Return to Seven Gables?

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Months of isolation and self-quarantine lead to various forms of mental illness -- or if not "illness," at least dysfunction.  One form of which is unfocused thought, and rambling daydreams, and free association.  Sometimes known as "wool gathering."

Re-reading a YA novel, one that is worthier of re-reading than most, started me off on this latest mental straying from the safe and sane path of normal mentation.  The novel is narrated by a student at a private prep school in the Oregon mountains, a student whose primary love is rugby and whose primary obsession is obtaining a kiss -- at the very least -- from a young lady in his class.  He is driven mad by his hormones -- overcome by both passion for this girl (and for girls indiscriminately) and by anger, or at least aggression, against some of his male classmates.

Given this boy's personality, it felt surprising to read a reference to "Rappaccini's Daughter," a short story by Hawthorne assigned in his American literature class.  Not surprising that he had been assigned that story, but that -- in the midst of his various hormonal turmoils -- he should lament:

I love the way Hawthorne said things.  I wished that I could also find "no better occupation than to look down into the garden" beneath my window, but I had, in such a short time, gotten myself so occupied with crap that I lay there convinced there was no way I would make it through my eleventh-grade year.

He refers back to Hawthorne's short story at other points throughout the novel.  (To be fair, I should note that the kid -- whose thoughts often resembled those of a teen hoodlum -- was at the top of his class academically.)

I'd never read "Rappaccini's Daughter."  I pondered:   Perhaps I'd missed something?  I downloaded a collection of Hawthorne's short stories, and read it. 

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is an interesting tale -- perhaps I insult my readers, all of whom are intimately familiar with it? -- narrated by a young man who finds a young girl who has been raised by her eccentric scientist father in a garden filled with poisonous plants.  She has become immune to poison, but also has become lethal to other creatures.  The narrator doesn't die from proximity with her, but himself becomes as lethal as his beloved.  Hawthorne seems to suggest the poison to be a representation of corruption, of evil, and that the girl has unwittingly "corrupted" the boy.

The ending is not happy.  The story was interesting, but didn't overwhelm me.  But I  read some of the other short stories -- "Young Goodman Brown" (analogous in some ways to "Rappaccini's Daughter," but in seventeenth century Salem, rather than Padua, Italy), "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," and "The Artist of the Beautiful."  All of which I found very enjoyable.  I remember also, of course, the novel, The Scarlet Letter, which I enjoyed even in college American Literature -- when forced to read it! -- and on later voluntary re-readings.  Also, I long ago read The Marble Faun, a novel about which I now remember nothing except that it took place in Italy, but which I do recall enjoying.

So much for the promised mental rambling.  Which brings me to Hawthorne's well-known novel, The House of the Seven Gables.  In October 2018, I discussed my visit to Salem, Massachusetts, and my tour of the house in which Hawthorne had boarded for a period, and on whose history he based the novel.  I expressed doubt at the end of my blog entry that I would actually go ahead and read the novel: "The book itself might be anticlimactic after wandering through the eponymous house."

I'm now reconsidering this obvious declaration of mental laziness.  What better time to read the novel -- which has actually lurked on my Kindle ever since 2018 -- than now, when by governmental decree and medical necessity I'm confined to quarters in my own house of several -- but not seven -- gables?  And when I've again renewed my acquaintance with Nathaniel Hawthorne?

More to come on this question.  Maybe.

The quarantine cat

“I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”

--Rudyard Kipling

I saw it out of the corner of my eye.  Maybe I'd seen it before?  If so, it hadn't slipped through my brain's filters, hadn't slipped into my consciousness.  A dark sweater in a hammock?  Hanging in a dorm window?

Virus or no virus, I walk through the University of Washington campus every two or three days.  Just one of my several daily walking routes.  I wind my way through a maze of new dormitories -- since March, a somewhat eerie experience.  The dorms are uncannily empty, aside from a few die-hard residents who linger on.  These are new dorms that were built over the old McCarty Hall and its parking lot, places which half my mind believes still exist.  Alternate realities.  

As was the sweater in the hammock, as it turned out.

The window was on the ground floor of Madrona Hall, almost hidden in surrounding foliage.  I had walked past it when the alert rang in my brain: "A dark sweater in a hammock?  Or was that a cat?"

I retraced my steps, and saw what my photo above reveals: a cat, a gray tabby, suspended in the window.  Sleeping.  It continued sleeping, throughout that first sighting.

I've since passed that same window seven or eight times.  The cat is always there.  In his (her?) hammock.  Usually asleep.  Sometimes curled up, as though asleep, but with eyes open, watching, sizing me up.  Once, it was sitting in the hammock, looking out the window alertly.

The hammock has never been empty.

The cat appears healthy and well fed.  It is obviously a pet.  From the exterior, I can't tell whether the cat room is a residence, or a dorm office, or a common room.  It could be any of those.   The curtain is pulled behind the cat, hiding whatever lies beyond.

I had never noticed the cat (or an old dark sweater) until after the coronavirus shut down the university.  Maybe he's been living there all year.  But I think of him as "the quarantine cat."

And really, doesn't the cat represent us all during the "stay at home" era?  Or, as cats so often do, represent an idealized version of ourselves?  He stays at home, without protest.  Or, in the cat's case, he stays in the hammock.  Not because he's leashed, not because his "owner" ordered him to, but because he chooses to.  The cat is a content creature.

I'm sure that, in his early days in Madrona, he explored the hall sufficiently to satisfy a cat's curiosity.  He was provided a hammock in which to repose, in which to observe the outdoors.  The hammock served his needs and in the hammock he passes his days.

Not -- as we tend to be -- bored, or stir-crazy, or angry.  Not raging against his Fate.  The cat views himself with his inner eye, and knows that he needs no entertainment, no distraction.  He is complete within himself, contemplating with contentment his own existence.

