Happy retrospecting

Denny and me
Summit of Kalapatar
Near Everest base camp (1995) 

To reiterate my much reiterated whining, Covid-19 has made a very big mess of my beautiful 2020 travel plans.  There!  Got that off my chest.  Again.

What caused this latest flare-up of discontent?  Well, yesterday I received the July issue of National Geographic magazine.  An issue devoted almost entirely to the Himalayas, including an account of a recent search for the frozen body of one of the two leaders of the tragic 1924 Mallory climb of Mount Everest.

It's a wonderful issue, with beautiful photos (and additional photos on-line for subscribers).  I was about to lift at least one of the photos for use with this posting, but ran into some stern copyright infringement warnings.

While I've never had an interest in climbing Everest, or ever possessed the training or physical capability necessary to even attempt it, National Geographic's photos remind me of places I have been in the Himalayas, and of places I'd love to visit in the future.

Even before this year, however, I already began to realize that my ability to hike at extreme altitudes was not what it had been even five years earlier.  I'm sure I can still handle 12,000 or even 14,000 feet, especially if reaching that elevation is not attempted all in one day, but the most exciting hikes in the Himalayas are at higher altitudes.

But the sorrows of old age aside, the Covid-19 pandemic rules out any foreign travel (or even domestic travel) this year.  And, worse, I'm not sure when it will be possible to do "adventure travel" in the future.  Probably not until an effective vaccine has been developed, at the earliest.  If I were 35, I'd roll my eyes and say, "Fine, I'll find other amusements until then."  I'm at the age, however, at which a wait of two or three years may well rule out certain kinds of hiking that I'm still capable of today.

The pathos of these mullings may explain why I've been posting so many photos of past hikes and climbs on my Facebook page.  Not so much showing off (although that, too), as to remind myself how lucky I am to have now those memories.  How clever I was in earlier years to spend my two or three week vacations out on the trails, rather than hanging out on the beach (although I have some good beach memories, as well).  How lucky I've been to have been in better than average shape for my age, at each stage of my life.

And how fortunate I've been to have two nephews -- Doug and Denny -- and the son of family friends -- Pascal -- join me, year after year, during their teens, twenties, and even thirties.  What great travel companions they were -- funny, adventurous, tireless, non-complaining, and willing to treat me as though we were all the same age. (And good losers at gin rummy, played on the ground outside our tents!)

The Alps (the Haute Route, the Mont Blanc loop), the Andes (the Cordillera Blanca, Choquequirao), the Himalayas (Everest base camp, Renjo La, Annapurna, Ladakh), Kilimanjaro, the Chinese Pamirs, Gabon swamps, Morocco desert tracks with camels -- and those were just some of the more spectacular hikes on which I was accompanied by one of the "kids."  Great memories!

Memories of travel aren't the same as the real thing.  But during the icy chill of a pandemic lock-down, happy travel memories are the warm, cozy fire by which one can sit and dream and warm his travel-deprived body.  (And dream up odd metaphors.)

And this pandemic, too, will end.  I have to believe!  Next year in Jerusalem!  Or maybe even Timbuktu.

Our own Catiline

Then that man [Catiline], in his burning rage, shouts out: "Since indeed I am surrounded on all sides by enemies and driven headlong, I will extinguish my own conflagration by pulling down everything in ruin."

--Sallust, Catiline 31.9 (Sallust was a Roman historian.)

Catiline was a Roman aristocrat with political ambitions. After failing in his bid for a consulship, he rallied the poor behind him and organized a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic. He was denounced in the Senate by Cicero, who was then one of Rome's two consuls. When Catiline saw himself losing support among the Senators, he responded with the above outburst -- if his career was to be ruined, he'd pull down the Roman Republic along with him.

History repeats itself, probably because human nature and lust for power remain constants.

Watch what's happening in Washington, D.C.; watch what happens over the next four months.

Social distancing

Pat M. has been a friend since law school.  He lives in a suburb of Seattle, but we haven't gotten together for many months.  Finally, we agreed to meet and catch up this morning.  Not inside a house or a coffee shop.  We'd walk and talk.  Wearing masks.  And we'd talk loudly across six feet of empty space while walking.

But yesterday, he emailed.  Within the last ten days, he'd been to three doctors' appointments, including a dermatology examination on Wednesday.  I had earlier outlined my own two-week history, which was pretty clear of disqualifying events.

We decided to postpone our walk for two weeks. 

Too bad.  Great weather for walking today.  Sunny.  Temperature headed for 79 degrees (26º C) this afternoon.  And we have lots of things, things occurring since our last visit, to talk (i.e., complain) about.

But it's not worth risking an end to either of our lives -- under sedation in an ICU, with a tube down our throats.

We're not kids in our 20s, where the risks are less obvious.  Not like my next door neighbors, who have loud, boisterous parties in their back yard each weekend. 

