The joy of bearing arms

ITEM:  In California, gun advocates are up in arms, so to speak, over a bill approved recently by the State Assembly that would require the police to arrest and take into custody anyone caught with a gun in the secure area of an airport.
--New York Times (May 29, 2012)

Wow!  The article discusses the increasing number of guns seized by TSA from passengers attempting to pass through airport security.  The writer observes that "many of the offenders seem to be people who believe they have a right to carry a gun anywhere."

The article really speaks for itself, and I'm not sure what flummoxed comment I could make that would enhance my readers' understanding of these gun freaks.  I've already commented satirically in an earlier post on the NRA's success in forcing the National Park Service to permit gun-toting in national parks.  Truly, the American gun industry, through its unofficial NRA mouthpiece, has become one of the most formidable lobbying groups in the United States.  An organization that used to be known for teaching kids how to handle a hunting rifle now promotes unfettered sale and possession of handguns and assault weapons, and opposes requirements for concealed weapons permits.

Rather than merely promote hunting, the NRA now appears to promote the arming of the citizenry for all-out warfare.

I'm not aware whether the organization has, as yet, formulated a policy as to purchase and possession of hand grenades, tanks, anti-tank guns, rocket launchers, and small nuclear devices.

Ok, fine.  I don't want to be around these guys and their deadly toys, but obviously a lot of people do.  I say we set aside a large, isolated reservation -- entire states, as large as the as-yet undetermined demand will require -- for those who salivate at the idea of owning their very own handgun or AK-47.  In this reservation, there will be no law, as in "no law west of the Pecos."  These guys can form alliances and emnities as they please.  They can fight large-scale military engagements, or simply engage in street fighting.  They can blow each other's brains out in saloons.  Go for it, guys.  They can live a never-ending Hunger Games, except we won't be watching on TV.  The last surviver can let the rest of us know what finally happened.

Those of us living in the remaining portions of the United States -- hopefully, not just the two coasts, but who knows? -- will rely on police forces to maintain law and order.  We will limit our gun ownership -- for those members of the slowly dying breed of hunters --to those rifles and shotguns reasonably useful for for hunting deer and game fowl.  (I mean hunting them in a "sportsmanlike" way -- no machine guns or napalm flame throwers.)

Both groups will probably will be happier.  And the reservation, ultimately emptied of its gun-worshipping residents, can then be added to our nation's wilderness areas, once the final clouds of gun smoke have dissipated and all the necessary funerals have been held.

Children dancing

FIRST POSITION: The feet are aligned and touching heel to heel, making as nearly a straight alignment as possible. The knees are also touching with legs straightened. In beginners' classes, most exercises at the barre start from first position.
--Wikipedia

I'm not a "balletomane."  In fact, I've only watched live ballet a couple of times in my life -- both times, attending Christmas performances of the Nutcracker with family.  But I've been moved by the dedication that children and teenagers bring to their training in dance -- a dedication I first noted in the Billy Elliot musical, and in the attendant videos that illustrated the search for and training of youngsters to play the lead and supporting roles for that production.  And I was moved last night by the documentary First Position, a film that followed six boys and girls in their pursuit of honors at the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) finals in New York.

For me, the attraction is less the dancing itself -- as beautiful as it is -- than the intensity of effort displayed by the kids and the varying relationships that exist between the dancers and their parents.  This film was produced in the same manner as was Spellbound, the documentary about spelling bees that I discussed in 2008 -- introducing the featured contestants, showing us their families, noting how the parents and children interact as the competition grows near, and finally watching the competition itself and its aftermath.

The YAGP competition is open to dancers between 9 and 16, divided into three age brackets.  The film followed one boy and one girl in each bracket.  Each child was amazing in his or her abilities and willingness to work.  Even the one  goof-off, relatively speaking, a grinning 10-year-old boy from Palo Alto who ultimately told his mother he didn't want to continue with dance, gave a creditable performance in the semi-finals.

Especially moving were the back stories of the two oldest dancers.  The girl was a refugee from Sierra Leone, where she had watched her parents killed and her teacher's limbs hacked off by the rebel army.  She found herself captivated by a picture of a ballerina while living in an African orphanage. She began lessons after being adopted by a Jewish couple in America.  She wanted to prove that a girl of African descent had the grace and lightness of foot to perform classical ballet, a claim that apprently is often disputed.

The boy, age 16, was a resident of Colombia.  He had left his family behind and come on his own to America to continue dance lessons and enter the YAGP competition.  The documentary caught his phone conversations with his parents at home, conversations that seemed to be primarily parental lectures, lectures filled with admonitions that he was his family's only hope and warnings that there would never be any employment for him back home in Colombia.  My impression of his parents --a horrified impression, just from sensing the burden their warnings placed on their son -- was totally reversed when the camera followed him for a brief visit with his family in Colombia, shortly before the YAGP finals.  The love and closeness that existed between him and his parents and kid brother was overwhelmingly obvious.

In the end, most of the six contestants did well.  Aside from the youngest boy, who seemed more interested in playing computer games than dancing, only one -- a girl in the middle grouping -- did not receive a prize.  She was devastated, but the epilogue revealed that one of the judges called her a couple of months after the contest and offered her a position with the Washington (D.C.) Ballet.  The girl from Sierra Leone received a scholarship from the school of the  American Ballet Theater (ABT) in New York.  The Colombian received a scholarship to the Royal Ballet school in London.