He actually reminds me of a Buddhist monk, as does every cat.  He has sufficient food to stay alive, and a hammock of his own, free from external annoyance.  He has an "owner" who loves him, and, I assume, to whom he feels some semblance of love.  But he does not depend on his owner -- not for food, not for safety, not for contentment.  Like a monk holding out a bowl for a gift of rice, he happily accepts his daily food.  But he is not "grateful" for the food, because he wisely knows that the owner obtains happiness of his own -- if not "karma" -- by so giving.  If the food stops being served, if he were to be abandoned, he would not despair.

He would not despair -- although he might grieve -- because he is a cat.  The cat who walks by himself.  Unlike the servile dog, he has kept all the instincts of his wild ancestor.  Like a good boy scout, he can live off the land.  And, in so doing, remain content with his own existence.

When I see him watching me as I pass, I approach the window.  The cat never flinches.  He never acts awkward or averts his eyes.  He stares at me calmly.  I might sometimes mistake his calm stare as a sign of hostility, but I'd be wrong.  I would be falsely interpreting his sense of self-sufficiency, his knowledge that he is equal with me as a fellow creature, his failure to show a craving for affection, as "hostility."  If he were a dog, perhaps so.  Not, however, a cat.  Or at least not this cat.

In a couple of days, I'll be walking once more past Madrona Hall.  My heart will beat slightly faster as I approach his window.  He may or may not see me approach.  Either way, I doubt his heart will beat faster.

He may eventually, however, give me a brief nod of recognition.  If so, I probably will react giddily.  But then, I'm not a cat. 

The Leopard

In 1860, insurrections were underway in Sicily against the Bourbon King, Francis II, ruler of the largest remaining state in Italy -- the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  To the north, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, under the House of Savoy, was leading a struggle for Italian unification and independence. It sent Giuseppe Garibaldi south, with a small army, to assist the rebels.  The island of Sicily fell quickly, and the rest of the kingdom, in southern Italy with its capital at Naples, fell by early 1861.

If we, meaning we Americans, read Italian history, we usually read it from the point of view of the victorious "progressives" --  the forces that led to unification and to the present Italian state.  But what about the losers?

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's historical novel The Leopard (1958) views that era from the point of view of one of the major losers, a member of the nobility under the Bourbon kingdom.  I've read allusions to The Leopard for years.  It's considered one of the landmarks in Italian literature.  A British newspaper has listed it as one of the ten greatest historical novels in any language.

I resisted reading it.  Nineteenth century Italian life -- especially Sicilian life -- sounded dusty and stuffy.  Sort of like Pinocchio, maybe, without the puppets.  But, trapped at home by Covid-19, I decided to give it a try.

The book is nothing like what I expected.  It was written in 1958, after all, not the late nineteenth century.  It gives an excellent picture of what life must have been like in 1860s Sicily, but it isn't an Italian version of Dickens or Thackeray.  The story is told from the point of view of Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, a figure based on the author's own great grandfather.  The Prince is in his mid forties when the story commences in 1860.

The Leopard is not a story of famous battles, smoldering romances, or dueling opponents.  The plot is minimal.

Instead, it shows us a view of traditional Sicilian life and attitudes, of princely splendors side by side with grinding poverty.  But it's more than that, and deeper.  It is a picture of what life was like for a man who was at the top of his society as he watched that society gradually fall apart about him, and be swept away as new classes came into power.  A man who watches his family's great land holdings be lost, piece by piece, through the improvidence of younger members of the family, members of a younger generation who care only for spending money.  And who watches himself grow older, year by year, fading away at the same time as his family's assets and reputation are either squandered or lost through development of a non-aristocratic society.

The new Italy, imposed from the north, was part of Western European civilization.  Its hopes and ideals were foreign to Sicily, unwelcome to Sicily.  Don Fabrizio tells a sympathetic northerner:

In Sicily it doesn't matter whether things are done well or done badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of 'doing' at all.  We are old, Chevalley, very old. ... We're as white as you are, Chevalley, and as the Queen of England, and yet for two thousand and five hundred years we've been a colony.  I don't say that in complaint; it's our fault.  But even so we're worn out and exhausted.

Don Fabrizio's marriage was already merely one of convenience by the time the story begins.  "Flames for a year, ashes for thirty.  He knew what love was."  His children were dull and disappointing.  His adopted nephew, Tancredi, had the fire, the quickness of mind, the subtlety of humor, that appealed to him, but Tancredi chose to marry the beautiful but shallow daughter of a highly successful peasant turned entrepreneur, an arriviste whose lack of social finesse appalled the older Prince.

Yes, the Prince was a snob, but that was expected and desired in the society in which he had been born.  He was also more compassionate than expected, a compassion that also accompanied an occasional unintended or unconscious cruelty.  And he was an intellectual, a studious man who spent much of his time on his rooftop, observing the heavens through his collection of telescopes.  He received a scientific award for his observations of a visiting comet.

In the penultimate chapter, the story leaps forward from 1861 to 1888, as the Prince prepares to die.  He broods that he has felt the life flowing out of himself, like sand through an hourglass, for years.  Now it is rushing out faster.   He observes his relatives clustered about him, only Tancredi showing real sorrow.  Many friends, many members of his family have died.  No one has excelled.  He has a grandson: "so handsome, so lively, so dear ... So odious."  One of the new sort of people, interested only in pleasure.

He himself [Don Fabrizio] would be merely a memory of a choleric old grandfather who had collapsed one July afternoon just in time to prevent the boy's going off to Livorno for sea bathing.

He heard the expected tinkling bell as a priest came to give him the last rites.  He couldn't think of what to confess.

