or so of delays we were finally bussed out to our plane and took off. It was pretty cramped. I think it held about 20 ppl and their bags.

The take off was pretty standard. Once in the air it isn't pressurized so you're constantly having to pop your ears, and the sound of the engines pretty much eliminated all possibility of having a conversation. So we just sat there staring out the window at the peaks soaring just below us and dreading the moment when the airstrip came into view. When it did, I made sure to document it. I whipped out my small cannon and shot a video of the landing. Everyone cheered when we made it in one piece. Whew!

We met our crew, had some tea, loaded up our packs and took off for Phakding. It was a pretty short hike. We had to take a bit of a detour because one of the bridges had washed out, so we had to hike up and over the creek that it was crossing. That was pretty loose and muddy, but overall not bad. Stayed at a lodge there that night.

The next day we hiked up to Namche. And I do mean UP. We hiked along the river for most of the day, which was great. Some pretty spectacular suspension bridges along the way (not Donny's favorite part, but I enjoyed the bouncing and swaying a couple hundred feet above a massive gushing glacial river). Then we hiked up and up to Namche. Along the way we caught a glimpse of Everest's peak (which honestly wasn't THAT spectacular...from this vista). Namche was a pretty cool village. In this big natural gorge/amphitheater looking place. It's quite the backpackers hub which tons of little shops selling everything you could need. We stayed there two nights so that we could have a day to acclimate to 11,300'. On the "rest" day we hiked up to a little museum which was pretty interesting. Told you about the Sherpa people and the environment there. The peaks were all out that morning and it really was beautiful. Then we hiked up to the Everest View Hotel which was pretty high up on this bluff. There was actually a tiny airstrip up there that planes flew into to drop off supplies to Namche. We got to see a plan land and take off. THAT was pretty awesome. I think Tom got some good pictures of it taking off. From the Everest View Hotel we got another glimpse of Everest (imagine that?! Aptly named hotel). Had some tea up there and just basked in the sun and the glory of the Himalayas.

The next day we took off to Khunde which was only maybe a 2-3 hour hike away. We stayed at our Sirdar's (he's the second in command from the main guide. He organizes all of the porters etc.) family house. Well, we camped in the back yard. Walked up to see the clinic there which was an important structure as it was the main clinic for a lot of villages in the region. Also, we checked out one of the first school that Sir Edmond Hillary built after he was the first known mountaineer to successfully summit Everest back in 1953. He contributed a huge amount to this region in Nepal, and is basically considered a demi-god here.

The next day we hiked up to Tengboche monastery. There was some significant climbing up hill but that's only because you have to go all the way down to the river and then climb back up the other side. Elevation wise it's not that much higher (12,664'). That night we went to see the Buddhist prayer session which was interesting. Also saw a little museum attached to the monastery which was very informative. Talked about the region and Buddhist teachings, etc. We camped that night and it got pretty chilly. Definitely some frost in the morning when we got out of our tents.

So up until this point we were following the main trail that most everyone takes to Everest basecamp. I had discussed with the other 5 ppl on the trek (other than Donny and I. There were 7 of us in total) to see why they chose to do this trip instead of Everest base camp. The older couple, David and Caroline from Bainbridge Island which is right near Seattle, had actually already been there about 30 years ago. They had just done the Annapurna Sanctuary trek just last year which is the same one that Donny and I did 2 years ago. The other 3, Ann who's the mother of Tom and sister to Bill, decided on this trek because EVERYONE does Everest basecamp and it's just crowded and too much of a tourist trap now. I wasn't quite sure if I agreed, but they did have a point. The next day we diverged from the basecamp route and took off on an even more remote trail than the main trail to Gokyo. It was perfect!

We saw maybe 3 other groups of trekkers where as previously we were pretty much always running into groups coming and going. SO much nicer to be out in a more remote area. We camped in this little valley in a village called Khonar. The next day was more of the same. Hiking along the side of these hills going in and out of valleys going a little up and a little down. Just beautiful. Stayed in this little Yak herding community called Chomteng (14,400'). From the first glimpse it looked like a deserted city of ruins. Stone walls winding round and round surrounding small pastures for the yaks and on each plot there was a little hut made completely out of stone. Apparently these are seasonal huts that yak herders use as the move up and down the valley according to the snow level and weather. It was really quite beautiful. That night it got pretty cold in the tents.

The next day we hiked to Gokyo. It was pretty much more of the same hiking for the first part. Then we hit the glacier. THAT was pretty impressive. We had to hike across it. It was not at all what I expected. When I was in New Zealand we hiked on Fox Glacier. That was pretty much what you expected a glacier to be like. Ice. Lots of hardened pale blue ice with veins of black sediment here and there striping the glacier. Not Ngozumpa glacier. It's apparently the largest glacier in Nepal. And it WAS large. It probably spanned 2-3 miles across, carving a deep gorge down the valley. And it was all covered by a thick layer of sediment. Basically a dusty sand with rocks. It took us a solid couple hours to traverse across it, snaking up and down sizable hills that the compacted ice below formed. Occasionally we'd have to circumvent large glacial ponds/lakes with huge ice cliffs hanging over them, waiting to crack off and plunge into the amazingly turquoise waters below. The color of glacial ponds/lakes is just beautiful. I doubt my pictures will do the colors justice. Every color of blue and green and turquoise you can imagine. All in stunning vivid clarity with the sun beating down them. The hike to get out of the glacier was pretty taxing, and a little bit unnerving as you are traversing along the side of this giant gorge with huge boulders poised right above you on the trail. Keep in mind that a glacier is constantly shifting and moving sending debris crumbling down sporadically. Needless to say, we didn't linger there for very long. Once out, it was a quick little walk to the town of Gokyo.

Gokyo is situated right next to a pretty large glacial lake. It's a little village of a couple shops and some lodges. We stayed at a lodge there for 2 nights to acclimate. (Interesting bit of trivia: acclimate and acclimatize are actually different. Acclimate is to adjust to ONE variation in a new place like altitude. Acclimatize is to adjust to a more complex set of changes. So we were acclimating where as the Sherpas were acclimatized. I think...) Anyways, we initially had the option of what we wanted to do on our "rest" day. Option 1: to hike over to the 5th glacial lake where you get great views of Everest. This option involves less elevation gain, and more distance. Option 2: Climb up to the top of Gokyo Ri which maxes out a 17,990'. Up there you also get great views of Everest, but are very similar to those that you would get from Renjo La pass. Initially we all kind of agreed that we would rather hike over to the 5th glacial lake to see a different view of Everest, but then the guide decided that in the interest of acclimating, we should do the hike to Gokyo Ri. I think he just wanted to make sure that we could all DO it. Some of us were having some issues with the altitude. I actually got a little headache and some nausea when we were all the way down in Namche, so after that I was taking half a diamox pill every night and felt fine. Some of the other people were having similar issues throughout the trip, but once they started taking diamox it was fine.

