Sacred Ganges

At least thirty religious pilgrims were reported dead this week, when panic broke out among an estimated 100 million pilgrims in India.  (Some claim the government is covering up the true toll of death and injuries.)  

The tragedy occurred during the peak moments of Maha Kumbh Mela.  The Kumbh Mela festival occurs only once every twelve years, and involves bathing in the Ganges river, which is believed to wipe out one's sins.  This year's celebration, the Maha Kumbh Mela, marks the completion of a full twelve-cycle circle of the twelve-year old cycles, making the 2025 celebration an event that occurs only once in 144 years.  

The most favorable spot to bathe is Prayagraj, where the Yamuna river (which flows through Delhi and Agra) flows into the Ganges.  These two "real" rivers are met at that spot by a third, invisible, mystical river called the Sarasvati.

By some celestial coincidence -- or maybe it was planned? -- the peak of the celebration, when the tragedy occurred, was the date of the second lecture on "rivers" by the University of Washington history department.   That second lecture, by Professor Anand Yang, discussed the Ganges river.  Professor Yang was himself born in India; he graduated from Swarthmore, and received his doctorate at the University of Virginia.  He speaks quietly and eruditely, and his lecture was well illustrated by projections of ancient art and some modern photographs., 

Even more than the Nile, discussed last week, the Ganges is a holy river, within Hinduism.  Professor Yang discussed the importance to Hindus of immersion in the river, and of having samples of the river in the home.  If curious, he remarked, you can obtain small vials of the Ganges water on Amazon at a reasonable price.  The Wikipedia article discussing Kumbh Mela states that the twelve-year cycle is based on the time that the planet Jupiter takes to make one complete revolution.**  No further information is provided.  I'm not sure whether the planet's actual revolution is studied, or whether this is a mystical revolution in the same sense as the Sarasvati is a mystical river.

I will publicly expose no further my ignorance of Hinduism, and especially of this festival.

Like the Nile, the deposits from the Ganges create rich agricultural soil, which historically allowed India to feed its enormous populations.  

The Ganges, together with its tributary the Yamuna, is also a major east-west transportation route across northern India, originating in the Himalayas, and swinging eastward into the Bay of Bengal.    As such, it has also facilitated several conquests of India by outside forces, including most recently the conquest from west to east by the Mughals from the Afghanistan area, and, from east to west, by the British from the Bay of Bengal.

Professor Yang devoted significant attention to the Ganges's pollution problem.  The Ganges is by far the most polluted river in the world.  It's a sewer for human waste, as well as for industrial waste.  It is valued as a holy depository for the ashes from cremation.  Many of the devout spend their last days beside the Ganges, so that their ashes can be swept off the ghats, where the cremations occur, directly into the river.  Professor Yang noted that not all bodies are fully cremated before being pushed into the river.

The government talks seriously about cleaning up the river, but -- I gather -- like most governments, hasn't yet made any significant inroads into the problem.  Think of that before buying your vial of Ganges water on-line.

Like last week's, this week's lecture was fascinating and very well presented.  It makes me want to know much more about India and, to some degree, about Hinduism.  I've visited Delhi and Agra, following a trek in the Ladakh Himalayas, and have paid a short visit to Mumbai, but I've never been to Calcutta or the Ganges plain.  I think such a visit would be worthwhile.

What little I know about Indian history comes not from a scholar, but from a British author, writing for mass audiences -- William Dalrymple.  His book White Mughals follows the life of a British "Resident" in Hyderabad, but in so doing, also portrays an interesting look at the British East India Company's headquarters in Calcutta shortly before and after the year 1800.  At a younger age, Dalrymple wrote City of Djinns, an engaging picture of Delhi, both as it is at present (or in 1993,when the book was written), and as it has evolved over the centuries, surviving and rebuilding following a series of invasions and conquests.  

Those books won't make you (or me) an expert on India, but they should whet your appetite for learning more.  Meanwhile, I look forward to next week's lecture on the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) river.    

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Photo of the aftermath of this week's panic at Maha Kumbh Mela, beside the Ganges. New York Times photo.

** (1-31-25) Looking up Jupiter's physical characteristics, I see that the planet rotates in just under ten hours. But it orbits the sun in just under 12 years, which must be what the Expedia article meant by "rotation." Trivial, but some readers with an astronomy background might be interested.