And so goes life in this year of grace, 2020.  We'll still get together.  In two weeks.  But spontaneity is a virtue that has disappeared, at least temporarily, from our lives. 

Voting rights in America

Professor David Domke, whose two-part Zoom lecture series on the 2020 election I discussed earlier this month, last night gave the first Zoom lecture in a three-part series on voting rights in America, and attempts by Republicans and southerners to limit those rights.

Last night's lecture was primarily historical, describing the efforts since the Civil War to extend the franchise and prevent state efforts to limit that franchise.  Next week, he will discuss the technology of voter suppression.  The week after that he will describe the hurdles that are being used to limit voting in the 2020 election.

I found last night's historical discussion to be fairly basic, certainly for most lawyers or for anyone who is politically involved.  It was a good refresher course, however.  Very briefly, as Domke pointed out, the Constitution originally left election laws pretty much up to the states.  Since the Civil War, however, Congress has made seven major efforts to extend the franchise. 

I'll just summarize those seven efforts, and await what may be a more interesting lecture next week.

1870 -- Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding any federal or state law limiting the franchise on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.  The Southern states immediately found ways around this amendment -- for example imposing a poll tax on the right to vote.

1913 -- Seventeenth Amendment -- Senators must be elected by direct vote of the voters, not by the legislature or other state agency.

1920 -- Nineteenth Amendment -- Voting may not be limited on the basis of sex.

1964 -- Twenty-fourth Amendment -- Abolition of the poll tax and other taxes as a requirement to vote in federal (not state) elections.

1965 -- Voting Rights Act

1971 -- 26th Amendment -- Lowers age of voting to 18.

1993 -- National Voter Registration Act -- Requires states to allow citizens to register to vote when they apply for or renew their drivers license, and in certain other contacts with state agencies.

Domke pointed out that felony disenfranchisement acts in many states deny the vote for life or for extended periods of time to convicted felons.  These laws were adopted in many Southern states as another means of discriminating against blacks, who were also selectively prosecuted.  In 2018, Florida voters passed, by a 64 percent margin, a constitutional amendment restoring the vote to most felons after they completed their sentence, and any periods of probation or parole.

The Republican legislature, with approval by the Republican governor, passed an act requiring that the felon also pay all legal fees, fines, and restitution to victims before being allowed to vote.  The constitutionality of that act has been challenged, and a federal court has held that the act imposes a tax in violation of the 24th Amendment, but only as those felons who cannot pay the fees. The burden is on the would-be voter to prove he can't pay the fees, but apparently no one knows the amount of the fees owed. At present the state appears determined to enforce the act.  The dispute affects the voting rights of 1.4 million Florida felons.

Travel hopes still alive

"Fauci said there were a number of promising vaccines in development and that it's about "when and not if" they get positive results. He reiterated his hope that a vaccine could be made available by the end of 2020 or early 2021."

--USA Today (June 23, 2020)

To recapitulate past postings, 2020 was going to be my best travel year ever.  And I live to travel!

For over two years, we had been planning a two-week celebration of my birthday, to be held on the Italian coast in the town of Levanto.  We had two villas rented, with thirty guests planning to attend for one or two weeks.  Immediately following that celebration, my sister and two or three others were joining me for a week of "recuperation" at a rented lake shore house on Lake Como, north of Milan.

I was then to come back to Seattle for six days, and then fly to Glasgow, where I would join a couple of friends for an extremely interesting hike I'd done before in 2011 -- the West Highland Way from Glasgow to Fort William.  Today, I would have completed my eighth day of the hike; I'd be returning to Seattle on Friday.

And then, of course -- although no definitive plans had been made -- I would make my annual visit to my nephew Denny and family in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for two or three weeks in October or November.

These were my plans as of mid-February.  On February 25, I posted "The Plague and I," in nervous response to reports of a severe outbreak of the Covid-19 virus in Lombardy, Italy.   I conceded that the Italian trip was looking a bit "iffy," but expressed a determination to continue with it as planned, if at all possible.  I bravely asserted

I'd rather die from contracting COVID-19 while hiking about the Cinque Terre than die of an aneurysm while watching Fox News at home on television.

Things soon went rapidly downhill, and on March 13, I mailed a notice canceling our rentals to the property agent in Italy. 

But we didn't exactly cancel the rentals -- we agreed to postpone them for exactly one year, until the last two weeks of May 2021.  In mid-March, that seemed quite reasonable; things surely would be back to normal by then.  Within weeks, however, I realized that Covid-19 could be with us for at least a couple of years.  No cure was known.  Not only was there no cure, but no medication was available that could make a serious case less serious.  And epidemiologists were estimating it would be one and a half to two years before a vaccine could be developed, tested, approved, and made widely available.

