Welcoming occasional chaos

During the last few weeks, the Archbishop of Indianapolis told a Jesuit prep school not to renew the contract of one of its teachers, because the teacher had entered into a same-sex marriage.  The school refused, and the archbishop then told the school it could no longer call itself a "Catholic" school.

In this week's newsletter to the parish, my pastor says that telling a Jesuit school it could not call itself "Catholic" was like telling a salmon that it could not call itself a "fish."

I avoid religious topics in this blog, because they tend to be very divisive among a few readers, and meaningless and uninteresting to the great majority.  But I think the pastor's letter touches on a broader issue -- what's Christianity all about? -- than whether a school should hire a given teacher.  It's interesting enough to me, at least, that I'll violate my own rule.

After a short introduction, the pastor reprinted a letter to the parish he had written in 2014 when a similar issue arose in the Seattle area.  Our own archbishop had ordered a school to get rid of a teacher, and for the same reason.  The school had complied and the students revolted.  They were joined by demonstrations in Catholic high schools throughout the Seattle area.

The pastor reminded us, in his reprinted 2014 letter, of the serious conflict within the early church on the issue of whether a convert to Christianity must become a Jew and follow Jewish law before being baptized.  The answer was arrived at not by scholarly analysis or by an exercise of power by one of the superior apostles, but by consideration of the shared experiences of the disciples.  The pastor's application of this fact to the issue at hand was eloquent, and worth quoting at some length.

I have thought often of this scene in Acts, over the last year, and especially as I have listened to Pope Francis speak of the need for “uproar” by religious, or call young people to make “a mess” in their dioceses. Like many, I have been refreshed and renewed not by some great doctrinal changes, but by the absence of fear expressed in the words of the Holy Father; by his trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit and his passion for courageous acts of faith—even acts that risk error or end in failure. For Francis, it seems, the timidity of tightly held borders, the safe-harbor of accepted opinion and doctrinal purity risks a greater sin—a greater loss to the Church—than the dangerous paths of love and welcome. Ships may be safe within the harbor, but that is not what ships are for. Like the Church of Acts, Francis calls today’s Church to a fearless proclamation of Christ and the Gospel, even though trying to understand such a proclamation may lead us to conflict and disruption.

***

[W]e in the broader Church should be grateful for the mess these young people bring, and should listen with compassion and openness to the Spirit that moves within them. Their love, their gentleness, their quest to make of the Church “the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” demands more than the silence of authority; it demands communion and engagement with the Church—i.e., education, direction, dialogue—since their spirit is a sign of the Church and is life-blood for the Church. May we engage, with fearless love, at the side of our younger sisters and brothers; and may we trust in the God whose Church we are all becoming.

While I myself have a certain abhorrence for "messes," sometimes messes can be valuable, especially in the religious context , where believers sense that God has often made his views known ultimately through a Hegelian synthesis (whoo boy, skating on thin ice!) of the conflicting views of his followers.

Fresh winds are always refreshing, and often valuable.  I like the pastor's welcoming of fresh thinking.  As he suggests, ships are built for courageous sailing, not for hiding from the ocean's storms in drydock.

Siblings?

Who are my relatives?

Today's New York Times Magazine contains a cover photo-essay entitled "Brothers, Sisters, Strangers."  The author leads off:

I always knew that I was conceived using a sperm donor.  But I never really understood what that meant -- until I went searching for my half siblings.

All 32 of them.

The essay is illustrated with large photos of thirteen of his "half siblings," accompanied by what he has learned of their lives to date.

Many may find this very appealing. I have a young relative who is engaging with enthusiasm in meeting up with her "half siblings." Maybe because I'm older, I find the appeal puzzling.

I suppose looking for half siblings can just be a convenient excuse to meet people. Like joining a club for redhaired people with braces, or fellow Star War fanatics. But I guess I lack the sense, shared by many, of the importance of genetic similarity or derivation.

When I first learned about adoption, I suppose I wondered "What if I were adopted?" I never wondered for long, because I realized I wouldn't really care. Who I was -- who I am -- is the result of my upbringing and my unique life experiences. My two "full siblings" -- far more likely to resemble me than a half sibling -- and I are all very different people. What makes us similar -- makes us share closeness -- isn't our physical characteristics or our innate temperaments or abilities. It's our common memories and the experiences we've had over a lifetime together.

If I didn't care who my "birth parents" were, I would be even less interested in locating my "half siblings." Especially, when I note how totally different the lives and personalities of the thirteen "half siblings" that the author portrays have from each other.

But for those who feel driven to seek out their half siblings, I suppose it's a largely harmless exercise. Although I wonder about the privacy rights of those who lack the author's curiosity, and who would just as soon limit their familial feelings to the family they grew up with. (I feel the same uneasiness about the intense compulsion some adopted kids feel to locate and confront their birth parents -- I regret that the laws and rules protecting privacy rights are being progressively relaxed.)

With respect to this last point, the author concludes his essay somewhat cavalierly:

What looks like privacy to one person in a relationship may look like secrecy to another, unearned and undeserved. For sperm donors, their offspring, the half siblings, the distinction may become moot, in an era when both privacy and secrecy are aspirational rather than reasonable goals. Technology belongs to the young, and what the young seem to want, as ever, is to know -- and be known.

Really? And, even if the author has some study to show that the majority of "the young" feel this way, what about the hypothetical minority who don't? Or is their right to be left alone "unearned and undeserved"?

Looking inside

When you're a kid from a moderately normal family, growing up in a bland, middle class world, things could get boring if you didn't use your imagination -- thus, those of us who were readers tantalized ourselves with stories of adventure or, much better, stories of horror. 

As adults in reasonably good health, we haven't really changed -- we scare ourselves with thoughts of cancer, hospitals, medical procedures gone bad, and medical malpractice.

