Final hours

Seattle Times photo

Max was a brilliant 13-year-old Seattle public school student, one who attended a middle school with a program for gifted kids.  He returned from a vacation in Peru with his mother and siblings on Sunday.  On Monday, Max persuaded his dad to take him and three friends, ages 12 and 13, for a drive over Snoqualmie Pass.

His father attempted to pass another car.  He lost control, and rolled his SUV.  None of the boys was wearing a seatbelt.  All were ejected from the car.  The father was wearing his seatbelt and received no serious injuries.  The car that was being passed sustained only minor damage, and none of its passengers was injured.

Max was killed.  Two of his friends are in critical condition, and the other is in serious condition.  All are in intensive care. 

The father apparently had been using a prescription medication at the time of the accident.  The medication and the condition for which it was prescribed have not been disclosed.  The father was arrested for driving under the influence of the medication, and charged with vehicular homicide and three counts of vehicular assault.

This entire story is so tragic in so many respects.  Max had begged his father to take them for a ride.  Aside from the medication, there is no suggestion that the father wasn't an excellent parent.  He's now lost his son, and knows he has caused the severe injury, possibly fatal, of three other boys.  I suspect his legal liability is the last thing he cares about at this point.

The boys should have been wearing their seatbelts.  This is an accident in which seatbelts obviously made the difference between life and serious injury or death.  And the father, I'm sure, realizes that he should have checked to make sure that the kids were belted up before starting the engine.  And yet, who can blame the kids for acting like kids?  And who hasn't forgotten, more than once, to check that all his passengers were belted up?

But beyond these obvious legal and safety issues, what strikes me -- hardly for the first time -- is how precarious a hold on life we all have.  I think of Max, home from an amazing vacation, eager to have a final outing with school friends before school started, begging his dad for a ride.  He came from a good family; he was bright and was about to return to an excellent school; and he was blessed with close friends.  He probably had already begun having thoughts about high school, and even about where he hoped to attend college. Life couldn't have looked brighter.

He could never have suspected, when he and his friends jumped into his dad's car, that he had only a few short hours before his life would be over.  His mother recalled that Max

convinced his father (my ex) to take them on a road trip. I kissed my son goodbye, told him that I loved him and got a call from the state trooper 5 hours later … He was brilliant and kind and fun and strong-willed and had so much life ahead of him.

His school is making plans to provide counseling to the boys' classmates when school opens next week.

"Highland Ghosts" visitors

Aside from a few friends and family members, my readership has always been a great mystery to me.  I know I have worldwide readers, and I know which countries they're from.  But that's pretty much all I know.

During the last 48 hours, Google Blogger (which hosts this blog) has reported 36 visits to one of my 2011 posts entitled "Highland Ghosts" -- an account of the Glencoe Massacre in the 18th century.  The visits have come not from just one person or one country.  They have come from readers in Germany, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, France, and the United States -- and possibly other nations.  It's a strange pattern.

"Highland Ghosts" has attracted more readers than average.  But until now, over the past seven years, the visitors have just trickled in.   I've never seen anything like this burst of activity.

Was "Highland Ghosts" cited somewhere in a travel article, or by a school history teacher?  I can't figure it out. If anyone reads this post and knows or suspects why readers have shown this recent interest, I'd love to hear from you.  Just add a comment below to today's post.

Thanks, and be careful about letting English soldiers sleep overnight in your house!

Purgatory in Seattle

Since my welcome hike to Snow Lake last Friday (see prior post), life has been -- well, not hell exactly, but maybe purgatory.  Like living atop a backyard barbecue.

I complained about it a week ago.  We then had a couple of days respite -- a day or so when we were allowed to walk the earth among the living.  And then back into the fires.  Record high temperatures (for Seattle), combined with smoke that registered in the "unhealthy for all living things" category.

The smoke was everywhere, indoors and out.  The nights weren't cool enough to significantly reduce the indoor temperatures.  You folks from elsewhere have air conditioning, which would have solved some of my problems.  We've never needed air conditioning in the eminently healthful Northwest Corner.

