The egg and I (soft-boiled)

Three or four times a week, I jump out of bed, get dressed, and drive to a near-by diner where I have what the help -- who know me all too well -- call "your usual."  Two eggs over easy, with ham, potatoes, toast and coffee.  

It's enjoyable, although I have health-related doubts about the ham.  But it's not what I really crave.

And what do I really crave?  Two soft-boiled eggs, boiled precisely four minutes, served in egg cups, and accompanied by a tiny, well-designed egg spoon.

I've just finished reading, for the nth time, an essay by Ursula K. Le Gwin entitled "Without Egg," in her collection of essays No Time to Spare -- an essay that is a virtual hymn to a properly prepared and served soft-boiled egg.  She emphasizes, as would I were I to have written the essay, the importance of attention to detail.  And the use of the proper implements, especially the dedicated cup and spoon.  

You can't really ruin a soft-boiled egg, especially if you also like hard-boiled eggs.  But Americans, in general, miss the entire point.  Sure, you can scrape the innards out into a dish, salt and pepper them, and eat them with a normal spoon or fork.  It will taste the same as a properly consumed egg.  But as she points out, you thus miss the entire point:

... it tastes the same but isn't the same.  It's too easy.  It's dull.  It might as well have been poached.  The point of a soft-boiled egg is the difficulty of eating it, the attention it requires, the ceremony.

She discusses the egg cup, its appropriate use, and which end of the egg should be up (this last point an apparent matter of some controversy among soft-boiled egg aficianados).   Should one saw off the exposed end of the shell?  Or whack it off?  Le Gwin is an agnostic on this refinement.  As am I.  Both have their pros and cons.

But then the proper spoon.  Americans -- including myself, because often having no choice -- are apt to grab the nearest spoon handy and have at it.  They make a mess, and decide that next time they'll dump their eggs into their empty cereal bowl and eat it from there.  Le Gwin points out that the egg spoon is made tiny, because it must fit into the small opening you have made in the end of the shell -- the egg spoon is more a surgical instrument than a shovel.  Or, as she more delicately puts it, the egg spoon

does one thing only, but does it perfectly and nothing else can do it.  Trying to eat an egg from the shell with a normal spoon is like mending a wristwatch with a hammer.

She doesn't point this out, but I find that I can down two fried eggs in a few bites and still be hungry.  By the time I've worked my way through two soft-boiled eggs, however, I not only have been forced to eat slowly enough that I enjoy every nuance of flavor, but I find that my appetite is quite satisfied.  Although there's always room for a croissant or two.

But maybe Le Gwin understands this also.  She calls her essay a blow against double-tasking.  The concentration required to properly prepare and eat the egg from a shell precludes unnecessary talking, reading, or daydreaming until the immediate task has been completed.  Which is the best way to enjoy any food worth enjoying.  She relies on the exhortation in Ecclesiastes that whatever you set out to do (presumably, even eating eggs) you should do with

all thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.

Ursula Le Gwin adds "Nor is there any breakfast there.  The grave is without egg."  I say she thus has taken a morbid, if amusing turn.  I'll just say that if it's worth eating, it's worth eating properly.  And my soft-boiled eggs consumed in Europe, with proper spoon and cup, are far tastier than those gobbled down at home.  

Having written all that, I find I'm hungry enough to fly to Paris for breakfast.  But instead, I'm off in the morning to Santa Rosa for Christmas.  

Merry Christmas to all.  And eat egg.

Music at Christmas

Once in royal David's city
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her Baby

In a manger for His bed.

The audience sat hushed as the ethereal, solo voice of a boy soprano reverberated throughout the austere interior of Seattle's St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, joined in the second verse by the full choir as it filed down the aisles in two parallel lines from the rear to the front of the church.  The Northwest Boychoir, in its 44th season, presented yet another annual Christmas "Festival of Lessons & Carols." 

Advent is traditionally a season of penance, and I decided to walk in the dark from my house to the cathedral.  The distance was only 1.5 miles, but the temperature was near freezing and the sidewalks were icy -- I came close to slipping to the ground as I started up one steep and treacherous stretch.  But the air was clear, and many of the houses I passed were brightly illuminated with holiday lights.

My timing was good, and I arrived forty minutes after setting out -- cold but bright-eyed, wide awake, and clear-headed.  Ready for the hour and a half service that each year transforms me into Christmas mode.

I like the fact that the format is always the same, based on the Christmas service of the choir of King's College, Cambridge, England.  It always commences with the solo first verse of "Once in Royal David's City."  After a couple of introductory carols, nine members of the choir -- beginning with younger and ending with older -- always offer the same nine readings from the books of Genesis, Isaiah, Micah, Luke, Matthew, and John.  Each reading is always followed by a carol sung by the choir, followed then by a familiar popular carol in which the audience joins in.

The choir consisted of 29 young members of Northwest Boychoir proper, 33 teenage boys from the associated group Vocalpoint Seattle, and 18 teenage female singers, also from Vocalpoint.  All singers were masked as a precaution against Covid and the flu.  This year, the proportion of teenage boy singers seemed higher than in the past; at least to my ears the tenor and bass voices, when all singers were singing together, seemed more predominant.  (At King's, there are equal numbers of each age group.)

My opinion is purely subjective, obviously, but -- even though the singers were still masked -- the singing impressed me as being sharper and more clear than it was last year.  And the excellent piano accompaniment sounded appropriately supportive, rather than dominating.

I was again moved and impressed by the entire performance.  After a final carol -- "O Holy Night" -- the audience burst into an extended applause, an applause appropriately delayed until the end out of respect for the religious context -- and another round of applause after the choir had filed out singing "Joy to the World."

Poised youngsters, still dressed in their choir gowns, greeted us as we left the cathedral, thanking us for our attendance.  My mind was full of musical phrases as I embraced the freezing air outside, and began my walk home.

Christmas cards

Two weeks from Christmas Eve.  Christmas music on the stereo, cat on the sofa, and me.  Bent over the dining room table, filling out Christmas cards.

Yes, I know. Part of my annual tradition has become posting on this blog a short essay anguishing over whether I should still be sending cards, forcing myself to hang on to a dying tradition.  Or should I just shout out on Twitter, "Yo, dudes, merry whatever and eat lots of turkey."

But no.  This year I had no doubts.  I would send cards.

Then came the problem -- where will I get those cards?  I usually drop by the University of Washington Bookstore, and peruse tables covered with stacks of cards -- a tradition I began decades ago as a college freshman, perusing similar Christmas card displays at the Stanford Bookstore.  But what did I discover this year?  One-half of a table with a scant selection of uninspiring -- even somewhat ugly -- cards.  I recoiled, and returned home to my computer.  Surely Amazon would have oodles of cards on offer.

Well, it was better than the U Bookstore, but most of Amazon's cards didn't seem very attractive. I finally hit on one design that seemed somewhat acceptable, and ordered them.  They arrived today.  They look fine, but I've certainly had better ones in past years.  I'm certain that wonderful cards are out there, somewhere, still.  I just didn't look in the right places, or maybe I waited until too long after Thanksgiving?

But it's the thought that counts.  I have passed beyond the point of feeling awkward sending cards to people who don't reciprocate, although I do take their past instances of non-reciprocation into account in drawing up my address list.  I mean, if I don't get a card from them, I don't take it as a personal affront.  Quite possibly, they don't now and never have sent Christmas cards.  Or maybe it's been a bad year, and they just don't feel in the spirit. 

On the other hand, I've never encountered anyone who was offended by receiving a card, and it will hopefully make their Scrooge-like December a bit more cheerful.  And they hopefully will not brood, as I myself might do, at the fact that they didn't send me one -- or force themselves to send one to me next year!

As full-fledged adults, we're apt to worry too much about things, aren't we?  Things that don't call for concern.  I'll try to recall my youthful enthusiasm to simply wish everyone a wonderful Christmas, without worrying about what it all means, or how my wishes might be received.  Let's keep it simple.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  

Family Christmas in Sonoma

Just over two weeks until Christmas.  

For us as kids, Christmas was ritually a very stable holiday.  My mother made sure that certain rituals were repeated each year, rituals that she had more or less devised herself, but which to us kids seemed to represent  the true way that all non-pathological Americans celebrated Christmas. 