Not that he felt himself innocent; but his whole life was blameworthy, not this or that single act in it; and now he no longer had time to say so.

He tries to recall all the happy times of his life.

I'm seventy-three years old, and all in all I may have lived, really lived a total of two ... three at the most.

And with that dispiriting thought, he fades away, along with the Sicilian life with which he had been familiar.

The Leopard is a warm and sympathetic story about a fascinating Sicilian aristocrat, but it's also a story of decay -- decay of a society, decay of a family, decay of the man himself.  Read it, but don't expect to finish up with a song in your heart.

Not "just the flu"

Jack McMorrow
(NYT photo)

I do everything right.

Except while I'm out walking, I stay in the house all day.  When I do walk, I keep six feet away from passing walkers, runners, and bicyclists.  (Except when speeding bikers get too close, but I'm told that they roar past so quickly that my risk is minuscule.)  I don't socialize in person.  I eat a healthful diet.  I exercise daily.  My only underlying risk factor would be blood pressure, which I manage medically extremely well.  I get ample sleep.

I should be safe.  Or so I like to think.

And then I read yesterday's story in the New York Times about 14-year-old Jack McMorrow.  A totally healthy New York kid.  Once his school was shut down on March 18, he hadn't left his folks' Queens apartment, except for one visit with his mother to their apartment house's laundry room.  His parents and his sister have all tested negative for Covid-19

But in mid-April, he developed a rash on his hands and a stomach ache.  Doctors didn't take his symptoms seriously.  He initially tested negative for Covid-19.  By April 25, his temperature was over 104, he had a sore throat and dry cough, he had swollen lymph glands..  He felt as though he had been injected with "straight-up fire."  Another test, this time by a hospital, was now positive.  His heart was soon beating 165 times a minute, and his blood pressure was abnormally low.  He went into cardiac shock.

He could well have died.  Within a day.

By the end of April, doctors were planning to put him on a ventilator.  Before doing so, however, they first tried giving him steroids to combat the inflammation and to suppress his over-active immune defenses.  It worked.  He was very lucky.  Lucky that his doctors kept trying different approaches.  Lucky that they realized he was suffering a new reaction to the virus -- a reaction that has belatedly been affecting young people, young people who at first were considered virtually immune.

Lucky they got it in time.

I would hate to reach the point where only luck -- and educated medical guesses that proved successful -- would save me.

Jack sounds like a great kid.  While still recovering, he wrote his biology teacher a thank you note for giving him the background to understand what was being done to him, while it was being done.  He has a sense of humor about his survival that only an uninhibited kid could have -- home from the hospital after ten days, finally free of all the tubes and wires hooked up to him, Jack danced around the apartment, singing Pinocchio's song:  "I'm a boy!  There are no strings on me!"  He told the interviewer about what it was like in the hospital, "I was very very emotional. ... I'm using the word emotional to cover up the fact I was crying like a baby."

It's a harrowing story with a happy ending.  But it was a horrible and painful experience, one I would have a hard time enduring.  The journalist should be commended for emphasizing how terrible the experience of Covid-19 can be, even for those who survive the virus.  She should also be commended for bringing Jack alive as a real and appealing young man -- not just another patient, another case number.

Jack says that his experience has increased his pre-illness interest in studying medicine.  If he does become a physician, I suspect his experience with Covid-19 will give him a strong sense of empathy for those he treats.

As for me, Jack's story convinces me that I won't be running out to visit restaurants the first day they're allowed to open.  Even though I sorely miss hanging out in my favorite breakfast spot.  It's a mysterious virus, and it pays to be cautious.

Thar she blows!

Mt. St. Helens summit, with
Rainier in the distance
(1971)

My buddy Jim B. and I climbed Mt. St. Helens in 1971.  I was in pretty good shape, and it wasn't a particularly difficult climb.  Probably easier -- or at least shorter -- than the climb of Mt. Adams by my brother and me in 1968. 

St. Helens was thus my second climb of a Washington volcano.  Since then, I've climbed Mt. Rainier twice, and Glacier Peak twice.  That leaves only Mt. Baker, which I attempted with a small climbing school group in 1992 -- we had to turn around half way up, because one of our group was having serious health problems.  I'm afraid Baker will have to remain unclimbed.

Sitting on top of St. Helens, water bottle in hand, I didn't realize that I'd never reach this summit again.  At least, a summit at that elevation.  Because nine years later -- forty years ago yesterday -- the mountain famously erupted, reducing the elevation of its peak from 9,677 feet to 8,330 feet.  If it had erupted while I was enjoying my lunch on top, my earthly remains would have been distributed over parts of Idaho and Montana, and even as far away as Oklahoma.

Luckily, I was not at the summit, but at Lihue Airport on Kaua'i, waiting to return to Seattle, when word was passed around the waiting area that St. Helens had blown her top.  I was amazed at the violence of the explosion, but no one was surprised by the eruption itself.  A series of earthquakes had shaken the mountain beginning in March 1980, and a large bulge had been forming on its north side.  The movement of magma inside the cone had been detected.

My home town was (is) twenty miles southwest of St. Helens.  One of the most popular views from our town was the symmetrical, snowy cone in the distance, looming over Lake Sacajawea in the center of town.  Spirit Lake, at the foot of the mountain, was an even more spectacular sight.  Both the Boy Scouts and the YMCA had camps along the lake shore.  There were two lodges at the lake, one of them at the opposite end of the lake from the roadhead.  My family had frequently taken the free ride in a launch to the lodge, for a Sunday chicken dinner. 

Spirit Lake was surrounded by steep hills on all sides, except where the road from I-5 to the west brought in visitors.  A friend and I did a two-night backpacking hike along the mountain ridges, circling the entire  lake in 1967.  It was a beautiful hike, long but not too difficult.  I never dreamed that I'd never do it again.