Early last month, I emailed everyone that I wasn't too optimistic about 2021, but that we'd evaluate the situation in September.  And that's where we stand now.  But predictions of the availability of a vaccine have been increasingly -- if guardedly --optimistic.  As have reports of medications that often alleviate the more serious -- and fatal -- consequences of infection for older victims, and for those with certain underlying conditions.

And today, Dr. Fauci expressed his "hope" that a vaccine might be available before we leave for Italy.

Almost too good to be true -- as it may well be.  But if scientists and drug companies that are working feverishly to develop a vaccine are successful, it would mean that everything I'd hoped for this year could be done in 2021.  And almost all of the folks who had signed up for Levanto this year have expressed a desire to stick with us in 2021.

As I've mentioned to a number of people -- in that gloomy, Eeyore manner that makes me so popular around normal folks -- even if we'd done everything we had planned on this year, by this Friday it would all be over.  We'd have nothing but memories and photographs to show for it.  But now -- maybe everything still lies ahead.  Like thinking you've reached old age, but discovering it was all a dream; you're still only a teenager and have your whole life lying ahead of you.

So Covid-19 might be a blessing in disguise!  Right?  Who knew?
--------------------------------------

Admittedly, this posting is extraordinarily insensitive to the fate of the 480 thousand people of all ages, and especially the elderly, who have already died from Covid-19, and for the many more who have survived but have suffered permanent, debilitating damage to their lungs and other organs.  And to those who have been economically devastated by the pandemic.  And, of course, to those who -- regardless of Covid-19 -- would be unable, physically or financially, to spend their retirement years traveling about the world.

Trump isn't the only narcissist, I guess.  But I've written about hopes and problems that are important in my own life, even though they give illustration to the term "First World Problems."

Court gives the kids a break

Juan was two years old when his parents sneaked across the border, with him in tow.  They found jobs eventually in Washington state.  Juan attended public school in Seattle.  He graduated near the head of his high school class, was admitted to the University of Washington, and is now doing well as a junior with a major in Electrical Engineering. 

Juan knows some basic Spanish, which he sometimes speaks with his bilingual parents, but his primary language, in which he is totally fluent, is English.  Since his arrival here at the age of two, he has never been outside the United States.

The government now wants to send him back to Mexico -- a country he knows nothing about, of whose language he has only a tourist's command, and where he knows no one.

Juan is a fictitious person.  But he represents several hundred thousand young people now in the United States without documents.  These young people have had a tenuous protection over the last few years under President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.  President Trump has tried to abolish the program, based on the claim that its creation was an illegal action by Obama.  He originally expressed some sympathy for the plight of the "Dreamers," but has since come under the anti-immigrant influence of the "Dark Lord" Stephen Miller. 

The Supreme Court held yesterday, by a 5-4 vote, that Trump's attempt to abolish the DACA program was "arbitrary and capricious."  The Court did not say that the program could not be terminated, only that the government had not done it properly, providing a reasonable basis for its termination.  As commentators have noted, by the time the Trump administration comes up with a basis for terminating the program that might pass muster, and has fought its way through challenges at the District Court and Court of Appeals levels, and reaches once more the Supreme Court, we will be well past the election in November.  And hopefully, this present administration will be no more than an embarrassing blip in American history.

Two days before the DACA decision, the Court handed Trump another defeat in ruling that LGBTQ individuals were protected from employment discrimination under federal law.  Mr. Trump handled that defeat with some grace, remarking essentially that it was a "powerful" opinion, and that the Court had spoken.  He may have found it harder to defend job discrimination against capable employees than he does kicking children, here in America technically in violation of immigration law, out of the country.

Certainly his rabid base wants to see them gone.  "The law is the law," they remind us.  If most young people protected by DACA were ethnic Norwegians or Swiss, I suspect his base's hostility would be less fervid.  But DACA is not without support among the public.  A New York Times poll shows that 61 percent of all voters favor DACA, and only 39 percent oppose it.  Of course, 70 percent of Republicans oppose it, so there you are.

I'm hoping that by the time this matter works its way once more through the courts, we will have a different administration in office.  I also hope that Congress will enact a more equitable immigration law, which, among other objectives, will provide a clear route to citizenship for DACA Dreamers.

Failed lives

Alan Hurwitz

Eight years ago yesterday, I wrote a post on this blog reviewing the novel Canada, by Richard Ford.  Canada was the story of Dell Parsons, a boy growing up in Great Falls, Montana.  His father, after a career in the Air Force, makes unsuccessful business attempts in Great Falls, and ends up owing money to some local Indians.  Not a lot of money, just $2,500.

