Kashmir trip canceled

Dear Kashmir Travelers,

We are very sorry to inform you that we will not be able to run our March 22 - April 2 Kashmir trip due to the deteriorating security situation in India and Kashmir. Since the bombing last week in Kashmir, the tension between the two countries has escalated and news from the region indicates that Kashmir is under curfew and activity is curtailed for the foreseeable future.

We understand this news is disappointing, and sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause, however our travelers safety always comes first, and therefore we feel the cancellation of the departure is the most responsible action to take at this time. We will be in contact with you shortly to facilitate processing your refunds and generating a letter to support your request of refund from your air carrier, if needed.

We would also like to offer you an inconvenience credit of $300 per person to use towards another trip. We do have a Kashmir departure October 18 - 29, 2019 that we would be happy to transfer you to if that works for your schedule. We also understand that the spring might be the best timing for you and thus would suggest our upcoming Jordan or Iran departures (Discover Ancient Jordan & Petra April 3 - 14, Treasures of Iran April 24 - May 8) or a private trip to India or elsewhere? Please let us know the best time for our Regional Specialist Brian Allen to contact you to assist in arranging an alternative to this trip.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience this causes, and also thank you for your patience in waiting to hear whether this departure would run. We look forward to working with you to arrange the next steps in your travel as it pertains to this trip and potential other options.
-------------------------------------------
My cat expressed his sympathy, but he seemed insincere.

War in Kashmir?

Srinagar in peaceful times

Three more weeks until I fly to India.  At least, that's the plan.  After a day or so in Delhi, the remainder of my visit will be in areas along the Pakistan border -- Dharamsala, just south of Kashmir in Himachel Pradesh; Amritsar in Punjab, virtually on the border with Pakistan; and Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, and its surrounding areas.

Meanwhile, the war drums beat ever louder.  Pakistani terrorists attacked Indian security personnel last week.  India believes the attack was authorized by the Pakistani government, and sent planes into Pakistan.  Pakistan sent planes into India.  An Indian plane was shot down in Pakistan territory, and its pilot taken captive. 

The Indian people cry for revenge, and their government led by Hindu nationalists at least pretends to give it to them.  The Pakistan government itself, for a change, appears to be acting in a more restrained and adult manner.

Civil defense goes on in Indian-controlled Kashmir.  The government is building 14,000 bunkers for local families to hide out in during bombing and artillery fights.  Non-Kashmiris who can get out are getting out, and tourism is at a standstill.

JAMMU, India — Migrant workers are fleeing India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir and tourist arrivals have fallen to a trickle amid an escalating conflict with Pakistan, badly hurting businesses in the Himalayan region known for its scenic beauty and fruit harvests.

Hundreds of taxis stood idle at the main railway station of Jammu, the winter capital of the state, …

--New York Times (my bold face)

Local airports have been closed, and migrants are fleeing by train.  Pakistan has closed its airspace.  Thai Airways canceled more than a dozen flights to Europe, because their routes passed through Pakistan air space.  Other airlines are re-routing flights to avoid Pakistan.

 

Twitter accounts in the two countries have reportedly been dominated by war hawks from both countries.

 

So far, I've received no indication that my trip will be canceled.  Much of our travel is by road, but longer stretches are by air.  On March 24, we fly from Delhi to Dharamsala -- not in Kashmir, but close to its border.  On March 28, we fly from Amritsar, on the Punjab border with Pakistan, to Srinagar in Kashmir.  And on April 2, we fly from Srinagar back to Delhi.  All these flights are either over Kashmir, or near the border with Pakistan, or both.  Will airspace on the Indian side of the border be closed by the end of the month?  Will it be safe?

 

I don't know, but all three of the above airports, as well as others in the area, were shut down by Indian authorities earlier today.  The order was reportedly withdrawn hours afterwards.

 

Ah, we live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse would have it.  I can do nothing but sit and chew my fingernails.  I suspect our trip's organizers are doing the same.  

 

May clear heads prevail.   But do they ever?

 

 

Braving the unknown

Post-swamp, Gabon

Mohammad Amin Rather, owner of A-Z grocery Store in the Rajagh area of Srinagar, said: "People are buying rice, edible oil, pulses, eggs and other essentials in bulk. We are busy and supplies are running out."

…

The owner of Raina Medicate in Srinagar's upscale Jawahar Nagar area, Mohammad Hameem, said people were rushing to buy anti-cancer, hypertension, diabetic and other vital drugs.