We were a small family in terms of non-resident relatives -- parents, aunts and uncles, cousins -- and so the rituals of Christmas almost always were observed in our small house: my parents, my brother and sister, my mother's twin sister and her husband, and my grandmother on my father's side.

The period of time during which these stable rituals occurred was little more than a decade, but a decade to a child (or even a teenager) is a lifetime.

Life is more chaotic as an adult.  Relatives insist on living all across the country, sometimes around the world.  And even relatives who are geographically near often prefer to act out their own family rituals, rather than merge into a gathering of the clan.

But this year, we will have such a gathering -- either at Christmas itself or, for some of us, during the week following.

Readers will recall that we had a similar family reunion in April, when my nephew Denny returned from Thailand to his California hometown, Sonoma, for the first time since the start of the Covid pandemic.  I concluded my essay describing our get-together with a plea for more frequent family reunions -- and my plea seems to have been answered.

We gather again in Sonoma.  Denny will return once more from Chiang Mai, Thailand, together with his wife Jessie, his now-teenaged daughter, and his dad.  My sister and her youngest son will arrive from Challis, Idaho.  My brother and his wife, together with their daughter, her spouse, and their eleven-year-old daughter will arrive from Southern California.  

We will also be joined by Suzanne, the daughter of my closest friend from college days, together with her husband -- visiting from San Diego.  She has stronger ties to my family than merely those resulting from my college friendship with her father, but those ties require more explanation than required at this time!  But they are family, too.   

And it will be a multi-family reunion, to some extent, as Jessie's family lives in the Sonoma area, and some of our gatherings will be together with them.

My  own somewhat solitary life in Washington state, in the Northwest Corner of the nation, at times feels like that of a tender of a lighthouse on a rocky outcropping from the shore.  Even though Washington is the ancestral home of my family, where my siblings and I spent our pre-college years, all but I have since fled our wintry rains like rats leaving a sinking ship.  So I look forward eagerly to these large gatherings, masses of people all related to me in one way or another, and wish they occurred more often.  It makes Christmas feel more like Christmas, even when celebrated in a distant land (i.e., California!).

I leave home on December 21, and will return on the 28th  My brother and his wife won't show up until the day after Christmas, which I regret.  But I spent a wonderful five days with them over Thanksgiving at their home in Palm Desert.

Now, my only problem will be explaining my absence to my two cats, trying to convince them that while the master's away, the cats can play.

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Photo:  Earlier family reunion.  Big Bear (California) (2011)

Feuilletons

During the dark days and weeks since late October -- the period after my old computer crashed, but before I finally pulled myself together and secured a new one -- a computer that arrived only this week -- I had ample time to think about the nature of my blog.  

After nearly sixteen years, and over 1,500 posted essays, the time to think about it did seem ripe.

What exactly do I write?  Essays, but what kind?

Lots of book reviews and movie reviews. Lots of thoughts about politics.  Observations about nature, especially about Seattle's peculiarities of weather.  Holidays.  Travels, completed or anticipated.  Reprints of old travel  journals and newspaper articles.  Musical experiences.  As I look over the list of some 1,500 posts, there's a bit of everything.

I've even written a few feuilletons.  What's that, you ask?  And well you might.

I'm reading a biography of an author and journalist from the first part of the century, a Jew from what is now western Ukraine but that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  His name was Joseph Roth, and his novels were largely autobiographical -- which isn't unusual -- but so was his journalism -- which was more so.

He was a foreign correspondent for a Frankfurt, Germany, newspaper.  But he preferred to take a subjective approach toward his news dispatches, rather than the purely objective approach they taught me and my classmates in high school journalism.  This objective approach was, he felt, despicably and soullessly German and American.  

I will discuss Roth's biography -- Endless Flight by Keiron Pim -- in a later post.  But I mention it now because -- in addition to his news articles written as a foreign correspondent -- he also wrote numerous feuilletons for his Frankfurt newspaper.  While journalists -- meaning American journalists -- don't like to let their feelings intrude obviously into their formal news stories, they often do write feuilletons -- feature stories -- without, probably, even knowing the word feuilleton.  

These tend to be fairly short feature articles based on the writer's observations, and discussing -- explicitly or by inference -- his own feelings about what he has seen.  The observation serves as a jumping off platform for the subjective feeling or thought that he wishes to convey.

I suppose that the readers of the New York Times who send in short discussions of their observations or experiences as they go about the city, designed to arouse laughter or sadness in the reader of those observations -- observations that are published each Sunday under the heading of "Metropolitan Diary" -- are writing (or attempting to write) very brief feuilletons.

Without categorizing what I was doing, I've written a number of such feuilletons, with greater or lesser success.  For example, in August 2017, I described watching a sobbing homeless person being escorted off a light rail platform by a security officer, and forced to enter a train stopped at the station.  I was unable to determine exactly was going on, but I felt free to imagine for my readers the mental state of the upset passenger and the events that had brought him to this unfortunate event.  And I wondered -- far too late -- what I might have done to ease his pain, and why I had failed to do it.

The objective observation was the interaction between the crying man and the security guard.  The subjective component, which converted the observation into a feuilleton, was my attempt to empathize with the man's feelings and reconstruct his history.

I know nothing about the bearded guy's back story, although I tend to make up stories for people in my head. But I'd say he was a gentleman who had no further physical or emotional resources available, regardless of what "act" of his life he was contemplating. I suspect we are surrounded by people like him. Maybe they still have enough pride not to cry. In public. But they want to.

Joseph Roth had written in 1919, with far greater artistic sensitivity:

I saw children blowing soap bubbles.  Not in 1913 -- yesterday.  They were real soap bubbles.  A little bottle full of soapy water, a straw, four children and a quiet alleyway in the bright sunshine of a summer morning.  The soap bubbles were big, beautiful, rainbow-coloured globes and they swam lightly and gently through the blue air.  There was no doubt these were real soap bubbles.  Not the soap bubbles of patriotic phraseology risen up from the muddy puddles of war editorials, the nationalist party, or the press corps, but beautiful, rainbow coloured soap bubbles.

The children and the bubbles were a simple observation, but Roth adds his own comparison of the children's innocence with the slimy, dirty "soap bubbles" of right-wing propaganda, as well as a reminder to his readers of the simple urban joys they had enjoyed in pre-war days.

Feuilletons are deceptively simple in  appearance, but not easy to do well.  I may make a conscious effort to write more of them, now that I better understand the form.

And know what they're called.  Even if I can't pronounce the word.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Yesterday, Seattle had a bit of snow  Not enough to cover my neighborhood's streets, but enough to put a white sheen over our lawns.  It snowed a bit, and it rained a bit, and the net effect so far hasn't been much.

Except that our November weather apparently sufficed to knock out power from 7:15 p.m. until about 10:15 p.m. last night.  I had given up and gone to bed at 9:30, and was awakened less than hour later by the lights coming back on.

You don't realize how much you depend on electricity until it isn't there.  My cats and I sat in a large dark living room, staring into the blackness and avoiding conversation.  I felt my way to a cupboard and grabbed my flashlight.  I didn't know how long this would last, so I also reached into a drawer for a couple of fresh batteries.

The window next door revealed lit candles.  True survivalists, obviously.

You can't read.  You can't listen to music.  You can't use your computer.  I did have my iPhone, but it was low on battery, and I just sent a fast, plaintive message to Facebook, advising them where to find my body.  Worse than the darkness, moreover, was the loss of my furnace.  It was when the temperature dropped below 60 degrees (15º C) that I gave up and headed to bed.  Throwing an extra quilt over me, since the electric blanket was useless.  

It wasn't just my house, and it wasn't just my neighborhood.  It was black at street level as far as I could see, but the clouds were reflecting light from some far off areas, which kept my street from the total blackness you might find in a horror movie.

Folks on Facebook chided me this morning:  "Poor guy.  It must have been like living in Ukraine!"  I know, I know.  I'm a pussy.  But my brief three-hour experience did give me increased empathy for the horror that Ukrainians endure, week after week, month after month.  I wonder how well I would hold up under not only the constant threat of bombing by a vicious neighbor, but from the loss of all the ordinary services we expect in a civilized society.  