His father and mother concoct a scheme to rob a bank of that amount in North Dakota, and then to blend into what they consider the vast anonymity of the Great Western Plains.  They are caught almost immediately, and sentenced to prison, where his mother commits suicide.  Dell was only 15, and is left without parents.  Looking back, at the age of 60, he concludes:

[B]ecause very few people do rob banks, it only makes sense that the few who do it are destined for it, no matter what they believe about themselves or how they were raised. I find it impossible not to think this way, because the sense of tragedy would otherwise be overpowering to me. Though it's an odd thing to believe about your parents -- that all along they've been the kind of people criminals come from. It's like a miracle in reverse.

I thought of Canada yesterday, exactly eight years after I wrote about the novel in my blog, when I read an obituary for Alan Hurwitz in the New York Times.  Like Dell's father, Mr. Hurwitz served in the armed forces.  He then became a successful middle school teacher of English and social studies.  He became an adviser on desegregation for the Detroit public schools, and a member of a state task force studying school violence.

And then he became addicted to crack cocaine.  In a period of nine weeks in 1992, he robbed 18 banks in the Great Lakes area, and became renowned as the Zombie Bandit.  He was finally caught and spent the next twelve years in prison.   Several years after release, in 2008, he went on another rampage, robbing banks in Northern California and Oregon.  He was sentenced to another 17½ years in prison.

He died of Covid-19 in prison at the age of 79.  He left behind two daughters, two sons, eight grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.  Between the two prison terms, he told a Detroit newspaper that: "I was raised in the liberal Jewish tradition of justice, learning, and equality."

Dell's father did not have crack addiction to blame for his rash robbery, of course.  But he had a small debt which apparently loomed large in his eyes.  Too many lives have been ruined because of crack, but the ruin -- although petty theft is common --is not so often accompanied by two strings of bank robberies.

Dell Parsons, in the novel Canada, couldn't help but believe that some people are predestined to commit criminal acts -- they have a "criminal personality."

I've seen this phenomenon in the faces of other men -- homeless men, men sprawled on the pavement ... -- I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.  It's a theory of destiny and character I don't like or want to believe in.  But it's there in me like a hard understory.  I don't, in fact, ever see such a ruined man without saying silently to myself:  There's my father.  My father is that man.  I used to know him.

Mr. Hurwitz never felt any remorse for the robberies.  "He hated banks," one of his daughters recalled, "and they were federally insured."  He was sorry for any trauma he caused the bank tellers, however.

Alan Hurwitz.  Successful teacher of junior high school kids.  A man who gave skillful advice to the Detroit schools on how to fight school segregation.   A man who helped study how to end school violence.

A man who robbed banks.

Philip's assassination

Alexander the Great has appealed to my imagination ever since about sixth grade, when we first read about him in our history books.  So I was interested in this month's cover article in the Smithsonian magazine, describing archeological digs at Aigai in Greek Macedonia. 

Aigai was the ceremonial capital of ancient Macedonia, as distinct from the better known -- to me at least -- administrative capital at Pella, about thirty miles to the north.  Much of the ruins are only now being excavated, and the ancient palace reconstructed.  The Smithsonian writer interviews the director of operations at Aigai (Angeliki Kottaridi), and describes the historical importance of the site.

It was in 336 B.C. that Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, was assassinated at the theater in Aigai, when Alexander was twenty years old.  Philip was entering the theater, on the occasion of his daughter Cleopatra's wedding, when Pausanias, the leader of his bodyguards, suddenly stabbed him in the chest with a dagger.  Pausanias made a run for it, but was caught and killed on the spot.

Besides Philip's several wives (Alexander was born of his fourth, Olympias), Philip had gone through one "romantic" conquest after another, both male and female.  Pausanias had been one of them until Philip grew tired of him.  One of the great debates of history has been whether Pausanias acted alone, as the classical jilted lover; or whether he was acting on behalf of Alexander (whose relationship with his father was often stormy); or on behalf of Alexander's mother (who hated Philip); or at the behest of agents of the Persian Empire or of the Greek city-states, all of whom were fearful of future Macedonian aggression. 

Pausanias was sort of the Lee Harvey Oswald of his time.

Ms. Kottaridi offers no opinion on that question, but -- as an admirer of Alexander -- considers any accusations against Alexander to be a "foolish slander."

Most of what we know about the first twenty years of Alexander's life comes from the writings, over a century later, by the Greek historian Plutarch.  Most of what I myself know about Alexander's life comes from the trilogy of historical fiction written by Mary Renault -- a writer whose excellent reconstructions of the Theseus legends -- The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea -- I discussed in two essays in 2016.  The first book of the Alexander trilogy, Fire from Heaven (1969), which I read avidly when first published, is based on Plutarch's account of Alexander's life from the boy's earliest years up until his father's assassination. The book expands on the sketchy details provided by Plutarch, making use of everything Ms. Renault knows about the milieu of fourth century Greece and Macedonia and the ways people from all walks of life thought and acted in those days, derived from her own extensive research into Greek history.