Or, in my case, of an imminent colonoscopy.

It had been twelve years since my last (and first) colonoscopy, and my internist shamed me into submitting to the indignity once more.  Colon cancer is one of the most preventable cancers, but many people still die from it.  It would really irritate me to kick the bucket needlessly.

With a colonoscopy, it isn't the procedure itself so much that you dread (although that, too); it's the preparation leading up to it.    And being now retired, as I wasn't the first time around, I had endless hours to dwell over the horrors of preparation that lay ahead.

Four whole days on a spartan, low-fiber diet.  Unbelievable.  How would I survive?  I had to eat smooth peanut butter on white bread, instead of chunky on whole wheat.  Special K with ripe bananas for breakfast instead of Grape Nuts with not-so-ripe bananas and blue berries.  No carrot sticks.  No fresh veggies at all, nor most fresh fruits. 

It was an inedible diet.  Well, actually, it was the diet my mother fed me as a kid.  But this is 2019. I live now in a Whole Foods world. 

And how would I live through an entire day -- the day before the "procedure" -- consuming nothing but clear liquids?  Essentially, water, coffee, Gatorade, and apple juice?  Actually, I discovered, nervous dread of my trip to the hospital made it quite easy to stick to a liquid diet.  I didn't feel very hungry.

And then there was the procedure itself.  Once trapped at the hospital and unable to escape, I was wrapped in a warm blanket, with various wires and tubes connected to me, all the while soothed by staff people who were obviously trained to handle emotional basket cases like myself.  Anesthesia always scares me, even though I remembered no problems from it twelve years earlier.

"I'm starting the injection.  You may feel a little coldness or sting around the injection site," the anesthetist finally said.  Yikes!  But huh?  I felt nothing at all.  Something's gone wrong, I thought.  The anesthesia doesn't work.  "Ah, finally, I do feel a little cold spot on my arm."  And then I opened my eyes to see my relatives grinning at me.  I was in a recovery room and all my wires and tubes were gone.

Propofol may have killed Michael Jackson, but it gets top marks from me.

I apparently am in no danger of dying of colon cancer in the near future, which pleases me.  I was out of bed, out the door, and eating a juicy, succulent hamburger and fries at my local Burgermaster within 90 minutes.

"The quality of the bowel preparation was excellent," reads the doctor's report.  So, yay for me, right? Photos of the interior of my large intestine. Yuk. Not a cave I'd care to live in.

The assisting physician thought I was "hysterically funny," according to my brother.  Perhaps an ambiguous compliment, but I'll take it at face value.

Once more, I've conquered the dread colonoscopy.  Now I can look around for something else with which to scare myself.

Ten years ago -- Annapurna Sanctuary

Your correspondent, posing
apparently as Gandalf, silhouetted
against Annapurna South.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of a trek that Pascal and I took to the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal's Himalayas.  I emailed a summary of the trek to various friends and relatives, and to better preserve the email I also copied it as "unpublished" into my blog folder --without ever intending to publish it.  I just read it, and it may be interesting enough, if you're interested in that area, to post now.  Unedited from the original email.

October 18, 2009

Greetings to friends, relatives, and fellow travelers,

I arrived home from a trek in Nepal yesterday, and am still keeping strange jet-lagged hours. Anyway, many of you have come to expect (or, conceivably, dread) an email recap from me of any such trips -- so 6:30 a.m. sounds like as good a time as any to toss it together.

This was a ten-day trek to Annapurna Base Camp at about 13,500 feet. A considerably lower elevation and somewhat easier trekking than the Everest Base Camp trek that Denny and I did in 1995, but still challenging in many respects. I hiked with Pascal, the son of family friends with whom I've hiked numerous times in the past -- most recently to the Indian Himalayas in 2005. He is now a newly-minted econ graduate from UBC, and was again an excellent companion. Our REI group contained a total of nine members, five men and four women, with a wide range of ages and backgrounds. What they all had in common was enthusiasm, warm friendliness, and a great sense of humor -- I couldn't have been happier with my co-trekkers.

The trek started at the relatively low altitude of about 4,000 feet, leading us through farming villages and beside brilliant yellow-green rice fields that were terraced up hillside slopes. The scenery gradually became less agricultural and more tropical rain forest (monkeys!), finally breaking into open Alpine landscapes at about 10,000 feet.

Unlike backpacking routes here at home, our trail served as a highway between backcountry villages, as well as as a trekker's route. We encountered a small village approximately every hour. These villages became less residential and more directed toward providing services to trekkers as we hiked farther up the trail. Each village had several simple lodges, providing rooms, meals, and groceries to trekkers. (Our group stayed in tents, however, in keeping with REI's policy of providing maximum employment for local porters, cook staffs and guides.)

In general, the lodge accomodations are vastly improved from the dark, smoky "tea houses" Denny and I encountered in 1995. This trek can now be completed comfortably by anyone in reasonably good condition, without the need to carry tents and food -- in fact, I observed a number of European families accompanied by kids as young as 9 or 10.

The "Sanctuary" itself has to be seen to be appreciated fully. It is a small plateau, surrounded 360 degrees by snowy peaks and ridges, so close you feel you can reach out and touch them. Some of the peaks, especially Macchupuchare ("the Fishtail") -- an iconic sacred mountain barred to climbers, and believed to be the residence of the Hindu uber-god Shiva -- are observable from various angles throughout the trek -- and indeed even from our hotel window back in Pokhara. I never got tired of watching the various peaks under changing conditions of clouds and light, and especially when shining in gold at sunrise and sunset.