Which brings me to the theme of this little essay.  Just as I have endured three hours of darkness and cold, so I have endured four weeks of loss of my computer, and you, my arguably faithful readers, have endured the blackness that you have discovered each day on my blog.

But, oh joy!  My new computer arrived yesterday, and I spent the afternoon setting it up and trying to struggle my way through Window's latest iteration of its operating system -- fighting to install Chrome as my browser and to resist Microsoft's tenacious struggles to keep me on "Edge"!  The battle isn't over, but I've mastered the simpler basics, such as how to continue with "Confused Ideas" in its usual format.

Life without blogging is like living without light and heat, and I sigh a sigh of relief as life returns to some version of normal.  Glad to be back!

Good news

 After an unconscionably long period of time, procrastinating and dithering over the problem of my frozen computer, I have ordered a new desktop.  A new computer won’t solve my problem of seven years of missing files, but that has no bearing on my ability to publish my blog.

The new computer is scheduled to arrive approximately the weekend after Thanksgiving (November 24, this year, for my non-American readers).  Barring some new disaster, some fascinating — more or less — essay should be forthcoming soon thereafter.

As businesses tell you, while you wait for hours on the phone for a company agent:  

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

Computer crash

 As if my posts on this blog haven’t been infrequent enough over the past few months already, my computer has now crashed.  Apparently permanently.

I will need to order and install a new computer, and ascertain how much of a decade’s worth of data has been saved “in the cloud,” and how much has been lost irretrievably. 

Until that’s been completed, my readers will have to be even more patient than in past months.  The only way for me to post at present — as I’m doing now — is on my phone, which is unsatisfactory in many ways.  Especially for those of us addicted to touch typing.

Thanks for your continued patience and interest.  I love having readers.  Maybe, during the upcoming hiatus, you can peruse my past essays, posted over the past 15 years.

Two weeks at Lake Como

We now pass swiftly from my arrival in Milan on September 8 to my arrival at our rental property on Lake Como on September 10.  Eliding, thereby, the dispiriting events of September 9 -- already described two posts ago -- which resulted in my spending my remaining 16 days in Italy with only one usable arm.

Dispiriting, I say, but I was not dispirited.  I saw myself -- I see myself, now -- as leading my legions from the Lombardy plains to the Como lakeshore, much as one-armed Lord Nelson himself lead his ships into battle.  An heroic figure, one might conclude. Even though my arm had been lost not in battle in the Canary Islands, as had Nelson's, but in a bathtub in a Milan hotel.

Week One

Because of changed logistics, we abandoned our original plan, described in earlier posts, of taking the train to Como, a ferry from Como to Menaggio, and a bus thence to our rental.  Instead, we hired a taxi to take us directly from our Milan hotel to the lakeshore rental.  Less picturesque, but simpler.  Or it would have been simpler if the driver had not heard "Menaggio" as "Bellagio."  His mistake wasn't appreciated until I noticed that, once past Como city, the lake appeared to be on the left side of the road, rather than the right.  Words were exchanged, tempers flared, some euros changed hands, and all ended well.

Our taxi delivered us to the parking area above the winding, pedestrian-only streets of Rezzonico right on time, and we were greeted by the same friendly and helpful manager who had met my sister, my cousin and me one year earlier.  Her young helper Michael carried our bags down the multiple flights of steps to our rental house at lake level.  The manager, remembering me well from the year before, gave us this time only a quick tour of the house, and -- at our request -- made our Saturday reservations for dinner at the local pizzeria.  She left, the members of Week One looked around, making small exclamations of pleasure at what they saw, and we settled in.  

The villa became our villa for the following seven days.

The six members of Week One, aside from myself, were all members of the family of the same Jim with whom I'd been hiking in Scotland.  Jim, his brother, and his sister are children of a former Dean of the Forestry School at the University of Washington; they seem a close-knit family, with similar instincts and with interests that -- as you might suspect -- center around outdoor activities.  Finding things to do at Lake Como that everyone enjoyed was easy.

Some activities are almost obligatory for almost all first time visitors, of course.  We took the ferry to the picturesque cross-lake towns of Bellagio (of George Clooney fame) and Varenna, and a long distance ferry ride to Colico, at the far northern end of the lake.  We hung out in Menaggio, drinking coffee and eating gelati.  Menaggio was also where we did our grocery shopping and found access to local ATM machines.

And we walked.  On Tuesday, we did a long walk up into the hills behind Rezzonico, ultimately reaching the tiny village of San Martino -- a tiny village we later found quite noticeable from below, marked by the tall steeple of its church.  We met two New Zealand women, former teachers, who were renting a house in San Martino, who entertained us with much needed flasks of cold water, and, learning that one of our group was an educator, discussions of educational philosophy.  Later that week, we walked from Rezzonico along the lake shore south to Acquaseria, and then returned home by a high route, passing through agricultural fields and through the streets of small towns.  And on Wednesday, three of us walked northward, to the next village of Cremia.  None of these walks was overly strenuous; they were all scenic, and they all offered us a good picture of ordinary people, both tourists and local residents, going about their lives.

The gustatory climax of the week was our Thursday dinner at Lauro, an excellent but tiny, informal, and family-owned-and-run restaurant located in Rezzonico itself, a two or three minute walk from our rental home.

Week Two

But Saturday finally arrived, the people of Week One sadly left by bus to the railway station at Como city, and -- while the owner's staff prepared the house for the next group -- I hung around Menaggio waiting for their ferry to arrive.  It did, and the people of Week Two emerged, led by my grinning sister.  Also disembarking were my eldest nephew and his wife, one of my sister's oldest friends and her wife, and the friend's daughter, and the daughter's husband, and their son (age 4) and daughter (age 1).  Overall, a younger group, and somewhat different -- but not completely different  -- in interests and attitudes.  Actually, I was happy and a bit surprised to find that the entire group loved hiking as much as the Week One group had.  And while two pre-school kids, precocious as they seemed, definitely changed the atmosphere at times, their presence didn't curtail their parents' hiking -- the four-year-old was a bundle of non-flagging energy, and his young sister alternated between trying to keep up with him and riding in a carrier on the back of one parent or the other.

We did some of the same things as did the first week's group.  The mandatory ferry ride to Bellagio and to Varenna.  The long ferry ride northward, although we decided to go only as far as Dongo -- where Mussolini was nabbed, trying to escape to Switzerland -- rather than all the way to Colico.  We drank cappuccinos and ate gelati at small lakeside cafés.  More so than with the first week's group, much shopping was done and euros changed hands -- definitely not my activity, and all I can tell you is two words -- "silk scarves."

Our hiking was perhaps more ambitious than that of Week One, in distance if not in altitude.  We took the bus to Colonno, south of Menaggio, and hiked back northward eight miles along the lake shore to Griante, stopping for a very satisfying lunch in the beautiful town of Lenno.  We hiked the five miles from Rezzonico to Menaggio, Menaggio being our "big city" where, usually arriving by bus, we did our grocery shopping and hopped the ferries.  And one day, while others were plotting shopping expeditions, I walked northward once more to Cremia, and then onward to Pianello, an exhilarating hike reminding me why I sometimes enjoy walking alone.  

Week Two neared the end of their stay on Thursday with the same highly enjoyable group dinner at Lauro as had Week One, and then on Friday with a home-cooked birthday dinner for our one-year-old -- no longer one, but now two.  (Did I mention that both she and her four-year-old brother seemed older and more sophisticated than I recall kids at that age being when I was young?)  

And so on Saturday morning, after checking out and watching Michael once more haul our bags, this time up the endless steps, we found our selves waiting at the bus stop for the bus to Menaggio, connecting to the ferry to Como, connecting to the train to Milan.  An unforgettable two weeks for me, and I suspect for everyone.  

But I'm confident it will not be the last time I ever see Lake Como.

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This post may seem excessively detailed as a vacation summary.  Please be indulgent.  I write it to remind myself of various sequences of events, so that in future years as my memory fades, my endless stacks of photos will make some chronological sense!

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Photo:  Isola Comacina, the only island in Lake Como.  Week Two walked past this island while we walked the lakeshore from Colonno to Griante.