I'll admit to occasional tears in my eyes during the movie.  For children of their age to care so deeply about their chosen career -- a career that, at best, will rarely last past the age of 35 -- and to be so willing to give up many of the enjoyable aspects of childhood, was incredibly moving.  But from the kids' point of view, they were giving up nothing.  They were doing what they loved.  As one of the girls pointed out, they all managed to maintain a certain balance in their lives, and had some time to be kids as well as dancers.  (The camera followed an amazingly graceful 11-year-old dancer as he zoomed around Central Park on his skateboard.)   I recall one of the Billy Elliot dancers saying in a YouTube interview that it was the other way around: He felt sorry for the lives of his non-ballet friends, kids who seemed so often bored and aimless -- he felt no envy whatsoever.

Finally, I was also impressed by the parents.  One mother was driven to push her children (the boy who quit -- but also a highly motivated older sister), and at one point her teacher had to restrain her from from excessive interference in her kids' instruction.  Some, such as the Jewish couple, simply observed in awe their children's talent and determination.  The father of one boy, a teenaged dancer who wasn't one of those featured in the documentary, confessed -- in his slow Southern drawl -- that a career in ballet was the last thing that ever came to mind when his son was born.  He'd just hoped he might grow up to be a good ballplayer -- but that, as it turned out, "I couldn't be prouder!"  

And the film made clear that the sacrifices weren't all those of the children -- all the parents were struggling with the demands that their children's lessons and travel expenses placed on their time and pocketbooks.

I'm simply happy knowing that kids like these exist.  I'm reminded that the school of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, here in Seattle, is ranked one of the three best dance schools in America, along with ones in New York and San Francisco.  Within a couple of miles of my own home, young people just like those in First Position are also struggling -- both painfully and joyfully -- to be the very best dancers they can become.

"Hooray for Capt. Spaulding!"

Oregon is a somewhat puzzling state.  For non-residents, it may seem simply connective tissue -- with I-5 being its artery -- lying between the latte culture of Puget Sound and the dreamworld/nightmare that is California.  Recently, the nation has awakened to the wonderful peculiarities of Portland ("Portlandia"), but Portland is a small cosmopolitan oasis in the northwest corner of a large state.  The rest of the state seems empty and, east of the Cascades, endlessly bleak.

But down near the California border, straddling I-5 and roughly midway between Portland and San Francisco, is the cultural oasis of Ashland.
But hark!  I've already described the town and its history for you -- in an essay two years ago!  You can go read it.

And so, two years later, my college friend Jim B. returns once again to Ashland, again taking a hands-on class in bicycle construction and repair.  And, again, I drove down to meet him, talk over old times, view together with alarm the present state of the nation and the future course of mankind, do some local explorations, and take in a couple of plays at Ashland's "Oregon Shakespeare Festival."

We started off with a production of a Broadway musical -- Animal Crackers -- a musical that originally -- of course -- starred the Marx Brothers: Groucho as Captain Spaulding, Chico as Emanuel Ravelli, Harpo as "The Professor," and Zeppo as Horatio Jamison.  The Broadway show opened in 1928, but the production is better known to most of us through the 1930 Marx Brothers movie.

The Ashland cast has come up with an incredible set of Marx Brothers clones.  The plot itself is inconsequential.  The musical was merely a platform for Marx Brothers gags, antics, mugging, acrobatics, and ad libbing -- combined with occasional forays down off the stage to delight and humiliate members of the audience.  Harpo was resplendent in fright wig and bicycle horns.  Chico was played by a young Japanese-American who -- after the first few sentences of broken Italo-English -- was totally believable as an Italian immigrant.  Groucho was simply Groucho -- he could have hosted quite convincingly a half-hour of "You Bet Your Life."

A highly recommended evening of sheer, mindless entertainment, if any of my readers plans to pass through Ashland this year.  "Hooray for Captain Spaulding!"

The other show was a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  For reasons not apparent to me, the production was set not in Renaissance Verona, Italy, but in 1840's "Verona," California.  The Montagues and Capulets are two Spanish hidalgo families.  Shakespeare's Prince of Verona becomes "General Prince, U.S. Commander of Verona."  Aside from a few minor translations of "Farewell" and "Good evening" to "Adios" and "Buenas Noches," the script remains true to the original.  My mind took only a couple of minutes to ignore the "updating" of the setting, which seemed to neither add nor subtract a thing from the significance of the play.

I'm not sure why they bothered.

But the acting was excellent.  Romeo and Juliet were played by unusually youthful-appearing actors -- appropriately so, since Shakespeare's Juliet was only 13 and Romeo not much older.  They spoke convincingly their Elizabethan lines to each other, while their facial expressions and body language were those of any two young American teenagers overwhelmed by the wonder of first love.  Their skillful interpretation of Shakespeare did far more to make the play relevant to Sunday night's unusually young audience than did any transposition of the setting from Italy to California.

Drama aside, Jim and I had a great visit together.  We spent a day visiting the Oregon Caves, a national monument I'd been wanting to tour since  childhood.  The caves are not as huge or dramatic as more famous ones such as Mammoth Cave, perhaps, but their geology and diversity are very interesting.  Props to the young geology graduate who works for the Park Service as a volunteer guide.  He has a true talent for sharing his love of geology.

Jim has lived in Indiana for most of his adult life, and I insisted that we drive on to the coast in Crescent City, just across the California border, to remind him of the ocean and his younger years in Seattle.  A beautiful coastal landscape, shaped by steady winds off the ocean and presided over by a still functioning light house.

A climb to the top of a strange mesa formation -- Table Rock -- near Medford, just north of Ashland, occupied part of another day.  The flat table top was originally the surface of a solidified lake of volcanic lava that covered the entire area.  Most of the lava and the soft substrata eventually eroded away, leaving only a few flat-topped formations like Table Rock looming over the agricultural valley.  We finished up the day renting mountain bikes and spending a couple of hours touring the area in and around Ashland.

A highly enjoyable long weekend.  Next on my to-do list is rental of the original film of Animal Crackers.  Were the real Marx Brothers as funny as their imitators in Ashland?