So it was decided for us that we would do the Gokyo Ri hike. Just to be clear, our lodge at Gokyo was at 15,580, so we were gaining 2,410' pretty much straight UP. Really, the trail basically just zig-zagged up the side of this hill/mountain. It was very slow going. A lot of huffing and puffing. I reigned in my competitive nature and hiked up last, hanging with Donny. Donny struggled a little bit, but with a lot of water, some breaks, many pictures, and raw determination rooted in stubborn pride (on Donny's part), we made it to the top after about 3 hours of climbing. It was great though. We started really early in the morning as the sun was just starting to rise. I got some (hopefully) great pictures of the mountains in the morning light and the reflection on the glassy calm glacial lake. Then on the way up we could start seeing Everest peak out from behind one of the other mountains that obscured it from below. It was fun to watch the higher we climbed, the higher Everest rose. It's as if it was climbing up with us. As I said, from the initial limited views of the fabled mountain top I really was not impressed. It wasn't all that jagged of a peak, nor visibly that strikingly large. But on this day, watching it grow and grow I finally started appreciating the sheer immensity of this amazing mountain. Once at the top, it clearly towered above all else, dwarfing other smaller (but still 25,000'+!) peaks. The rest of our group was already up there waiting for us. Donny quickly explained that he was nice enough to hang with me while I struggled up the mountain. I smiled and assured everyone that Donny is indeed a nice guy for doing that. The next hour was filled with slack-jawed aw of the surrounding views. A LOT of pictures taken. Speaking of pictures. There was a whole photo shoot of me getting up on one of the taller boulders and jumping as high as I could in order to stretch up that extra 10' so I could hit 18,000'. I think I made it! (for some perspective, Lake Tahoe is at 6,225' and you're huffing and puffing up there! The highest peak in the continental North America is Mt Whitney at 14,494')

On the way down I pretty much ran down with Tom. Hung out at the base laying next to the lake and chatting. It was a beautiful day. We spent the rest of it just relaxing, reading, playing gin, sipping tea, and just marveling at the lake and mountains all around. Speaking of Gin. Bill, one of the other guys on the trip, is a very interesting guy who worked in the start up industry in business development and retired at the age of 42 right before everything crashed. So anyways, apparently he used to play in Gin COMPETITIONS! Yeah, I didn't even know they existed. So there is a variation where you can play with 4 ppl and two decks of cards. Basically each duo plays against each other in a separate game and then you take the net score of the two games. Anyways, it was a lot of fun. And he was VERY good. After that, gin became a pretty regular routine in the evenings.

The next day we hiked up to our highest camp right below Renjo Pass. The campsite was in this amazingly stunning valley with snow all around. Luckily there were some dry patches where we were able to set up camp. It was at 16,700'. From the camp we got great views of Everest. In fact, when we were eating dinner in the dining tent, once the sun started setting on Everest's peak, they unzipped one side so we could dine with that in the background. Probably one of the most spectacular sites I've EVER seen. Needless to say it was VERY well documented. I think took so many pictures I could make a movie of the sun setting on Everest and capture each hue of golden orange it faded into. Just magnificent.

That night it was VERY cold. I'd say probably down into the teens. I was relatively warm in my sleeping bag, but my feet got really cold towards the morning. I didn't sleep that well. I think I was also just too excited to sleep.

The next morning we hiked the rest of the way to Renjo La pass (17,880'). Most of the trail was through the hard packed snow. Some great pictures of snow-scapes. It was kind of anti-climactic to get up to the top because we had already been that high on Renjo Pass and saw a similar scene. And the sun-set on Everest pretty much topped everything. But regardless, the sense of accomplishment was enormous and we were all thrilled to have made it over the pass.

The trail down from the pass was quite steep and snowy so it was slow going at first. The rest of the trail was just beautiful. We were in a new valley and it was as beautiful as ever. At camp it got REALLY foggy. We lucked out on the weather because if it was that foggy and cloudy on the pass we wouldn't have seen ANYTHING. SO lucky. I'm very grateful.

The last couple days of the trek were not all too eventful. We hiked back through to Thame, and then the next day to Namche again. From Namche it was quite a long day all the way back to Lukla, but everyone made it in great time. Well, funny story, Bill decided to hi-tail it there "in order to get a workout before the flight". He got there REALLY early and actually took a flight out of Lukla to Kathmandu that afternoon before anyone got back. Apparently one of his Schwab accounts was "compromised" and he had to get back home "immediately". Kind of left everyone with a bad taste in our mouths. Especially Ann, his sister. She was so embarrassed by his behavior. Apparently he's done this in the past. But apart from that everything was great.

The flight out the next morning was breath-taking. The runway is VERY short and actually tilted downhill with a pretty sheer drop off at the end (so if you don't have enough speed by the end you drop off the cliff and can glide for a bit to gain enough speed to get airborne... luckily we didn't have to make use of that particular feature!). Tom was up at the front of the plane and I gave him my small camera to take a video of the takeoff. Everything worked perfectly and we were soaring over the peaks on our way back to Kathmandu in no time! WHEW!!!

I think that pretty much wraps it up! Just have a couple days here in Kathmandu relaxing and then we head home on Friday. Don't get in until 10:15am on Sat the 22nd. Ashley's nice enough to pick me up from the airport. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET HOME!!! I'll make sure to send out another email when I touch down safely.

I love you all and I'll see you soon!

- Pascal

Visiting Kashmir

Jhelum river, Srinagar

Jet lag from my Thailand travels is a recent memory, Christmas is hardly over, and the major bowl games still loom ahead -- but I'm already eyeing travel plans for 2019.

Therefore, let it be known that I'm traveling to India in March.  A fairly short visit (but a long flight) from March 20 to April 2.  The company organizing my tour -- for such it more or less is -- calls it "Secrets of Kashmir," but only four days will be spent in Kashmir -- in and around Srinagar.  Two days will be spent in Amritsar, in the Punjab.  And three days exploring the vicinity of the Dalai Lama's "capital in exile" at Dharamsala, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

This trip was originally intended for a group of between five and fourteen travelers, but they've decided to run it with only three -- a couple (about whom I know nothing) and myself.  We'll be traveling with an Indian guide who is experienced and well-respected by the company with which I've signed up.  As the humorous woman at the tour company points out, I'll have the advantages of a private tour at a fraction of the cost.