A fellow of infinite jest

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

--Albert Einstein

With due respect to Professor Einstein, sometimes it's the unreality of reality that is the illusion.  A comforting illusion.

Take my periodontist.  Please!  (Sorry, I'll try to be serious.)  Let's begin at the beginning.

I've been fascinated by the human skeleton ever since elementary school  I used to pour over drawings of skeletons in our school encyclopedias, memorizing all the bones and how they were connected.  There was nothing scary about those skeletons, any more than studying the steel girder skeleton of a skyscraper was scary.  It was just the way things were put together.

Then there was Halloween, of course.  In Seattle today, folks' yards are decorated, for most of October, with (fake) human bones.  Just bones.  Or skulls.  Or full skeletons.  Skeletons sitting in chairs talking to each other.  Or half submerged skeletons emerging from the soil.  All very creative.

I'm sure we had "scary" skeletons when I was a kid, but the decorations tended more toward witches, and black cats, and ghosts, and spiders.  And pumpkins galore.  And girls dressed up as princesses and fairies and other pretty creatures, a bit scary perhaps to young boys but in a different way.  I'm trying to remember how I felt about skeletons as part of Halloween.  They were just one form of decoration among others, and I don't recall any particular reaction at all.

At some point in my life, of course, I realized that I myself was a walking skeleton, painted over with layers of flesh.  Not a new idea intellectually, but it hit me with a sense of reality.  I really WAS a walking skeleton.  I could bare my teeth at myself in the mirror, and almost imagine the skull beneath the face.

Almost, but not quite.   Certainly there was bone structure there -- I could feel it through my forehead and cheeks and chin.  But I couldn't quite picture those bones as coming together as a skull.  Not even after watching Hamlet declaiming, "Alas, poor Yorick," as he held poor Yorick's skull in his hand.  Just a play, that was. 

But the reality beneath the illusion became much more clear yesterday at my periodontist's office.  As part of an investigation of my mouth, he had a CT scan done of my skull -- not the entire skull, just the portion beneath the eye sockets.  He was interested in the teeth and gums.  He posted the scan on a large screen in front of my dental chair for my education and amusement while we talked.

"Alas, poor Me!"  There was no doubt that I was looking at my very own skull.  I even saw, for the first time, my one remaining unerupted wisdom tooth, right where it was supposed to be.  It was my head, all right.  Just another skull among the uncounted billions which have passed through an earthly life over the eons.  

I was looking at my head as it would be some years from now, lying six feet beneath the surface of the earth with a horrible, demented grin stretching across my entire face.  It was far scarier than a Halloween decoration. Far scarier than Hamlet's stage prop.  This wasn't merely a skull, first studied with curiosity from an encyclopedia in second grade.  

This was me.  The real me.  The me that a good haircut, a clean shave, a Botox treatment, and a genial smile could not disguise.  What I see today in a mirror, however dispiriting the sight, is just an illusion.  The reality is what I saw yesterday in my periodontist's office.

The shock of that sight merely enforces a decision already made long ago.  Cremation. And, please.  Do it quickly before that ghastly smirking skull begins peaking our from beneath my face.

History of the Nile

One of the advantages of having done my graduate work at the University of Washington is that it opens the door to a number of events right here in Seattle that I wouldn't otherwise have known about.  Even aside from Husky football games.

Since the year after I graduated from law school, the Alumni Association together with the UW history department has presented annual (or more frequently than annual) series of lectures.  The first few years were devoted to ten lectures each academic quarter by Professor Giovanni Costigan, a professor of the old school, one for whom teaching was more important than research.  And he was an amazing teacher and lecturer.  His two-hour lectures often ran overtime by as much as a half hour, as he made an effort to share all his enthusiasm about whatever subject was under discussion with his audience.

Even as his lectures went well past their scheduled ending time, few in his audience were tempted to leave.  He was that good.

Professor Costigan was a jewel, one that in my opinion was never out-shone by later speakers.  But a number of other professors, especially in the early years, were also very good, very enthusiastic lecturers.