Growing up with Asperger's

Several years ago, I read Mark Haddon's novel, told from the point of view of an autistic, but fairly high-functioning, teenager, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.   The boy's thought processes obviously differed in many respects from those considered "normal":  he possessed a very literal understanding of language, feelings of being overwhelmed by sensory perceptions, a tendency to focus on one particular interest to the exclusion of all or most others in order to feel in control, an apparent absence of empathy. 

Haddon was so successful in bringing me into his hero's mind that I found the boy's way of thinking to be totally understandable, almost "normal."  I actually wondered whether -- because of my affinity for the way the boy thought -- I might possibly be mildly autistic myself.  A missed childhood diagnosis?

After quickly scanning the diagnostic criteria for autism and Asperger's syndrome, I realized that I wasn't even close to meeting those criteria -- to my relief, I suppose, and -- by then -- slight surprise. 

I'm now nearly finished with another book told from the point of view of an "Aspie."  This book is a memoir, rather than a work of fiction.  Look Me in the Eye, by John Elder Robison, is the author's harrowing account of growing up with undiagnosed Asperger's.  His father was an alcoholic and a physically abusive college professor.  His mother was a psychotic poet.  Although Robison had one of the highest IQ's in his high school, he dropped out in tenth grade, after a semester of straight F's on his report card.

His memoir, told at the age of 50, would be an interesting read regardless of where, if anywhere, the author fell on the autism spectrum.  His typical -- for Aspies -- trait of perseveration caused him to latch onto mechanical and electronic design and repair as the focus of his life.  By developing, through intense concentration, unusual competency in these areas, he was able to overcome the fear that haunted him -- that he was just a high school drop-out, doomed to failure throughout life.  It also provided him some compensation for the extreme difficulty he had in developing personal relationships.

In the 1970's, he became the electronics expert for the band KISS, and the person responsible for making technically possible such trademark aspects of their act as the band's smoking and flaming guitars and its concert pyrotechnics.  He went on to become an engineer (still without a high school degree) for the Milton Bradley game company, helping to develop some of MB's earliest electronic games.  Despairing of the politics of corporate life -- each promotion up the corporate ladder at Milton Bradley removed him further from his areas of competence -- he opened his own auto repair shop, specializing in repair of very high quality (and very expensive) automobiles.  He married, and has a kid whom he insists on calling Bear Cub. 

All of this happened by the time he was 40 -- the age he was first diagnosed with Asperger's.  Sometimes it's a relief to know there's a name and a reason for the ways in which you feel you're different.

All my life, I had felt like I didn't fit in.  I had always felt like a fraud or, even worse, a sociopath waiting to be found out.  But the book told a very different story.  I was not a heartless killer waiting to harvest my first victim.  I was normal, for what I am.

Even before learning of his diagnosis, Robison had been learning to relate to others in an increasingly normal way, just by trial and error.  Now, he had a clearer picture of what he'd been doing wrong.

I trained myself to respond in a manner that is only slightly eccentric, rather than out-and-out weird.  When someone says, "Hey, John, how's it going?  How have you been?" I can answer, "I'm doing okay, Bob, how about you?" instead of "I have just been reading about the new MTU diesel engines that American President Lines is installing in their newest container ships.  The new electronic engine management system is fascinating."

And now, he can make himself look you in the eye!

And now I know it is perfectly natural for me not to look at someone when I talk.  Those of us with Asperger's are just not comfortable doing it.  In fact, I don't really understand why it's considered normal to stare at someone's eyeballs.

Which of us hasn't kind wondered about that, at one time or another?

Robison concludes his Prologue:

It took a long while for me to get to this place, to learn who I am.  My days of hiding in the corner or crawling under a rock are over.  I am proud to be an Aspergian.

Robison's story is filled -- in Aspergian fashion -- with perhaps more technical details about the musical and electronic game industries than we'd hoped to learn.  But his tale gives great insight into the way his mind works, and in how he overcame so many hurdles to reach the success as a human being that he's achieved today.

Many parents of Asperger's children have complained that Robison is an unusually high performing Aspie, and that his book leaves the impression that all such children should succeed as he has.  I don't think so.  I think Look Me in the Eye is a very specific story of one particular individual.  It's the story of how he overcame not only the difficulties posed by his own Asperger's symptoms, but the difficulties created by his dysfunctional family life.

Robison's little brother, whom he persisted (and persists) in calling "Snort" (and later "Varmint"), but who is known to the rest of the world as Augusten Burroughs, has written a foreword to Robison's memoir. Burroughs wrote his own best-selling memoir (predating Robison's), entitled Running with Scissors. Burroughs's book describes the boys' toxic upbringing (and discusses his problematic relationship with his brother) from his own perspective.

Running with Scissors resulted in a well-publicized libel suit by the family of the unreasonably eccentric psychiatrist who had treated both boys at one time or another, and who later -- not surprisingly -- lost his medical license.

Passage to India

While young people are heading for theaters to watch The Avengers, the older set is showing up at other venues to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  That was the observation made in a review of the latter movie that I read a few days ago.  I was relieved last night, therefore,  to find a healthy mix of ages surrounding me as I watched Marigold Hotel (although admittedly the audience was more of a Midnight in Paris crowd than a bunch of Kick-Ass devotees).

If the movie has a theme, I suppose it would be an affirmation that you're never too old to grab hold of life and enjoy it.  Or, as the hyper-enthusiastic, young Indian hotel owner (Dev Patel, of Slumdog Millionaire fame)  puts it: "Everything works out in the end.  If it doesn't, it isn't the end."  In other words, yes, it's an optimistic film, one that causes you to leave the theater feeling a certain sense of buoyancy.