The low turn-out suggests a lack of enthusiasm in the American public for "adventure travel," but actually that kind of travel -- in small groups to unusual places -- is more popular than ever.  But the great majority of adventure travelers are interested in the same places -- I snarkily suggest places that look or sound impressive on their Instagram or Facebook pages -- places like climbs of Kilimanjaro or to Everest base camp, or tours to cultural or naturalist targets like Machu Picchu or the Galapagos islands.  India is still slightly off the map, and the Punjab and Kashmir provinces of India even more so.

There may be other reasons.  The State Department advises:

Do not travel to:

• The state of Jammu and Kashmir (except the eastern Ladakh region and its capital, Leh) due to terrorism and civil unrest.
• Within 10 km of the India-Pakistan border due to the potential for armed conflict.

Srinigar and its environs are, of course, in Kashmir, and we will also be traveling to the Pakistani border in Punjab with the express purpose of watching the opposing guards of India and Pakistan.  There have been a few incidents in Srinagar involving attacks on tourists, limited to the throwing of rocks, but in general the area is heavily dependent on tourism, is well policed, and such incidents have been isolated.  Our guide is familiar with the area, and the tour company is extremely experienced with traveling to countries with widely varying levels of public safety.  If they aren't confident because of current conditions, they cancel the trip.  I'm happy to rely on them.

Besides, I've already had a reasonably long and interesting life!   

Although the trip is primarily cultural in focus, we will be hiking in the country -- fairly short hikes -- on three days.  On one of those days, we will climb about 1,800 feet to an elevation of 9,275 feet through forests in the Himalayan foothills.  The wide variety of activities on this trip is, for me, one of its attractions.

You will see more about my Kashmir trip in this blog, like it or not, before my March departure.

Winter in Idaho

Front of the "cabin"

Idaho is next door to Washington.  Technically, it's probably part of my "Northwest Corner."  But winter in Idaho is different from winter in Washington,* even when Washington experiences one of its occasional snows.

Idaho is very cold.  During my three days near Challis, Idaho, the temperature never rose above freezing during the day.  It approached zero (Fahrenheit) at night.  But the frigid air out of doors only emphasized the warmth and coziness of the cabin's interior. 

Our "cabin" (a full-sized house designed to look like a cabin) was heavily insulated.  So well insulated that -- except for electric heat in my bedroom -- it was heated entirely by a wood fire in a large fireplace.  (I say "wood" meaning "wood from trees" -- not Duraflame logs, or natural gas piped over concrete "logs.")  And the cold outside is a dry cold, not the dank, wet cold we sometimes experience in Seattle. 

So you are happily warm inside the cabin, and you can spend an hour traipsing around outside without shivering and without returning home with your boots saturated with water. 

I loved it.  Would I love it for an entire winter?  We'll never know, will we?

A picture's worth a thousand words, so here are several thousand words' worth (no pun intended).
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*Eastern Washington may, in some ways, be similar to Idaho.  But for those of us in Seattle, Eastern Washington might as well be part of Idaho.  We forget it's there.  Forgive my west-of-the-Cascades chauvinism. 

Moose looking balefully across the
living room.  On an opposite wall, was an
even more morose shaggy bison.
 

Strolling toward the cabin,
accompanied by Buddy.



Study in sage brush and snow 



Andy thoughtfully built this bridge
so Kathy could hike her path with dry feet.

Road leading to property exit
in far distance.

Horses who allegedly love the cold.

My last morning in Idaho, gazing out from
the cabin's front porch

Dying custom

Ten years ago, I posted a lament for the dying Christmas card. 

I recalled the hordes of cards that my parents received each year during my childhood -- some from close relatives, some from distant friends, many from folks they hadn't seen personally since the Great Depression.  Some were pre-printed with the senders' names.  Some were photo cards showing the sender's growing family.  Some contained lengthy letters.

In a world without email or social media, a Christmas card was an excuse to keep in touch.  My folks enjoyed them, and for me as a child it opened a picture of my parents' lives -- both present and long past -- that I would never otherwise have known existed.

But that was then and this is now.

My once lengthy Christmas card list -- never nearly as lengthy as my parents' -- is down to about twenty.  All my relatives, aside from those overseas; those friends with whom I don't keep in contact on Facebook; and any other friends and acquaintances who, like me, insist on observing a sadly atavistic custom.

I never receive as many as I send, but the balance has always been fairly close -- and made closer by a few cards I receive from senders I hadn't anticipated.

This year?  Well, I just received today's mail.  Just one more day's mail before I leave for Idaho.  I have received seven cards, one of which was an e-Card received on my computer.

That's kind of sad.

Of course a few more always come in after Christmas, but those are always a bit suspect as being guilt offerings, sent after the sender has received my own.  Still welcome, still counted in my statistics, but one that seems a bit like the response to a Valentine, a Valentine sent off with starry eyes, that arrives just a little too late.

But that's ok.  As I wrote in 2008, back when I was still young and idealistic:

Maybe in 2008, with email and Facebook so readily available, no one really does care if I send them a card or not. But I send them for myself, at least in part. Christmas just doesn't feel like Christmas until I carry my stack of envelopes down to the corner and drop them in the mailbox.

Exactly.  So those of you who received my Christmas card this year and didn't respond, don't feel bad.  Customs change, I recognize that.  I still care about you.  And I still wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Our own private Idaho

A year ago at this time, I was preparing for a lengthy train ride from Seattle to Oxnard, California, where I was to spend Christmas.  My brother and his wife had recently purchased a fairly large boat that they had moored at the harbor in Oxnard, and most of the family was converging.  My brother and his immediate family stayed on the boat, and the rest of us settled into near-by accommodations.

The weather was warm; we took the boat out to the Channel Islands; we enjoyed each other's company.  It was hardly a traditional family Christmas, but it was an enjoyable family gathering.

This year is different.  Sunday, I fly from Seattle to Sun Valley, Idaho.  Not to ski (sigh), but to launch myself on a two to three hour drive (weather permitting) north to Challis, Idaho -- a small town in the middle of nowhere.  And not even to Challis, but to a house located about twenty miles up a small road from Challis, adjacent to a National Forest.  Here, in isolated splendor, I will find enthroned my sister, sharing the house with her friend Andy.

Snow is predicted all the way from Sun Valley to Challis; highs will be in the 20s and lows near zero.  I have almost definitely decided to spend Sunday night near the airport, and set out on the drive to Challis first thing Monday morning.  The Idaho Highway Department  warns of herds of deer on the highway north; my sister herself says that animals on the highway are especially dangerous at night, and that her son managed to run into an elk some time ago while night driving.

I'm adventuresome, but not a total idiot.

So, for a lot of fuss and bother, not to mention expense, I'll end up spending only Christmas Day itself, as a complete day, at my sister's house, although I'll be there most of Monday, the 24th, as well.  But we will be a tiny gathering, not the usual gathering of the clan that I'm used to at Christmas.