--New York Times

 

I am scheduled to fly to Delhi, and thence to Kashmir, in just over three weeks.  Any day now, final trip details and meeting instructions should be arriving.  Imagine my joy at learning that the region is apparently headed into chaos.  After terrorists -- allegedly supported by Pakistan -- launched a February 14 suicide bombing in Kashmir that killed forty Indian security personnel, India has been threatening severe retribution against Pakistan. 

 

The fury is partially political -- Indian elections are coming up soon -- but that does not rule out the possibility of military retaliation.  Indian forces have been rounding up activists who support either independence for Kashmir or Kashmir's actual union with Pakistan.   The news today is full of reports of Indian military aircraft and helicopter flights over the Kashmir valley.

 

I assume my trip is going forward, having heard nothing to the contrary from the trekking company that is running our trip.   I signed (without really reading seriously) pages of documents waiving all liability by the company and assuming all conceivable risks.  But the company is one of the best known "adventure travel" companies in America, and I'm convinced that they will weigh the dangers before going forward with the trip.

 

Newspaper photos of their clients' heads, mounted on poles, being borne about the streets of Srinagar would seem to be bad publicity for an adventure company.

 

At least I hope they will consider it bad publicity.  The same company did an "exploratory trip," down a river in Borneo in the 1990s.  The trip turned out to be a disaster, as portrayed in Tracy Johnson's book, Shooting the Boh (1992).  But I suspect that, once the trip was over, the survivors considered it to have been the experience of a life time, and lived off its stories at many a social function.

 

In fact, one of the survivors was a member of a trip that my nephew Denny and I took to Gabon, in West Africa, in 2000.  This guy got pretty good mileage off the Boh fiasco even with us "hardened adventurers."  Especially with us, in fact, once our own Gabon trip began to disintegrate.

 

The Gabon trip had been advertised as an introduction to the world of pygmies, as well as an exploration of Gabon's back country, stretching back to the Congo border.  Our first intimation that not all was going as planned came when we were told, on arrival in the capital of Libreville, that the pygmy portion of the trip was canceled -- there had been recent mysterious disappearances of European travelers in pygmy country.

 

But the remainder of the trip proceeded.  After traveling up-river by boat and camping in the bush, we began a hike back to the coast.  The jungle hiking was interesting, especially when we encountered a large herd of elephants.  (The elephants were less interested in us than we were in them. But they could afford to be.)

 

Our native guides turned out to be incapable of guiding us to the coast -- where we were to reconnoiter with vans and civilization -- because they had never actually visited the area before.  We had an early model GPS which showed us the direction to go, but that direction led through a large swamp.  I dived in, fully clothed and shod, and swam for dry land.  Denny and others found a way to work around the swamp, remaining on relatively dry land.  Denny and I covered ourselves with DEET, once past the swamp.  No one else bothered; everyone but us was plagued with horrible bites and rashes for the rest of the trip.

 

Toward the end of the trip, our vehicles were stopped on their way back to Libreville by anti-government demonstrators of some sort.  We had to drive over a hundred miles on dirt roads through one tiny settlement after another to get around the blockade.

 

It was a trip where nothing went right, but where everything was memorable.  I think I can speak for both Denny and myself when I say we wouldn't have missed the experience for all the tea in … well, for all the cashmere in Kashmir.

 

But of course we weren't exposed to actual hostilities.  If our heads had been separated from our bodies, the trip would have seemed less a success.  

 

But I place full trust in the company that has my money, trust that they will get us both into and out of Kashmir safely -- or cancel the trip if they feel sufficiently uneasy.

The Magic Flute

Probably the best and most enjoyable movie ever made of a classical opera is Ingmar Bergman's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute (1975).  The film was shown last night as the seventh in the Seattle Art Museum's current Bergman series.

The film is delightful.  To review it would require me to review Mozart, which I'm not inclined to do.  A few observations -- not about the Mozart opera, but about Bergman's filming of it.

Bergman first saw the opera in Stockholm as a boy of 12, and it obviously haunted his imagination for the rest of his life.  Reviewers have seen echoes of the opera in a couple of his earlier films.  When he decided to make a film of the opera in the mid-1970s, he attempted, so far as possible, to reconstruct his experience as a boy, seeing the opera in the old Stockholm opera house.