If I were reviewing the film, which I'm really not, I'd point out the brilliant acting by an all-star cast.  And I'd describe in some detail the plot, beginning with the somewhat hackneyed premise of having a bunch of elderly Brits deciding -- for various reasons, including financial problems -- to respond to an advertisement for an allegedly luxurious retirement hotel (for "the elderly and the beautiful") in Jaipur, India, and then learning much about themselves through their interaction with India and with each other.  Sort of a "shipwrecked on an island" scenario.

A major actor in the movie is India herself, or at least this film's depiction of India.  The hapless Brits are forced not only to adjust to each other, but also to navigate a chaotic world that each finds -- depending on his or her personality -- exhilarating or hellish.  Reviews have complained that the movie does not adequately reveal the true squalor and horror of Indian street life.  I suspect such reviewers correspond to the character in the film who couldn't force herself to leave the safety of the hotel and walk out into the city.

In the few days I've spent visiting Delhi and Agra, I've wandered around the streets, fended off highly persistent touts, ignored frighteningly disfigured beggars, navigated in tuk tuks through impenetrable traffic, and eaten excellent food in highly questionable environments.  While I'm sure there are sights that I haven't seen that would offend my sensitivities, I think the movie gives a pretty good picture of life in urban north India, at least as it would appear to a typical Western visitor.  I can understand the fears of the woman locked in her hotel room -- but appreciate even more fully the sense by others in her group that India has brought them alive for the first time since they were very young.

Jaipur offered them so much to see -- not just landmark tourist sights, but simple street life as they went out to the neighborhood market.  And, perhaps for British visitors especially, it offered immersion in a society where they no longer felt bound by the expectations that their own social set at home had imposed on them.

One woman complains, shortly after arriving, that she feels absurd.  She wasn't some kid, she muttered, wandering through Asia on a year off from school.  She felt constantly humiliated.  But that sense of absurdity, that humiliation, come from the internalized voices of the people who had surrounded her at home, voices that told her how an elderly, middle class woman was supposed to feel, to react, to behave, to be treated by others.  She could continue in that mindset -- a mindset that was keeping her bound up and unchallenged as she sat around awiting her eventual death -- or she could open herself to novelty, to the opportunity and necessity of learning, and to personal growth.

Fortunately, all but one of the hotel guests sooner or later selects the latter.  The exception was one woman -- the one who was afraid to leave the hotel -- who realizes that she truly lacks the flexibility to make the necessary adjustment to an alien civilization.  She leaves India (as well as her long-suffering husband), and returns to family in England.

Apart from the story, and the enjoyable but perhaps overly wishful moral of that story (would a group of untraveled, over-60 men and women really find happiness and fulfilling romance in a shabby hotel in India?), the Indian background is both beautiful and exciting and in itself makes the film worth viewing. I suspect that the film's popularity will cause an increase in India tourism.  And the movie offers viewers a chance to preview their own reactions to a different society -- would you love India, or find it sufficiently frightening and distasteful that you wouldn't find the trip worthwhile?

For myself -- well, one of these days soon, I'm going to have to return to India, this time for a longer and more comprehensive visit.

Religious warfare

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
John 13:34

The Seattle Times carries a religion column each Saturday, each week's writer rotating among local representatives of the predominant religious faiths.  The columns are usually fairly anodyne, designed to inspire readers to acts of kindness and good works, rather than urging them on to religious warfare, verbal or otherwise.  The Jewish rabbi, in particular, comes across as a humorous and intelligent guy you'd enjoy having as a house guest and visitor at your dinner table.

The Catholic columnist, Fr. Patrick Howell, who had his turn at bat today, is the rector at Seattle University, a Jesuit institution.  He comments today on the Vatican's recent appointment of Seattle's archbishop as its "apostolic delegate" to investigate the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a coordinating body for American nuns.  Fr. Howell's column is restrained and good natured, although quietly critical of the "investigation," and in it he asks its readers to remember all the good work that nuns have accomplished over the years. He notes that many people, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have been upset over the Vatican's pending investigation.  He summarizes the reasons given for the investigation as follows:

The [reasons] that leap out are that Women Religious has been silent on issues of sexual ethics, such as contraception and gay marriage, and that some of their invited keynote speakers at their national conferences have raised up significant isssues the church still needs to deal with.

By implication, they have focused too much on social justice issues such as homelessness, oppressive political structures, capital punishment, and so forth, without sufficient attention to the doctrinal teachng of the church.  And they should never have raised questions about the ordination of women.

Fr. Howell goes on to speak well of the archbishop, and of the archbishop's conciliatory language in accepting the assignment.  The column concludes with the words, "But the wound has been made," and continues with the hope that the archbishop can help with the healing, and that members of the church will offer their support to the women in religious orders.

Fr. Howell admittedly makes it clear that he personally questions the wisdom of the investigation: "Being called on the carpet for maintaining a respectful silence on controversial issues related to sexual ethics seems particularly inquisitional." But, overall, his column sounds to me like a balanced article, one aimed at Seattle readers in general, not just a Catholic audience.  The writer speaks well of the archbishop, but also praises the work done by the LCRW and its members and expresses his profound hopes that a very large baby not be thrown out with a small amount of bath water (my metaphor, not his).

But the vitriolic on-line comments in response to the column are disheartening.  Very few writers had anything complimentary to say about Fr. Howell's essay.  Roughly half denounced religion in general, often hysterically, and Catholic Christianity in particular.  The other half denounced American nuns, the LCRW, the Jesuit order, Seattle University, and Father Howell himself as betrayers of the One True Faith.  A betrayal that I gather began with the succession to the papacy of John XXIII and that has become increasingly devastating to True Believers over the intervening years.  A sample of these latter comments, by writers who might be called Catholic traditionalists -- an example atypical only because its writer was fairly literate -- reads as follows:

Pride is a perfect example of what the Jesuits produce. Egocentric and selfish. A little bit of education is dangerous. Irritating but not the real problem.