Until my mother died in 2003, virtually every Christmas saw all my family together, except for times when it was absolutely impossible for someone to attend.  She never played the guilt card to command our presence; she simply had a knack for causing us to want to be with her and with each other.  It helped that most of us were still either single or had significant others who were happy to join in our family celebrations.

Since then, it's been different.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

But my mother's absence isn't the whole story.  My brother and sister have each had children, and some of those children have had children.  Families like to devise their own rituals, not rely slavishly on the rituals of their own childhood.  Sometimes we can still all get together, as we did last year; more frequently, only some of us can get together.  And this year we are more fragmented than usual.

My brother and his wife live in the Los Angles area, and want to be with their daughter and granddaughter, who in turn have ties in the L.A. area with whom they want to share Christmas.  My eldest nephew is married and in San Francisco; his wife's family in the Bay Area, like ours, has strong family traditions.  My second oldest nephew and his daughter are in Thailand; they have come back for visits twice already this year, in addition to last Christmas.

It's all understandable; it isn't really tragic (Christmas with my sister in a rural winter wonderland is hardly something to be sneezed at). But for those of us who find certain types of change unsettling, it feels a bit sad.

No matter how old you are -- but especially when you're young -- you subconsciously assume at any given time that, with minor adjustments, the future will be exactly like the present.  Everyone will stay the same age.  Everyone will continue to have the same interests.  Ability and willingness to join together in the same family unit we enjoyed as teenagers will not change.

But of course things do change.  Not always for the worst; often for the better.  But for those of us who were very happy in our childhood, change always seems suspect.  As Lord Marchmain's mistress noted in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited:

“Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very unhappy.

That's me.  But not "very unhappy."  Just wistful. And I try to remember that someday, the year I got caught in the snow storm on my way to Challis will also be part of "the good old days."

Merry rocking Christmas

I was driving along Montlake Boulevard a couple of days ago, and caught myself humming to myself the 1957 hit Christmas song, "Jingle Bell Rock."

I was a teenager when "Jingle Bell Rock" was released, and I was ok with rock music.  But I was appalled at the concept of a Christmas song with a rock beat.  I wiped it forever from my approved list.  And now, the better part of a century later, I find myself cheerfully humming it -- singing the lyrics when I could remember them -- as I started and stopped my way through the traditional Montlake traffic jam.

In retrospect, I really was a puritanical teenaged lad.  Or, more accurately, I was a culturally conservative one.  If a piece of music wasn't a traditional Christmas song -- i.e., one that I remembered from "my childhood" five years earlier -- it had no reason to exist.

For me -- probably for my entire family -- the basic canon of Christmas music was established by our five-disk, 78 rpm album of Bing Crosby classics, one that dated back to 1945.  The album contained ten carols or songs.  Only four, I now note, were actual traditional carols -- "Silent Night," "Adeste Fideles," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and "Jingle Bells."  Others, however, seemed equally venerable to me at the time -- "White Christmas," certainly.  "I'll be Home for Christmas" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  Others on the album, were sort of, "whatever": We played through them as the records dropped, one by one, on our record changer and we became used to them, without really warming up to them.

So obviously, when I say that Bing's album was the basic canon, I exaggerate.  It was amply supplemented by songs from my book of Christmas piano music, by songs we sang in music classes and school assemblies at school, and songs we sang at Sunday School and Church.   None of these supplements, however, endorsed the likes of "Jingle Bell Rock."

And yet, for generations then unborn, no doubt, it has become one of the great classics.  It has become elevator music, and thus admitted to the pantheon of cherished tunes.

As a kid, I made little distinction between "sacred" and "secular" carols.  I laughed with everyone else to the 1944 novelty "classic," "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth."  I even had View Master (q.v.) reels illustrating "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."  I found the 1952 hit "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" somewhat embarrassing -- a bit risqué, perhaps, and subversive of the Santa Claus myth, and thus harmful to the morals of the little ones.  But I dutifully listened to it without vocal complaint. 

Elvis was still suspect in my rigid little mind, and his 1957 release of "Blue Christmas" caused me to roll my eyes.  But I viewed that song as more of a love song than a Christmas song, and because it wasn't a sung to a rollicking rock beat, it escaped my scathing censure.

As is obvious, my touchstone for separating the gold from the dross in Christmas music was "I know what I like, and I like what I know."  I recall informing my mother that Bing Crosby was sort of the gold standard as far as I was concerned.  Imagine my surprise when she laughed.  She told me that when Bing began singing Christmas songs, he was attacked as ruining, with his moaning and groaning, the traditional songs beloved by all.  He was the first popular singer to ever record Christmas music, and traditionalists just plain didn't like it.

Just like me and "Jingle Bell Rock."  There's a lesson there somewhere for us all, undoubtedly, but I'm too old to figure out what it is. 

[Walks away from his computer, humming to himself]

"What a bright time, it's the right time
To rock the night away
Jingle bell time is a swell time
To go gliding in a one-horse sleigh."

Ten years later

In an hour or so, I'll head downtown for a traditional Christmas celebration.  Yes, it's time for another gathering of the Old Office Gang.

I find it hard to believe, but it was ten years ago this past summer that I retired from my job as a defense attorney for a locally-headquartered insurance company -- a legal department position I'd held for about sixteen years.  Although I didn't realize it at the time, our company was on the verge of acquisition by a large Massachusetts insurer.  As a result of this acquisition, many of my co-workers found themselves, voluntarily or not so voluntarily, seeking other employment.

I felt fortunate to be old enough to be justified in retiring, and to be hanging onto a 401k account that made the idea not preposterous.

In any event, within a matter of months, maybe half (maybe more) of our legal department had moved on to other endeavors -- most of them with other insurers or with private legal firms.  It was an exciting and unsettling time, and it seemed appropriate to get together in the midst of all the chaos to exchange gossip and our plans for the future.

Actually, many of us had been meeting after work occasionally, for a number of years.  We got together at Oliver's, a small, quiet hotel bar in a hotel adjacent to the building in which most of us had first met.  And to Oliver's we instinctively returned.

We met monthly at first.  We felt that eventually our meetings would stop, once we had all found ourselves new places to work (or, in my case, not work).  And after several years, we did gradually meet less frequently.  But, surprisingly, we never stopped completely.  Ten years later, we still meet at irregular intervals, several times a year and always at Christmas.

And we will meet today.  We hang out for maybe three hours, consume a couple or three drinks each, discuss our work and our travels, and generally -- in a world where people tend to drift apart -- keep in touch.  Most of us are attorneys, but paralegals and legal secretaries are also invited and some regularly attend.  We have a core group of about six who always show up unless they have a conflict, but we have a total of sixteen names at present on the "notification" list.  The list expands or contracts depending on peoples' interest.  And we often extend oral invitations to those not on the list but who we feel might be interested.  "Significant others" are always invited, and often enjoy attending.