We were advised to stay indoors and not exercise.  Nevertheless, I waited until dusk and did my usual walk through the swirling fumes.  I went to a Mariners game Monday night.  Only a few people were wearing the recommended face masks, but you could see the smoke diffracting the game lights and dramatically dimming the downtown skyline.  (Mariners beat Houston in a thriller, thank you.) 

The sun was a red disk, both morning and evening.  An evil red.  The skies were cloudless, but gray.  The smoke held the day's heat close to the earth, slowing its ability to radiate into the night sky.

The total effect on me was physical and psychological enervation.  I couldn't concentrate well enough to read anything more lengthy or complex than newspaper articles.  Aside from my enforced evening marches, I couldn't muster the energy to move around.  I vegetated, while in the background the Trumpian madness filled the news reports.  The whole world seemed to be teetering on the edge of dystopia.

I obviously had no energy to blog.  (Hahaha -- the main point I wish to make.)

I woke up this morning feeling the air cooler, as had been predicted.  And it was lightly drizzling, which had not been predicted.  Westerly winds and a little bit of drizzle have done wonders for reducing the smoke in the air -- at least for the moment. 

I return gradually to life.  My brain begins working.  My curiosity begins extending beyond the twin marvels of Manafort and Cohen.  I think I've survived.

My weather app assures me that we'll have highs in the lower 70s and high 60s for the next ten days.  The smoke shouldn't be returning.  I love it!

Snow Lake

I hadn't been hiking since I returned from Scotland in June. It was mid-August already and the summer was slipping away.  So yesterday at 8 a.m., Pat M. and I met up at the Park 'n' Ride lot at Exit 22 on I-90, and drove together in his car to Snoqualmie Pass.

We parked in the parking lot at the Alpental ski area.  The trail to Snow Lake takes off across a small road adjacent to the ski area.

My climb of (or, more accurately, descent from) Ben Nevis in Scotland had caused some serious pain in my toes.  Luckily, the six days of hiking thereafter was on primarily level ground, and didn't really cause any further problems.  But I was a bit nervous about the climb to a mountain lake, and especially the downhill portions on the return.  I've read that your feet spread out larger as you get older, which makes formerly well-fitting hiking boots become ill-fitting.  So I sacrificed the ankle support given by my boots and hiked in walking shoes -- low rise, but at least they had lugged soles.

As it turns out, some of the muscles in my legs and feet became a bit achy, from not having been used for a while.  And my ankles were a bit stressed.  But the toes that concerned me caused me no problems at all.

The hike enters the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area about half way to the lake, so you are required to sign in and hang permits on your backpack.  (This is a self-service operation that you perform at the trailhead.)  The trail for the first mile and a half or so works its way gradually upward until you reach an intersection with the trail to Source Lake.  Ignoring this intersecting trail, you turn right and begin a series of switchbacks.  The trail becomes extremely rocky as the switchbacks cross back and forth over rockfalls.  As the switchbacks shorten and become ever steeper, you at least have the assurance that the climb is nearing an end.

I had hoped that the lake would be a short dip beneath the top, but the trail goes over the ridge and continues down the other side for a fair distance before you reach the lake.

We encountered fairly heavy fog at the beginning of the hike, which gave the trees a ghostly appearance.  We met fog again as we approached the lake.  At one moment, the entire lake and its spectacular shoreline would be visible, and the next moment one could barely see the water below the trail. 

The trail splits near the lake, where it essentially meets a trail circling the lake.  We walked a short distance in each direction, both of which offer pleasant places to stop, enjoy the scenery, and have lunch.  The trail to the left leads in a few feet to the abandoned ruins of a stone cabin.  We speculated about why anyone would build a cabin at such an inaccessible location, and how they kept it provisioned.  Now, of course, it's located within the Wilderness Area, and can't be rebuilt.

For me, at least, the downhill portion of the switchbacks was trickier than the uphill.  Unless your ankles are strong, and your balance is excellent, it would be worthwhile bringing hiking sticks with you. 

We hiked on a Friday, and the trail was at least as crowded as the Mt. Si trail -- I can only imagine what it's like on a summer weekend.  Unlike the Mt. Si trail, which dead ends at the summit, the Snow Lake trail continues from the opposite side of the lake ever more deeply into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.  But if you enjoy a bit of people-watching, you can put up with the lack of a true "wilderness experience" and enjoy both the spectacular surrounding mountains and your fellow hikers.