West Highland Way -- 2022 version

On Sunday, August 28, in late afternoon, I dragged my weary body from a downtown Glasgow airport bus stop several blocks to my booked hotel and collapsed.  It had been a long day and night of flight and six hours sitting in Heathrow, with little or no sleep.  Soon after arrival, Jim and Dorothy came by the hotel, and we all went out to dinner at the "Missoula Montana Bar & Grill."  No, it really happened, surreal as it seemed then, and as it seems now in recollection.

Four weeks later, I returned to Seattle from Milan.  That was almost two weeks ago, and some explanation for my delay in summarizing my trip may be called for.  First, jet lag.  Second, a bad cold that began the night before my flight home and that is still running its course today.  And, most dramatically, a dislocated shoulder (see last post) from which I'm still recovering, together with the dramatic warning from my orthopedist that I almost certainly had sustained a partial or even full tear of my rotator cuff, requiring surgery.  An MRI was scheduled.

Not all news is bad news.  The MRI apparently revealed that yes, I had a partial tear to my rotator cuff, but it had occurred long ago and my body had fully compensated for the damage by making substitute use of other muscles and ligaments.  No new tearing had occurred in Italy.  No surgery would be required.  He recommended physical therapy, to strengthen muscles and increase range of motion.

I know now how a condemned prisoner feels when he receives a pardon from the governor.

So after an all-too-un-Montanan dinner in Glasgow, we proceeded to Milngavie on Monday, as planned, loafed around the pleasant small town, and prepared to begin hiking on Tuesday, August 30.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I hiked the West Highland Way back in 2011.  I remembered parts of it well.  Some parts I didn't recall at all.  Other parts were different from how I remembered them.  Above all, hiking with two friends changed the experience -- from a solitary adventure into the unknown to a more social experience -- fewer thoughts of encountering ghosts of Highland rebels, smugglers, and drovers on the high moors, and more joking, more discussions of the pleasures and miseries we encountered on the trail and in each night's B&B or small hotel. 

The trail is considered moderately easy as British trails go, but it had its challenges.  The second day, as part of a 13 mile hike, we climbed  up and over "The Conic," a high peak with a gradual ascent but a precipitous decent into the village of Balmaha, a pleasant, well-touristed town on the south shore of Loch Lomond.  (An alternate route by-passes The Conic, for those wishing to avoid the climb.)   

The following night was spent at the stately Rowardennan Hotel, midway up the east side of Loch Lomond.  Our relaxed evening at the Rowardennan didn't prepare us mentally for the following day's formidable hike to Drover's Inn at the northern tip of the Loch -- formidable not so much for the 13 mile length of the hike, but for the very rough trail, composed mostly of rocks and tree roots.

Once past Drover's Inn, the hiking was relatively easy, even when the days were long.  My friends kidded me for being overly concerned about our meals -- both quality and quantity -- but I have to admit that the freshly-caught local trout served for breakfast, along with our eggs, at Tiigh Na Fraoch inn in Tyndrum, and the elegant Avocado Eggs Benedict served at the Inveroran Hotel in Inveroran were surprises, and a nice break from the usual "Traditional Scottish Breakfast." 

After Inveroran, we found ourselves crossing the vast expanse of Rannoch Moor.  My memory of the moor from 2011 was one of a mysterious realm -- a dry path leading through grassy marshes, surrounded by crags with threatening-sounding Gaelic names.  I walked alone, and encountered very few other hikers.  I wouldn't say the experience was at all scary, but it had the potential for being scary if I'd twisted an ankle, or had found myself walking alone after dark.  But this time, the sun was brightly shining, I had friends to talk with, and the trail was crowded with fellow hikers.  

The changes in experience were both gains and losses.  For me, perhaps, with my sense of imagination and love of telling stories to myself, more losses than gains.

This was especially true at the end of that day, when we came down off the moor to Kingshouse.  Kingshouse is very old, and was famous in the 18th century as a meeting place for smugglers.  It was a cozy place to stay overnight, at the head of Glen Coe, despite its obvious age.  But in the past eleven years, Kingshouse has changed radically.  No longer an isolated white building looming ahead on the trail, it is now surrounded by ancillary buildings.  The main building itself has been largely renovated and enlarged with modern additions.  No apparent attempt has been made to preserve the atmosphere of the old building, except in the bar.  

We did not stay in Kingshouse this time.  Because of demand, and probably price, the company that arranged our accommodations provided a cab ride from Kingshouse, down Glen Coe to the coast, and back up the next valley north to the old aluminum producing town of Kinlochleven.  The following morning, a cab returned us to Kingshouse, where we hiked back to Kinlochleven.  The trail out of Kingshouse leads you up the "Devil's Staircase," so named by British soldiers required to carry supplies on their backs up the switchbacks.  Although I was eleven years older, the hike seemed easier this time than last.  However, a photo taken of me at the top, attempting to pose in the same manner as I had in 2011, dispelled any illusion that I hadn't aged!

My second night at Kinlochleven was the end of the trail for me.  My companions hiked the final fifteen miles to Fort William the following day.  I beat them there by taxi, where I caught a train back to Glasgow.  A flight cancellation by British Air had forced me to fly from Glasgow to Milan a day earlier than planned.  Jim and Dorothy had excellent weather for that last day of the hike.  In 2011, it had poured during the entire day's hike -- a hike through what is described as the most scenic leg of the West Highland Way.  I saw nothing but the puddles in the trail beneath my feet.

I may have to return to Scotland some day just to hike that final fifteen miles!

Once I'd left Glasgow and arrived in Milan, the second half of my thirty day European vacation began.  But that's a story for a later post.

-----------------------------

Photo:  Bridge of Orchy, built by the English military in the mid-18th century to assist moving soldiers to the Highlands to put down rebellions.

Dislocation

"But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant."

--Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

It had been an amazing two weeks, hiking the West Highlands Way in Scotland with my friends Jim and Dorothy.  But wait!  There was more to come.  On Thursday, September 8, I flew from Glasgow to Milan, where I was to meet up with a group of Jim's relatives, and proceed to a house we'd rented on Lake Como.

I arrived late in Milan, checking into my hotel near the Milan Central Station at about 9:30 p.m.  I'd been warned that my friends had already gone to bed; we were to meet over breakfast in the morning.

I bounced out of bed, full of excitement, the next morning.  I took a shower in the room's deep tub, thinking about the day to come.  I had to make sure everyone was gathered together -- Jim was flying in that evening, and Jim and Dorothy's son arriving early on Saturday, the tenth.  We had to be at the station reasonably early on Saturday to catch a train to Como, connect with a ferry to Menaggio, and arrive at our rental house some five miles north of Menaggio by the 4 p.m. check-in time.

My hair washed and my body scrubbed, I turned off the water and stepped out of the tub.  But I never quite made it.  My foot slipped on the soapy bottom of the tub, my head hit the wall, I tried to catch myself on the floor outside the tub with my right arm.  After that?  My only memory after that was of excruciating pain.  

Not just excruciating pain, as when you hit your finger with a hammer.  Excruciating pain that remained excruciating at the same level as the minutes went by.  It dawned on me, through my mental haze, that something had gone very wrong, something beyond twisting my wrist or shoulder.  Finally, I contacted Anne, one of the friends with whom I had planned breakfast.  She was alarmed by the sound of my voice, and sent John, her brother, to see what was wrong.  I somehow had managed to pull on some boxers before he arrived.

I suppose that, even when dying, I'll want to comb my hair before the undertaker arrives.

John and Anne and their spouses leaped wonderfully into the breach.  Somehow, an ambulance was summoned, my bags were packed while I squeaked out instructions, and we dashed to an orthopedic hospital, sirens wailing.

It's a cliché, but Italians do have a flair for the dramatic.

By now, I was well aware that I'd dislocated my shoulder.  Full props to the ambulance personnel for treating me gently and with compassion -- although our speed  on a rough road made an extremely uncomfortable ambulance ride.  But, to be honest, I was beyond being able to distinguish between degrees of "excruciating."