If you like historical fiction,  Fire from Heaven is a must; if you're not sure, it's a good place to start.  My own edition includes a very good introduction by Daniel Mendelsohn, whose analysis of Homer's Odyssey, his discussion of how he taught the Odyssey to a small seminar of college freshmen, and the story of his problematic relationship with his own father, were all combined seamlessly in a book entitled The Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, which I discussed in 2017. 

Every piece of historical fiction -- perhaps even every "objective" writing of history -- reconstructs the known facts from the perspective of the writer.  Mendelsohn points out the psychological factors in Renault's life that led her to have perhaps idealized Alexander.  Alexander is not just a military conqueror, Renault implies; he is an intellectual, a typical ancient Greek, one who sought to learn about and to understand the worlds he conquers.

That Renault saw Alexander as someone motivated by this quasi-philosophical yearning is made clear in The Persian Boy [the second book of the trilogy], where he says that he didn't "only travel the earth to possess it.  I seek to know what it is, and what men are, also."

It's this yearning that we sense in his life that, no doubt, has made Alexander an attractive historical figure for centuries of readers.  And for me, as well. 

And besides, who can resist Plutarch's story of how the boy Alexander won his beloved horse, Bucephalus?

In Mary Renault's telling of the assassination plot, Alexander had, in fact, been tempted to assassinate his father.  The two strong, but very different, men -- father and son -- had struggled against each other for years, and by the time of the assassination, Philip was about to go off and conquer the East, leaving Alexander home in Pella.  Alexander had always been dissuaded from doing so, because of the strong taboo against killing one's father, a taboo enforced by the frightening Eumenides ("the Furies.")  But his mother has now advised him -- remember that she hated Philip, and would loved to have seen him dead -- that Philip was not actually his father.

Once he believes himself not his father's son, however, he finds his hatred fading away.  He considers the issue rationally.

If I meant to do it, no time could be worse than now, at this ebb-tide of my fortune, with the tide ready to turn. He won't leave me Regent here, when he goes to Asia; I'm in disgrace, and besides I doubt he'd dare. He's bound to take me to the war. Once I'm in the field, I hope I can show him something, and the Macedonians too. ... If he lives, he'll change to me when I've won some battles for him. And if he falls, I'm the man who will be there, with the army around me.

This monologue, directed at his intimate friend Hephaistion, is of course Ms. Renault's invention.  But it illustrates her view of Alexander, and it's a view that her writing has forced me to accept: that Alexander was a young man of deep passions and great ambition, willing even to kill when he found it necessary, but a man whose passions were almost always under the control of his reason -- part of the Greek ideal of character. In Ms. Renault's reconstruction of the assassination, Alexander was not the assassin.

So why was Philip of Macedon assassinated at his daughter's wedding in 336 B.C.?   It's been debated for over two millennia, and we'll never really know, of course.  To me, it doesn't sound like something Alexander would have done.   But I'm irretrievably prejudiced by Mary Renault's starry-eyed view of Alexander's character.

Ms. Kottaridi tells the Smithsonian writer that she fell in love with Alexander when she was young,

... not the mythical figure, but the man.  He was so much more than a military genius.  He opened up the Silk Road.  He built these amazing Hellenistic cities in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, with freedom of religion, tolerance for different cultures, equal opportunity.  And it all began right here in Aigai.

I think Ms. Kottaridi and Ms. Renault would have enjoyed knowing each other.  And I know I would have enjoyed talking to both.

Biden looking good -- part 2

Biden's looking like a winner.  That thought was expressed even more strongly in tonight's streamed lecture than it was on Sunday.  I'm referring, of course, to the two-lecture series presented by the University of Washington's Professor David Domke.

(Insert -- These lecture summaries may or may not be interesting to my readers.  Like some book reviews, I write them primarily to remind myself what I read/heard, and how I reacted, when I look back at some future time.  Bear with me!)

Tonight's lecture expanded on the fourth critical factor set forth in the earlier lecture -- President Trump's leadership qualifications.  The short summary is that he has none, and that lack has become glaringly apparent to the voting public.

Domke started off somewhat abstractly.  Voters see the presidency as having two aspects -- head of state and manager of the nation.  As head of state, he sums up who we are, and represents us to other nations.  He observed that -- although his Seattle audience might find it hard to believe -- a large portion of the country likes Trump's rather crude, "tough guy" approach in dealing with other countries.  But voters don't really vote based on their approval or disapproval of this aspect of the presidency.  It's the president's ability to manage the nation that hits home for everyone.

Any president's ability as manager can be broken down into three factors:

1.  Competence -- intelligence, ability, execution.
2.  Integrity -- honesty, trustworthiness, moral core
3.  Empathy -- care for others, compassion, ability to relate to persons other than himself

In a time of crisis, like today, integrity becomes less important, except as it's incorporated into the other two factors.  Competence is most important, and empathy is second.