I'm pleased that we've kept the tradition alive.  I realize from talking with others that it's a tradition that isn't all that common among former co-employees.  But we had a certain esprit de corps while working together, and it's been a strong enough bond to continue for the first decade after we otherwise went our separate ways.

Fortnight in Thailand



Denny's house in
Chiang Mai

The clouds dulling my consciousness have gradually begun to dissipate, two days after my return from Thailand.  After a full, final day in Phuket on Tuesday, I flew an hour and a half to Bangkok at 5:30 p.m., connected with a 1 a.m. six-hour flight to Seoul where I spent seven hours in the airport, and then connected to a ten-hour flight to Seattle.  Thanks to the International Date Line, I arrived home on Wednesday morning.

Lots of sitting, not much sleeping.  But back-to-back viewing over the Pacific Ocean of classic favorites Oliver! and The Graduate.

Aside from the horrors of long-distance flight -- exaggerated here for comic and/or dramatic effect -- my two and a half weeks were entirely enjoyable.  Two and a half weeks that combined a return to places I've enjoyed in the past with a discovery of new charms and time spent with members of my family.

My sister Kathy has been living in a rental house outside Chiang Mai since mid-October, approximately four miles from her son Denny's house.  The two were at the airport to greet me as I slipped through immigration and customs at about 11:30 p.m.  Despite the hour, we were all in great spirits as Denny drove me to Kathy's house, where a detached bedroom awaited me, opening onto a courtyard filled with tropical growth and noisy birds.  That was to be my home for the next eight nights.

Me and my bike:
On the prowl

Denny is a sixth grade teacher at his daughter's international school, and school was in session while I was there.  I didn't, therefore, see as much of him as I would have liked -- especially as his school's in the throes of expansion from an elementary school to a unified elementary/high school, in which Denny will return to high school teaching.  But we all got together after school many evenings, as well as over the weekend.  Before he settled into his profession, Denny had joined me on many mountain treks around the world, and I always enjoy his company.

Denny's dad, Clinton, retired from medical practice, is living permanently in Chiang Mai at Denny's house.  Kathy presented me with a bicycle when I arrived, which was to be my primary transportation between our two houses, as well as a means for zooming around exploring the back roads near Kathy's house.  The ride between Denny's and Kathy's houses took about twenty minutes on small, little-trafficked roads, through rural areas.  The rides were at least as enjoyable as the destinations.  I also walked between the two houses one day, just for the exercise and the experience.

Wat Raiamontean
Old Town, Chiang Mai

Thailand is different from America, of course, in many ways.  But it's also part of the 21st century.  My first evening, we all went out for pizza.  I biked a couple of mornings to a coffee shop, as modern and as pretentious in its offerings as Starbucks, called The Mug.  And we all celebrated Christmas by driving to a nearby shopping center with a multiplex theater where we ate popcorn and watched the 2018 production of the Grinch's attempt to steal Christmas.

As fun as joining a Thai audience in watching the Grinch's antics may have been, I was even more interested in helping Denny's daughter Maury celebrate Thailand's Festival of Lights, or "Loy Krathong." The air was full of fireworks, and paper lanterns lit with candles were everywhere -- including those soaring into the air like hot air balloons. We visited Maury's school while they were preparing their own floatable lanterns, adorned with flowers, which they launched into a pond on the school property. The children, first through sixth grades, hailing from many countries including Thailand, seemed uncannily cheerful, focused, and well-behaved.

After a week of exurban life, Kathy, Clinton and I moved into Chiang Mai's "Old Town" for three nights, returning to the hotel we first discovered a year ago.  "The Three Sis" is a very nice and nicely located boutique hotel -- rooms about $70 -- immediately across the street from the most famous of Chiang Mai's many temples or "wats."  We were able to eat breakfast or imbibe pre-dinner drinks while contemplating monks (and many tourists) streaming in and out of the wat.  We also returned to "La Fourchette," an excellent French restaurant a few doors from our hotel, for our luxury dinner in Chiang Mai.

View from On the Rock
restaurant, Marina Phuket

Finally, we flew to Phuket, returning to a beach resort, the "Marina Phuket," for my fourth visit.  First visited in 2003 as part of a group trek, I've returned to the Marina Phuket with various family members in 2004, 2010, and now 2018.  The resort is a large forest preserve on a point of land protruding into the Indian Ocean, sharing a stretch of adjacent Karon Beach with the general public.  I'm amazed every time I visit by the resort's ability to survive as an oasis of nature, its quiet broken only by the cries of tropical birds, while surrounded by spaces devoted to mass tourism. 

Denny and his daughter flew down to join us for the weekend, and our four nights at the Marina Phuket made an enjoyable close to my Thailand visit.

Denny has signed a contract for another year of teaching in Chiang Mai, and my sister has every intention of returning again next fall for another stay of at least two months.  I plan to return as well, enjoying what is becoming an annual tradition.

Well worth the time it takes to get there.

Madness

"I will do such things,
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be...
The terrors of the earth."
--William Shakespeare, King Lear

“O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

I'm flying to Thailand very early on Sunday.  I have packing and other preparations to complete.  And I seem to be acquiring a cold or some other ailment that makes me sleepy.  So you're not going to get a well-written, well-reasoned final posting to this blog before I fly off to another hemisphere.

But you, like me, have been watching our Great Leader.  Watching him claim with gusto that the disastrous election results were tantamount to a personal victory for himself.  Laughing at those pathetic Republicans who lost, lost only because in his imagination they weren't devoted enough to Trump.  Focusing on the gain of a seat or two in the Senate, and ignoring -- except for those barbs at the losers in his own party -- the losses in the House, the governorships, and the various legislatures.

Seemingly believing himself beloved by the nation, when the raw figures from the Congressional elections (Democrats 56.9 percent to Republicans 41.5 percent in the Senate races)  show an overwhelming majority of the country is hostile to him, and/or his party.

And then there was Europe.  Trump rushes off to France to honor the American war dead from the two world wars, and then doesn't.  He sits in his hotel room and broods and tweets.  There's more, much more, and you've read it in news and opinion reports. He shows up at meetings with other leaders; while they chat and laugh, he stands alone scowling and bitter.

My question is whether he is sane.  I'm not talking about personality disorders -- God knows he clearly has many -- but about whether he is teetering on the brink of sheer madness.  Probably not yet.  We like to apply strict scientific criteria today in diagnosing psychosis.  But in Shakespeare's time, the average citizen felt free to size up the situation, relying on common sense. 