I was admitted immediately at the hospital ER, and -- after a frustrating conversation about my travel insurance -- was subjected to numerous x-rays.  I was then seen by an orthopedist who spoke quietly to me, held my hand, pulled my hand gently -- it felt good, the first improvement in my level of pain that morning.  She gradually pulled more strongly until -- wow! -- I felt great.  The pain almost totally vanished in an instant.  I was given post-reduction x-rays, and my right arm was wrapped up in a sling.

Great moments in medicine, as MAD Magazine once declared it -- the presentation of the bill.  I was expecting something in the order of several thousand dollars.  But it was 340 euros -- at a time when the euro was worth almost exactly the same as the dollar.  They didn't have enough information to bill my insurance company, and they couldn't take my credit card, so they handed me the bill.  Have your bank wire us the money, they requested, trustingly.

Was my stay at Lake Como ruined?  Hardly!  But it was changed.  My friends abandoned our plans for a train-ferry trip to the rental house, and hired a taxi.  Less problem with moving me and my baggage about, although by the time I returned to the hotel, aside from having one arm hors de  combat, I was back to being my usual excited, witty self.

I hiked (well, walked) long distances almost daily for the next two weeks, and did everything everyone else did, everything I'd planned on doing.  I just did it all one-armed, with my crippled arm tucked under my t-shirt.  

But I wasn't unaffected by my injury, even when the pain was minimal or non-existent.  Before, I had been, mentally if not physically, a young guy up for any adventure.  Afterward, I found myself considering each day's activities, asking myself if I could handle the challenge, and if I could do it safely.  Thoughts that rarely crossed my mind before the Great Shower/Tub Incident.

Returning home, I learn that I may have torn my rotator cuff, which might well require surgery with a long period of recovery.  I am scheduled for a shoulder MRI this evening.

Looking back, I keep pondering how my cheerful plans while showering, feeling excited about the day and capable of anything, were changed in an instant into extreme pain, and, worse, into a prolonged period of partial disability -- a period that continues today, and the full extent of which may not be known for months.

"One tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction."  A lesson many learn to their sorrow at a much younger age than I have.  But a lesson that, whenever learned, changes one's sense of reality, of the continuity of life from one day to the next, from one moment to the next.

Writer's block, redux

So let's review the bidding.  Since July 28 -- nearly a month ago -- I have published one small essay on this blog:  On August 14, I reminded everyone that in two weeks I'd be in Glasgow.  Ready to begin my second walking of the West Highland Way. 

That was twelve days ago.  Tomorrow, I fly to Glasgow.

My blog has indeed been rich in content.  If by "rich" we mean one bare bones description of my planned vacation travel.  

And now?  It will be another 31 days from now before I return to Seattle.  To my computer.  To a place equipped to permit me to churn out my next feeble effort. 

Well, I do promise to give you, upon my return, a full accounting of my month's leave of absence.  

But there was a time -- say last summer -- when you were able to expect more from me -- in quality, and certainly in quantity.  Hopefully, my writing flows onward like a sine wave, and we have merely hit the bottom of that wave.  We're headed back up!  To amazing new peaks of quality, spun out several times a week. 

It could happen.

But then I remember the career of E. M. Forster.  Along with numerous short stories, Forster wrote five acclaimed novels between 1909 and 1924.  His 1924 novel, A Passage to India, was perhaps his best, the subject of a well-received movie in 1984.  Forster wrote that last novel when he was 45.  He lived to the age of 90, but never wrote another novel or other serious work, aside from some short stories published posthumously, during those final 45 years of his life.  

Now that's a serious writer's block.  I should post a photo of Mr. Forster above my computer as a stern warning.

Return to the Highlands

Paths are made by walking.

--Franz Kafka

Two weeks from today, I'll be looking forward to a comfortable bed in Glasgow, following a long flight from Seattle to London, and a 6½-hour layover at Heathrow.  I hope that I will have been reunited with my checked baggage, but, in light of recent airline difficulties,  I'll take the precaution of putting a few overnight necessities into my daypack.

Once in Glasgow, I'll meet up with friends Jim and Dorothy, and -- after my much-needed night's sleep -- we'll take a commuter train ride the following day to the suburb of Milngavie -- a pleasant small town, and also the start of the 96-mile West Highland Way northward to Fort William.  Those of you with extraordinary memories may recall that I hiked the same trail alone back in 2011.  It was one of my favorite British hikes, and I look forward to doing it again.

Immediately following completion of the hike, Jim and I will return to Glasgow by train, where we will say goodbye to Dorothy and catch a flight to Milan.  In Milan, we will meet with other members of Jim's family, and proceed to Lake Como, where we will stay in the same lakeshore house that my sister, cousin, and I stayed in a year ago.

At least that was my simple plan until British Airlines canceled my flight, forcing me to leave Scotland a day earlier than planned.  As a result, I will lop off the last 14 miles of the hike, and travel by taxi (or possibly, bus) from our overnight accommodation in Kinlochleven to the train station in Fort William.  Jim had better luck getting an alternate flight, and will be able to complete the hike, arriving in Milan one day later than will I.    

I'll be sorry to miss the last leg of the hike, but I did finish the entire hike in 2011 -- walking that last stretch in a constant downpour, as so often happens during summers in Scotland.  I'm glad Jim and Dorothy will be able to complete the hike, and wish them better weather than I had on my last day.

The West Highland Way is a beautiful hike, varied in terrain and in atmosphere -- from the gentle terrain of the Loch Lomond shoreline, to the bleak beauty of Rannoch Moor, down to the head of Glen Coe, up the switchbacks of the aptly named "Devil's Staircase," and across a forested expanse through Kinlochleven and on to Fort William.  

Just two more weeks!

This isn't Global Cooling

"[C]limate scientists warn that a decade from now, a scorching summer like this one might seem comparatively mild."

--New York Times (7-28-22)

Yes, I know that when they hear me complain that Seattle high temperatures have broken into the 90s for the fourth straight day, the reaction from the rest of world may well be bitter laughter.  In a different article, from a week ago, the Times wrote that during this past spring, the temperature in northern India routinely exceeded 110 degrees.  The heat was so persistent that people were unable to work. 

Much of the world consists of economies that barely provide basic necessities to their people.  Those economies are failing.  Because of excessive heat.  Because critical portions of the population insisted that global warming was a hoax.  

But the rest of the world exists only in my mind.  My reality is what I see before me, day after day.  And 90 degrees means something different to me -- who grew up in a world where 80 degrees in summer was considered hot -- than it would to a resident of Delhi, or Cairo.   Or San Antonio.  

At this moment, 6 p.m., it is still 90 degrees outside.  Inside my house, it is now 80 degrees, a temperature that has been very slowly rising throughout the day.  And "inside my house" means on the main floor.  Upstairs, where I sleep, it must be well over 100 degrees -- as you ascend the stairs, the change in temperature is sudden and overwhelming.

So I spend most of my day indoors.  My two outdoor-oriented cats have also spent most of the day indoors, sprawled out on a window ledge.  I will again go to bed at 11 p.m. or midnight, rather than my normal 10 p.m., as I wait for the upstairs to cool down.  Because one advantage Seattle possesses over some hot cities is that -- usually -- the temperature does cool down during the night.  Down to 64 or 66 degrees this past week.

This morning, I arose at 6 a.m., despite being retired and having no job to hustle off to. I opened front and back doors, hoping that a little fresh 66 degree air would cool the downstairs to below 70 degrees, in preparation for another day beneath the blazing sun. It didn't, really, never dropping below 72. I ate an early breakfast, glanced at the morning papers, and then left at 7 a.m. for a morning walk.

That walk was refreshing, and was definitely the highlight of the day. I followed one of my several walking routes -- through the Arboretum and down into Madison Park. I sat outside in the cool morning air at Starbucks, arming myself with a blueberry muffin and a latte, and then continued walking into Madrona, and wound my way back home.

It's sad, but that was the highlight of my day. I arrived home at 9:30 a.m., with the temperature already pushing past 75 degrees. I spent a short time on my back deck, being entertained by my cats and plucking a few dandelions out of the yard. Then, the temperature up to 80, the doors went shut, a fan in my living room was turned on, and I once more was barricaded against the outside heat.

A novel addition to my daily ritual: from 2 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m. I slept. Siesta time, making up for those lost hours at night. As well as the boredom of incarceration in an over-heated house. Who would have ever predicted that the Siesta would come to Seattle?