So the film is not a film only of the opera, but also of the experience of watching the opera.  During the playing of the overture, the camera ignores the orchestra and focuses on the individual faces, one by one, of members of the audience, many of them young people.  Also, at times, he shows us a bit of what was going on behind stage while the singers were out before the audience.

The arias were pre-recorded in a studio, and were lip-synched by the singers.  This fact was not at all obvious, and I was unaware of it until I researched the movie afterwards.  The film is sung (and spoken -- the opera contains spoken portions) in Swedish, with English subtitles.

Because the camera shows us close-ups of the singers as they sing their arias, the actors were chosen for their appearance, as well as their singing ability.  There are no "fat ladies" singing the part of teenage girls!   Thus the hero (Tamino) is strikingly handsome, and the heroine (Pamina) is beautiful.  Tamino's humorous sidekick, Papageno, is as humorous in his facial expressions as in his lines.  Mozart's "three spirits," who guide the hero on his quest -- generally, cast as three young women -- have been recast as three young boys aloft in a peculiar balloon, boys who enforce their guidance at one point by leaping from their balloon and pelting Papageno with snowballs. 

The dragon and the various beasts of the forest look more like creatures in a children's TV story than an attempt to be realistic.  The scenery changes make no attempt at subtlety, and are modeled after those Bergman had watched at the old Baroque Stockholm theater when he was young.

The entire effect is beautiful, funny, awe-inspiring, and at times -- as when Tamino and Pamina prove their worthiness by  passing through a Hell filled with writhing souls -- frightening. 

A film totally unlike all the other Bergman films we have seen in our series to date, and a film that reveals his great versatility as a director.

Left behind

We're all vaguely aware that there's a disparity in wealth between whites and blacks.  How serious is it?

According to an article in today's Seattle Times, the median net worth of a white household in Seattle is $456,000.  Of an Asian household?  $446,000.  How about a black household?  That would be -- drumroll -- $23,000. 

That's not a typo.  That's twenty-three thousand dollars.

How could this be?  The article discusses a number of statistics.  The disparity in home ownership is the biggest factor in differentiating black (and Hispanic) households from white and Asian.   Seattle's black households have among the lowest rates of home ownership in the nation -- 28 percent, compared with 64 percent for white households.  Combine that statistic with the fact that the median net worth of families that own their houses is $898,000, while for families that rent it is $36,000. 

The effect of home ownership on net worth dwarfs the impact of other criteria such as education and age of the household members. 

The article offers no solutions to the problem, but -- as realtors happily tell us -- owning a home is the best and most certain investment a young person or persons can make.   A renter, even a renter with a high income, is apt to blow his paycheck, month after month, or to make unwise investments.  The homeowner not only has made an investment that, historically, appreciates nicely over time (and, in Seattle's market, has appreciated spectacularly over the past couple of decades), but is required to invest a certain amount of his income each month toward reducing his mortgage debt.

Obvious advice to renters, whatever their race, is to invest in residential housing if they plan to stay in the Seattle area for any appreciable period of time.  Unfortunately, the price of a house, any house, in Seattle and its neighboring suburbs is at an historically high level relative to average salaries in the area -- although it has declined slightly over the last few months.  A large number of Seattle homeowners find themselves happily occupying houses that they could never afford to buy at present prices. 

They lucked out.  They were in the market for a house when houses were far more affordable. 

Now, even if prospective home buyers have a salary high enough to afford a house of some sort, they face a market where few people are selling.  At any price.  Homeowners can't afford to sell, because -- unless they're leaving the area -- they would have a hard time finding another desirable house to buy.  This is true whether they are young and at a stage where they would be selling a starter home and buying a larger one, or if they are near retirement and interested in downsizing.

I see no solution, really, either from an individual's point of view or from the community's point of view.  Land is scarce in Seattle.  Some efforts are being made to up-zone certain areas of Seattle to allow more multiple family residences.  But these efforts result in strong neighborhood resistance, and, in any event, are usually intended to increase rental housing, not home ownership.

Strengthening government mortgage programs would help blacks and other low income buyers to get a foot in the door, as would programs to help first time buyers pay a down payment.  These programs would be more effective, obviously, in areas where housing is more available and less expensive than it is in the Seattle area.

As the middle class owners of existing houses die or move elsewhere, it seems inevitable that they will be replaced by employees of companies like Amazon, the highly skilled and highly paid technical workers who are becoming an increasingly dominant portion of Seattle's population. Seattle houses will thus increasingly be owned by citizens with the highest incomes, which, at present at least, means whites and Asians.