King Donald's court would be buzzing with the question -- is he quite mad?

As far back as February 2017, conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan asked the question:

I keep asking myself this simple question: If you came across someone in your everyday life who repeatedly said fantastically and demonstrably untrue things, what would you think of him? If you showed up at a neighbor’s, say, and your host showed you his newly painted living room, which was a deep blue, and then insisted repeatedly — manically — that it was a lovely shade of scarlet, what would your reaction be? If he then dragged out a member of his family and insisted she repeat this obvious untruth in front of you, how would you respond? If the next time you dropped by, he was still raving about his gorgeous new red walls, what would you think? Here’s what I’d think: This man is off his rocker. He’s deranged; he’s bizarrely living in an alternative universe; he’s delusional. If he kept this up, at some point you’d excuse yourself and edge slowly out of the room and the house and never return.

In the 21 months since those words were written, has Mr. Trump come to appear more rational, more disciplined, more in touch with reality?  I leave the answer as an exercise for the reader.

In the last week, David Remnick wrote a column in the New Yorker, discussing the same issue in often picturesque language.

The President of the United States rages daily on the heath, finding enemies in the shapes of clouds.

Quite.

I shall sit calmly in Chiang Mai, Thailand, contemplating nature, clearing my mind of disturbing thoughts, seeking only the best in the people I meet.  I'll return to America with some trepidation.
 

Placebo effect

Personal injury attorneys know a lot of medicine.  They may not know it well.  They may not understand what they know.  But they grasp it well enough to persuade a jury that they understand medicine as well, if not better, than the physician who is testifying.

Those of us who have spent our careers as defense attorneys -- persuading juries that injured plaintiffs were not really injured, or at least not injured as badly as they say they are -- find our quasi-medical erudition flavored with a healthy dose of cynicism.

"Of course you are suffering from "whiplash"," we sneer, putting sarcastic air quotes around "whiplash.".  "Of course your lung cancer was caused by that rear end accident six years ago."

One aspect of medicine with which we are well familiar is the "placebo effect" -- the known fact that many patients who complain of pain do in fact feel much better if provided totally worthless treatment.  For example, if a physician tells the patient that he's giving him or her a pain reliever, but actually provides sugar pills, the patient will often actually feel much better.  This suggests to a newbie defense attorney that the injury was fake to begin with.  But doctors he trusts will assure him that even a real injury will respond to the patient's belief that he is being given drugs or other treatment that will relieve his pain.

An article by Gary Greenberg in the New York Times Magazine examines recent research into the placebo effect.  As the article notes:

Give people a sugar pill, they have shown, and those patients — especially if they have one of the chronic, stress-related conditions that register the strongest placebo effects and if the treatment is delivered by someone in whom they have confidence — will improve. Tell someone a normal milkshake is a diet beverage, and his gut will respond as if the drink were low fat. Take athletes to the top of the Alps, put them on exercise machines and hook them to an oxygen tank, and they will perform better than when they are breathing room air — even if room air is all that’s in the tank. Wake a patient from surgery and tell him you’ve done an arthroscopic repair, and his knee gets better even if all you did was knock him out and put a couple of incisions in his skin.

The article examines two possible bases for the placebo effect:  One, the more classically "medical," is that certain brain chemicals -- those associated with stress, reward, and good feeling -- are produced in some, but not all, patients in reaction to the interaction that the patient has with a doctor whom he trusts.

This makes sense to me.  If stress can give you a headache or an upset stomach, a caring relationship with a doctor or an acupuncturist or a naturopath could well make your backache feel better.

The second approach, insofar as I understand it, may be completely compatible with the first.  Maybe only the emphasis is different.  Its proponents feel that the placebo effect results almost entirely from the caring interaction between doctor and patient.  These researchers are more interested in the caring relationship than in any chemical or "molecular" basis for the placebo effect.  Their primary proponent, Ted Kaptchuk, has done

a comparative study of conventional medicine, acupuncture and Navajo “chantway rituals,” in which healers lead storytelling ceremonies for the sick. He argued that all three approaches unfold in a space set aside for the purpose and proceed as if according to a script, with prescribed roles for every participant. Each modality, in other words, is its own kind of ritual, and Kaptchuk suggested that the ritual itself is part of what makes the procedure effective, as if the combined experiences of the healer and the patient, reinforced by the special-but-familiar surroundings, evoke a healing response that operates independently of the treatment’s specifics.

"Whoa," I might have exclaimed if I'd taken this fellow's deposition.  "Voodoo medicine."

I'm less skeptical now, partly because the two approaches tend to examine the same phenomenon, merely from different directions.  The more intense the providing of medical care, or the Navajo chanting, or the administering of acupuncture by an empathetic practitioner, the more likely the production of the appropriate brain chemicals under the purely medical model.

Many people, both doctors and laymen, worry that medicine has become too cold and impersonal.  An annual medical exam too often feels like a quick check to see if any expensive drugs or procedures are justified.  If new developments in the understanding of placebo medicine lead to a greater realization that a warm and empathetic relationship between the physician and the patient is therapeutic in itself -- not just as a means to reach a proper diagnosis -- we may be approaching a more effective and satisfying form of medicine.

My skepticism remains to some degree, but is tending to fade away.  As Shakespeare had Hamlet declaim some five centuries ago:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And that may go for medicine as well.

Sand through the hourglass

We pass through time like someone walking through a swarm of mayflies:  The moments come so thick that we hardly notice them dropping around us, and we can't imagine they will ever be gone.  …
We are contiguous with everything that is gone.  We are history.  This moment is already over.
--Sam Anderson (New York Times Magazine)

It is 11:20 a.m. in Seattle.  The temperature is 47 degrees.  The sun is shining; the air is crisp and cold; people walk by my house wearing warm jackets and gloves.  I see one such person being dragged along by a dog on a leash, a large dog wearing a large, warm sweater.  The temperature is forecast to reach a maximum of 52 degrees by 2 p.m.  By then, I will have gone for a walk under autumn leaves.

It is 2:20 a.m. Monday in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  The temperature is 75 degrees.  It is dark and cloudy, and most people are asleep.  The temperature is forecast to reach 85 degrees by 2 p.m..  Showers are forecast all day; it's the tail-end of the monsoon season.

One week from this moment, I will be almost an hour into a twelve-hour flight to Seoul, where I will change planes for a six hour flight to Chiang Mai.  Drinks will have been offered.  I probably will have declined, puritanically concerned about adjusting my circadian rhythms.  I'll accept wine with dinner.

Eighteen hours after that proffered drink, I will arrive in Chiang Mai.  It will be 10 p.m. Monday evening.  The temperature will be about 76 degrees.  I will be greeted by my sister and her son at the airport, and whisked off to her rental home.