Our trek was scheduled for October, by which time the summer monsoons are supposedly over. Unfortunately, whether from global warming or just bad luck, the monsoons lingered into October this year. We found ourselves hiking in showers during early days of the trek, which became a torrential downpour about three days from the Sanctuary. We stayed an extra night at the village of Doban, where REI put us up in a lodge to escape being washed away in our tent. An American family group came stumbling down the trail, wet and exhausted. They had hiked down all the way from Base Camp, where they had been unable to see a thing, and had fallen in various swollen streams they had tried to ford on their way down.

We had just about decided to abandon our objective, return part way down the trail, and seek other scenic spots at lower elevations -- but I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the sky full of stars. The next morning was bright and sunny, with not a cloud in the sky. Shiva -- god of both creation and destruction -- must have looked with favor down upon our little party. We were all elated as we continued up the trail.

With the unseasonable rains came unseasonable leeches, occasionally crawling into our socks and causing more psychological than physical discomfort. (These were tiny (albeit bloodthirsty) leeches -- not the giant "in-your-underpants" variety familiar from the movie "Stand by Me.") We learned to live and let live, more or less, with the tiny vampires.

This "quick" summary has gone on too long, but it seems like there's so much more to tell! All in all, a very successful trip, and one of the most enjoyable treks I've been on. Now I'll spend a few days washing clothes and readjusting to Pacific Coast time! And enjoying my new status as a great uncle -- Denny's baby daughter having arrived while I was away!

I've posted an album of photos on Facebook, for those of you who like to see other people's vacation pictures! If you don't do Facebook, but are interested in seeing them, let me know and I'll send you a link.

Best wishes to you all.

--[Rainier96]

Bound for Mars

Wildly optimistic artist's vision of a settlement on Mars
Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space

In the summer of 1952, at the age of 12, I found myself bedridden during a family vacation at Long Beach, Washington.  Not ill, just suffering from badly sunburned legs.  I amused myself during that day of recovery by reading a book my mother had received from Book of the Month Club. 

Not a typical book for her to purchase or read -- The Exploration of Space, by Arthur C. Clarke.  (I still have the book.) Five years before the Soviet Union put a tiny ball named Sputnik into earth orbit, Clarke was describing the planets to the American public, explaining how they could be visited, and assuring us that we would be visiting at least some of them. 

I had been reading children's books about the planets since I was six or seven.  At twelve, I was impatient for the exploration to begin.

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo program resulted in the first lunar landing.  I listened to the news reports while doing shift work in a laboratory.  It had taken 17 years for the first step of Mr. Clarke's exploration to be accomplished, but we were on our way.  NASA's head predicted that we would send men to Mars in 1983.

Nineteen eighty-three came and went.  Between the first flight by the Wright Brothers and America's landing on the moon, 66 years had elapsed.  Since the first Apollo landing to the present, another 50 years have drifted by -- 50 years with only the six Apollo program landings between 1969 and 1972,.   My childhood dreams of seeing interplanetary space travel while still young have been shattered. 

What now?

This month's National Geographic is devoted largely to a discussion of space travel -- past accomplishments and future plans.  As the magazine rightly points out, we have done amazing things in unmanned space travel -- from orbits of the Earth and explorations of all the planets to the two Voyager space probes now traveling in interstellar space and still sending back data.  Impressive. But back in 1952, I had greater dreams.

Private companies are partially replacing NASA in the quest for manned space travel.  One company, Blue Origin, hopes to put the first American since 1972 on the moon in 2024.  How about Mars?  Elon Musk claims his SpaceX craft will travel to Mars in 2024; that claim is generally regarded as absurd.  NASA's studies have determined that the very earliest it could be done under the most optimistic scenarios is 2034.  The early 2040s are considered a more reasonable date for which to aim.

The early 2040s.  I'll be getting up there by then -- under the most optimistic scenarios.  If we do it, and I'm around to follow the news, I'll be as fascinated as I was at the age of 12, reading Arthur C. Clarke, and at the age of 29, following the first Apollo mission. 

Statisticians note a "Christmas effect" on the date when elderly folks tend to die -- they keep themselves alive through the holidays in order to be reunited with family and to join in the celebration one last time.  An analogous "Martian effect" may keep me alive into the 2040s, longer than one might now expect.

Mars or Bust!

War with Iran

Long time readers of this blog will recall that I visited Iran in April 2011.  I loved the country, and I loved the people I encountered. 

I was part of a university alumni group, accompanied by both an American professor and a local guide.  The local guide was not a conduit for government propaganda.  He was proud of his country, but he was well-traveled and sophisticated.  He had harsh things to say about his own government at times.

I am not naïve, I don't think.  I realize that the Iranian government is a destabilizing force in the Middle East.  But I'm also aware that within the government are a number of contending forces -- moderates, hard liners, and Muslim ayatollahs -- and that the urban population in particular is moderate, educated, and relatively Western-oriented in its interests and ideals.

It was another Republican president -- George W. Bush -- who stated proudly, "I don't do nuance."  The present administration seemingly revels in this concept.  President Trump , at least so far as we can ascertain from his public statements and manifold tweets, sees the world in terms of black and white.  Good guys and bad guys.  And for Trump, unlike for even George W. Bush, who is good and who is bad is determined not by foreign policy experts but by what Trump had for dinner that night. 

And by an obsession with destroying any accomplishment of the prior Obama presidency.

Obama had helped negotiate a treaty reducing sanctions against Iran in exchange for various restrictions on Iran's atomic weapons program.  Trump clearly hated the treaty -- not only because it was credited to Obama, but because Iran was detested by Saudi Arabia.  (Trump's infatuation with the Saudis is another question, but beyond the scope of this short essay.)

After grumpily certifying on several occasions that Iran was in compliance with the treaty, he suddenly decided that it was not, and in October 2017, refused to make the certification.  In May 2018, he announced that the United States was withdrawing from the treaty.  Ever since, he has been obsessed not only with reapplying sanctions against Iran, but forcing our increasingly skeptical allies to do the same.