The result will be an even larger gap in net worth between whites and Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other.

Cries and Whispers

"The first image kept coming back, over and over:  the room draped all in red and women clad in white.  Four women dressed in white in a big red room.  They came and went, whispered to one another, and were utterly secretive."
--Ingmar Bergman

Bergman's recurring dream was what prompted, he claimed, the basic setting for his Oscar-nominated film, Cries and Whispers (1971). The story is filmed almost exclusively within an upper-class nineteenth century home; the color emphasized throughout -- from the background of the opening credits, to the decorations of the apartment, to the wine drunk at table and the blood spilled from a woman's body -- is crimson, crimson accented by white.

Three sisters -- Agnes, Karin, and Maria -- and Agnes's maid Anna, are confined in a fairly large, but still somewhat claustrophobic house.  Agnes is slowly dying of cancer.  Her sisters stand about.  They're doing their duty by their sister, waiting for the end.  Karin is aloof, dignified, business-like, unemotional.  Maria is more open, more outgoing, more smiling -- although her former lover, Agnes's doctor, warns her that the very lines of her face show that she is becoming more insincere, more secretive, more selfish, as she grows older.

Only the maid Anna appears open and unguarded in her affection for the dying Agnes, even cradling Agnes, repeatedly during her dying agonies, against her own body for comfort.

The film contains flashbacks to earlier events in the lives of Karin and Maria, showing traumatic episodes that either resulted from their difficult personalities or were the cause of the women we see today.  Maria makes insincere attempts to regain an earlier closeness with Karin -- Karin rebuffs her sharply. 

Like so many of Bergman's films, this is a film filled with silence.  Conversations do occur, but more striking are the sounds that echo in the silence -- the ticking of a clock, ticking Agnes's final hours away; muffled cries of agony; the sounds of nature from outside the building.  The women have their memories.  They have their individual fears and dread.  They have little to say to each other, and when either does attempt to share thoughts with the other, the attempt usually elicits hostility.

Agnes finally dies.  The sisters prepare the body, as one did a century ago.  The doctor comes by.  Their pastor shows up, and, while praying, confesses his own religious doubts.  The sisters receive little comfort from anyone, but then they seek none.

Anna hears a sound from the room where Agnes's body lies, awaiting the funeral.  She looks in, and Agnes speaks.  Agnes begs to speak to her sisters.  Each terrified sister enters the room separately.  Karin is horrified and disgusted to hear the dead speak; she quickly exits.  Maria shows more compassion, but when Agnes wants to hug her, moves toward her, tries to drag her into death, as Maria views it, Maria tearfully apologizes and also escapes.  Agnes tells Anna that she is dead, but can't leave her body.  She needs human comfort.  Anna unhesitatingly wraps her arms around Agnes, and holds her body close. 

Was it all dream?  Agnes tells Anna it may be Anna's dream, but it is not a dream for Agnes.  In any event, the funeral takes place on schedule.

The death and funeral were a relief to all but Anna.  The two sisters and their husbands talk over the legal matters involving the estate.  The two sisters will split everything.  Karin and her husband feel that Anna has been paid for her services, and should receive nothing more.  Maria and her husband are less harsh, understand the closeness between Agnes and Anna, and slip some cash to Anna as they leave. 

Alone in the house, Anna reads Agnes's diary.  Months before, when Agnes was not so ill, the three sisters had gone for a walk through the park.  They had laughed and reminisced.  Agnes wrote that she had rarely been so happy, so filled with joy; she had realized that her closeness with her sisters was what made her life worthwhile.

She may have been happy, but she may have been deceived.

This movie has been analyzed from every angle.  Feminism, female sexuality, psychiatry, Marxism, concepts of death, suffering, isolation and inability to communicate, Biblical references and mythical references, allusions to great works of art.  See Wikipedia for a compilation of themes that various critics have found worth discussing in this film.  It certainly is a film of sufficient complexity to support a number of Ph.D. theses. 

My overall reaction was one of compassion for the sister who, even on her death bed, received little love or support from her own sisters, those who knew her best, but was rocked to her final rest in the arms of her employed maid.  Like so many of Bergman's films, Cries and Whispers portrays a world whose silence, all-encompassing silence, does not represent peace, but an absence of human love and communication, and an inability of sisters, even sisters who had enjoyed each other's company in happier times, to empathize with and reach out to each other when times were less happy.