The real problem is that people that took their vows, now see fit to ignore them. Forces that have been trying to destroy the Church use this. When the Pope ask something be done, it the duty of the Church to carry out those Papal Orders.

Too many have wandered and led the faithful astray. The Church was built as a place to come and worship Jesus, not man. We pray to Jesus, not the Nuns, not the priests and certainly not the Jesuits.

My general conclusion is that today's readers bring the same extreme, if heartfelt, positions to religion that they do to politics.  In both religious and political discussion today, Americans -- or at least, the more vocal Americans -- are driven by anger.  This is true of the left and right wing in politics, of atheists and theists, and even between those within the same religious tradition who hold conflicting views about the nature and practice of their faith.

It will be a relief next week to step back and read some calming and good humored remarks on human nature by the local rabbi who serves as the Times's  Jewish correspondent.

Timing belts, and such

"You know, Don," Jim casually remarked, as I paid for my oil change, "I wonder if your engine has ever had it's timing belt replaced?"

"Huh?" I alertly responded, as my brain's search engines did a quick scan of my memory banks, seeking fruitlessly for data about "timing belts."

"Yas, yas," he drawled, or words to that effect.  "Your car has 97,000 miles on it."  (Not bad for a '96 Corolla, I remark to myself.)  "The timing belt really needs to be changed every 60,000 miles."

Now I bought the car ten years ago, when it had about 49,000 miles, before a timing belt change would have been performed.  And I'm sure no one's ever muttered the words  "timing belt" in my presence during any of the servicing I've had done since that time.

"So, do you think the belt needs changing?"

"Well, there's no way to tell until we take the engine apart.  And by that time, actually changing the belt will be the least of your expense."

Somehow I don't like the way this is going.  "Well, what happens if I don't get it done?"

"Wrecks the engine, or at least badly damages it."  (Possible "irreparable engine damage," as Wikipedia put it, when I later looked up the topic.)

"Will it be expensive?"  Jim gets that compassionate look on his face that repairmen get when they're about to lower the boom.  He gives me an estimate.

I'm not going to tell you the amount of the estimate.  You'd only leave comments on my blog telling me how your Uncle Randy, a renowned auto mechanic, would have done it for a quarter of that price.  Let's just say that the ground seemed to tremble, the service station seemed to swirl about me, and tears flooded my eyes.

"I'll think it over," I stammered, as I staggered over to my car and gunned it out of the station.  That was a week ago.  I'm driving down to Ashland in a couple of weeks to meet an old friend and snag a couple of plays at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival.  That's 460 miles each way.  I contemplated the vision of my engine's exploding before my startled eyes somewhere around Eugene.

Luckily, we consumers now have access to the internet.  I don't have to rely solely on Jim's word that such a thing as a timing belt even exists.  Unfortunately, it does.  It connects the cam shaft to the crankshaft.  Of course.  How else is the cam shaft going to turn?  How did I think those little valvey things would pop open and shut if the cam shaft weren't spinning?  More to the point, several on-line articles also confirmed both the fact that the timing belt needs to be changed every 60,000 miles and the full extent of engine carnage that could easily result if it wasn't.

Resignedly, I phoned the station.  I made the arrangements.  I took the car in this morning.  Its engine probably is being disassembled right now, even as I type.  Jim's son can now rest assured that his old man will be able to pay for his Harvard tuition.

I wonder if my life would have been happier if I'd never heard about the threat posed by a failing timing belt.  Just as I sometimes wonder whether I really need the doctor to tell me about my blood pressure.  Which -- at the moment -- almost certainly is elevated.

A dissatisfied life

"Norwegians don't enjoy, they endure."  So replied a woman of Norwegian background when I asked her if she had enjoyed the experience she was describing to me.

George F. Kennan was Scots-Irish in ancestry, but he married a Norwegian, spent holidays in Norway, and might as well have been Norwegian.  As told by his biographer, John Lewis Gaddis, Kennan merely endured his 101 years of diplomatic service, historical scholarship, world travel, consultations with presidents and secretaries of state, reputation as perhaps the foremost American expert on Soviet affairs, and fame as the originator of America's post-war policy of Soviet "containment."  Besides his professional activities, he was an amateur poet, a sailor, a man who thought deeply about religion, a devotee of Russian literature, and a hands-on Pennsylvania farmer.  He lived a life that causes most of us to gasp with admiration.

But his life, from childhood to death, was troubled with feelings of guilt, inferiority, self-consciousness, and rejection.  He served America nobly, but didn't really like Americans.  Although he called himself a Christian, he doubted almost everything (and was perhaps unique among Christians in believing deeply in Christ, but not being so sure about the existence of God the Father).  And he had no hopes for the future -- not his own future, not America's, and not that of mankind. 

He was not a happy man, and his life might have been unendurable except for the continuous support of his Norwegian wife, Annelise, to whom he was married for 73 years -- despite occasional strayings on his part.

Some books one swallows happily in one sitting.  Gaddis's biography,¹ at 698 pages, is not one of them.  I began reading it last November, shortly after writing my blog post based on book reviews of the biography, and I finished it today.  It was a wine made for sipping, not chugging.

Gaddis is a distinguished Yale professor, but he had close ties with the first President Bush, and has had kind words to say about the foreign policy of the Reagan administration -- a president whom Kennan himself loathed.  Much of the latter part of the biography attempts to show that President Reagan effectively put Keenan's views on "containment" into practice, thus giving both Reagan and Kennan credit for the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union.