In general, they have not.  They have not because they disagree with the American failure to certify compliance, and because the American (i.e., the Trump) position seemed irrational, arbitrary, and capricious.  Which it was.  Which it is.

American abrogation of the treaty was a shot in the arm for hard liners in Iran, and a setback for moderates who had been running the government under the watchful and somewhat suspicious eye of Ayatollah Khamenei.  Iran reacted cautiously but firmly in increasing the production of fissionable material. 

In April 2018, John Bolton was named National Security Adviser.  Since the Bush administration, Bolton has pushed for war with Iran, apparently with the goal of replacing the government with one more to his liking.  Step by step, since becoming Security Adviser, Bolton has goaded Iran into doing something that would provide a pretext for an American attack.  As CUNY Professor Peter Beinart writes on-line for The Atlantic:

By May [2019], events were bearing out the Pentagon’s fears. “In private meetings,” the Times noted, “military officials have warned the White House that its maximum-pressure campaign against Iran is motivating … threats to United States troops and American interests in the Middle East.” The former Bush-administration official Kori Schake observed that “every single European government believes that the increased threat we’re seeing from Iran now is a reaction to the United States leaving the Iran nuclear agreement and trying to force Iranian capitulation on other issues.”

But in any event, Bolton now has what he has wanted all along, a pretext for war.  Iran shot down an American drone.

Trump says the drone was over international waters in the Gulf.  Others claim it was flying over Iranian territory.  Ordinarily, our allies, our population, and I myself would give the administration the benefit of the doubt -- certainly over an increasingly hostile Iranian government.

But analogous to the boy who cried wolf too often, Trump has lied far too often.  He lies and he lies and he lies.  He lies about trivial matters.  He lies when the lies are clearly easy to disprove.  He lies as a matter of personal policy.  It isn't clear to me that "Truth" has any meaning to him other than "whatever is useful, or even just pleasant, to me at the moment."

But we've never insisted on truth as a grounds for attacking another country.  We remember all too well the second Bush's trumped up excuse for attacking Iraq.  If Trump decides this is a useful time for a war with Iran, war it will be.  He will ignore international law.  He will ignore Congress.  He will ignore cooler heads in the military and in his own administration.  Professor Beinart warns:

For more than a century, this false innocence has been a feature of every unprovoked American war. And it is this false innocence that Americans must relentlessly challenge if they wish to avoid war with Iran now.

I suspect that the days are past when we had any control over a president's military actions.  Trump will go with his gut feelings.  And we will live with the consequences of his gut feelings long after Mr. Trump has retired, and has slinked off to play golf at Mar-a-Lago.

Gimme a hug!

First, let me say that I like the British newspaper, The Guardian.  I read it in its on-line American edition.  (It was the Manchester Guardian when I was a kid, but I digress.)  It's not as thorough or as pleasantly bland as the New York Times, but it gets breaking news on-line faster, and it has a nice outsider's viewpoint on the silliness in which our own society often indulges.  (And doesn't spare its native Britain either.)

But some of its columns sometimes bug me.  For example, a columnist's take last month on hugging.  She begins, quite reasonably, laughing at people who make a big deal over hugging or being hugged.  She agrees that kids hug un-self-consciously, and those hugs have no amorous intent.  As a child, she never much cared for adult relatives who demanded a hug, but she politely  gave them their hug.

When an elderly friend asks my kids, in a wheedling fashion, “Do you have a hug for me?”, I don’t think it will kill them to oblige.

But then a four year old boy asked her four year old daughter for a hug, and the daughter refused, rudely, and hurt the boy's feelings.  His mother complained, and our columnist replied. 

All of a sudden, everything changes.

My daughter was not put on this Earth to comfort your needy son, I thought, as if they were four-year-old players in some wild new chapter of #MeToo.   I didn’t say this. I sent a measured response.

But she exults in her ability to enable her daughter to say "No."

At that point she lost me.  She's not complaining that the boy sexually assaulted her daughter.  He just wanted a hug.  Exactly like her elderly aunt had wanted a hug from her, and probably for the same reasons.  We aren't talking about hugs as romantic acts.  We are talking about social conventions, about reassurance that we are friendly with each other.

And hugs, like handshakes, are just that -- social conventions.  When I was a kid, no one was asking for hugs from peers at the age of four, but those were different times, different places.  Physical contact with my peers until maybe the age of 8 consisted of pushing and shoving.  Then, we began walking around the playground with our arms over each other's shoulder.  This continued through seventh, and to a dwindling degree, eighth grade, supplemented with certain friends and at certain times by holding hands while walking.

I remember both forms of contact in junior high.  It didn't signify even particularly close friendship.  It was just a way of staying in contact while we walked and talked our way down a busy school corridor.  As a junior in high school, because of a schedule conflict, I had to return to the junior high for an hour each day to take second semester Spanish.  I was surprised at seeing guys holding hands in the hallway -- not shocked, just surprised that I had already forgot this junior high custom.

But back then, we didn't hug.  (Except with the dreaded elderly relative.)  But by the 1970s, we did.  Or some of us did.  There was a period of awkwardness -- which still exists to a lesser extent -- as to whether you greet a person of the same sex, or even of the opposite sex, with a hug or with a handshake.  We've learned to pick up subtle signs, as we do in so many areas of social life, about the expectation of the person we're with.  Wikipedia, as always careful in its analysis, points out that

 Unlike some other types of physical contact, a hug can be practiced publicly and privately without stigma in many countries, religions and cultures, within families, and also across age and gender lines, but is generally an indication that people are familiar with each other. Moving from a handshake (or touch-free) relationship to a hug relationship is a sign of a closer friendship such as best friends.