Disease avoidance

Some of the most emotionally charged conflicts in our society revolve around a parent's right to determine what's right for his or her child -- especially when the parent's determination is at variance with both social norms and scientific evidence.  A Jehovah's Witness who refuses a blood transfusion for a child -- because that religion equates a transfusion with the Biblically proscribed ingestion of blood -- even though without the transfusion the child will die, is perhaps the most disturbing example.

A less dire example is the refusal of many parents to have their children inoculated.  Sometimes this refusal is based on religious objections -- objections to the specific substances required in specific vaccinations, or, more commonly in the United States, to a belief that vaccination interferes with divine providence.  (As does wearing seat belts in an automobile, I assume.)  More often, probably, the parent believes that immunizations are either worthless medically, or have possible side effects worse than the disease they are designed to prevent. 

These pseudo-scientific objections are fed by the internet, and by some parents' willingness to believe that mainstream doctors and scientists are for some reason concealing problems that writers of internet blogs accurately bring to light.  This attitude by parents is similar to the attitude of climate change doubters -- why believe university researchers when I've read something different somewhere?  For example, many parents have adopted the belief that some or all immunizations may cause, in some cases, autism -- despite the absence of any medical evidence.

These immunization doubters aren't all wacko conservative gun nuts.  I had a very liberal Facebook "friend" -- I didn't know her in person, but we "met" because we liked each other's comments on the Facebook page of a mutual friend -- who finally defriended me.  Why?  Because, without arguing, I simply told her that I disagreed that flu vaccinations were a scam by "Big Pharm" to make money with a worthless procedure.  We agreed whole-heartedly on virtually every other political issue we discussed, but I guess I had strayed into unforgiveable heresy in her eyes.

These ruminations result from two events.  First, I've been reading the newspaper stories this week about the boy in Ohio whose mother doesn't believe in immunization.  Through his teens, he had read all the scientific evidence, pro and con, and had discussed the matter with his mother repeatedly.  When he turned 18 (and in Ohio no longer needed parental consent), his first adult act was to begin receiving all those immunizations he'd never had.  He now worries about his six younger unimmunized siblings.

And secondly, today I take the first oral dose of live typhoid vaccine, in preparation for the perils of India.  I've had both the injectable inactive vaccine, and the oral live vaccine in the past.  Never had any problems with the oral method -- one pill taken every other day for a total of four doses.  (The injectable vaccine gave me bad flu-like symptoms for a day, but that may have been because of no prior immunity.)

If I die of typhoid even before arriving in India, or if I develop adult-onset autism, well then.  They told us so, right?  I love irony as much as you do.  You can put this blog post in your file under "Idiot."

The Great Game

It's been ten months since Loki died.  Loki the trickster.  Loki the clown.  Loki the adventurer.  Loki the lover.  Loki the snuggler.

Leaving behind Muldoon.  Muldoon the introvert.  Muldoon the shy one.  Muldoon the cautious.  Muldoon the stand-offish.  Muldoon who drew back from human touch.  Muldoon "the cat who walked by himself."

Loki's death puzzled Muldoon, but he didn't really grieve.  But Loki's death did ultimately transform him.  Day by day, he grew closer to me, day by day he resisted less being handled, day by day he parked himself closer to me as I sat reading.  Until today, Muldoon is still shy and cautious, still introverted, but he is like the shy kid who's finally found a friend, a friend to whom he can't stop talking.  He not only has become the complete lap cat, but a lap cat who follows me about the house demanding a lap.

I'm happy with the relationship that's developed between us, something I would never have predicted while the Trickster, the Lover, was still alive.

But I miss watching the game of chess the two cats played while Loki still lived.  A chess game in which I was the passive King, a piece which seldom moves but whose existence is central to the game.  The game, as played by Loki and Muldoon, was to keep each other a safe distance away from the King.  The strategy for Loki, of course, was pre-emptive, involving frequent attempts to jump on my lap; Muldoon would approach me reluctantly, only as a defensive move to block Loki.

I would sit reading in the living room, glancing up every so often to note the quiet moves of the two cats about the room, only occasionally bursting into overt action, more usually moving one square at a time, feinting, thrusting, attempting to place the King in check, moving to block the check. 

At times the tension would break into violence, generally with Muldoon the Cautious chasing Loki the Adventurer across the room and up onto the back of a chair or sofa.  It was a game, however, and after a match they could be found grooming each other as though best buddies.