It is Kennan's half-century influence, and often unfortunate lack of influence, on American foreign policy that will attract many readers.  But some will also be attracted by the tragedy of a great but flawed human being, a public figure of great reputation who nonetheless never felt that he'd received the respect from either the government or the public that he deserved.  Gaddis's portrait, if we assume its accuracy, shows a thinker who perhaps thought too much, an analyst whose analyses were too often affected by his emotions, and a diplomat with a deep understanding of nations and peoples who often failed to understand both the legitimate concerns and the selfish egos of individuals.

He was, as he concluded near the end of his life, a teacher, but not a politician.

When asked unexpectedly to sum up and connect the various careers of George Kennan, he laced them all under the heading of teacher: on understanding Russia; on shaping a strategy for dealing with that country; on the danger that in pursuing that strategy too aggressively, the United States could endanger itself; on what the past suggested about societies that had done just this; on how to study history; on how to write; on how to live.

George F. Kennan's life was, perhaps from his point of view, tragic.  But his life serves as a model to others who follow -- a model of one man's making the maximum use of his talents, of achieving power and influence without losing his humility and sense of proportion, of maintaining his curiosity and love of learning throughout a long and active life.  And also, perhaps, a cautionary story of a man's asking too much of himself, of driving himself daily to the point that he cannot sit back and simply enjoy his accomplishments, his family, and the world about him.
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¹John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press 2011).

Lifting up our hearts

O Lord,
How manifold are thy works!
In wisdom hast
Thou made them all;
The earth is full of thy riches.
--Psalm 104:24
On my last morning at the Grand Canyon, after my previous day's exhausting but triumphant hike down to the Colorado, I wandered along the rim in the (finally!) warm sunshine, enjoying the views of the canyon.  As anyone who has been there knows, the views are breathtaking, the mind's response transcendent.  At "Lookout Studio," a little stone building with an interesting history, perched on the rim of the canyon, I looked down and saw a plaque with the excerpt from Psalm 104, displayed as quoted above.

My first thought was "Exactly!"  The beauty of the view, the vast distances involved, and the incomprehensible time spans evidenced -- endless eons, almost as impossible for the mind to grasp as the size of the national debt -- create an emotional surge that lifts you above the daily routines of our lives in 2012 -- at least if you're alone and silent, as was I, and not trying to keep track of three wild and noisy children.  But my second thought, being a lawyer, was "Hmmm.  Does the ACLU know that a psalm is being displayed in a national park?"

As it turns out, the ACLU does know.  The organization complained in 2003, the plaque (together with two others located elsewhere along the rim) was removed for a few days, but then replaced by order of the Park Service's deputy director, pending further legal and policy review.

That review seems to be still pending.

Legally, from a purely analytical point of view, I suppose the plaque should be taken down, although the Supreme Court precedents aren't totally clear.  Unlike religious symbols approved in other parks, these plaques have no particular historical value -- they were installed only in the 1960's.  But, from a common sense point of view, I feel otherwise.  The plaque enhances the experience of the visitor to the park, just as would a verse from Shakespeare, without putting the government's stamp of approval on any particular religious belief, or even on religious belief in general.

The psalms are literary expressions, as well as religious writings.  An atheist, secure in his atheism, would surely read the quoted excerpt as an ancient writer's heroic attempt to express  awe in the face of an ineffably magnificent  "Creation" -- even if the atheist personally felt that the Creation was not, in fact, literally "created."  I suspect, therefore, that he would have very much the same emotional response to the psalm as would a Christian or a Jew.  Or a Muslim or a Hindu, for that matter.  Very much the same response as I found myself experiencing.

Even Soviet officials, firmly atheist by doctrine, often resorted to religious imagery to express strong depth of feeling.  Some of our greatest poetry is religious in subject matter.  And the Bible itself contains poetic imagery that is unforgettable and that is part of the bedrock -- religious content aside -- of our civilization.

It's not a life or death matter, certainly.  The plaque can be removed, and the Grand Canyon will still be there to astound and stupefy.  But we shouldn't be so rigid and doctrinaire that we insist on  purifying our responses to nature of any language from our literary heritage that helps us to express those feelings -- often difficult to articulate -- that overtake us as we confront suggestions of infinity and eternity.

4/20

I don't do drugs. I even think twice before swallowing an occasional Aleve. 

I do drink occasionally. But frankly, if I knew that I'd never have another beer -- or gin and tonic -- for the rest of my life, the effect on the totality of my happiness would be virtually nil.

On the other hand, I'm somewhat appalled that our country had to endure Prohibition for over a decade. I'm just enough of a libertarian to object to limitations on anyone's personal freedoms without a showing of some reasonable justification in terms of the public welfare.

I do think that such a justification can be shown for prohibiting use of a significant number of "recreational" drugs, just as we permit purchase of many non-narcotic drugs only by prescription. But marijuana? Certainly, studies have shown that long-term usage can result in impaired memory and cognitive abilities. But regular drinking results not only in similar problems, but also in a significant number of organic disabilities. Tobacco smoking causes well-known damage to the body -- including cancer, lung ailments, and cardiovascular disease -- and a shortening of one's life.

No one suggests that smokers and drinkers shouldn't be able to choose their own poison. And yet, the federal government and some states seemed obsessed with aggressive enforcement of often Draconian anti-marijuana laws. Surely the fact that Senators and corporate executives choose to smoke and drink, while pot is associated with young people and -- to those still living in the past -- "hippies," has no association with these differing attitudes?

What's the difference between a person driving while drunk and one driving while stoned?
The drunk runs through red lights.
The guy who's stoned stops at the stop sign and waits for it to turn green.

Old joke, but one that makes a valid point as to the relative threats to the public safety posed by the two substances.