In the past twenty years or so, it apparently has been more difficult for the history department to find professors willing to sacrifice an evening a week for any extended period of time from their own professional work and research.  So it has been necessary, apparently, to ask a different professor to give a lecture each week about a subject of his own expertise.  Some of the lectures have been very good, but the results have been uneven.

This year, the department is offering a series of four lectures on the subject of "rivers" -- each lecture presented by a different speaker.  The four lectures will discuss the Nile, the Ganges, the Rio Grande, and the Columbia -- an interesting mix.  I attended the first lecture last night by Professor Joel Walker, whose topic was entitled "River of the Gods: The Nile and Ancient Egypt."

If the other three lectures are as well presented as Dr. Walker's, I'll be very happy.  

Professor Walker discussed the geography and geology of the Nile basin; the hydrology of the Nile river system (what makes the river rise and fall seasonally?);  the effects of the Nile on the economy of ancient Egypt; and the central place of the Nile in the religion of Pharaonic Egypt. In answer to post-lecture questions, he also described briefly the effect of modern dams on the river, and the effects of the growing water shortage on the international politics of the region.  He wasn't optimistic about the future.

Dr. Walker had a very short time to cover his topics, covering some three thousand years of Egyptian history in a little over an hour, but he presented his main points clearly and in some detail.  He was a good speaker, one who obviously had organized his talk in considerable detail, but who managed to deliver it in a relaxed and casual manner, giving it a feeling of having been ad libbed.  His specialty is the ancient history of the Middle East (Hebrew, Persian, Arab, Turkic, Ottoman), up through the early Christian era; he was careful to deny any particular expertise in ancient Egyptian history.

But he knew more than enough to serve as a highly effective speaker for last night's lecture.  I'm eager to hear the remaining three speakers, and I look forward to next Wednesday's talk on the Ganges.

Children of the war

For those of us beyond a certain age, Ukraine was just a region in the Soviet Union.  Then, when the Soviet Union broke up, it somewhat improbably became an independent nation.  Then, in 2022, Russia decided that Ukraine was really part of Russia, and wanted it back.  

We all know how that has turned out.  But Ukraine and Russia aren't just hunks of land on a "Risk" game board.  Ukraine is full of people.  What are those people like, and how has war with Russia affected them?  Rather than some comprehensive survey of the entire nation, the New York Times published a feature article this past week studying three teenaged students and a drama instructor in Kyiv, Ukraine.

A drama instructor who was bearing up under the psychological pain of knowing that her fiancé was in the Ukrainian army, fighting near the Russian border.  But a drama instructor with the whimsical humor to name her studio the "9¾ School," after the magical track leading to Harry Potter's Hogwarts.  She wrote a different play each year, directed it using her pupils, and put on a performance at the end of the course.

In 2024, she decided to ignore the war and write a romantic play about teenagers in America.  The play was entitled "It's OK," after one of the songs in the play.  It starred a 16-year-old boy, Sasha, who enrolled in the class while still hospitalized for emotional distress caused by the uncertainties of war.  His character, from New York, was orphaned by a car accident.  He was taken in by the desperately poor best friend of his mother, who lived in a small town in Mississippi.  He fell in love with the two young daughters of the family, played by two young teenagers. A fourth cast member, age 12 but "an old soul," played the mother.

The details of the plot aren't really important.  What's important is how Sasha's intense focus on learning and acting the part of the orphaned New Yorker began the process of restoring his interest in life.  The article points out that he memorized a poem for the play, a poem that included the words:

And even if your soul is the most desolate of deserts, then something will grow from it.

The young actors learned their lines.  Their teacher taught them to act. 

Sasha's mother burst into tears when he appeared on the stage, acting the lead in the play.  The entire audience was near or at tears, watching a play about kids being kids, not obsessed by death or injury.

I know Simon [the character Sasha played] is pretty sad but with that family that loves him, the character, he got loved by someone,” Sasha said. “It was very good for him.

Sasha himself felt himself loved, both by the play's audience, and, more importantly, by the three kids his age with whom he had worked hard to produce a good performance.

Sasha now hopes to become a psychologist, to help both veterans of the war and the young people whose lives have been turned upside down by that war.

After the performance, Ms. Korzhenevska joined the actors onstage and praised each one. Sasha, she said, had developed a kind of peace and inner calm.

I’m just on tranquilizers,” Sasha said. The audience laughed.