By the time I'm in bed that night, I will be not only physically in Chiang Mai, but mentally as well.  It will be nearly midnight Monday night, and the temperature will be in the mid-70s.  I will no longer be in Seattle.  Supposedly, it will be 9 a.m. Monday morning in Seattle, and the temperature will be somewhere around 40 degrees.  But that will not be my world.  Not my reality.  That will be the world of a different place.  And a different time.

My world will be warm and dark.  I will go happily to sleep, eager to re-explore Chiang Mai in the morning, a morning when I'll be wearing shorts and a t-shirt, not jeans and a sweater.

As Sam Anderson suggests, the "today" in which I'm now writing will be history.  This moment, writing in this blog, is in fact over even as I write.  And Seattle itself will be over, finis, kaput, next week.  Just one portion of the mayflies through which I have swum throughout my life, albeit a large portion.  And a portion of that swarm to which I must return two weeks later. 

I will return to it two weeks later, and feel a slight surprise as my train carries me from Sea-Tac airport to Husky Stadium near my home, a ride during which I'll see how little has changed since I left.  A few minor changes, perhaps, as though the "Seattle" set had been hastily reconstructed for my arrival, so hastily reconstructed that a few inaccuracies had escaped the eyes of the workmen. 

But I'll be back.  As though I had never left.  Chiang Mai will move on, so they try to persuade me, undisturbed by both my coming and my going.  But to me it will have been dismantled and stored, awaiting my hoped-for return. 

And I'll be in Seattle once again.  With only photographs to persuade me that my memory matched reality, that I had in fact, for a short time, dwelt in another world.

Is it blue?

I was in Salem last month, as I noted a few posts ago, checking out the House of the Seven Gables and various witchcraft-related sites.  At the end of the day, sitting at the station waiting for the train back to Boston, the talk between a mother and her young daughter sitting next to me kept me entertained.

The little girl was two years old, three at the most.  Like most kids that age, she was more than keeping up her end of the conversation.  She was asking Mom about colors.  "Is this blue?  What about this, Mama?  But is this blue, too?"  

The mother patiently answered all the questions.  "Yes, that's blue. No, that looks kind  of blue but it's really purple.  That's right, the sky is blue today."

I admired the woman's patience.  Myself being the sort of guy who very soon would have told my little girl that Daddy's had a hard day and needs a little alone time, so why don't you go play on the track?  (Oh, not really, but you know what I mean.)

Then I began thinking about the girl's questions.  Color isn't all that easy a concept for a child's brain to grasp, even though her eyes come with the ability to distinguish between colors.  When Mom tells little Betty that something is "blue," what is she talking about?  Is she talking about shape or size or the object's use?  The child has to keep asking if various things are blue in order to figure out what they all have in common.  The sky is blue, her jeans are blue, Mama's necklace is blue.  Sooner or later, she realizes why these disparate items are all called "blue."

Suppose you're a teacher explaining color to a group of intelligent kids who, for some reason, have never learned the concept of color.  How do you even begin to tell them what they're supposed to be looking for?  You can do it only by showing them objects that have the same color, contrasting those items with other objects of a different color, and hoping the kids catch on.

Even then, how do you explain which color is "blue"?  Once learned, the difference between the various shades of blue and, say, orange seems intuitively obvious.  But it really isn't.  A scientist can give an objective definition of "blue" as light with a wavelength between about 4,500 and 4,900 angstroms.  That doesn't help a child.  Again, once they understand "color," you teach them by contrasting blue objects with non-blue objects.  Just as the mother in Salem was doing with her daughter.

Somehow, virtually all of us learn colors, regardless of how skillful, or not, our parenting may have been.  But I recall even in first grade working on numerous exercises where we colored objects blue where the word "blue" was written. We were learning to read the words, of course, but we were also learning (or reinforcing our ability) to differentiate one color from another.

I thought to myself -- in fact I noted on Facebook -- that the little girl was fortunate to have a mother so patient and so involved in her daughter's learning.  Yes, the child no doubt would learn "blue" eventually, even if her mother totally ignored her.  But how much better to learn it from a loving mother when she was two or three, rather than as a novel concept among scornful classmates when she reached kindergarten.

I remember a girl in high school literature class who -- it finally became obvious to everyone -- had no understanding of the concept of "rhyme."  The teacher had been increasingly irritated that she would pick one word to rhyme with another when their sounds had only the vaguest resemblance.  For example, she might have said that "trick" and "track" rhyme.  Or "paper" and "pavement."   I doubt that the girl -- not the sharpest blade in the drawer, admittedly -- had an organic inability to detect whether two words rhymed.  It was just something she had never thought about, and that no one had ever explained to her.

The concept of rhyming poetry itself was probably a complete novelty to her.  Our tenth grade teacher wasn't inclined to start from scratch with the poor girl.  The teacher just more or less threw up her hands and began talking to someone else.

School teachers are (or can be)  great, but parents are their kids' first and best teachers.  Few children in school will ever find a teacher who can offer them the time and attention that a parent will.  Kids whose curiosity has been ignored or throttled before starting school may find themselves at a disadvantage that they are never able to overcome.

Trump country

Until last night, like everyone else I had mentally divided the country into blue states and red states.  We on the two coasts were blue, as were portions of the industrial mid-West.  Most of the rest of the country was red.  Ghastly red.

What I saw last night, as the election returns were posted by CNN and other networks, was that reality was more complex.  Most states had red sections and blue sections.  When the analysis was fine-tuned, it was apparent that even single Congressional districts had red areas and blue areas.  For example, the district in south central Florida to which the announcer kept returning -- in the southern portion, it was urban and blue, but in the north it was rural and red.  Which section would produce the most votes, and thus determine the winner?

It appears that the most crucial predictor in guessing whether a voter is apt to be be pro-Trump or anti-Trump -- which in today's world means Republican or Democrat -- isn't whether  he is undereducated, or unemployed, or White, or over the age of 60, or fears loss of status.  All of those factors do affect the calculus, but the most critical factor is whether he lives in a city or suburb, as opposed to a rural area or small town.

Last night, sitting before our television sets, we looked for hours at the map of Texas.  A big red state, but with small blue islands representing a disproportionately large number of voters in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso.  Enough voters in those small blue islands to almost give Texas a Democratic senator.  In Kansas and Missouri, the districts including the two parts of Kansas City were two tiny specks in a mass of red.  In the center of Oklahoma -- the epitome of a red state -- was a spot of blue, representing Oklahoma City.  And even in Utah, the district including Salt Lake City is -- as of this writing -- trending blue.