As 10 p.m. drew near, tension would begin to build.  Bedtime was approaching, and once I was in bed reading I would become a willing target for their affection.  Plenty of room on the bed for them both, plenty of affection to go around.  But, with Trumpian logic, they believed life to be a zero-sum game.  Any attention I showed one counted as a loss of face for the other.  Hence, the jockeying for position around the foot of the stairs as I began brushing my teeth.

Loki's game plan was entirely offensive -- to dash up the stairs and onto my bed.  Muldoon's was entirely defensive -- to position himself first at the foot of the stairs, and then at some point on the stairway itself, so as to block Loki --  even if his maneuvering forced me to step over him as I went up the stairs myself.  As with the French and German war plans in the first world war, timing for both was everything.  As a result, bedtime preparations for the cats gradually moved up earlier and earlier in the evening, as the chess pieces were moved into place.

Today, I get all the affection from Muldoon that I could hope for from a cat.  But I do miss watching the Great Game unfold before my eyes as each evening progresses.

The Passion of Anna

The filming of The Passion of Anna took forty-five days and was quite an ordeal. The screenplay had been written in a white heat. It was more a description of a series of moods than a traditional, dramatic film sequence.
--Ingmar Bergman

I wish I'd run across this quotation by Bergman before I saw his film, The Passion of Anna (1969), last night.  The film is the fifth in this season's Bergman series at the Seattle Art Museum.  Many critics consider it the third in a trilogy of films, all filmed on the island of Fårö, which also include Hour of the Wolf and Shame.  SAM has shown the three films consecutively, in sequence.

The film differs from its two predecessors, first of all, by being filmed in color.  Bergman attempted, he has said, to film a black and white film in color, with various hues coded to convey various emotions.  He was unhappy with the result, discovering that the existing color technology made it difficult or impossible to obtain the results he hoped for.  But the colors do have a rather attractive washed-out quality.

The film also differs from Wolf and Shame in the weakness, intentional or otherwise, of its plot.  I found myself often confused.  I suspect that a number of scenes were flashbacks to past events, but I would have to view the film again -- especially the first half -- to see if my suspicion is correct.  Wikipedia presents a very straight-forward account of the plot, such as it is, which seemed less straight-forward to me during my viewing.

The moods that Bergman wishes to present -- in preference to conventional plot -- are those of loneliness, inability to connect with others, deception of oneself and thus of others as well, and the futility of life as lived by most middle-aged adults..

The four main characters are Andreas (Max von Sydow), a reclusive but friendly man living alone, surrounded by books; Elis, an ironic, successful, but self-deprecating architect who has no belief in his work; Eva, his wife; and Anna (Liv Ullmann), a friend living with Elis and Eva.

Anna claims to believe in openness, trust, and truthfulness.  She idolizes her marriage to a husband who, together with their child, died in an automobile accident.  But we learn that the marriage had been a disaster, a fact that Anna cannot face because it doesn't fit with her ideology.  After a brief affair with Eva, Andreas enters a more serious relationship with Anna -- knowing from the outset that Anna is both deceived and deceptive about her former marriage.

No one is happy, of course.  Andreas finally tells Anna, while driving with her, that neither of them loves the other, and that he longs to be alone again.    She lets him out of the car, and -- apparently as a metaphor for his conflicting desires for connection and independence -- he paces back and forth on the road, unable to decide which direction to walk, as the film ends.

As a subplot, some unknown person on the island is killing animals with great cruelty.  An innocent man is blamed for it, and ultimately commits suicide.  This subplot apparently expresses a strong Bergman conviction.

My philosophy (even today) is that there exists an evil – and humans are the only animals to possess it. An evil that is irrational and not bound by law. Cosmic. Causeless. Nothing frightens people more than incomprehensible, unexplainable evil.

This is all very well, but I'm not sure the average movie-goer -- e.g., myself -- understands how this subplot, this philosophy, has much to do with the rest of the film.  None of the four main characters seems to represent capital E "evil."  They are unhappy, they hurt each other without really meaning to, they consider their lives meaningless.  But evil?  The concept of "irrational evil" came alive far more convincingly in the two earlier films of the trilogy.

Interesting film in some respects, with the usual excellent acting and cinematography, but a film that left me rather unsatisfied.

Cornish adventure

Just six weeks from today I will be freshly arrived in Delhi, India.  I remember an eagerly-awaited trip in my early teens, which I awaited by counting down the days on my calendar --  beginning at six weeks. Those six weeks seemed to last forever. 