“Me too,” Ms. Korzhenevska admitted.
“I’m just joking,” he replied.
Ms. Korzhenevska hugged him. “I’m not,” she said.

Sasha came to the class a very sad boy.  Much of that sadness is probably still felt.  But he has retained -- or regained --a sense of humor.

A sense of humor always helps.

Dentists as artists

 

I have found the entire business absolutely extraordinary:  the shock of sudden crippling, the multiple aspects of "patienthood," helplessness and dependence; excruciating sensitivity to the behaviour (and especially the motives) of those round one; ....

--Oliver Sacks (Letter of September 30, 1974) (complaining about aftermath of climbing accident in Norway)

Yesterday morning, at 8:45, I found myself sitting in a dentist's chair in an office high above the streets of downtown Seattle.  I was scheduled to have a crown installed on one of my lateral incisors, a tooth that had received fillings at least twice in the past.

The tooth looked fine.  The fillings were not the old silver colored blights, but a composite that blended totally with the tooth.  The tooth hadn't been bothering me.  But despite my protests, and my alarm at the expense,the dentist had finally persuaded me that the fillings weakened the tooth, and the whole edifice would eventually come crumbling down.  Crumbling and possibly leaving nothing to work with in restoring it.

I didn't ask whether the urgency of the situation was related to his son's Harvard tuition payment coming due.  Such a joke/question would have been unworthy of me.

The procedure was scheduled to last three hours.  I have had crowns installed on other teeth by other dentists, and I didn't recall that it had taken them that long.  (Rather than leave you, my readers, in suspense, I'll just say at this point that it took just short of a full four hours.)

At first, all went as expected.  The numbing of the gum, the injection of anesthetic, the study of x-rays that were on a screen before my own eyes to remind me of why I was there.  Then the drilling away of most of the tooth, including the old fillings, leaving only a post on which the crown would be mounted.  The drilling did take a very long time, but the dentist seemed very skilled (and he in fact was), and he was a perfectionist.  I have no fear that this crown will ever come loose or need re-doing.

After a little more than an hour, the drilling had been completed. I won't describe the details of what happened next, because I couldn't see what was being done, but if you've had a crown fitted in recent years you're familiar with the process.  His dental assistant scanned the site of the drilled tooth and the rest of my mouth with an electronic instrument.  In modern times, unlike in the uncouth days of my youth, another electronic instrument then created the crown, making loud and unpleasant noises  in a room across the hall.  The rumblings went on for at least 45 minutes while I sat in the chair staring out the window.

Being confined to a dentist's chair is hardly a matter for complaint while the doctor and his assistant are working on you.  But when you're left alone, you begin to understand Oliver Sacks's feelings of helplessness, dependence, and irrational paranoia while he was hospitalized with far more severe problems than anything your tooth could imagine.

But finally, the mountain finished laboring and brought forth a small tooth-like item.  The assistant stuck it tentatively on my stump, and he and the doctor studied the lay of the land.  There had been considerable discussion between the two of them while the drilling proceeded about the color that the crown should have, to best match my other (somewhat variably shaded) teeth.  The dentist wasn't quite satisfied with the result.

To me, the crown looked quite toothlike, quite the color of my other teeth.  It was off-white, for god's sake.  But there was discussion about how they could improve the match between the exact shade of the crown and that of nearby teeth.  I suddenly realized that neither the doctor nor his assistant was merely a tooth technician.  These guys were frustrated artists -- hear the language they used about varying the shade near the visible edges of the tooth; the shade names and number that they used, like pigments a painter chooses; the friendly disagreements they had between themselves, and the way those disagreements were resolved.  

Calling them dentists or dental assistants would be like calling Michelangelo a guy who colored canvases.  The dentist apologized.  They wanted to "shade" my crown a bit differently.  I visualized them slapping a little paint on it.  "How long will that take?"  Not long, they assured me.  We had already reached the three hour mark.  

It took another 45 minutes, using the crown-making machine.  They returned, agreed that it looked better, and stared at it a bit more.  "I really think we should have used more of the blah blah blah," the dentist said.  "Do you mind if we give this one more shading?  It shouldn't take more than twenty minutes."