You may properly conclude that I don't have air conditioning. Correct. I'm a native resident of the Northwest Corner. We don't do air conditioning, because we don't need air conditioning.

So I keep telling myself, with less and less conviction, as I listen to the hum of the AC next door. Power-driven machinery, keeping a group of kids cool, kids renting the small, neighboring house. Bah! A waste of power and one more source of environmental degradation.

My cats look at each other, and roll their eyes.

Ascending Mt. Si, to measure decline

Many of us have childhood memories of measuring our heights at intervals -- keeping track of our growth, for example, with pencil marks and dates on a wall or doorjamb. It was encouraging proof that we were not only growing up, but getting bigger and stronger as we did so.  

I'm probably in a minority, however, in keeping track of my decline as I age -- by documenting the increasing time it takes each year to climb Mt. Si, an isolated 4,167-foot volcanic remnant, looming above the town of North Bend, Washington, about forty miles east of Seattle.  I've hiked the trail frequently ever since I was 26, but have documented my climbs annually only since 2011.  My Mt. Si post on June 5, 2011, continues to be one of my most frequently read entries, a reflection of the large number of persons who continue to climb the mountain.

Each year, I add to my 2011 post my most recent time to climb Mt. Si.  By which I mean the hike from the trailhead only to the open rock field, below the Haystack, where one emerges from the forest, some 3,200 feet above the trailhead.  The Haystack itself is a class 3 scramble which I did a number of times in my careless and foolish youth, but not in recent years.   

My annual time entries show a definite trend upward, and my physical condition a corresponding trend downward.  It takes me longer to climb the same distance each year.  In 2011, it took me an hour and 40 minutes.  Last year, that had increased to two hours, 13 minutes. Yesterday, it was five minutes longer: two hours, 18 minutes.

I'm not getting younger.  Or faster or stronger.  But I'm like the dog that learns to dance on his rear legs:  he doesn't do it well, but it's a miracle that he does it at all. 

Yesterday was a Saturday, and the trail was mobbed.  I used to hear complaints that hiking and climbing were recreations enjoyed only by privileged white youth.  That certainly wasn't true yesterday -- climbers of both sexes and of every conceivable ethnicity and age.  It was a veritable United Nations on the slopes, reminding me of a recent report that Seattle was behind only New York and San Francisco in the diversity of its population.

The usual approach to Mt. Si from Seattle is to take I-90 to North Bend, then exit and follow the winding road to the trailhead.  My car has some problems that made me uneasy about taking it onto the interstate, so I chose the "back road" that I'd never taken before.  I drove across Lake Washington on SR 20, continuing as far as Redmond -- a freeway as crowded as I-90 -- but then turned off onto SR 202, a very pleasant and scenic drive through rural King County, including the small towns of Fall City and Snoqualmie, ending up in downtown North Bend.  The drive takes about 15 minutes longer from my house than the I-90 route, but was much more enjoyable.

An enjoyable day that has become something of an annual ritual.  As has the following day, during which I once more learn to walk on legs made of rubber.

Return to North Rim

After my major disappointment, two months ago, as I unsuccessfully attempted to reach Bar Harbor, Maine, for an idyllic four-day vacation, I held my breath last week as I plotted a four-day visit to the Grand Canyon.  

The gods toyed with me, as they did with Odysseus's attempt to reach Ithaca -- throwing up a series of obstacles en route, obstacles that seem funny only in retrospect -- but they ultimately allowed me to succeed.

This was my fourth visit to the North Rim in the past decade -- prior visits having been noted in this blog in 2013, 2017, and 2018.  The place obviously attracts me.  As in those past years, I braved a six-hour drive, going and coming, between Las Vegas (the nearest major airport) and the Canyon.  As in past trips, I unaccountably chose to make the trip in mid-summer.  The temperatures as I drove through southern Nevada reached 114 degrees (45.4° C), but began moderating once I left I-15 at St. George, Utah, and began climbing toward the canyon.  

During my stay at the North Rim, with an elevation over 8,200 feet, the temperature never exceeded the high 70s -- far below the temperature down at the level of the Colorado River.  On past visits, I have braved hikes down into the canyon as far as Roaring Springs at 5,200 feet (2013), and the Supai tunnel (6,800 feet) (2017).  I began those hikes, both years, at about 6 a.m., and I still had a long, hot hike back to the rim.  

This year, I didn't feel like getting up at 5:30 a.m., or skipping a good breakfast in the lodge.  Shamefacedly, I admit that I therefore confined  my hiking to trails on the rim.  But it was some pretty good hiking, in a nice climate.

Grand Canyon Lodge is situated on something of a promontory into the canyon.  On its east is Kaibab Canyon, where the Kaibab Trail leads down to the river.   On its west, is another canyon, called the Transept.  A trail follows the rim of the Transept from the Lodge to the only North Rim campground, a distance of about 1½ miles.  Although there is no appreciable change of elevation between the Lodge and the camp, the trail dips up and down in places, making it an easy, but not too easy, hike.  I hiked the trail early on my first full day at the North Rim, and again as a send-off to the Canyon on the morning of my departure.  Both times, I returned on a dedicated Bridle Path -- closer to the road, and a slightly shorter route back to the Lodge.

On Monday afternoon, the day after my arrival, I hiked the Uncle Jim Trail (4.7 miles), a loop originating at the Kaibab Trail trailhead.  The trail was steep in places, the afternoon was hot, and I worried for a while that I should have brought more than my one liter of water.  Eventually, the path reaches the rim of Kaibab Canyon, and follows the rim for some distance with excellent views of monuments arising out of the depths of the canyon, such as the Throne of Wotan and the Vishnu Temple.  As the loop began moving away from the best view at the Observation Point, I heard distant thunder, and soon was drenched in heavy rainfall for about 45 minutes.  Unexpected, but entirely welcome -- my concerns about being overheated vanished as I strode briskly down the trail in sodden shorts and t-shirt.  A happy  Seattleite, hiking in the rain!

Tuesday morning, I drove the narrow, winding, 23-mile side road to Cape Royal, east of the Lodge with views not only of the canyon, but beyond to the Painted Desert far below, and mountain ranges beyond.  From the end of the road, there is a paved, flat, one-mile trail, lined with descriptive signs regarding local plant life, and with an excellent view of the Angel's Window, a square hole carved in the rock.  The trail ends on top of Angel's Window.

A 2.6-mile side road from the Cape Royal road leads to  Point Imperial, the highest point in Grand Canyon National Park, at about 8,800 feet elevation. 

Tuesday afternoon, I set off on the Widforss Trail.  The trail is 4.8 mile in length (one-way), circling the end of the Transept and following the opposite side back for some distance before turning inland toward the south.  I started late, and had no intention of completing the entire trail; I planned to be back for dinner!  I turned back after reaching the Transept's approximate end, maybe two miles.  It was a very enjoyable hike, with  ups and downs into side gullies, but not really strenuous.  Next time I visit the North Rim, I'd like to start early and hike the entire trail.  I met only one party while on the trail, and my car was the only one in the parking lot when I returned.

I got up early Wednesday, had my final Lodge breakfast, did a final hike on the Transept Trail to the campground, returned to the Lodge, spent some time hanging out on the Lodge patio, and finally checked out at the last allowable minute at 11 a.m., squaring my shoulders and facing my six-hour return drive to Vegas.  

I hated to leave.  I'll be back.

---------------

PS -- At Grand Canyon National Park, the Park Service has recently reinstated masking mandates at all indoor spaces for everyone, and -- for the unvaccinated -- at outdoor spaces where social distancing can't be observed.  Signs informing the public of these rules are posted everywhere.  While I was there, I was surprised at how many visitors totally ignored the rules.

Klara and the Sun

Sixteen years ago, while on a family canoe trip in France, several of us took turns reading Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go.   We were fascinated by his story of young people (all clones) who had been raised into their teens for the single purpose of having their organs harvested for the medical needs of those who could afford them. .  Fascinated, and creeped out.