The round trip to Snow Lake is six miles, with an elevation gain of about 1,700 feet.  If you get an early start, as we did, you can easily be back in Seattle before the evening rush hour traffic.

Smoke gets in my eyes

Plane landing in the smog
at Sea-Tac Airport

I was about to go out for my afternoon half marathon, but the Seattle Times warns that the “elderly” should avoid exercise because of the current air pollution. So, for the sake of my health, I’m keeping to my hammock with a calming G&T.
--Facebook, Aug. 14, 2018

My Facebook humor on Tuesday drew more appreciation than usual.  Everyone in the Northwest Corner is experiencing the same frustration -- it's hazy and smoky outside.

When I was young, "Los Angeles" and "smog" were practically synonymous.  You couldn't go wrong making a joke about L.A. smog.  They went together like "orange" and "Trump."  Los Angeles might have glamor, and freeways, and entertainment, and sunshine, and oranges, and oil wells.  But it also had smog.  We'll just sit up here in our drizzle, we thought, grinning, but thanks.

But that was then.  Smog reports by a website called Weather Underground gave Seattle Tuesday a rating of 154 (the EPA's rating was 170).  That gave Seattle one of the worst smog ratings in the world.  Beijing was 54; Delhi was 89; Mumbai was 152.  Only Abu Dhabi edged out Seattle, with 155.

The Seattle Times reports that this is the second straight year Seattle has experienced a very smoggy summer.  This has been one of the hottest and driest summers on record, resulting in a record number of wildfires.  We are surrounded by wildfires in three directions.  Northerly winds bring down smoke from as far away as British Columbia (566 wildfires currently burning).  Only westerly winds can blow the smoke away.

Fortunately, westerlies off the Pacific aren't rare in Seattle, and the flow of marine air is supposed to reduce -- but not eliminate -- the contaminants in the air today and tomorrow.  Next week, however, we are back to high temperatures and a lot of sun.

But it's just wood smoke, you say?  Experts say that particulates of any kind -- whether from burning wood or burning fuel oil -- have the same effect on your body.

The small particles go to “deepest parts of your lungs,” triggering an inflammation response from the body, he said. That response can increase your heart rate and blood pressure.

Seattle Times (Aug. 15, 2018).   My blood pressure, measured at 2 p.m., was 104/63, so I'm not at death's door.  But for those with borderline health, the air quality is no joking matter. 

It seems like every year is getting hotter, and drier, and smokier.  And less healthy for us all.  But fortunately, the administration has determined that global warming is a liberal hoax, so we don't have that to worry about.  And even if it existed, man's activities didn't cause it.  And even if man's activities caused it, there's nothing that we can do about it now.  And even if we could do anything about it now, we're not going to do it.

So maybe next year it will be cool and wet.  And the air will be pristine.   Meanwhile, join me in sucking down those gin and tonics.

Meta monstrosity

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

You good folks silently, but politely and patiently, endure a constant drumbeat of my blog's "book reviews," reviews that I also copy and paste onto Goodreads.  A less silent (but still affable) Goodreads viewer has advised me that my book reviews aren't really book reviews.   And they aren't.  They wouldn't pass muster as essays in Miss Feeny's eleventh grade English Literature class. 

I guess that, for purposes of my blog, I use "book review" as a term of art for "my personal reactions to a book I've read, along with a summary of its plot."  Because virtually no one reads my blog, I feel free to use my "book reviews" simply as a way to avoid forgetting a book as soon as I've read it.

Or, to summarize, "stuff it!"

Today's post -- and I will try (but fail) to be brief -- is neither a book review nor a "book review."  I'm simply noting a peculiarity that amused me.  Allow me to explain.

In 1987, Twentieth Century Fox released The Princess Bride.  It received very high ratings -- from both professional critics and those viewers who viewed it -- on Rotten Tomatoes.  Not that many viewers viewed it, however, nor did it apparently receive any major awards.  But it became, as we say, a "cult classic."