But so it goes. At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, all those recreational opportunities, all those scenic views, were suddenly terminated -- as were many square miles of commercial timber owned by giant timber companies.  For years, there had been talk of creating a national park or national monument around St. Helens.  It never happened, but the ruined peak is now enclosed in Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, a 110,000 acre tract devoted to the study of natural regeneration following a volcanic event. I've climbed to what is now the "summit" on the crater's rim two or three times since the eruption.  The approach is now from the south, rather than from Spirit Lake on the north.  What had been a serious (but non-technical) climb is now just a long uphill walk.   

Everyone who spent his youth in or near my home town feels the loss viscerally --  as no doubt Parisians feel the burning of Notre Dame.  Spirit Lake has again been reachable for many years now, of course.  But the configuration of the lake and of the surrounding terrain is so radically different as to be disorienting.  Some people prefer not even to visit, preferring to keep Spirit Lake, with Mt. St. Helens looming gracefully above it -- serenely and perfectly -- embedded in their memories and in their old photographs.

The immutability of the world we live in is a persistent delusion, but a delusion that is frequently proven false.

A High Five for Glenn Burke

Silas is twelve years old. He's in sixth grade.  He plays center field for his Little League team, the Renegades.

He's an outstanding baseball player, his athletic performance heightened by the total focus and determination he brings to the game.  ("... when I'm out in center, it's where hits go to die.")  He's the team leader, and the most popular player among his teammates.

Silas has loving parents who are enthusiastic about his playing, without being the stereotypical scary parents screaming in the stands.  As his mother assures him,

"Every time you're out there, Silas, you're playing like it could be the very last time you ever get to play.  Baseball needs more players like that.  The world needs more people like that -- people who are passionate and energized.  It's an indescribable feeling for a mother to see such passion and energy in her son.  Don't ever lose that."

Silas has an excellent coach, one who can relate to a 12-year-old on the boy's level, who can guide and reassure him when needed, and who realizes that Silas has as much to teach his coach about baseball strategy as the coach has to share with him.

And Silas has a best friend, a girl his age who is as funny and crazy in her own way as Silas is in his.

But Silas is secretly gay.  And he has just given a report to his English class about an outstanding major league player in the 1970s, Glenn Burke, the man who (seriously) invented the "high five."  But a player who was traded away by the Dodgers when a magazine revealed that he was gay, who was insulted by the Oakland A's manager, and who was finally sent down to the minors.  He ended up on the streets, and died of AIDS.

Silas didn't tell the class about Burke's career -- just that he was a great player who had invented the high five.  But Burke's disastrous career preys on Silas's mind, and on his ambitions for a career in baseball.

A High Five for Glenn Burke, by Phil Bildner, is a book suitable for middle school readers.  It was reviewed favorably in the New York Times Book Review.   The book is well written, although it's not "great literature," nor intended to be.  But it's an enjoyable read for all ages, often very funny and moving, with a wealth of information about good baseball strategy.

Silas does make one mistake, a little lie that blows up in his face.  But he's a sixth grader -- let's give him some slack.  He feels totally mortified and embarrassed.  But his coach, with some backup from Silas's best friend and his team mates, helps Silas view the mistake as a learning experience.

His coach tells him to look forward to his future baseball career:

"You're going to meet so many people on this journey, Silas. People who will love you and celebrate you, and the impact you're going to have on them will be extraordinary. ... That's happening already. You've impacted me."

This is a book for middle schoolers.  In an understated way, it offers many wise lessons to kids of all kinds on the brink of adolescence.  And because it's aimed at a younger age group, we can trust that, in the end, all's well that ends well.  And with a great coach, loving parents, and good friends and team mates, it does end very well for young Silas.

Acceptance

As I write this, at about 9:30 p.m. Central European Time, I should be having a late dinner with my brother and his wife, together with their daughter and her family.  In Rome.  In Italy.

After, perhaps, one more concluding round of grappa, I would be heading for bed.  And I'd be anticipating boarding a 10 a.m. train the next morning to Pisa, with a connection through the Cinque Terre to Levanto.  Where a two week festa was to begin, in celebration of my birthday.

Instead, I am sitting at my computer in Seattle, having just filled out a form requesting a refund of my pre-paid railway fare.

Such are the vicissitudes of life, especially life under Covid-19.

Being usually a bit of a Pollyanna, I try to be upbeat about my dashed plans.  I mull over the frequently stated claim that most vacationers enjoy the pre-trip planning and the post-trip reminiscing and bragging more than they do the trip itself.  I understand the partial truth of this claim, but I'm not sure it's my own experience.  I like it all -- pre, post, and during!

But I also am receptive to the suggestion that was contained in the weekly email from our pastor, which I received yesterday -- which I received just as I was glumly recalling that I should have been somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.  He recalled that as a young man, he was an ambitious sort, in a priestly way -- always having some valuable mission that he wanted to accomplish.  His concept of the religious term "grace" was the help God gave him to complete whatever mission that he'd set out to accomplish.

On the other hand, anything which distracted from the work was a hindrance to my mission, and was clearly not grace. It took me many years—and more than a little pain—to recognize that one’s true mission is more often found in those things that we thought were distractions than in the work one had set out to do, and to realize that all of it—the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the painful and the comforting, the moments of success and the hours of failure—all of it is grace.

My mission -- a fun-filled fortnight on the Italian coast -- is a bit less exalted that the sort of missions to which the email referred.  But the manner in which I suspect I should react to the damnable "hindrance" thrown in my way by the pandemic may be somewhat analogous.