My own Washington has long been a blue state, but on the map you see a large red state with a splash of blue surrounding the shores of Puget Sound.  Those are the most urban portions of the state, joined together with their great suburban areas -- suburbs once pure red that have, like suburbs across America, turned blue in recent years. 

The House went decidedly blue while, at the same time, the Senate has gone a bit redder.  It seems odd.  But it isn't.

Although the national map showing House victories is mostly red, away from the coasts, it is thus sprinkled with blue representing urban areas.  But on the Senate map, those areas are pure red.  Senators are chosen by statewide majorities.

The Great Compromise, at the time the Constitution was written, gave every state equal representation in the Senate.  It was "undemocratic" -- but it was a necessary concession to persuade small states like Delaware and Rhode Island to join in a union with large states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Those colonies had all been equal after independence, and the smaller colonies were understandably nervous about surrendering their total independence without some protection against rule by a nationwide majority in the newly created Republic.

But the unintended consequence is that protection of states with small populations is only of incidental importance in today's politics.  What is being protected -- and greatly magnified -- is the dominance of the interests of rural areas and small towns over the interests of the more populous urban and suburban populations.  Oklahoma and Kansas, for example, may each send a Democratic member to Congress, but their senators will always be Republican.  State after state through the farm states of the prairie Mid-West and the southern cotton-growing regions each sends its two Republican senators off to Washington.  North and South Dakota together send only two representatives to the 435-member House, but they together send four senators to the 100-member Senate.

Quite apart from the question of gerrymandering in House districts, the constitutional arrangement for the Senate's composition virtually assures that for the foreseeable future rural America will have an outsized institutional advantage over the rest of the country.  Only when people with urban interests and background begin living in great numbers in rural states -- as is perhaps beginning to happen in Montana -- will  this bias cease to be so obvious.  (Not many red states, of course, have Montana's scenic and recreational attractions.)

One solution would be for our national population to become increasingly uniform in interests and concerns, regardless of whether they live in cities or farms.  I might have predicted such a confluence of characteristics, because television and the internet interconnect us so radically.  But the opposite appears to be happening -- rural people are digging in their heals and increasing in their disdain of "city folk."  And something analogous is obvious among urban residents.

Solution?  I have none.  I just observe the problem with interest.  And note that Article 5 of the Constitution prohibits any amendment changing the way the Senate is constituted, insofar as that amendment would permit a state,"without its Consent, [to] be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."  

Deracination

I was once part of the flow, never thinking of myself as a presence.  Then I looked in the mirror and decided to be free.  All that my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years.  Then it will be over.

As Americans, we are accustomed to being a magnet for the unhappy, the dissatisfied, and the persecuted from other countries.  Whether we welcome immigrants, or hate them, we take for granted that every migrant who passes our border, documented or not, has essentially hit the jackpot, won the lottery.  He has reached the land of eternal bliss.

We fail to appreciate the sacrifices the migrant has made to reach America.  Not merely the discomfort and dangers of travel, and the risk of arrest and deportation, but also the loss of homeland.  So what, we ask?  Some poor soul from a backward, third world country?  How can he complain of loss when he has reached the land of milk and honey?

Santosh was a domestic worker living in Bombay.  He worked as a cook for a middle class businessman.  He slept on the sidewalks, except during the monsoon when he slept in a small closet under his employer's stairs.  His job earned him a pittance, but his needs were few. 

He lived in squalor, we would say.  He wouldn't agree.

I was so happy in Bombay.  I had a certain position.  I worked for an important man.  The highest in the land came to our bachelor chambers and enjoyed my food and showered compliments on me. I also had my friends.  We met in the evenings on the pavement below the gallery of our chambers.  Some of us, like the tailor's bearer and myself, were domestics who lived in the street.  ... 
In the evenings it was cool.  …  The pavement was swept and sprinkled, bedding brought out from daytime hiding places, little oil-lamps lit.  … [W]e read newspapers, played cards, told stories and smoked. 
[In the morning,] I was free simply to stroll.  I liked walking beside the Arabian Sea, waiting for the sun to come up.  Then the city and the ocean gleamed like gold.  Alas for those morning walks, that sudden ocean dazzle, the moist salt breeze on my face, the flap of my shirt, that first cup of hot sweet tea from a stall, the taste of the first leaf-cigarette.

Alas, indeed.  Santosh's employer was sent by his company to Washington, D.C.  Santosh faced the choice -- go with his employer, or return to his hill village where his wife and children lived.  He had become too much an urbanite.  He chose to travel to America.

V. S. Naipaul's novella "One Out of Many" was published in 1971, as part of a collection entitled In a Free State.  Bombay (now Mumbai) was not the modern city it is today, and Washington was experiencing devastating race riots and arson; entire sections of Washington, including the area in which Santosh and his employer lived, were being blackened with flames.  But I suspect that in much of Mumbai life, beyond the tourist areas, life goes on much as Santosh describes it.  And I suspect that at least some of the racial tensions that prompted the riots in our nation's capital still simmer below the surface.

But Santosh's problems are far more fundamental than coping with tensions between the whites (which he did not consider himself) and the people he knew as hubshi, blacks who aroused at least as much prejudice in India as they did in America.  The physical city itself he found disorienting, and the behavior of the people of all classes and races was impenetrable.  He spoke virtually no English on arrival.   He had no friends.  He had no status.  He enjoyed cooking for his employer -- and for the restaurant for which he later worked -- but when work hours were over he was at a total loss, despite gradually picking up some English.

His only ventures outside his quarters eventually were limited to visits to the supermarket, excursions that made him uncomfortable.  He watched television, which gave him his only (distorted) insight into the life of white Americans.

Eventually, he married a hubshi woman who had shown some interest in him.  They knew nothing about each other when he asked and she accepted.  He tells us nothing about his marriage, but his account of how he spends his days does not include mention of his wife.

Like many immigrants -- some of whom, unlike Santosh, never learn any English at all -- he has no real life or enjoyments.  As he says in my quotation from the story's conclusion, he merely goes through the motions as he waits for his eventual death.

Santosh's story reminds me of André Aciman's frequent accounts of his childhood life in Alexandria.  Aciman and his family came from an infinitely more sophisticated and cosmopolitan background than did the humble cook from Bombay.  But André, too, continually laments that no matter where he lives or visits, he never feels he is "home."  Home is Alexandria, or more accurately a now-dead Alexandria, to which he can never return.

Permanently leaving the society you grow up in is a radical act. It is an act requiring much bravery, and is usually motivated by intolerable difficulty in living life in one's true "home."  Groups of men, women, and children do not lightly  leave their homes and walk 1,600 miles to a country they know little about.  We can't assure them happiness in our very different society, although -- as the Latinos of our Southwest show -- we can offer them hope for their children's future happiness.