Ishiguro's recent novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), is equally eerie, and raises somewhat similar questions in our minds -- questions we may or may not like contemplating.  Ishiguro's approach in both novels reminds me of that in works by Ursula K. LeGuin -- both authors deal with worlds very similar to our own, but with certain critical differences.  As LeGuin once stated, she was not interested in predicting our future, or in envisioning possible scientific advances -- she was not, she believed, writing science fiction.

Instead, like Ishiguro, in story after story, she described our own world, or a world very similar to our world, but one with certain critical differences, asking the question -- if we postulate these differences, what might result?

In Klara, the variable is the development of artificial intelligence to the point that resulting "robots" not only can imitate all human behavior, not only have superior perceptions to humans, not only excel humans in analytical skills, but also seem to have a sense of self and an ability to display empathy, to experience emotions.  

These abilities have permitted the development of robots that serve as "Artificial Friends," or AFs as they are called in the novel.  (A development we see developing even now, in "real life," in embryonic form.)

The story is told from the point of view of a female AF, whom we first see as she stands on the floor of a retail establishment, waiting to be purchased.  She develops a reciprocal friendship with a young girl, Josie, whose mother finally decides to purchase Klara to keep Josie company.  Josie is ill, it turns out, suffering from after effects of having been "lifted" -- genetic editing to increase intellectual ability -- which has become a prerequisite for admission to virtually all universities.  Klara is purchased to help keep Josie's spirits up, to give her a close friend, while she struggles with the illness.

As in his earlier novel, Ishiguro asks us what it means to have a soul.  In Never Let Me Go, the young people -- cloned, which in our civilization would not detract from their humanity -- were believed by everyone to be soulless, mere physical imitations of human beings.  In Klara, the AF is clearly a manufactured being.  But, by telling the story from Klara's point of view, we are left unable to doubt that she thinks, acts, and feels in ways identical to ourselves, modified only by not having the advantage of our years of gradually accumulated experience with the world.  If she doesn't have a soul, what exactly do we mean by a soul?

And what do we mean by love?  Klara doesn't love romantically, but she is devoted to Josie, to Josie's boyfriend, and to their hopes of a lasting relationship.  She loves the Sun, which she personifies as a divine presence, one to whom she turns repeatedly with both prayers and adoration.  She perceives the divine Sun, as it reflects through several stacked panes of glass:

Although his face on the outermost glass was forbidding and aloof, and the one immediately behind it was, if anything, even more unfriendly, the two beyond that were softer and kinder.  There were three further sheets, and though it was hard to see much of them on account of their being further back, I couldn't help estimating that these faces would have humorous and kind expressions.  In any case, whatever the nature of the images on each glass sheet, as I looked at them collectively, the effect was of a single face, but with a variety of outlines and emotions.

She thus develops a sense of the complexity of her divinity, the Sun, and, perhaps, of the complexity of human love.

As I've suggested, the entire story is told by Klara.  Klara has a high intelligence, an incredible ability to infer human emotions from studying faces, but a limited familiarity with day to day human life.  Her eyes apparently divide her range of vision into "boxes," blocks which she learns to combine to give a true picture of reality, the way we combine views from our two eyes to obtain three dimensional sight.  She has concluded that the sun literally sinks into the ground at the point of the viewable horizon.  Her nemesis throughout the book is some form of machinery that emits a cloud of smoke; she believes the purpose of the machine is to produce pollution, an offense against the Sun.

It's a fascinating story -- the oddities of Klara's perceptions, the intense, the lasting sense of guilt by Josie's mother for having had Josie "lifted," and thus subjected to life-threatening illness, the underlying love story between Josie and her friend Rick.  The Kindle edition has a Study Guide at the end, with eighteen questions to consider.  I didn't find the questions particularly helpful, but they do suggest the number of issues considered or hinted at in the novel, the various ways it might be interpreted.

Despite its complexity, Klara and the Sun is an absorbing story that draws one into its world, a world so like our own, but with the addition of thinking, feeling Artificial Friends, AFs with their own hopes and dreams and ways of viewing life around them.  

And an ending that is therefore heartbreaking.

Music in the park

Last night I enjoyed a free outdoor concert in Volunteer Park, provided by the Seattle Chamber Music Society -- the traditional precursor to their annual (indoors) summer festival.  I say annual, but -- thanks to the pandemic -- this will be their first summer season since 2019.  

Unlike prior outdoor concerts, this one was presented from the stage of "The Concert Truck" -- a van with a side that opens out into a small stage.  The Concert Truck, apparently an independent entity that has worked together with the Society this year, has been visiting various areas of the city, offering free concerts to audiences who might not otherwise have exposure to chamber music.

If I can offer an opinion -- thank you, I will -- I much prefer the open air stage to the Concert Truck venue.  The performers looked cramped on the tiny stage, and the acoustics sounded odd.  I suppose that instruments are always amplified in outdoor concerts, but they sounded peculiarly amplified, especially the piano, last night.  

The program was somewhat different from that announced on the Society's web page.  With a couple of exceptions, each piece played was a duet between piano and an instrument, or a piano for two hands.  One exception was one movement from a Bach cello suite transcribed for solo viola.  The other was a well-received performance of all four movements of the Dvořák Piano Quintet. 

Aside from the Bach and the Dvořák, the various duets emphasized African-American composers, or other Americana.  

The five players of the Quintet appeared uncomfortably crammed together on the tiny stage, but their playing was, as expected, excellent.

Outdoors performances have their advantages and disadvantages.  The primary disadvantage last night was the decision of Sea-Tac's Air Traffic Control to direct incoming flights over Voluntary Park seemingly about every ninety seconds (well, to be fair, as they probably do every night).)

The advantages of an outdoor performance on a pleasant summer night are obvious.  The ambience of a beautiful park.  Friends and families stretched out on the lawn, many accompanied by extremely well-behaved dogs.  Kids dividing their time between rapt attention, and running around the periphery, working off excess energy.

Entertainment not to be overlooked was the somewhat surreal appearance in the distant background, while a duet was playing on stage, of  the Society's artistic director and violinist James Ehnes.  He was wandering through the park, amongst kids playing games, warming  up his violin for his upcoming part in the Dvořák.  I'm not sure anyone besides me noticed -- but it brought to mind a scene from a Fellini movie.

Enjoyable evening, and a happy crowd.  Hope this tradition continues every year.

For the home team

My friend Pat and I routinely obtain tickets to at least two -- more usually three -- Mariners baseball games each year.  We buy them from one of my former co-workers, who buys two season's tickets each year, and sells off the ones she doesn't want at cost.  As you might guess, she's something of a baseball fanatic -- I don't know if she still sits in the stands with pencil and paper, scoring each game, but I know she did for many years.

Call it prescience -- or coincidence, if you will -- but this year we only bought tickets for one game -- tomorrow night's game.  Most years, we have some hope, however fragile, that the season will work out to Seattle's advantage, if only in terms of moral victory.   They've rarely been an outstanding team, but often a pretty decent team.  Twenty-one years ago, they managed a 116-46 record (.716) -- tying a record set by the Cubs in 1906.  (But still lost the American league title to the Damn Yankees in a 4-1 series.)

This year is not 2001.  Although the local newspaper keeps finding grounds for optimism.  This morning's headline in the Seattle Times sports section read "Winker's two-run double backs stellar outing by Ray."  The game was a 2-0 victory over the Orioles, a team that after that loss now shares a .461 season's record with the Mariners.

But, unlike Baltimore which is last in its division, Seattle still ranks ahead of one other team in its own division.  That team would be the Oakland A's, with a .329 average, a team that's a distant 22½ games out of first place.  And ten full games behind Seattle.  And at this point in the season, boasts the worst record in Major League Baseball.

Who do we play tomorrow?  Oakland, of course.  A game of interest to the baseball world only should Seattle be humiliated.  And not much, even then.

Do I care?   Not really.  Going to a baseball game -- especially when it's only once for the year -- is a ritual totally satisfying in itself, regardless of who wins or how.  Neither Pat nor I are the kind of fans who score each play.  We're the kind who chat about our lives and catch up on each other's doings while we watch the play on the field.