The roughly two years of planning for the celebration were fun.  I discovered -- well, it wasn't a novel revelation, I guess -- that I like being a travel agent, or a trip organizer.  So, yes, I did have the pleasure of that pre-trip planning to which the "frequently stated claim" adverts.  But more than that, I had the fun of being in constant contact with the thirty relatives and friends who were planning to meet me in Levanto.  Some of them I communicate with regularly, but many others I see or email very infrequently.  There were a couple of second cousins who I hadn't spoken to in decades, cousins who I was delighted to discover were interesting and funny.  (Hey, they're related to me -- how could they be otherwise?)  I learned a lot about the Cinque Terre and the Ligurian coast, and the interesting things that could be done in that area.  I read books I might not have read but for my planned trip.  I indulged in my enthusiasm -- well known by my tormented siblings since childhood -- of managing other people's affairs for them.  

In short, I didn't make the trip, but I enjoyed many of the pleasures of the trip.   

But more than that, I've learned once more that living life means accepting and valuing all aspects of it, "the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the painful and the comforting, the moments of success and the hours of failure."  I've learned once more that I can control what I can control, hopefully to the best of my ability, but I can't control everything.  And that acceptance of that fact is important.  "Man proposes, but God disposes," as the saying goes.  Or, if you prefer, Covid-19 disposes.  

So, I did the best I could, but I encountered what the Greeks would call the immutability of Fate.  I accept disappointment.  And I persuade myself that not getting what I want, when I want it, isn't always a bad thing.  It can be, if we let it -- as our parents would say -- character-building.   A "learning experience."

And, as the Mariners like to say, there's always next season.   We're now signed up for the same accommodations for May 2021.  Everyone still sounds enthused.  Will we be able to make it?  Will travel be safe twelve months from now?  I don't know.  But nothing would be gained by accepting defeat a year in advance.   

We'll do what we can.

Watch it, dude!

I walk four to five miles per day, rain or shine, in virus-saturated air or not.  I've felt relaxed about it, so long as no one gets within six feet of me.  Which raises today's issue.

I'm getting tired of runners and bikers who seem oblivious to the need for distancing.  Even on the very wide walkways of the University, they seem to enjoy crowding me as I cringe along the pavement edge.  Are they malicious?  I doubt it.  I think their minds are in an oblivious zone, no more concerned with my presence -- a lowly walker -- than they would be with an intrepid cockroach crossing the sidewalk.

Finally -- after dodging speeding bikes coming up behind me on the narrow sidewalks of the Montlake Bridge -- I prepared to let off steam in my accustomed fashion -- a harangue on my Facebook page.  Just before I began haranguing, however, I read an interesting post by a professor of biology offered on a friend's page.

The post -- "The Risks -- Know Them -- Avoid Them"* -- was essentially a long protest about the haste to "open up" the economy while the rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths still continue upward.  I was interested in all aspects of his discussion -- especially the ease with which a single, asymptomatic carrier of the virus can infect and kill a large number of patrons in a restaurant.  It makes me think very carefully about my enthusiasm for returning to my practice of eating breakfast out while lingering over my newspaper.

But the article was encouraging about the risks incurred out of doors.  And causes my hackles to flatten out to some degree when confronted with incursions by runners and bikers into my invisible safety zone.

The author points out that no one is infected by a single virus.  Infection requires a minimum load of viruses, probably something like a thousand, based on other viral infections, although a number has not been yet determined for the Covid-19 virus.  And the number probably differs from one individual to another.

If you are outside and someone sneezes in your face, you have a problem.  But, he reminds us of the formula for infection:

(Successful Infection) = (Exposure to virus) x (Time of exposure)

You can reach a one thousand viral particle threshold by breathing in 500 viral particles per minute for two minutes, or 20 viral particles per minute for 50 minutes. 

The time that a walker is exposed to a passing runner -- or even more, a passing biker -- is very slight.  Even though the passer is breathing heavily, and blowing out hypothetically infected aerosol, my exposure will be for a very short period of time, and even slight breezes will disperse the cloud.  Moreover, viruses decay and lose their ability to infect more quickly out of doors, in sunlight and dryness of air.  He summarizes:

If I am outside, and I walk past someone, remember it is "dose and time" needed for infection   You would have to be in their airstream for 5+ minutes for a chance of infection.  While joggers may be releasing more virus due to deep breathing, remember the exposure time is also less due to their speed.

No one  claims that infection is impossible under these conditions -- just as no one claims that an airplane never crashes.  But the risk is small enough to be, for most of us, an acceptable risk.

He reminds us to avoid distances closer than six feet, and advises us to wear masks.  My problem, of course, is with rogue exercisers getting within six feet of me, but I can see now that the risk still is minimal for very short exposures.  And I'm still not wearing a mask on the routes I follow, where -- for the greater part of the route by far -- I'm in no proximity to others.

WARNING -- I'm not an epidemiologist, or any other kind of physician.  I'm merely summarizing an online article that I found helpful and interesting.  No warranties as to its scientific or medical validity is offered to my readers.
---------------------------------------

/> *Erin Bromage, "The Risks -- Know Them -- Avoid Them,"  https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200511&instance_id=18384&nl=the-morning&regi_id=56695179&segment_id=27239&te=1&user_id=ae0a8f5fa52bc45332f32eb39846f734&fbclid=IwAR36sPVcinEh6sO7A4M02fCK85p_BBINB93Uf031nUSzzDkMteTNrjhGvoQ

Dr. Bromage is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.  His studies have focused on epidemiology and immunology.  He references another post that provides additional information on the specific question of risks of contracting Covid-19 while outdoors.