I have no illusions that the six weeks that lie ahead will pass as slowly as did six weeks as a teenager.

But, although India will probably be the travel high-point of my year of 2019, I'm also looking forward to a hike in England in mid-May.  I'll again be hiking with a good friend from UW days, and with members of his extended family -- the same group I had the pleasure of walking with last spring in Scotland.

After hiking the north Highlands of Scotland last year, this year we'll move far to the south -- hiking the Cornwall coast from St. Ives to Falmouth, rounding the southernmost tip of England at Lizard Point (and the most westerly point at Land's End).

The hike will be only 57 miles in total length, with no mountain peaks to climb over.  But I'm not deceived.  I've walked short stretches of English coastline before.  I spent far more time walking down into one creek bed after another, and up the other side, than I did walking on pleasantly flat clifftops.  We will be hiking nine days, with a one day layover in Penzance, half way through the hike.

I'll also spend a day in London before the hike, and a couple or three of days in London with my friend Jim afterwards.

When I hike in Britain, I'm of course all about historical and literary allusions.  So in St. Ives, I'll be looking for kits, cats, sacks, and wives.  And in Penzance?  Surely we'll run into pirates?

Morning after the snowfall

I was always one of those nerds who liked school.  Who was excited in September when school opened -- buying new supplies, studying my schedule, wondering what my new classes would be like, curious as to who would share my classes. 

But even for me -- waking up to snow meant, if we were lucky, no school!

And today was a no school day in Seattle.  And for many adults, if they could get away with it, a no work day.  I don't know how much snow officially fell in Seattle, but my trusty ruler applied to my back deck led me to conclude that we received a solid five inches. 

I'm too old to run out and build a snowman, at least without being accompanied by a minor; but I'm too young to sit inside all day and admire the scene from my window.

And so, at about 10:30 a.m., I laced up my hiking boots, put on an aging ski jacket, slipped on some gloves, and headed out into the chilly (26 degrees) out of doors.  One look at my car, a formless white snowball, had already told me that I wouldn't be driving anywhere for lunch, which gave me a ready-made excuse to hike two miles through the snow to University Village.

We see so little snow in Seattle, that it's easy to forget how enjoyable a walk through the white, fluffy stuff can really be.  The snow beneath your feet crunches and squeaks as you tramp along.  The world is hushed.  Traffic, with its usual noises, is drastically reduced in numbers, and the falling snow muffles all sounds in any event. 

And best of all -- people of all ages are out walking.  Once away from major arterials, enclosed in the network of small streets that make up our Montlake neighborhood, I feel as though I could be walking through a small town a century ago, a town where neighbors smile and say "hi" to each other. Kids are everywhere -- walking with friends in laughing, boisterous groups, or talking excitedly with their parents.  I forget how many families with children now live in my neighborhood.

Some neighbors -- like me, not caring to shovel out their cars -- surprise themselves by actually walking for supplies to the nearest convenience store; snow gives them an excuse to sacrifice for a day a bit of dignity.  Many more are out walking just for the joy of walking.  Young couples walk hand in hand; much older couples shuffle along together; young or old, they all look about with wonder, happy to be out in the crisp morning air.

Forty-five minutes after leaving home, I find myself at my favorite burger joint, ordering a large plate of spaghetti.  Watching the snow fall as I eat, I can -- with sufficient imagination -- pretend I'm lunching in the Italian Alps.  Snow does that to you -- it coats your familiar world with the magic of other worlds, dream worlds.

No more snowfall is forecast until possibly Friday, but what fell today will stay fallen for some time.  Night lows in the mid-20s are forecast for the next ten days.  I'm happy, my neighbors are happy, my cat … eh, not so much.

Snow!

“I gave three quiet cheers for Minnesota. In Seattle a dusty inch of anything white and chilly means the city lapses into full-on panic mode, as if each falling flake crashes to earth with its own individual baggie of used hypodermic needles. It’s ridiculous.”

--Cherie Priest, Bloodshot

It's snowing in Seattle!  First snow of the year.  And it's sticking on my back deck.

I suspected this was going to happen, and just returned from a short walk that I realized might be my last walk for a while.  At least on non-slippery ground.

According to the weather app on my phone, we will be having snow, off and on, for at least the next nine days, with a couple of days with sunny breaks.  Lows in the low to mid 20s, and highs in the 30s.