I hesitated.  My patience was exhausted.  I told them I appreciated their "artistic integrity," but the nuances would be lost on me.  I wouldn't be able to see the difference between one shade or another.  And no one else would either.  

The dentist looked a little sheepish, and laughed quietly that he often got carried away trying to reach a perfection that his patient couldn't care less about.  The patient just wants to go home.  Yes.  I just wanted to go home.

He didn't accuse me of being a philistine, a dental barbarian.  He was just sad.

So the "not quite perfect" crown was installed.  I gave it a good look under a bright light when I got home.  It looks fine.  It looks like the other teeth.  He did a great job.

I guess there's a moral to this story.  Just don't let the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good."  Especially when you're asking your patient for his patience.  And his money.

Lament for a favorite lunch spot

 

Just heard that the Burgermaster near U Village is going to close, replaced by a residential tower. I’m devastated. I may move to Thailand. Or Italy. Some place where you can still linger over breakfast and the morning papers!

--Facebook (January 9, 2022)

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Exactly two years ago today, as noted above, I learned that my favorite hangout for lunches and breakfasts was about to close.  A developer had bought the property that both Burgermaster and the adjacent Safeway occupied.  Safeway closed almost immediately.  But the developer apparently had difficulty obtaining the necessary building permits, or at least his obtaining the permits took longer than expected.

As a result, Burgermaster has continued for the past two years, serving the needs of the area north and east of the University.  And, more important, my own needs -- it is a sit-down restaurant, where food is ordered at the counter and brought to the table by servers.

But today, the other shoe dropped, as it were.  While getting breakfast this morning, the checker warned me that my string of meals was coming to an end.  Burgermaster had been served with notice of cancellation of their lease.  Or, as the checker put it more tersely, they were being evicted.

Burgermaster serves a diverse base.  Students, construction workers, family groups, and retired people like myself.  Many of the retired customers are regulars, who show up day after day.  Some even have regular seats.  The servers greet them by name, and know exactly at which table to find them.  The loss of Burgermaster will be a significant loss for the neighborhood.

It won't be the first.  The lot to be developed abuts the upscale University Village shopping center.  The Village is a beautiful shopping center, large, nicely designed, well landscaped, and full of customers.  But it's also a shopping center that, while welcoming to all, clearly caters to a fairly well-to-do clientele.  

It wasn't always so.  At one time, it had not only expensive shops, but stores that served the daily needs of Seattle's customers.  It had a beautiful Barnes and Noble bookstore, one so comfortable and full of books of every kind that it served almost as a library.  B&N left many years ago, as digital sellers like Amazon took over the book selling business.  The local Bartell chain of pharmacies has had a large drugstore at the Village, which I have patronized regularly.  The chain was taken over by another pharmacy chain, and the Village outlet will close this month.  Amazon Books itself had a short-lived presence in the Village, but it also closed.

There are now  no bookstores in the Village, and there soon will be no drugstores.  I discovered recently, needing a passport photo, that there no longer are any camera stores.

What's left to draw me to the Village?  Three Starbucks outlets, and one supermarket that has necessarily replaced Safeway in my affections.  

There are lessons to be learned here about trends in American retailing, and about the killing off of local businesses by their acquisition and liquidation by national chains, and about the replacement of many types of small retail stores by both Wal-Mart type bulk sellers and by the internet.  University Village is such an attractive collection of stores, including a large number of good bars and restaurants that it's in no danger of collapse.  It's a gathering place for people of all ages, who wander about, meeting and checking out their peers.  But most retailers don't find themselves surrounded with the same pleasant ambience as those at the Village.

Burgermaster served a varied clientele, many of whom also on occasion stroll about the Village.  But they don't do so every day, and it will be difficult to find another spot where they can sit quietly in a booth or at a table, reading the paper or their phone while slowly working their way through a pleasant and well prepared breakfast or lunch.  Most sit-down restaurants encourage fairly rapid turnover. 

To me, the closing of the university area Burgermaster is another step in the wrong direction for a city that would like to increase casual human interactions -- not encourage its citizens to barricade themselves in their houses or apartments and order their goods and meals by phone or internet.

Taking my knee to Wales

I walked (while outdoors) 11,400 steps yesterday.  I've always considered that number of steps to represent about 4.5 miles, but my phone assures me it was a mere 3.7 miles.  