Well, yeah.  Sometimes.  But I've picked up "let's hug" cues from persons I've barely met, either on meeting or on parting. 

If you aren't an American, take everything I've said with a grain of salt.  The meaning and expression of hugging, like other social signs, varies.  In Latin countries, hugging is more routine, often accompanied with a kiss on one or both cheeks.  The same applies to holding hands, which is totally common among friends of the same sex -- but NOT of the opposite sex -- in Muslim countries and in India. 

Ten years ago, the New York Times reported that, in America, "the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days."  Is that still true today?  Who can tell with those damn kids?  In southern India, a 16-year-old boy hugged a female fellow student who had won an art competition.  He was expelled, and the High Court held that the headmaster had the exclusive power to maintain "discipline and morality."  No one would blink an eye at a similarly welcomed hug of congratulations in this country. 

It's hard enough to decode the social codes in your own community -- don't try to understand those in other parts of the world.  Unless you plan to make social contacts there, in which case a little advance study would pay off.

As for me, I'm multi-cultural.  I shake an offered hand, I return an offered hug, I'll let you walk with your arm over my shoulders.  I know a French-Canadian woman who used to insist that I always remember to kiss her on alternate cheeks three times.  This was getting a little complicated for me, and I'm glad that she's become less insistent as time has passed.

If I had a pre-school daughter, which I don't, I can't really see being upset if one of her little friends asked for a hug.  Nor, of course, would I insist that she give a hug that she didn't care to give.  Growing up means learning to understand the intentions of others, and often to give others the benefit of the doubt.  I suspect that the little dust-up between the two four-year-olds featured in The Guardian's column has taught them both something about getting along. 

I'm not so sure about their respective parents.

The Last Grain Race

My first  (and toughest) encounter with physical labor didn't come my way until I was 20 years old.  (A few days per summer picking strawberries doesn't count, nor does the summer I was 19, working in an airconditioned laboratory performing chemical analyses.)  I was working in the "wet end" of a paper mill, doing tedious, dirty, and disgusting work, the sort of work that was avoided, if possible, by regular employees.

Filled with horror, I felt life was demanding too much of me, requiring me to do mindless and exhausting work for a full three months, before returning to my idyllic life on a beautiful campus. 

Eric Newby was a middle class boy from London, educated at prestigious St. Paul School, who had been fascinated by stories of sea adventure since childhood.  In 1938, at the age of 18, he signed on as an apprentice on the Finnish four-masted windjammer Moshulu, agreeing to remain with the ship as it carried ballast from Belfast to Port Victoria, South Australia, where it dumped its ballast and picked up a full load of Australian grain, and to stay with it until it returned with its cargo (by way of the Pacific) to Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland.  His father paid a £50 deposit (about £3,400 in today's money) to ensure his son's completion of his contract, and signed with reluctance the indenture agreement (at 18, his son was a minor), to be interpreted under Finnish law.

I remember that he was particularly concerned to find out whether the death penalty was still enforced and in what manner it was carried out.

Newby nervously boarded the ship dressed in street clothes, and reported to the Second Mate near the main mast.  The Second Mate looked him over, and asked if he'd ever been aloft on a sailing ship before.  "No," Eric allowed.  "Op you go then."  Impatiently the Second Mate refused to give Eric time to change from his slippery street shoes.

At 130 feet, he reached the topsail yard.

I stood gingerly on the this slippery construction; the soles of my shoes were like glass; all Belfast spread out below.  I looked between my legs down to a deck as thin as a ruler and nearly fell from sheer funk.

But he was far from done.  "Op to the royal yard," the Mate yelled.  At about 160 feet, he reached the top yardarm.  "Out on the yard!" came the cry.  He edged out on a line that ran along the yardarm, and looked down  "What I saw was very impressive and disagreeable."   The Mate summoned him back to the mast, where he was told to shimmy up the remaining height of the mast.  He reached the top of the main mast at 198 feet.

Since that day I have been aloft in high rigging many hundreds of times and in every kind of weather but I still get that cold feeling in the pit of the stomach when I think of the first morning out on the royal yard with the sheds of the York Dock below.

As someone who, not much younger than Eric Newby, froze on the gently-sloped  roof of our family home while doing some sort of maintenance work, and had to be carefully guided down to the ladder, my blood curdled reading of this initiation to Newby's eight months at sea.  I felt less cowardly when a friend, to whom I was describing the voyage, admitted, "I just couldn't handle it."

The rest of the story is hardly anticlimax:  The length of time it took just to find the right winds to break free of the Irish sea.  The long sail to reach the Cape of Good Hope, using prevailing winds to first sail almost to Brazil.  The frightening seas during the long period of isolation crossing the South Pacific.  Rounding Cape Horn.  And the horrific storm the ship survived in the South Atlantic.

Although the arc of the story will appeal to everyone, the details will be most appealing to those who have some experience sailing, if even only a small pleasure craft.  Newby, to a large extent, assumes a knowledge of the terminology one uses to describe the myriad sails used on a four-masted ship, and the mechanics of raising and lowering them.  (Not done, for the most part, with the help of mechanization.  Men were required high in the rigging on virtually a daily basis.)  Also, Newby was one of the few men on the ship who spoke English.  He joins the reader in his own confusion by his constant quotation of Finnish (or often Swedish) commands, insults, and daily conversation.  The more critical dialogue he translates, but much of the remainder can be guessed only from the context.

The "Race" of the title refers to an unofficial contest between the sailing ships --  all of which sailed at approximately the same time, presumably because of the available winds and/or the availability of the Australian grain cargo -- to make the fastest return trip from Australia.  The effect of the drama will not be spoiled if I tell you that the Moshulu, sailing under its tyrannical and single-minded captain, won easily.