I've never seen it.  In fact, it's only recently that I'd even heard of it.  But suddenly, serious people who -- I had assumed -- would not care for a movie about someone named "Princess Buttercup" were acting aggrieved that I'd never seen it.  "Oh, you have to!" they exclaimed.  My resolve to avoid what I assumed was a campy takeoff on the Pirates of Penzance -- which in turn was a campy takeoff on Il Trovatore and other cultural icons -- was only stiffened.

But when reading The Temple of Gold by William Goldman (see last prior post) I learned that Goldman had written the book on which the movie was based (and assisted with the screenplay) …  Oh well, I thought, why not?  After writing at one time a review of a Charlie Chan novel, I couldn't really be overly fastidious.

Goldman "claims" that an author named S. Morgenstern wrote The Princess Bride at some unknown time in the past.  When Goldman was a boy, recovering from pneumonia, his father read him the story, chapter by chapter, night after night.  At times, Goldman felt his father was skipping portions, but his father assured him that if he didn't like it, he'd have to blame Morgenstern.  The dad was just reading the book.

In the fullness of time, Goldman had a son of his own, Jason.  After much difficulty, he located a copy of The Princess Bride, which he gave to the boy on his tenth birthday.  You who are parents can guess the result.  His wife assured him: 

He tried to read it.  He did read the first chapter.  Chapter Two was impossible for him, so when he'd made a sufficient and reasonable attempt, I told him to stop.  Different people have different tastes.

Goldman didn't much like his son anyway, and this was the final straw.

But then he read the book himself and realized the problem.  Morgenstern had written the book in part as a satire on the pretensions of royalty -- a serious issue.  But Goldman's dad had read him only "the action stuff, the good parts."  Chapter Two contained "sixty pages of text dealing with Prince Humperdinck's ancestry and how his family got control of Florin and this wedding and that child begetting this one over here..."  Golden couldn't bear to read it himself.  (When my own mother read me Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I begged her to omit pages of description of undersea life, lovely coral, etc., and get on with the action.  She was a purist, and I had to listen to it all.)

And so, Golden decided to write an abridged version, a version leaving out vast sections of boring stuff that might appeal to a scholarly adult with an eye for Morgenstern's sense of irony, but not to the casual reader.  And not to a child.  Certainly not to his own thick-headed child.

That alone might (or might not) be an amusing way to present a fantasy/fairy tale.  But Goldman takes it to another level.  As the Princess story proceeds, he interrupts it continually with asides (in italics) explaining his justification for excising portions of the "original" Morgenstern text, and detailing his arguments with editors and others regarding the propriety in so doing.  At one point, he becomes so incensed at his publisher that he begs his readers to write the editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt at their New York address to voice their support for Goldman's position.

 Goldman's professional life is well known.  He's written a number of novels and a large number of high profile screenplays, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men.  The preparation of the abridged text, the arguments with editors, the travel about the country and abroad associated with the book -- as well as subsequent work on the Princess Bride screenplay -- all purportedly took place while documented events in his real life were occurring -- events to which he repeatedly refers.  The reader loses his sense of which reality to believe. 

The European country in which the events of The Princess Bride occur is the fictitious Florin, and its adversary neighbor, the equally fictitious Guilder.  In a post-text chapter, Goldman discusses flying to Florin to check out surviving ruins of places described in Morgenstern's original novel -- a novel based on events in Florin's actual history.  He describes his Air France flight to Brussels, where he changed planes to take the "InterItalia" flight to Guilder, "and then just the short hop to Florin City."  This follows his visit to Bangor, Maine, where he had a bitter argument with Stephen King as to which of them would do the screenplay for a sequel to the original movie.

One comes close to losing one's mind.  Let me make myself clear:  To the best of my knowledge, Florin and Guilder are fictitious countries.  Goldman did not have the arguments with either Mr. King or his own editors that he claims.  Goldman's dad never read the Morgenstern's original to him, no matter how touching the father-son bond described by him may seem.  Goldman never gave the Morganstern book to his son Jacob, because Goldman does not have, nor ever has had, a son. He has two daughters.

But another reason he did not read it to his son is that there never was a Morganstern original for him to give.  In fact, there never was an author named S. Morganstern. 