The walk began under cloudy skies, which continued until I reached my midpoint -- Starbucks in Madison Park, where I stopped for further fortification.  As I left Starbucks, the rain began.  Not sheets of rain, but a more Seattle-type rain -- not drenching, but unremitting.  It gradually increased as I returned home, but not so badly as to keep me from  walking a few extra blocks through the Arboretum.

I was wet enough on my return that I had to hang my parka and my hat in the bathroom, where the dripping would cause less damage.  But I was pleased.  It had been my longest walk of the week, although there had certainly been longer walks before Christmas.  I may be limited by arthritis in one knee, but I'm not inhibited by a little rain.

I'm a Washingtonian, born and bred.  We don't dissolve in the rain, like the Wicked Witch of the Wet.

Both my knee and my mileage are of special concern, because I'm signed up to join some friends for a five-day walk in June.  The walk is in southern Wales, around the coastline of the Gower Peninsula, a bulbous protrusion from the mainland into the Bristol Sea near Swansea.

The trek is 45 miles long, a  uniform nine miles per day.  A mere nothing compared with the treks of my younger years, but a serious objective now.  Nine miles is 2½ times 3.7 miles.  I wasn't exhausted yesterday, but I was glad to collapse into a chair when I got home.  But exhaustion isn't the problem -- I can train to overcome that.  The problem is the effect on my knee.

My knee felt pretty good at the end of my walk -- considerably better than it had when I started out.  It always takes ten minutes or so of walking to get the lubricating fluids circulating my knee.  (That's a layman's description of what goes on, not a physician's.)  I've resisted taking any pain medications, but yesterday I did take a single Tylenol pill before starting out.

Tylenol's effect isn't immediate and magic, like a shot of morphine.  Its pain-relieving effect on my knee and leg may be medical, or it may be closer to the feather that Dumbo held in his trunk.   But it seems to help, and I have Tylenol pills in stronger doses I can use if I need to.

My friends chose this particular hike with me in mind, because of its being largely flat and coastal, and because it never gets far from a paved road.  I've satisfied myself that -- should worse come to worst -- Uber is fully available on the peninsula.  On the Cornwall coastal trail that I hiked with the same group of friends in 2019, two of our group, on separate days, had to rely on taxis half way through the day because of blisters, so I won't be embarrassed if it comes to that.

Not embarrassed, maybe, but defeated.  

I'm hoping to avoid relying on Uber's assistance by preparation of mind and body.  I'll see an orthopedist in three weeks; my primary care physician says that an orthopedist may suggest a proper knee support that will limit any pain I experience.  Also, it's possible that exercising certain leg muscles -- in addition to gradually increasing walking distances before the hike, aiming for 28,000 steps* -- may limit the unhealthy directions of movement in my knee that contribute to pain.

I'm excited about the hike and, as the length of this note suggests, a bit worried.  I'd rather be thirty years old, but even back then there were worries about both exhaustion and aches and pains.  It just took longer treks back then to provoke them.

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*In September, I walked 23,000 steps my last day in Italy. I felt fine afterward.

Blogging 2025

So, a fresh page.  The drab year of 2024 is history.  A new year lies ahead.  And today, January 2, is a day for New Year resolutions.

Or for one resolution.  A resolution regarding this, my blog.

I posted 27 times in 2024.  The most pathetic total in my history of blogging, dating back to 2007.  Compared with 148 posts in the dispiriting pandemic year of 2020.  And compared with 52 posts in my worst prior year -- the prior year being just last year -- 2023.

Something has gone wrong.  I won't speculate what's gone wrong.  I'm not sure.  

I had an annual check-up Tuesday, and achieved a perfect 10/10 score on my cognitive ability test.  Just like President Trump did, which is very reassuring.  But it also means I can't blame diminished mental capacity.  I can only blame myself, which I've always been unusually capable of doing.

Which brings me back to my New Year resolution.  I resolve to force myself to write two blog entries per week for the month of January.  Even if I can't think of anything interesting to say, I'll say something uninteresting.  I'm going for quantity, a minimal quantity.  Two per week.

We'll worry about quality in February.  Assuming I live up to my resolution in January. 

Today's pathetic whining counts as blog entry No. 1.