After reading this book, I doubt if you'll mind having missed the opportunity of signing on as a sailing vessel apprentice.  But you may well feel that we all have lost something in no longer caring about the great ocean currents that move the seas, and the strong prevailing winds -- and especially the trade winds -- on whose consistency a successful voyage depended absolutely until the last century.

A book of hardship, rough companionship, and good humor -- and a healthy dose of historical technical data on how to manage a tall ship.

At the end of the sail, the captain asked Newby, "Coming again?  … Make a man of you next time"

"I'll think it over," he answered.  He didn't.  Once he left the Moshulu, he never saw the ship or its crew again.

In the moment

Glacier Peak and Image Lake

How had I allowed myself to become so busy?  How long had it been since I’d spent a day in the sun, eating sandwiches from a cooler and watching water ripple across the surface of a lake? Why do I so often behave as though there will be unlimited days to sit quietly with my beloveds, listening to birdsong and wind in the pines?
--Margaret Renki (New York Times)

We had hiked all day in rain the day before, climbing higher and higher above the Suiattle River in the North Cascades.  At six thousand feet, we had put up our tents in the rain, eaten dinner in the rain, and gone to sleep in the rain.  But when I awoke the next morning the sun was shining.

This was  1968, and the start of my first weeklong backpacking trip.  Jim (the same Jim with whom I hiked in Cornwall last month) and his friend Jason had been backpacking together since high school, so I felt very much the newbie.  I slipped out of the tent.  I marveled.  Where the day before there had been only clouds and swirling fog, this morning I was greeted by Image Lake, reflecting the image of Glacier Peak.

My friends were still asleep.  No one else was camped within sight or sound.  The air was crystal clear.  The birds were hopping around and singing with enthusiasm.  And the mountain seemed to have materialized magically out of nowhere.  I was exhilarated.  It was, as they say, a transcendent moment.  We had a long day of hiking ahead of us, but I was in no hurry to begin, or even to eat breakfast.

In the years that followed, I engaged in many backpacking excursions -- some a week long, some merely overnight.  I enjoyed a lot of beautiful scenery.  But I almost always was "goal-oriented" -- I had set myself a destination to reach, a peak that I was to climb, a number of miles I was to tramp.  The scenery was always there, and I certainly didn't ignore it.  But smelling the roses was a by-product of the hike, not its purpose or my major activity. Like a marathon runner, I was often too busy competing with myself, and achieving my goals, to meditate on what I was running through.

In Cornwall last month, I suspect that Jim -- like me -- was still goal-oriented.  Let's get to the B&B as soon as possible, was our silent mantra.  I found myself envying John, a geologist who was always ready to stop and examine both the terrain and individual rocks.  And Ann and Dorothy, whose knowledge and love of plants and flowers became obvious.  And I remember a relative, a physician, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of ornithology -- observing and identifying birds always fascinates him.

And then I read Margaret Renki's column in today's Times, lamenting how her life seemed one big rush to accomplish projects.  She had forced herself to take time to return to her home town to attend a funeral.  While there, she wandered about her old neighborhood, and pondered how much less harried and more enjoyable her life had been in her youth.

I found the place at the end of the road where rusted tracks emerged from the weeds, the exact place where my father had waited for his father to step off the trolley after work. I found the creek where my eighth-grade boyfriend first held my hand. I named to myself all the neighbors who had once lived on my street, every one of them gone now, as a scent drifted on the air that I couldn’t place. Then, finally: gardenia! It blooms in profusion in my hometown but not at all in Nashville, where I have lived for 32 years.

Well, sure, you say.  Everyone is nostalgic for childhood.  So what?  But this meant more than nostalgia for Margaret.  It was the trigger that revealed how, since childhood, she had lived more and more in her head and in the future, concerned with goals and things to be accomplished.  She lived less and less in the present, noticed less and less the people and places about her.

I don't have to be a geologist or a botanist or an ornithologist to live in the present -- although it can help.  I just need to be observant, to think about what I see, to marvel at nature and to marvel at the amazing diversity and complexity I see in the people about me.  I need to feel more and intellectualize less.  In fact, I might even find it useful to enjoy an experience without wondering how it can be converted into a blog entry!

Because, in Ms. Renki's words

I’ve recognized the reach of mortality for the better part of five decades. It is always hurtling toward us faster than spring turns into summer on a southbound highway. Faster than a sapling becomes a shade tree and a house becomes someone else’s home. Faster than a newborn baby becomes a man. And yet I conduct my life as though I have all the time in the world, filling my days in ways I can’t always account for when evening falls.

"Stop and smell the roses" is a tired cliché.  But a useful cliché.  Reminding us that whether we fill our days with questionably important goals to be accomplished or with rich experiences to be savored, time still passes, day by day.  Extra years aren't for sale.  But we can all use the ones we have in ways that are more satisfying.

Like watching the sunlight move slowly across the different ridges on Glacier Peak.

Conventional signs

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,   
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!"
--Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

While in Greenwich last week, attending a concert of only minimal interest to me, I was conscious that I was sitting upon -- or very near to -- the "prime meridian."  The British Empire, in all its narcissistic glory, determined in 1851 that longitude at any point across the entire earth should be determined with respect to its rotational distance from Greenwich, a suburban area of London that happened to have the Royal Observatory.

On a prior visit to London, sometime in the distant past, I had visited the observatory, and had enjoyed the pleasure of stepping back and forth between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere, between Longitude West and Longitude East.  I was eager to learn my longitude, east or west, while sitting at the concert, and knew that it was possible to determine it from my iPhone, but -- alas! -- was unable to locate the proper app to make the determination.

Only a day or so later did I discover that the longitude and latitude are to be found on the Compass app -- or, more precisely, on my phone, on the Compass sub-app within the "Extras" app.