When a crisis occurs, Americans tend to give their leader the benefit of the doubt.  Domke pointed out a number of examples over the past fifty years when voters rallied about the president.  But when a leader begins to appear incompetent, things go sour for him quickly.  This is what has happened with Trump.  His first few virus briefings were fairly well received, but then it became all too clear that he had no idea what he was talking about.  He might well have survived the coronavirus crisis if he had stopped the briefings while he was ahead, and then shut up and let his experts and responsible departments handle the details.

When the racism protests began, he might have recovered some of the ground lost earlier if he had acted competently.  But he didn't.  His ratings have now reached a low point that no presidential candidate has had since Carter in 1980.

Action suggestion:  Start gathering a "cabinet" of advisers to be seen by voters, speaking on the pandemic, on the economy, and on racial affairs.  Biden is very calm, which is a good contrast with Trump, and such a cabinet would show his willingness to rely on the specialized expertise of persons who knew what they were talking about.

The other factor, empathy, is always something it's nice for a candidate to have, but it becomes critical during a crisis.  Domke believes that Trump not merely doesn't display empathy, but is psychologically incapable of empathy.  On the other hand, Biden's very best trait is his natural and amazing empathy -- his ability to be really interested in other people.  Domke recalls the time that Biden went to a black church and sat in the congregation for several hours -- not speaking, just listening to others. 

Action suggestion:  Just keep doing what you're doing.

Domke believes that there are three regions of the nation where Biden can win the election.  The most obvious  is Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.  Hillary lost three of those states by less than a percentage point.  Polls and primary results show that white voters over 65, who were turned off by Hillary, because of sexism and for other reasons, have moved back toward the Democrats since 2016.  In the South, Florida is up for grabs, with Georgia and North Carolina definitely in play.  And in the West, Arizona could definitely go blue, with Texas a possibility.  Trump can't lose many of those states.  He's in trouble, five months before the election.

Young people will not be the crucial factor in this election, despite all the talk to the contrary in the early primaries.  The critical blocs will be black voters and suburban women, along with working class white voters.

Interesting lecture, a lot of graphs and maps and data.  Domke will give other lectures this month and next.  He is definitely hoping to sign up more "on the ground" workers for the campaign ahead.

I'd give my life for a burger

Cow meat!  I hadn't had any since early March.  My proteins have all come from egg sandwiches.  Tuna sandwiches.  And that ever-popular favorite, peanut butter sandwiches.

That's what happens when you don't care enough to cook, and Covid-19 keeps you cowering (no pun intended) in your house rather than dining out.

But today I had a hankering for a burger -- with tomatoes, lettuce, onions, pickles.  Yeah!

Actually, I was equally motivated by a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with my Thailand-residing nephew.  If you like that burger joint (I'll call it "Burger Heaven") so much, he suggested, you should support it during these trying times.  Buy some take-out meals.  Ensure that they'll still be around when you feel brave enough to walk in and sit down.

Ok, I decided this morning.  I'll do it. About 11:30 a.m., I opened Burger Heaven's webpage, ordered a burger and fries, and paid for it on a credit card.  I grabbed a virgin face mask, and drove to Burger Heaven.  I was expecting a few braves souls to be lurking about, waiting for their order.

Yikes!  The parking lot was packed.  More packed than it usually was for lunch before the Time of the Virus arrived.  I positioned my mask, and entered.  The joint was full of construction workers waiting in line to order, and waiting for take-out orders.  Like Trump, they apparently agreed that wearing a face mask was unmanly.  They were laughing and talking, breathing on each other and on anyone else who came in the door.   

And as of last Friday, restaurants in King County have been allowed to serve seated guests at 25 percent capacity; there they were, brave and/or foolish souls actually sitting inside, eating.

On a summer evening, you know how sometimes you're walking along, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of a swarm of tiny gnats?  You have to close your mouth to avoid sucking them inside with each breath you take?  That's was how I envisioned the interior of Burger Heaven.  A giant cloud of gnat-like viruses, too small to be visible, filling the entire room and every corner. Being blown hither and yon within the room by the fans.  And some idiots were sitting there, lazily eating and chatting, while they were sucking those little "gnats" into their lungs.  Madness!

Nothing indicated where on-line orders were to be picked up, and the person behind the counter seemed puzzled by my inquiry.  Maybe she couldn't make out what I was mewling about behind my mask.  Finally, she located my order.  I grabbed it and fled, chased out the door by hordes of gnat-like viruses. 

Back home, after thoroughly washing my hands and gingerly disposing of the bag in which my food was served, I sat down at the table and ate my burger and fries.  What an anticlimax!  It's not the same as eating it in the restaurant, or even in a car outside the restaurant.  The food was fine, if lukewarm, but the ambience was lousy.  And it cost over eleven bucks.