Sigal Samuel, "Why You're Unlikely to Get the Coronavirus from Runners or Cyclists," https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/24/21233226/coronavirus-runners-cyclists-airborne-infectious-dose?fbclid=IwAR1XkiJk6Tu81-QqCP6RZFWfswBzqSZson29ZcRYM_pS9xt5AjGtkXYt020

The author is a staff writer for Vox's Future Perfect.  She is not a trained scientist, but writes on general science matters.

Dorm life

McMahon Hall

As I wandered across campus on one of my several walking routes this afternoon -- in 75 degree (24° C) springtime splendor -- I walked past eleven-story McMahon Hall.  McMahon's architectural style is described by Wikipedia as "brutalist," ordinarily meaning I wouldn't like it.  But I've always found the building attractive, ever since it was built in the mid 1960s. 

But then, it was my home for a number of years, while I worked on a second bachelor's degree and a master's.  It's part of my history.  I often feel -- and I today felt -- an urge to walk right in, as though I still belonged there.  As though I were still in my 20s. 

It's closed right now, of course, like the rest of the campus.  But still.

McMahon's design was excitingly new, when it was built.  Rather than having long halls with rooms on either side, it consists of a number of "clusters" on each floor.  Each cluster is a small U-shaped hallway that leaves the main hall and doubles back onto to it.  Within the cluster is a common room with a balcony, and, in most cases, four double rooms and a single.  The cluster has its own restroom, including showers.

You got to know your eight cluster mates well, and spent a lot of time hanging out in the common room together, reading, or talking, or playing games.  I believe our cluster was best distinguished for having placed a plastic palm tree out on the balcony, a tropical delight on which to warm our eyes during the long winters.  McMahon is built on a cliff overlooking a valley below.  The valley at present is occupied by a university golf course and a group of athletic buildings.  While I lived in McMahon, however, the valley was a land fill, and I could look up from my books and watch, hypnotized, the endless procession of garbage trucks bringing their cargo to the dump for dumping.  In the distance, the headlights of rush hour traffic, chronically stalled on the Evergreen Point bridge leading to Lake Washington's eastern shore, glowed angrily.

Those were good years, I realize now.  My isolation at present, hiding alone in my house from the novel coronavirus, causes me to be even more nostalgic than usual for times in the past when "the going was good."

Some people are only too happy not to recall their school years.  I'm not one of them.  If I had been British, I might have been one of those university students who end up never leaving the university, a life-time don, helping educate bright new students and forgetting that I was no longer one myself.

Partly, it was the ease of meeting people, and the kind of people I met.  My days as an undergraduate marked the first time I'd ever been surrounded by people my own age who knew a lot about a lot of things, things about which I knew nothing.  And who were intensely interested in whatever those things were.  The guy who ended up being my closest friend as an undergrad -- and eventually became a medical school professor -- was fanatically interested in, at the same time, Jussi Björling's singing of opera arias and Buddy Holly's singing of rock songs.  I'd never heard of either performer, but I soon learned to like opera and to at least respect the interest of others in certain types of rock -- unknowingly making myself more receptive to the great age of rock that arrived soon after graduation.

As sort of a corollary to the above, it was a revelation to realize that there was nothing wrong with reading books, with showing interest in obscure topics, with enjoying serious argument, with speculating for the fun of speculating, with not feeling compelled to share the interests of the herd.  Undergraduates, whether great students or just average, were all stretching their minds, opening up to new ideas.  Many came from prep schools, and the difference between prep school and college was, for them, one of degree.  For me, from a small town high school, it was a whole new world, and a whole new way of seeing myself in that world.

Also enviable, in retrospect, was the flexibility of my fellow students.  I look back wistfully, as I've mentioned in an earlier post, on how easy it was for someone to come by at midnight and say, hey let's drive off-campus and grab a burger.  And why not?  But, midnight!  I can't imagine someone now pounding on my door at midnight and suggesting we head for McDonalds.   Today, my night's sleep is well underway by that hour.  But I wish it weren't. 

In my undergraduate dorm, which may or may not have been typical, everyone played bridge, and there seemed to be almost always three players looking for a fourth.  I found this to be something of a return to my life as a games player in sixth grade and younger, but at a more complex and challenging level.  I played a lot of bridge.  I've hardly ever played it since graduation, but I look back on my temporary enthusiasm with fondness.  If I could find three players today, I'd probably waste my remaining years refining my bidding techniques --  which would make about as much sense as spending day after day of my dotage on the golf course.

But didn't I go to class, didn't I ever study?  Of course.  Frittering away my time would eventually have become depressing, if it hadn't been a way of occupying the interstices between the hours of bending over the books.  But it's very clear to me now that much of my education, especially at the undergraduate level, came from my dormitory experiences.  Being a shy introvert, I didn't always find it easy or natural being surrounded by often self-assertive dorm mates, but the experience was invaluable.  Much of education is self-education, and professors and texts are merely guides.  Sharing the enthusiasms of others for a field of study helps broaden your education beyond the requirements of your major.  It's not the only path to a broad education, obviously, but it's maybe the easiest.

In other words, I recommend living on campus to anyone who can swing it.

All of these memories -- prompted by walking past a beloved dorm that the UW is considering tearing down.  Why?  Apparently, because today's students want more amenities than can be found in that old reinforced concrete hulk.

It's a good dormitory and, in my opinion, an attractive one. I hope it remains in place, high on the edge of its cliff, for many years to come.

Royally masked

My face mask arrived yesterday.  Two of them. 

I wanted black, for maximum macho effect, but had to settle for "Royal Blue."  My undergraduate university was offering cardinal-colored face masks emblazoned with the school name and logo, but I was afraid that a gang  of graduates of our archrivals might find me alone in a dark alley and beat me to a pulp.  I'll stick with Royal Blue.