I at least can tell you that my present longitude and latitude, as I type this post, are Latitude 47° 38' 7" North, Longitude 122° 18' 1" West.  How much fun it would have been to walk a few steps and watch my phone as my longitude switched from 1" East to 1" West.

Right?  Such are the joys of nerd-dom. 

I am reminded of all this as I read Eric Newby's account of his 1938 apprenticeship, at age 18, on a steel-hulled, four-masted sailing ship, carrying ballast from Belfast to Australia, in preparation for a return trip with a hold full of Aussi grain.  The book, The Last Grain Race, was Newby's first book, and is a finely told record of a form of commercial shipping that ended with World War II.

The book is full of technical data that are now, sadly, of only historical interest.  But among the data, the constant recording of latitude and longitude,  as read from the ship's navigational instruments, speaks the same language that we speak today.  Newby's narrative is full of reports such as

The upper topgallants and the mainsail were reset and by midday we were in 36° 39' 3" S, 14° 15' 1" W, having made 320 miles by log in the 24 hours.

The overall effect is fascinating; the repeated details perhaps less so.  We sympathize with certain of the crew whose navigational skills were minimal, or even based on fantasy.  Such as Yonny Valker, who maintained, despite all argument to the contrary, that longitudinal lines did not meet at the poles; in fact, he maintained, they were strictly parallel and met nowhere.  As proof, he offered a Mercator projection of the world map, showing parallel longitudinal lines disappearing into space off the map.  When told that, if he believed that longitudinal lines were parallel, he must believe that the world is flat, "Yonny looked cunning but did not answer."

Nor would he agree with Caroll's crew of the Snark that longitude and latitude were merely conventional signs.

Yonny.  You do understand that the lines of latitude and longitude aren't real, don't you?  That they're only on maps?

"Yeth they are," said Yonny with absolute finality.  "They are real.  AND THEY NEVER MEET."

The Last Grain Race is a fascinating narrative of a time not so long ago, but still very much over, when men sailed great ships, a narrative told with skill and humor by the writer who later described his mountain climbing adventures in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (which I discussed in July 2011).

In conclusion, I just re-checked my latitude and longitude on my phone.  The latitude is constant.  The longitude has moved to 122° 17' 60" W.  Either the tectonic plates have shifted beneath my seat, even as I type, or my iPhone app isn't infallible.  In either case, this bizarre discrepancy does not support Yonny's view of reality.

Longitude lines are just "conventional signs."  And they do meet at the poles.

Flexible tourists

(stock photo)

Susan and her 12-year-old son Leo were vacationing in France.  They were visiting Versailles.  Leo had been studying French, and she knew they would both enjoy visiting the famous palace.  But they found themselves there on a holiday weekend -- the grounds were inundated with tourists, and the lines were long.  With nervous regret, she abandoned their plans; they rented bikes, and spent the day riding about the extensive grounds of the palace.

She didn't regret her decision.  They had a wonderful day, far better than a day spent waiting interminably in line to crowd into a hot and stuffy château.  Leo was happy, and Susan was happy.  So happy, that they drove south to the Loire valley, where they went on long bike rides through the countryside.  When Leo got tired biking, and wanted to go back to the hotel and play gin rummy?  They went back and played gin rummy.

This was a feature article written by Susan Dominus in the New York Times.

It was a happy story, and it made me happy.  Then I had other thoughts.  The obvious ones, of course, were of the billions of people on earth for whom such a vacation would be beyond even the realm of fantasy.  Of the great disparities of wealth.  Of how unfair life often seems to be.

On the other hand, I could hardly argue without hypocrisy that the author should have given all her money to the poor and stayed home, sharing a crust of bread with her son.  And -- while the argument may be too facile and self-deluding -- it's true that money and the experiences money buys don't guarantee happiness.  Many people -- impoverished but satisfactorily fed and sheltered -- have lives filled with greater happiness and joy than those who occupy their hours flying first class about the world.

My more complex reaction occurred to me this afternoon, sitting outside a Starbucks on the Seattle waterfront, watching the tourists walk by.  How few of the passing children looked as though they were studying French in their spare time.  How few of their parents looked as though they might hop on a bike when their sightseeing began to feel too cramped.  How few looked as though they might ever find themselves traveling on their own about France.

The best family vacation of my childhood was a car-camping trip from our home near Portland to Glacier, Yellowstone, and Jackson Hole National Parks, with a quick excursion down to Salt Lake City, before returning home.  Besides gas for the car, we spent little along the way.  In most ways, it looked like the sort of travel that many of those passers-by on the Seattle waterfront might enjoy and might find affordable.

With three of us kids, ages two to ten, in a cramped car, I don't know how enjoyable that trip was for my parents.  But for us children, it was an adventure in wonderland.  It was one of the most memorable experiences of my childhood.

Where am I going with this?  In some ways, I suppose I'm contemplating class differences, but the differences are only indirectly related to class.  I guess, sitting in front of Starbucks, I began thinking about individual differences in experience and in desires, differences that exist independently of differences in wealth, education, and class.

Susan's decisions were largely based on what she felt Leo would most enjoy.  She did not disregard her own happiness, but her happiness derived from that of her son.  As she mused, Leo would soon be at the age where his life would be something she could observe, but not really share.  She wanted to share now his excitement and happiness, not his tiredness, frustration, and irritation.

Many parents would consider this attitude to be "coddling" the son by putting his wants ahead of their own.  That's one significant difference among groups of parents.

Many, many mothers would not feel comfortable riding a bike for any distance, with or without the company of their child.  My own mother was enthusiastic, and in some ways adventurous -- but I don't picture her biking around our home town, let alone along the roads of France.  Other mothers, especially today, would love the experience.  I watch them bicycle down my street daily. 