Yeah, yeah.  Don't talk to me about polar vortexes (vortices?), and other phenomena endured by you folks east of the Rockies.  Everything is relative.  Here in the Northwest Corner, we've had an unusually mild winter, with highs in the mid to upper 50s.  It was so nice that it lead me to fear that the Great Trumpian Climate Change had arrived faster than expected. 

Will we have snow drifts?  Will we lie on the ground making snow angels?  Will friends come visiting on Nordic skis?  Will we build a Snowman and call him Parson Brown?

Probably not.   It's getting a bit late in the year for all of that.  Besides, in these parts, the Groundhog didn't see his shadow yesterday.  Springtime is therefore supposedly upon us.

But snow is nice.  Not slush, mind you.  Not the gray stuff they heap onto street corners in Manhattan.  But gently falling snow, kids shouting outside, snowballs being thrown.  Everyone excited.  Even -- secretly -- grouchy old folks.

Just so it doesn't go on for too long. 

"Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?"

Shame

Shame (1968) was the first film I've seen in SAM's first two years of weekly Ingmar Bergman film showings that didn't elicit spontaneous applause at its conclusion.  The audience arose and left in almost total silence, eerie silence. 

Maybe we felt we were viewing our future as a nation, or the sort of people we were becoming.  That we might soon become.

Once more, the scene is set on a small Swedish island.  Jan and Eva (played by the usual Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman) are a young couple living in a small cottage, growing vegetables in a green house, raising chickens.  Eva is strong, happy, and self assured.  Eva has to drag Jan out of bed in the morning.  Jan appears weak, easily distracted, daydreaming.  They are about to drive into town, a trip that takes forever to get under way because Jan keeps forgetting items -- goes back into the house, becomes distracted, and forgets that Eva is waiting in the car for him.  "Passive aggressive" comes to mind, but I'm not sure that fully explains his personality.

Both Jan and Eva are violinists.  Eva, about 30, is eager for children before she becomes much older.

Both music and childbearing are on hold, partly because of the war.  The war.  From the outset, armed vehicles move past the house down the road.  Jets fly overhead.  The war apparently is a civil war.  (A Swedish civil war!)  We never learn the cause of the war, or the competing ideologies or personalities.  The reasons for the dispute, if there are any rational reasons, are unimportant to Jan and Eva.  What is important is the effect on their lives.

Things go from bad to worse.  Shame contrasts with the usual stillness and introspection of Bergman's other films.  It's an action film, with much noise, fire, senseless destruction, violence, and death.  Two of the couple's closest friends -- the town's mayor who has played with them in the same orchestra, and a neighbor who sells them fish -- end up as local leaders of the opposing factions. 

Eva accepts all the mayor's savings -- and tacit continued protection from arrest -- in exchange for one short sexual episode.  Jan is devastated when he learns of it.  The fisherman neighbor arrives with troops and agrees to let the mayor live in exchange for his savings.  Jan has found the money, but denies knowing where it is.  The fisherman hands him a pistol and orders him to kill the mayor.  Jan does so with little hesitation.  The fisherman's troops -- presumably out of frustration with not obtaining the money, or perhaps because Jan and Eva were friendly with the mayor -- kill all the chickens, smash the house, and burn it down.

Jan finds his violin, smashed and broken.

The couple, now homeless except for their greenhouse, run into a teenage soldier who has deserted one side or the other.  The boy is terrified, and hasn't slept for days.  Eva tries to calm him down.  Jan grabs his gun, marches him down the road, and kills him, taking his usable clothes and supplies.

By now, Eva can hardly bear to look at her husband.  He says that he's learned of a boat off the island.  Eva doesn't want to go.  He says that's fine, it makes it easier for him.  She goes with him.

Once at sea, the boat's engine quits.  The captain -- the fisherman, now without troops -- commits suicide.  The boat becomes becalmed surrounded by floating bodies of dead soldiers.  Eva whispers that she had been dreaming a beautiful dream of nice houses and streets and parks and roses.  Roses that burst into flame, but were beautiful while they burned.

And the whole time I knew that I should remember something … something someone had said … but I had forgotten what it was.

Screen fades to black.

Shame is about more than the tragedy of war.  It is also about the tragedy of nice people, cultured people, who -- when faced with difficulty -- have no moral or philosophical beliefs strong enough to see them through.  Eva perhaps does have such a foundation, but Jan seemingly has none at all.  And, as a result, both Jan and Eva suffer not only great material losses and possible impending death, but also an awareness of moral failure and disintegration as human beings. 

A sense of "shame."