We buy our ceremonial hot dogs and chips before the game, at booths outside the stadium.  We have set times for buying our one beer between innings, for getting a cup of those little ice cream chips whose name I forget, for cheering the scoreboard's inter-inning hydroplane races, and for rising and singing during the seventh inning stretch.  Both of us are retired, so we don't have to panic about work the next day if the game goes extra innings.  Leaving the game, we head home in opposite directions on the light rail, enjoying the atmosphere in the packed cars, whether loud and jubilant or silent and resigned.

Summer wouldn't be summer without at least this one game.  

"Feed me on peanuts and cracker jacks...."

Mock-orange

"We are all made of dreams, and our life stretches from sleep before birth to sleep after death."

--Shakespeare, The Tempest

 
As mentioned earlier, my sister spent a long weekend with me a couple weeks ago, while en route from a three-month visit in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to her home in rural Idaho.  She rarely visits Seattle, and I was excited to have her company during a season when one might reasonably hope for both sunshine and warmth.  

Although I realized she had experienced plenty of both in Thailand. She was so acclimated to heat that she complained constantly of the "cold" in Seattle.  To be honest, it was unseasonably cloudy and chilly.  On only a couple of days did Seattle's high reach 60 degrees (15.5° C), and even my house -- ten degrees warmer -- felt cold to her.

As usual, her timing was bad.  Today's high will be 82, tomorrow's is projected at 88, and Monday's at 91 (32.8° C) -- before falling temporarily back to around 70 on Tuesday.  I found myself a few minutes ago lolling on my back deck, re-reading David Sedaris essays on my Kindle, while Pollux was stretched out at my feet, savoring the 79 degree warmth, and sharing with me the moderating shade of neighboring shrubbery.

It was like Hawaii, I told myself.  Why Hawaii?  Then it occurred to me!   Because of the fragrance.  At one end of my deck, rising above my border hedge, rise stalks laden with white flowers.  They bloom every year, but never as luxuriantly as this year, and never before with such a distinctive fragrance or one that I recall ever tracing to them.  I was sitting at the opposite end of the deck, but the delicious smell was almost overpowering even there. 

My handy plant-identification app identifies the flowers as Lewis' mock-orange.  Also known as California mock-orange, or, botanically, Philadelphus lewisii.  They are supposedly easy to grow and require little attention, making them tailor-made for my limited gardening skills.  Where they came from, I have no idea.  Until ten years ago, the spot where they now grow was devoted to out-of-control blackberry brambles -- at which time I replaced the brambles with a laurel hedge.  The mock-orange sneaked in from parts unknown, and now towers a good three feet (one meter) above the ten-foot hedge.

But who gives a hoot about its origins?  I sat there, stretched out in my chair, Kindle in hand, cat at foot, intermittently reading, meditating, enjoying -- and increasingly, I'm afraid, dozing.  Finally, I looked down and discovered that the unfaithful cat had apparently become bored and had wandered off elsewhere.  (Pollux is back in the house as I type this, noisily chasing house flies; Castor, on the other hand, is off on another of his 30-hour absences without leave.)

Anyway, half-reading and half-dreaming on my back deck on a warm, sunny day is always pleasant.  The newly-assertive appearance of my mock-orange merely kicks my enjoyment up another notch.  If only we'd had this weather two weeks ago, when my sister could have enjoyed it with me. And kept me awake with a little pleasant conversation.

Republic of Texas

According to Yahoo News, the Texas Republican party's committee on party platforms has drafted a document calling for a referendum in 2023 to determine whether Texas should secede from the union.  This development comes as no special surprise, following on the heels of the Texas GOP's declaration, overwhelmingly approved, rejecting the "legitimacy" of the 2020 presidential election.

The reader comments to this story were also "overwhelming" -- let them go, and good riddance, was the general thrust of reader reaction.  

Devout American patriot Sen. Ted Cruz, exercising what passes as Texas caution, declared: "We're not there yet, and if there comes a point where it's hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil."

Readers hooted, pointing out that the federal government owns NASA and the military.  Maybe the erstwhile state would keep the oil.  The federal government would end all subsidies, including Medicare and Social Security payments to the "Texas Republic's" aging citizenry.  Texans collect more from the feds than they pay back in taxes -- kiss those subsidies goodbye, too. 

But, for many Texans, like their emotional brothers and sisters in England, it's all about sovereignty -- economics and the financial welfare of their citizens (i.e., themselves) is irrelevant.  Texit and Brexit -- the two great 21st century accomplishments of ideology over reality.

I doubt if anyone takes "Texit" seriously.  The issue of state sovereignty was decided in the 1860s, regardless of the arguments by some Texans that their accession to the Union was different and "special."  I'm sure the Texas Rangers would fight bravely against the U.S. military, but to no avail.

Still, it's fun to consider building a "Big Beautiful Wall" along the Texas border, and crying out against the bandits, murderers, and rapists who try to sneak across from the slums of Dallas and Houston.  Hopefully, normal diplomatic relations would soon be worked out, with an American ambassador sitting in the U.S. embassy in Austin.  Probably American consulates in Dallas, Houston, and El Paso (unless El Paso breaks away and joins New Mexico).  Senator Cruz drools at the thought of becoming president; now he could do so -- but  President of the Lone Star Republic of Texas.

Most important, of course, would be the formation of an all-Texas college football league -- Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, Baylor, Houston, Rice -- probably others.  All joined together, because they'd have nowhere else to go.  

Hook em Horns! 

Now back to the real world ...

Avoiding the pangs of autumn

This morning at 2:13 a.m. (PDT) was the summer solstice, when the sun tired of it's northward journey, and began trudging back south.  In Seattle, the sun rose at 5:11 a.m., and set at 9:10 p.m., although I note that the first glimmer of daylight was visible even through my closed blinds at 4 a.m., and still lingers past 10 p.m. 

On Facebook, I noted -- only half facetiously -- that it doesn't get any better from this point on, and that "until the first flowers of February, it's all downhill."  By this point, as a kid, I was already fretting about how fast summer vacation was passing, and by July 4 I was wailing that "the summer's half over."  My mother would calmly suggest that looking at the calendar more carefully might provide a needed attitude correction.  

Today, for many kids, vacation ends in August, but for us, the first day or two after Labor Day marked the start of our nine-month incarceration under supervision of the school authorities.  In my mind, Labor Day still marks the end of summer, although in the Pacific Northwest, September is often one of our most enjoyable summer months. 

But I digress.  This year, rather than September's arrival looming with the childhood horror of school, or marking the dwindling of daylight and of decent weather, as the damp chill of winter approaches, my summer will end with a bang.

On August 27, I fly to Glasgow to meet my friends Jim and Dorothy, where we begin our nine-day walk from a suburb of Glasgow to Fort William -- some 95 miles.  For me, this duplicates a hike I did in 2011, one of the best walks I've done in Britain.

After a night in Fort William, we return by train to Glasgow.  Dorothy, who will have arrived in Scotland a week before me, to visit family near Glasgow, will return to their home in Indiana, but Jim and I will fly on September 9 from Glasgow to Milan.

In Milan, we will meet Jim's brother and sister, and their spouses -- with whom I hiked together in 2018 (the Great Glen Way, Scotland) -- and spend the night at a hotel near Milan's central railway station.  The next morning, we will walk to the station, where -- if all goes as planned -- we will be joined by Jim's son Graham, who is arriving from the States early that morning.  We proceed by train to Como city, on the southern tip of Lake Como, and hop on a ferry to Menaggio, where we will proceed to the same house my sister, cousin, and I rented last September.

The seven of us will enjoy a week at Lake Como.  My friends will then depart, leaving me to be joined for the rental's second week by a varied group of friends and relatives  -- including my sister, and a couple of friends with their four-year-old son and one-year-old daughter..   

Will two weeks at Lake Como be too much?  Will I be bored?  Such questions can be asked only by someone who has never visited the Italian Lakes.

Finally, on September 24, we surrender our rental and return to Milan.   My sister -- having been deprived of Lake Como during my first week there -- will make up for it by traveling south for a visit to Puglia and Sicily.  I'll spend two nights in Milan, and then fly home to Seattle on September 26.

By the time of my return to Seattle, trees will be changing and autumn will be well underway, although some Indian summer may yet remain.  But though another summer will be gone, it will have ended while I was happily engaged elsewhere, and I can settle cheerfully into a season of arranging my photos and planning future travels.