But I've had my cow meat.  Salted liberally with suspected viruses.  I'm convinced that I can do without the mental stress.  I'll be eating sandwiches for at least another three months before a craving for meat drives me back to Burger Heaven, again braving illness and death in my quest for cow.

Biden looking good in 2020

These days, we all could use a little good news.  I just watched the first of two streamed lectures by Professor David Domke of the University of Washington.  The title of the two-part series is "How Joe Biden Can Win."

Domke is a professor in the Department of Communications, and until recently was the department's chair.  He is also co-founder of a Seattle organization called "Common Purpose," created to promote "a just and inclusive democracy founded on the sanctity of voting." I attended a lecture series by Domke four years ago, analyzing the 2016 election as it progressed, based on his travels about the nation talking with local political figures. He is an excellent speaker, and in 2002 won the University's Distinguished Teaching Award.

The good news is the conclusion he reached at the end of today's lecture -- that while the election remains competitive, Biden is "well-positioned" to win.  The four critical factors in his favor are:

1.  Biden's strong position within the African-American community, a factor that has become even more critical after the past week's demonstrations.  Biden is celebrated among blacks not only for his association with President Obama, but his ability and willingness to serve as vice president under an African-American president without showing any sense of white superiority.

2.  His demonstrated ability to intertwine the story of his own life with the story of the American myth.  That myth proclaims that we are a resilient people; that we are a good and decent people; and that, as a people, we are not naturally divided into hostile factions, but are "in this all together."

3.  His success in having the center and center-left factions of the Democratic party coalesce behind him in the primaries.  He thus enters the general election campaign representing  moderate positions that appeal to the electorate as a whole.  He does not have the Democratic candidate's usual task of pulling back from extreme positions necessarily taken during the primary campaigns in order to win the nomination.

4.  The strong concern among both Democratic and independent voters about the leadership qualifications of President Trump, brought to the fore by the president's actions with respect to both the coronavirus pandemic and to the national revulsion resulting from the recent police murders.

Domke pointed out that recent polls show both candidates holding about the same support from their party members as Trump and Clinton did in 2016, with Biden doing perhaps slightly better than Ms. Clinton.  But independents, who voted for Trump by a significant margin in 2016, now break for Biden 45 to 35 percent, according to a poll today by NBC.

Dr. Domke's second lecture, on Thursday, will focus specifically on the Trump leadership issue.

Chorale

I admire Anne Frank.  Trapped in a Secret Annex, quarters that make the house in which I find myself self-quarantined  feel like a mansion, she found a million topics to discuss in her diary.  I seem to have no topic but the Pandemic and its ripple effects on my life, and --now -- the after-effects of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  Including, of course, the President's continuing meltdown as a result of both events.

This Spring has been beautiful, and my daily walks inspiring.  But I've blogged enough Wordsworthian ecstasies on the glories of Nature.  It's been Spring for you folks, as well.  You long for something different (assuming you long for anything at all).

Last December, I wrote about having attended the Christmastide "Festival of Lessons and Carols," presented by the Northwest Boychoir in Seattle's St. Mark's Cathedral.  Since March, those boys have been unable to gather together, either to practice or to perform in public.  The time each of them has between really mastering his art and then having his voice change is short, and it's a shame that the Pandemic has taken many of those months from them already.

But the organization keeps in touch, apparently, with its attendees.  In the last few weeks, I have received emails advising me of two performances -- on Zoom or a similar platform -- which they have posted on YouTube and made available for free.  Something to remind us that even in bad times, there is beauty that transcends the trivia of our daily lives.

In the absence of any other inspiration, I offer you links to the two performances.  They are very well done, especially considering that the boys hear each other only through earphones while they sing.

The first piece is Little Stream, a lively song by Hub Miller -- a Seattle composer and graduate of the University of Washington.

The second is something more classical and serene, Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine.

(Click on either title)

Hope you enjoy, and that this singing by an excellent Seattle chorus gets you through the next couple of days.  By then, I may have come up with a more writerly inspiration for my next blog entry.

The great filter

Where is everybody?
--Physicist Enrico Fermi

Our Milky Way Galaxy, a fairly typical galaxy, has about 100 billion stars.  In the entire Universe, there are an estimated 200 billion to two trillion galaxies.  That's a lot of stars, and a lot of planets going around those stars.

Scientists know enough about the molecular structure of tiny organisms to suspect that, under the right conditions, they could come into existence anywhere.

So, as every science fiction loving teenager has probably wondered, why haven't we heard from anyone?  Not necessarily been visited -- those stars are far apart -- but why haven't we at least picked up a little radio or TV babble from another world?  Or something?

Last Sunday's New York Times contained an article discussing a concept developed by Robin Hanson, something he calls the "Great Filter."  Hanson is an economics professor, and an expert in futures and markets, which doesn't sound promising, but he does have an M.S. in physics from the University of Chicago.  All I know about Dr. Hanson -- aside from his credentials from Wikipedia -- is what I read in the Times article.