I don't get out much nowadays.  For the past five weeks, I've done my weekly grocery shopping on-line.  I drive to the grocery store, phone my arrival, and wait in the car while a friendly attendant loads the stuff into my trunk.  The only time I've been inside a store since March was to fill a prescription at a drug store.  I didn't have a mask. It was 8 a.m. and the store was mainly empty, but I still felt naked and unprotected.

I don't intend to wear the mask while out walking.  My neighborhood isn't densely populated like Queens, in New York.  I can easily walk while keeping a considerable distance from other pedestrians, and we avoid each other with a smile, although runners and bicyclists sometimes streak by a bit too close for comfort. 

But I'm more concerned about being stuck near others indoors, and that's when the mask will come in handy.  Because, sooner or later, I'll be forced to confront such a situation.

Costo now requires all shoppers to wear a face mask, which seems eminently reasonable to me.  Apparently, some shoppers are outraged, and have threatened to boycott Costco, or even take more violent actions.  They view masks as a protection only for themselves, like motorcycle helmets and seat belts --  whose mandated use no doubt also infuriates them.  "Is there no end to the tyrannical acts of this government,"  they shout, imitating the tone of the list of grievances against the Crown in the Declaration of Independence.  "Give me liberty or give me death."  Over seat belts and face masks.

Face masks differ from helmets and seat belts, in that their use is primarily for the safety of others, not the wearer.  I'm hoping they add some protection for me, of course.  But I know that I could be infecting others for a week or so before I had any symptoms myself.  It seems reasonable that government -- and certainly private grocery stores -- should protect the health of the general public by requiring face masks where distancing has become insufficient or impossible,

But I rise above the howls of those who enjoy the benefits of government, but feel entitled to avoid imposition upon themselves of the slightest inconvenience for the benefit of others.  My Royal Blue mask awaits my wearing.. 

Do not go gentle

Can we live forever?  Or how about even just to 120?  Back in November, I discussed Jake Wolff's novel, The History of Living Forever, a story arising out of a biochemist's effort to extend human life by the use of certain substances found in nature that remove free radicals from the body.  Free radicals may contribute to the aging and degenerative processes in the human body.

The book was fiction, and some of what it discussed was quackery.  (As the author warned in a "Don't try this at home" warning) But not all of it.

An article in this month's Stanford Magazine, entitled "The Elixir of Youth,"* discusses non-fictional efforts by a Stanford professor of neurology to reach some of the same results.

It's been observed for a number of years that an injection of the blood of a young mouse into an old mouse will cause the old mouse's organs to begin rejuvenating, resulting in the mouse's becoming actually biologically younger.  It was later discovered that use of whole blood wasn't necessary -- the plasma alone had the same effect.  In fact, the plasma from young humans has been shown to have a rejuvenating effect on an old mouse.  What's not known at present is what the ingredients in the plasma are that have this effect, and how.

But what is known is that whatever the efficacious plasma ingredient might be, it is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and causing improvements in persons suffering from Alzheimer's.  The blood-brain barrier was one of the major problems that faced the biochemist in Wolff's novel.  He discovered the solution to be the ingestion of mercury, which temporarily makes the barrier permeable.  Unfortunately, mercury in the brain also usually leads to death.

Results now seem to show that the blood-brain barrier, which was thought to permit only water and nutrients to reach the brain, also permits passage of whatever in plasma causes brain rejuvenation.  And that seems to be where we are at present.

So will we live forever?  Not this generation, according to the Stanford neurologist.  But if it becomes possible to extend human life to, say, an average of 120, only those with a lot of  money will be able to afford it.  Ethical questions abound.

On the other hand, I've discussed the question with many friends over the years -- if a magic drug were developed, would you be excited about living considerably longer than the present life expectancy?.  Younger friends usually say, "sure."  Older ones surprise me.  They seem irritated by the question.  I explain that I mean not another forty years of senility, but another forty years of good health.  They aren't convinced and they aren't persuaded.  A relative of mine, a physician, said it wasn't possible.  But, I asked, suppose it became possible, would you be interested?

The subject was closed as far as he was concerned.  He refused to discuss it further.

The Stanford neurologist may share to some extent this feeling -- but from a societal rather than a personal standpoint.

If we all of a sudden find something that prolongs life span to 120 in the average population, I don't think we could deal with that.  There aren't enough resources, and the population would increase so rapidly that we could probably not cope with it without starting to kill each other or having massive famines.

But then he's a physician, not an economist or environmentalist.

As for myself, perhaps socially irresponsibly, I say -- wow, yes, bring it on!
---------------------------

*Deni Ellis Béchard, "The Elixir of Youth," Stanford Magazine (May 2020)

Farewell to Salonica

"The Frenks are clever, but their hearts are hard as the stones in Mehmed's mill," commented a peasant in breeches, stroking his long black beard. 

Four years ago, I wrote an essay discussing André Aciman's memoir, Out of Egypt.   Aciman grew up in a large, extended Jewish family in Alexandria in the late 1950s and early 60s.  Alexandria was then a highly cosmopolitan city, with a population from a multitude of ethnic roots.  His family was forced to leave in 1964, when Egypt expelled nearly all non-Arabs, citizen and non-citizen alike.  Aciman was 14 years old when they left.  Out of Egypt is a haunting memoir of growing up in a happy but lost world.  I notice that I've referred to it frequently in subsequent posts.

Salonica -- now bearing the Greek name, Thessaloniki -- was another cosmopolitan city at the beginning of the twentieth century.  A coastal city in the Ottoman province of Macedonia, it had a population of Turks, Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Bulgarians, French, and Spanish.  The Jewish population was especially large, their ancestors having moved to Salonica after 1492, when Spain and Portugal expelled their Jewish residents.  The Jewish immigrants were ambitious and highly educated, and were welcomed to the Ottoman Empire by the Sultan, who mused:  "They say that Ferdinand [Spain's king] is a wise monarch.  How could he be one, he who impoverishes his country to enrich mine?"