You must believe me.  As impossible as it may seem after reading this book, not only is the underlying story of the Princess Bride a fairy tale, a work of fiction -- as everyone agrees.  So is the entire book, including all of Goldman's comments about his work on the abridgement, and how the work affected his life.  It is so easy to lose track of this fact.  Let me emphasize -- the entire book is not only fiction.  It is a complex tissue of outright lies! 

Except, of course, where it's not.  Goldman did write screenplays.  He's probably even pals with Stephen King.

How did the underlying story of the Princess Bride come out?  Has that been lost in all the wrangling over the meta aspects of the book?  Well, didn't you see the movie?  How did that come out -- since I haven't seen it?  Did Princess Buttercup marry her pirate boyfriend?  Or did Prince Humperdinck kill her in pursuit of his nefarious planned war with Guilder?  

How does the book end? 

You'd better read it yourself.  Why?  Because "Oh, you have to."  

The Temple of Gold

Go meet the new family's son, Ray's mother tells him.  He's about your age, and he seems like an absolute angel.

Ray, a seventh grader bearing a grudge against life in general, hated him already.

"I hear you're an absolute angel," I said to him that morning.
"I  hear you're not," he came right back, which threw me because I didn't know how the news had spread so fast.

Ray, a fairly nice looking, outdoorsy kid, who struggles to get by in school.  Zock, an "ugly" straight-A student who loves poetry.  They have nothing in common, and so, of course, after a brief fight, they become best friends.

William's Goldman's first novel, The Temple of Gold (1956), which he dashed off in three weeks, tells a tale that probably has been lived by many a small town kid.  A childhood reasonably happy, because he doesn't know better.  A high school career that is undistinguished academically, but fun, exciting -- the odd synergy between the two boys making them joint leaders among other students.  Graduation.  One boy remaining in his small Illinois town, aimless, messing around with girls, choosing girls badly, being repeatedly dumped.  Spending night after night alone, drinking, drunk.  The other boy living an exciting life in the Ivy League.  All the makings of tragedy.

They part, following graduation, with characteristic humor.

"Well, Zocker," I said belting him one on the arm.  "Don't take any wooden nickels."
"My mother has already warned me."
"And stay loose."
"I shall," he said.  I shall endeavor to try."
"Do endeavor so," I said, imitating him.
We shook hands.  "Good-by," I said.  "Good-by, Euripides."
But neither of us moved.
"I hear you're an absolute angel," I said finally.
"I hear you're not," he said.
Then we both ran.

Zock returns home after his first year at Harvard, excited to see Ray again.  After one year, Ray wants only to drink.  Ray insists on driving while drunk.  The inevitable accident.  Zock is killed.  "Murdered" in the eyes of Zock's parents, of the townspeople, and of Ray himself.

Ray joins the Army four days later, unwittingly contributes to the death of a fellow recruit, and is discharged.  He marries the whore who he's been seeing in town.  As a newly married man, he determines to pull himself together.  In effect -- although it's not made explicit -- he tries to live the life that Zock would have lived.  Had he lived.  Had Ray not killed him  He enrolls in the local college. He studies hard and becomes an A student.  He works his butt off to become editor of the school literary magazine.  He fails to become editor only because the adviser can't forget the boy's past, and refuses to appoint him..

Meanwhile, his wife tires of  his dedication to his studies and to the magazine.  She's sick of being a "good girl."  She has an affair with the 16-year-old boy next door, and then leaves.  Unlucky at school; unlucky at love; unlocky at friendship.

Ray sinks lower and lower.  Not for the first time, he ends up at Zock's grave in the cemetery.

"Zock, I'm cracking.  Help me.  Help me for Christ's sake.  I can't find the handle, Zock.  Tell me what to do.  Tell me now because I'm cracking."

He finally finds himself lying in bed, spending a spell in the hospital's mental health ward.

The Temple of Gold was published at roughly the same time as Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.  It is written in the same breezy, informal style, and is told by the same sort of confused adolescent, one whose decisions appear to the reader as disastrous and self-defeating.  Goldman's work is darker, perhaps because it does not stop where Catcher in the Rye stops, at a stage where we still see some realistic hope for the future (as Goldman's original manuscript did, before his publisher insisted that the novel be doubled in length). 