Hanson apparently suggests that life is forming everywhere, but that a filter keeps it from attaining a level where its members would be advanced enough to be capable of contacting us.  Many planets don't provide a ripe enough environment for life to advance very far up the evolutionary scale.  This is obvious.  That's an early part of the filter.  But Hanson suggests that as a species advances, as it becomes sentient, and intelligent, more and more problems arise -- many of which we have so far successfully eluded.

But as civilizations continue to develop, to arise, to become technologically advanced, they create their own problems.  The article was prompted by our present coronavirus pandemic.  Pandemics come about because of ever denser populations and more rapid travel and communication among their members.  On the other hand, as a civilization advances, it becomes better able to combat epidemics, as we have done.  We have now reached the point where we can very quickly identify the genetic code of a new virus, and develop ways to combat it.  On the other hand:

the downside is that it entails also an increase in the spread of "dangerous knowledge" that would enable mavericks to make viruses more virulent and transmissible than they naturally are.

This downside doesn't apply just to viruses, of course.  For just one example, I'd suggest, consider the advantages, and the downsides, of the development of atomic energy.

Hanson suggests that the Great Filter chokes off the life of civilizations more and more surely as those civilizations advance.  At some point, through one means or another, each civilization dies at its own hands.  Each civilization effectively becomes "too smart for its own good," or too profligate in its use of limited resources   Hanson speculates that the Great Filter works efficiently enough and consistently enough to end the progress, if not the entire existence, of every civilization before it achieves the technological ability to communicate with other civilizations on other planets.

I found the article a little confusing and a little irritating at first reading.  To me, it seemed to suggest that the Great Filter was a limitation that a conscious Universe imposes deliberately, by some grand design.  On later readings, the writer seems to have just used colorful language.

The unanswerable question, of course, is how close we earthlings are to being choked off by the Great Filter.  Maybe not all that far, eh?   The concept reminds me of the idea proposed by some that we live in a "virtual universe," a concept I've discussed in past posts.  Proponents of that concept -- where we are all actors in an enormous computer program -- point to the fact that as we ourselves -- we simulated humans -- develop the ability to create our own virtual realities, at some point the capacity of the ur-computer which we all inhabit will reach an overload.  What would happen then?  I quoted a 2007 New York Times article:

It might be something clunky like “Insufficient Memory to Continue Simulation.” But I like to think it would be simple and familiar: “Game Over.”

The article suggests no way around the Great Filter.  If any way to escape existed, one of those billions of now dead civilizations would presumably have discovered it.  But a consolation prize is suggested.  Before ending up in the dustbin of Universal history, some of those civilizations may have left some giant data banks for future civilizations to discover, sharing with them their accomplishments and wisdom.  And how and why it all went wrong.  Something that we may discover, before our inevitable end.  And something we may want to leave for our successor civilizations.

The Times writer claims to hope that even if Hanson is correct about a Great Filter, somehow we're smart enough to beat the odds.  We're smart enough to learn from experience.  To survive where all others fail.

And if you believe that, he has some pork belly futures he'd like to sell you.

And a little child shall lead them

The year 2020 isn't yet half over.  But already we've had a president impeached, the worst worldwide epidemic in over a century, and the most extensive violent protests in over 50 years.

And in the midst of it all, always verbal but never constructive, stands Donald Trump -- the most insecure, emotionally needy, intellectually incurious, politically insensitive, and morally undeveloped president in decades.  In fact, probably in our entire national history.

The protests aggravate the epidemic, at least within this nation.  The epidemic itself has added to the misfortunes of our racial minorities.  They work together to create a perfect storm.  Some of our governors and mayors have, thank God, provided some decent leadership.  But the President of the United States, together with his Congressional cohorts, seemingly tries to put out fires with buckets of gasoline.

Yesterday marked something of a nadir as he ordered the pathway from the White House to a nearby Episcopal church cleared by force.  Why?  So he could walk to the church and stand, all alone -- with an empty expression on his face, holding a Bible upside down  -- and have his photo taken.  He might well have prayed -- but of course didn't -- the traditional Confession from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer:

We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Your holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is nothing good in us.

Mr. Trump then strides back to the White House while even some of his conservative support -- but not his rabid, knee-jerk pro-Trump base -- begins to waver.  Conservative columnist George F. Will -- admittedly never a Trump enthusiast -- wrote yesterday:

This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.

Five more months until the presidential election.  But first come the conventions, with Trump demanding that the Republican convention pay no heed to the epidemic.  No protective masks, no social distancing, nothing for this president's coronation that might suggest that anything was wrong with the State of the Nation. 

I close my eyes.  I take a deep breath.  And I return to my reading of The House of the Seven Gables.