Leon Sciaky was born in Salonica in 1892.  His memoir, Farewell to Salonica (1946), begins with his early recollections of growing up in a large house with a large garden.  His father was a successful, well respected, and well liked businessman.  Leon appears to have been an introspective but not shy young boy, highly affected by the beauties and curiosities of his house and garden, and highly imaginative in the solitary games he played.   Once he began school, he made friends with children from all ethnic groups, and became fluent in French in addition to the family's Ladino (a Jewish dialect derived from ancient Castilian Spanish); he also spoke enough of Salonica's other languages to get around, as did many of the city's residents.

From the early chapters of the memoir, it's clear that Leon lived in an intensely close, extended family, as did Aciman in Alexandria.  He was loved, and lived a secure and enviable childhood.

I had grown much like the weeds around the odd corners of the garden of the big house, drawing upon its cloister-like serenity the stuff that went to make my dreams and fantasies.  Mine had been a world so filled with wonder and exciting fancies that I had not missed the companionship of other children.

Leon's classmates at
Le Petit Lycée Français.  Leon is
the second boy seated from the left. 

He found his grammar school boring and stifling, but when he began high school, he attended Le Petit Lycée Français -- a highly innovative school for its time (or for any time, I'd say).  The instructors were approachable and friendly, and enjoyed answering questions.  Students in the multi-ethnic student body were taught to study as a group, rather than being pitted against each other competitively.  Virtually all of the students were bright and curious and Leon found them enjoyable to work with.

And it was at the Petit Lycée Français that Leon began satisfying his intense curiosity about the outside world, the world that was beginning to amaze even Salonicans with its railroads and electricity and steamships.  The world beyond the safe, comfortable, non-challenging world of Salonica in which he had grown up.  The world of the "Frenks," as the Ottomans called all Westerners, not just the French.

Leon's closest friend at the Lycée was a Turkish boy named Shukri, a boy as quiet, as intelligent, and as thoughtful as Leon himself. They spoke often together about the books they read, mainly French classics, and about their school classes. Only once does Leon recall Shukri having spoken about the Ottoman Empire's place in the world. Everyone in the West is upset about the plight of the Christians in Macedonia, Shukri noted. "But the shame we feel, who shares it with us? We see our country on the brink of ruin, reviled, and spat upon. Enemies surround us and are in our midst. Who shares with us our humiliation?"   He hoped for an awakening by the common man in Turkey.

By the time Leon was sixteen, the centuries-old Ottoman world was breaking up, as Shukri foresaw, with the revolt of the "Young Turks."  Five years later, in 1913, the Great Powers decreed the partition of Macedonia, with the southern part, including Salonica, awarded to Greece.  In 1915, Leon and his family left Salonica, never to return, and settled in New York. 

America was exciting, Leon found, but disconcerting.

Reared in the atmosphere of courtesy and hospitality of the East, I found both teachers and pupils shockingly intolerant of anything that deviated ever so slightly from what they had been accustomed to.  Their readiness to ridicule foreigners -- their names, their accents, and their civility -- struck me as singularly coarse.

He later decided that this was the cost of democracy -- he noted how young people from every social and economic class played together as equals.  He regretted the cost, but approved of the result.

Salonica became, as it is now, a Greek city.  Other ethnic groups were forced to assimilate or leave.  The dwindling Jewish community was finished off during World War II, when the Germans sent virtually all the Jews north to extermination camps. 

Leon and his wife spent most of their adult lives in upstate New York, where he taught in progressive schools and ran summer camps.  He died in 1958. Three years after his death, I passed through Thessaloniki by train on my way to Athens.  I rejoiced that I had finally arrived in Greece.  I had no idea of the tragedies that the city outside the railway station had endured.

Rebecca West and Robert Kaplan, in the two books I've read and discussed over the past couple of weeks, emphasized the cruelty, harshness, and stupidity of Ottoman rule.  They accurately described the effects of that rule on the Slavic minorities -- and for Kaplan, also the Greeks -- who suffered under that rule.  And Leon does not minimize the hardships suffered by the peasants, both Bulgarian and Turkish, in the rural areas of Macedonia surrounding Salonica, peasants whose grain his father purchased each year for shipping.  Many of these hardships resulted from the greed and corruption of the local Turkish "beys," or landowners, whose soil the peasants worked -- the exorbitant taxes and fees the beys imposed.

But for Leon's family, and the rest of the very large Jewish community in Salonica, Turkish rule was, in some ways, more a blessing than a curse.  For all its arbitrary cruelty and corruption, the Ottomans had never been a nationalistic Turkish empire.  It was an empire that embraced a large number of different ethnic groups.  Jews, among others, were allowed considerable autonomy and self-rule.  While resistance to Ottoman rule was already developing outside the city, within Salonica itself Leon recalls almost complete peace among all the groups.

Leon recalls especially the quiet warmth and peacefulness of Turkish households, the rituals of hospitality that were more than rituals, that truly expressed welcome to Leon and his family.  The flip side to this devotion to traditional values was the stagnation that Leon fought against, the resistance to new ideas, to change in general.  Leon's every instinct from childhood was to burst out of this cocoon, this lack of interest in new ideas and new inventions.  He found a congenial home in America.

But even in America today, young people who leave behind the close ties of their home towns for the excitement and progressiveness of the large city often look back with nostalgia to the unquestioned values and friendly rituals of their youth.   So it's been with André Aciman.  So it was with Leon Sciaky, as he looked back and said "farewell" to Salonica.