Susan initially showed some tendency to follow an itinerary rigidly, but she overcame that tendency after some reflection.  Many people feel, rationally or irrationally, committed to a plan once that plan has been drawn up.   They feel a fear of chaos, of ambiguity, of improvisation.

I could go on.  One could devise as many categories of tourists, perhaps, as there are tourists.  In my thinking, however, I was considering a duality between those who would love the kind of vacation that Susan and Leo ended up taking, and those who would have felt much happier if they stuck with Susan's original plan.  Today we shall see Versailles Palace, barring some natural disaster, because that's the plan.

Were my parents rigid or flexible on that highly satisfactory trip to Yellowstone? I was only ten; I don't really remember. I suspect we had a plan, but I also suspect that when we got fussy, or when my dad found a place he wanted to fish, or my mom decided we needed to find a motel where she could take a bath, they freely made adjustments. On the other hand, our parents had their own interests; keeping us happy was a significant objective, but only one of their objectives.

As is too often the case, I unconsciously classify people who think like myself as in some way superior to those who don't.  Susan's my kind of gal, and, to me, Leo's a lucky kid.  But if the parents love their child, even if that love causes them to be somewhat strict and rigid, things tend to work out fine, and everyone's happy.  People come in many flavors.  None is necessarily "better" than the other, any more than "sweet" is better than "salty," or "bitter" is better than "sour."  De gustibus, etc.

But personally, as I say, I think Leo's a lucky kid.

Kernow A'Gas Dynergh**

As I stepped off the train in St. Ives, where I was greeted by my four fellow hikers, and looked out over the twisted, picture-book streets of the town -- a larger town than I'd expected -- I knew I was going to love Cornwall.  What I didn't yet fully realize was that Cornwall, in return, had some physical demands in store for me.

My college friend Jim, his brother John, and their respective wives Dorothy and Ann had hiked with me last year in Scotland.  This year's hike was to be more wildly scenic, and considerably more physically demanding than had been Scotland's "Great Glen Way."  In nine days of actual hiking, our official mileage was 99 miles.  But several of our accommodations were located somewhat off the trail, and my phone's pedometer gave me a total of 111 miles.

We began the hike in St. Ives and hiked counter-clockwise along the coast to Falmouth.  The largest town between those endpoints fell midway at Penzance, where we spent a rest day.  (Although I "rested" by logging another 6.9 miles just wandering around Penzance.)

The first day was extremely difficult hiking -- not because of altitude changes, but because of the rocky terrain we passed over.  At times, the trail was nothing more than a route over fields of boulders.  That first day was only six miles, but felt much longer.  The second day was longer, but not quite so difficult, and the trail became increasingly conventional as the days passed.

The scenery was magnificent -- rugged coast lines, with rocky promontories and sandy coves.  Historically, this was smuggler country, where locals considered smuggling simply another profession.  Shipping was important, and sailing was difficult along the Cornish coastline.  Salvage of wrecked ships, like smuggling, was just another way to make a living.  As one church leader prayed:

Dear Lord, we hope that there be no shipwrecks, but if there be, let them be in St. Just for the benefit of the inhabitants.

It was also mining country -- tin, which was an important export from Neolithic times up until the 20th century, and the beautiful serpentine rock.  The mines and smelters are abandoned today, but the structures are still in place -- stately stone buildings, in various stages of ruin, reminiscent of ruined castles and fortifications. 

We arose each morning to a sumptuous breakfast, then hiked all day -- perhaps stopping for tea and cake if we happened on a tea house, often stopping for an improvised lunch, until finally -- finally -- we arrived at the next night's accommodation.  The names of the towns in which we slept ring with the accents of Cornwall -- St. Ives, St. Just, Porthcurno, Penzance, Porthleven, Lizard Village, Coverack, Mawnan Smith, and Falmouth. 

Every B&B or small hotel was different, every proprietor's personality was unique.  Including that amazing woman in Coverack who, in "high camp" accent, called us her "darlings," greeted us with gin and tonics as she introduced us to her bohemian friends, insisted that we bathe blisters in a bath of vodka, and, with a wink, suggested I leave my key in the door in case she decided to visit me at night.  It wasn't the Marriott.

We saw, of course, the most westerly point in England (Land's End), as well as the most southerly (the Lizard).  We also saw the beautiful Mount St. Michael -- cousin of the related French abbey at Mont St-Michel -- which is reachable by foot only during low tide.  We saw a monument at the spot where the first transatlantic "message" was sent (to Newfoundland) and received -- a simple Morse code "S" (dot dot dot).

Two of our hikers suffered severe blisters, and left the hike by summoned taxi at noon on successive days.  Spirits remained high, however, and after a day or so of recovery, both were back on the trail.

We finished our odyssey in historic Falmouth, where we visited the excellent maritime museum, and where I discovered monuments celebrating the the place where the first news arrived in England of Nelson's triumph at Trafalgar, and the place where Darwin returned to England on his craft, the Beagle.  It was hard to forget that England was a seafaring nation, a nation that considered the sea both its highway to the world and its defense against invasion.

Jim and I left Falmouth by train for London, where we were later met by Dorothy.  London -- very much the England of the cosmopolitan present, after a week of dwelling in its picturesque past.  As mentioned in an earlier post, I was enticed by Jim and Dorothy to a Mark Knopfler concert at Greenwich's O₂ Arena, joining tens of thousands of enraptured spectators.  It was, um, loud.

We spent our last night watching a local production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution.  Somehow, Jim and I ended up cast as members of the jury.  We of course vote for acquittal, to our later bemused chagrin.  Excellent production, very good acting.  Clever jurors.

Would I do it all again?  Of course.  But there are other hikes in Britain, just waiting to be sampled. 
-------------------------------

** "Welcome to Cornwall."  In Cornish, a Celtic language closely related to both Welsh and Breton.