The story attempts something of a hopeful final few pages, but I had the feeling that Ray had played all of his cards, and had pretty much lost all of his chips.  He's like guys we've all known, kids who might have made a good life for themselves, but who made poor decisions they lacked the resources to overcome later. 

Ray's glory days were in high school, and his friendship with Zoch was the golden thread that ran through his life.  He attempted to relate to his girlfriends with the same breezy, jokey, mildly-insulting approach that had been so successful with Zoch.  It might have worked with some girls even then; it might well have worked in 2018.  It didn't work in the 1950s, in small town Illinois.

All of the tragic aspects of the novel having been noted, the dialogue is often quite funny, especially in the early chapters between Ray and Zock, and between them and their high school friends.

Goldman's subsequent career was prolific.  Among his novels, he wrote The Princess Bride.  He has written numerous screenplays, including All the President's Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Life near the border

UTEP students

If you take a look at a county map of Texas, displaying the presidential vote in red or blue colors, you'll not be surprised to see that the state is largely red.  Exceptions, of course, for the blue islands of Dallas and Houston, and a few other counties.

Way out west, however, lies perhaps the bluest of the blue counties -- El Paso County, which voted almost three to one in favor of Hillary Clinton over Trump.   El Paso is surrounded on the north and west by New Mexico, and on the south by Mexico -- neither of which has much love for Trump or the Republicans.  Adjoining El Paso on the east is Hudspeth County, which makes a large red blob on the map -- but that county is all sagebrush, with fewer than 3,500 residents.  El Paso County, tiny in geography, has the sixth largest population of any county in Texas, with over 800,000 residents.

El Paso, city and county, are heavily Hispanic ethnically.  The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has a student body that is  about 80 percent Hispanic, and the population of El Paso County itself is similar.

I visited El Paso for the first time in March, not realizing that I'd be flying in again this past weekend for the wedding of a college friend's son.  The wedding itself was in Mesilla, a tiny town sharing a border with New Mexico's second largest city, Las Cruces, about forty miles north of El Paso. 

Mesilla may be a dot on the map now, but it predates its much larger neighbor, and was at one time the capital of a military district that included both present day Arizona and New Mexico.  Its inclusion in the United States was disputed with Mexico, until secured by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.  It was the site of two major Civil War battles, and its courthouse was the site of the murder trial of Billy the Kid. 

Mesilla is pretty sleepy today, but history hangs heavily over the town.  Doña Ana County, which includes Las Cruces and Mesilla, is 63 percent Hispanic.

I emphasize the ethnicity of these areas because I'm interested in the Mexican-American experience within America.  While Hispanics are widespread throughout the country, up here in the Northwest Corner the dominant white culture is influenced more by Asians, both native-born and immigrant.  We have a president who seems, for his own political purposes, to single out Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants for scathing attacks.

What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.

Trump on Fox News (2015).

I don't question that Mexican immigrants, newly arrived in the United States, often face difficult problems of language and culture, as has every other immigrant group since the nation's founding.  But I suggest that Mr. Trump, if he has any interest in immigration, aside from using it politically as a weapon, should wander about the streets of El Paso, and Mesilla, and Las Cruces.  He might be startled at how "American" these "criminal" Americans and aspirational Americans would appear.

Fiction is fiction, not scientific research.  But the young adult novels of Benjamin Sáenz (e.g., He Forgot to Say Goodbye, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), written by a Mexican-American professor and former priest, have helped focus my attention on the increasing success of the Mexican-American community.  Poverty remains a problem, of course, but many of their young people are quickly working their way into the middle class and into positions of business and political leadership.

A quick walk through UTEP's campus while the university is in session shows the direction that this community is taking -- the determination of many of its young people, already assimilated into American culture, to achieve upward mobility economically. 

My personal knowledge of life in the El Paso region is obviously miniscule, and largely hearsay and anecdotal.  But I like what I've seen.  I enjoy visiting the area and I'm impressed by its culture.

Mexican-Americans and other Hispanics will be valued members of our nation long after Donald Trump has moved on to other endeavors.