Criminalization of pot is low on my list of problems threatening America, but I suppose irrational government regulation and misuse of police resources in general are valid concerns. I'm not particularly happy about encouraging increased use of recreational drugs -- anymore than I'd be happy about encouraging increased smoking and drinking -- but all such behaviors seem more the proper subject of education and discussions with one's physician, rather than cause for imposition of prison sentences (or even fines).

Let's free up the police to worry about more important matters, and free up the kids to find more critical issues about which to demonstrate.

All I have to do is dream, dream, dream

A dream is a wish your heart makes.--W. Disney

Sometimes dreams are enjoyable. Sometimes they're scary. Most often, for me at least, they're just sort of exhausting. But most of all, they're random.

But not anymore. Just buy the proper app for your iPhone and you can program your dreams, just as you program your music on your iPod. So a CNN article reports.

The app, called Sigmund and costing a mere 99 cents, lets you choose from a list of key words that your iPhone will then whisper into your ear, over and over, during the times of the night when Sigmund calculates you'll be most likely to experience REM sleep.

Young people who have used the app report that it works well, but sometimes more subtly than expected. A Harvard student entered "running" and "mountains," and had a satisfying dream about running in the Sierras. But a Yale Law School student remarks:

... one night, I entered the words: "black cat." I did not dream about a black cat. I had a very vivid dream of walking around Paris in the evening with a girlfriend. But, at a decisive moment in the dream, a black cat appears and watches us silently.

Once awake, he enjoys reconstructing his dreams and discovering what his mind did with the whispered cues.

"Fascinating," as the Yalie notes. But perhaps a bit creepy, I wonder?

Mr. Huxley had the idea, if not the technology, figured out back in 1931.

"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"

Of course, these quiet whispers in sleeping children's ears, described in Brave New World, were used by government to create proper attitudes -- not by the sleeper himself to shape his own entertainment. But how big a gap, really, is there between the two uses? Why not an FTC regulation requiring the app to insert a few patriotic murmurs? And why not add a few subliminal commercial announcements as well, a word from the sponsor before your nightly dream program commences?

The article does not explain how the app came to be named "Sigmund," but I suppose that can be left as an exercise for the reader. Pleasant dreams.

And then climb back up!

To cut to the chase: Yes, I successfully made it down to the river. And, more importantly, I returned to the Rim. As the Park signs proclaim: "Down is Optional. Up is Mandatory."

Whether I was even going to get started on my hike was touch and go for a while, however. I woke up Saturday morning, looked out the window, and saw a pine forest white with snow. A winter wonderland! Oh no. Just what I needed. A Winter Wonderland! About three inches of snow had fallen during the night, and it continued snowing all day Saturday. Snowing, and gusting with high winds. Only a few brave souls struggled along the rim trail, trying to view some signs of the canyon through the opaque white-out.

It snowed some more Saturday night, but tapering off, and the weather forecast for Sunday looked promising. Therefore, I put on four layers of clothes, filled my daypack with water bottles and candy bars, and began my descent.

For the first half mile or so, the Bright Angel trail was slushy, but the temperatures were warm enough that it wasn't particularly slippery. From that point until about the 1.5 mile Resthouse, the trail just got wetter and muddier, with snow only along the sides. And after that, conditions just kept getting better and better, and layers of clothes just kept coming off.

By the time I reached the cottonwood tree oasis of Indian Gardens -- 3,000 feet below the rim -- I was down to my t-shirt and enjoying my rest break in warm sun. One nice thing about really crummy weather up on the Rim? Lots of solitude on the trails. Coming down to Indian Gardens, I probably saw more Park staff doing trail repair than I saw fellow hikers.

Below Indian Gardens, I was hiking in new (for me) territory. The Tonto plateau, and all the layers of rock above, are sedimentary and easily erodable -- by water, wind, and gravity. Below, the river cuts a narrow V-shaped channel through much denser and harder, pre-Cambrian, metamorphic schist -- rock that is much older than the sedimentary layers that lie atop it. The views are no longer expansive. The walls about you are dark-hued. They close in about you as you descend farther and farther. You never see the river until:

Wow, there it is right in front of you!

I spent about a half hour poking about the river shore. A number of rafters had pulled in for a rest stop a few yards up river, and a couple of their group were paddling around in kayaks, being careful not to get far from shore. The water was fairly calm in this area, but to my left, downstream, the river quickly fell into a stretch of rapids. The Colorado is an attractive river, at the point I encountered it, and narrower than I expected.

I really wanted to follow the river about two miles farther upstream to the Campground (which is where the 9.3-mile figure came from in my earlier post) and the Phantom Ranch (which would make an ideal overnight spot, if one only had the reservations, which need to be made far in advance). But I'd left the Rim a bit later than I'd hoped to, and I was afraid of not making it back before nightfall.

And so -- there was nothing to be done but turn around and begin climbing back. Up.

I won't bore you with the aches and pains of my 7.5 mile ascent. Let's just say that it's probably just as well that I hadn't irritated my body further by forcing it to handle that additional four-mile round trip to Phantom Ranch. As it was, I arrived back at the Rim at 5 p.m. And weary.

I wasn't embarrassed to take the shuttle back to my lodge, rather than walk another 1.5 miles.

We make jokes about the ineptness of government. But three cheers for the National Park Service. They have done an excellent job of managing a park that caters to both the casual tourists who dread getting out of their cars and walking a quarter mile to see the Canyon, and the hardy mountain men who descend into the canyon and don't emerge for a week or so. I'm impressed especially by the signage along the rim trail, easily viewed by all Park visitors, that gives a really decent and understandable explanation of the geological history of the Grand Canyon and -- as a result -- a sense of the awesome lengths of time that nature took to create the spectacle now on view.

In terms of time, human existence certainly is only a tiny exclamation point at the end of a very long novel. Looking about me, I felt the extraordinary fortune that allowed me to exist as part of that tiny morsel of punctuation.
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Photos, from top (click to enlarge):

1. Rafts putting in where trail first hits the Colorado
2. Snow on Saturday the day before the hike
3. Bright Angel Trail, leaving Indian Gardens before descent into Inner Canyon
4. Tourists relaxing up at the Village on the rim

For 20 more photos of the hike, click here.

Down, down, down

To segue from yesterday's blog posting, April in Seattle is not necessarily a "cruel" month, but it is a confusing one. The flowers are out, the leaves are budding, the air is perfumed. It can be beautiful. But the fragrant perfume is borne through the soft air by the soft moisture in the air -- the chilly high humidity, the dripping trees, the drizzle.

It's an enjoyable month, for those of us who are used to wetness, and a nice contrast with, say, February. But the heart sometimes cries out for something both warmer and drier.

Hence, my decision back in mid-January to reserve three April nights at the Yavapai Lodge (more a government-operated motel than a "lodge"), on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I've been to the canyon three times in the past, always in April, and each time encountered wonderful hiking weather -- sun, dryness, and temperatures that were warm but not too warm for comfortable hiking.

And so -- I'm flying down on Friday, enjoying the canyon over the weekend, and returning on Monday. I've hiked at least three-fourths of the way (by elevation) down into the canyon -- as far as the Tonto Plateau -- a couple of times. This time, I decided to get up early on Sunday, pack plenty of water, and hike all the way down to the river -- and, of course, back up again. The Park Service strongly recommends not doing the round trip in one day, but their advice is clearly intended for the usual summer visitors, innocents choosing to hike down during months when the temperature can easily reach 120 degrees by the time one reaches the river.

Imagine my surprise -- my unpleasant surprise -- when I noted about a week ago that the weatherman was forecasting two days of rain and much lower than average temperatures for this coming Saturday and Sunday. You may recall my foreboding about the rain in Scotland last summer. This appeared to be a bit of a repeat.

Fortunately, the most recent weather prediction has shown a slight improvement. Rain still on Saturday, but "mostly sunny" on Sunday, the date of my anticipated long hike. The temperatures will still be chilly -- a high of 48 and a low of 23 on Sunday -- but I much prefer hiking in unusually cold weather than in unusually hot.

So, I'll arrive at the Park Friday evening, and play it by ear. It is 9.3 miles down the Bright Angel Trail from the South Rim to the Colorado River (and, of course, another 9.3 miles back up -- a return on tired legs that's mandatory and not negotiable!). The change in elevation is 4,380 feet, which is certainly manageable, based on my past experiences.

I'm a cautious sort, and not given to taking wild chances. I'll be monitoring my physical condition all the way down. I will definitely turn around before reaching the river if I feel that I'm overextending myself, but -- so long as the weather is decent -- this should be a day's hike that I'll complete successfully.

Stay tuned for post-hike comments.

Casting about

As I sit at my computer, I find myself nearing the end of the tenth day of the month. Yes, indeed, April is one-third over, and, until this moment, I've written only blog entry for the month.

And it's curious. Looking over statistics for the past three years, I note that I've written an average of only 4.67 posts during each April, compared with an overall average of 7.75 posts per month for those three years as a whole. To you, my occasional readers, these statistics may be of little interest -- you may, in fact, be already preparing to click over to your favorite gardening blog -- but I pore over these figures with the same puzzled fascination that a young baseball fan lavishes on ERA's and batting statistics.

I scratch my head, but can't think of any unusual feature about the month of April that would account for my low authorial productivity. I've already used up, in earlier posts, my only two literary insights into the mysteries of the month: "April is the cruelest month" and

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, etc. etc. etc.

Granted, these are highly satisfying quotations and, I'm convinced, quite meaningful when taken in proper context. But this hardly seems the context.

I suppose I might appeal to the schoolboy's excuse of spring fever. Or to the schoolboy's joke: "I just got finished with a march of 31 days." (Yuk, yuk.) Or I might consider the fact that each year in March I do celebrate in print the anniversary of my blog: perhaps April finds me exhausted after the excesses of those revels, the sheer Dionysian abandon with which I indulge myself?

I don't know. I just don't know. But I do know that I'll somehow manage more than the (now) two posts that I've been able to accomplish to date.

Meanwhile, there's one more popular allusion to April, perhaps less literary than those by Eliot and Chaucer, but nevertheless containing some allegorical truth: "April showers bring May flowers." Let's pretend that while the soil of my brain lies relatively fallow throughout April, seeds are being planted that will spring to life in works of great art by next month.

"Yes, isn't it pretty to think so," as one of my fellow writers once wrote.

I "heart" you

As with many of you, my driver's license is imprinted with a small red heart -- an announcement to whomever it might someday concern that I'm a registered organ donor. The decision to become a donor felt like a no-brainer: neither my scientific nor my religious beliefs suggest that I will in any way cherish my organs once I'm dead. Why not let someone else enjoy them?

Now comes the devil, whispering in my ear: "But how do you know you'll be dead?"

The devil, in this case, is Dick Teresi, who has just published a volume entitled -- chillingly -- The Undead.¹ I haven't read Teresi's book, but am relying entirely on its review by Elizabeth Royte in last Sunday's New York Times.

Teresi points out that no uniformly accepted criteria for death exist. I guess I've always realized that, and have been willing to take my chances. But Teresi also suggests that doctors confronting patients who appear near death are willing to relax their usual standards for determining death in order to preserve the viability and usefulness of the organs they are about to transplant. They no longer wait for the heart to stop beating and the lungs to stop breathing. Instead, they rely on a test for brain death. Not a test for certain termination of consciousness (controlled by the cortex), but death of the brain stem which controls basic physical functions of the body.

Furthermore, in order to determine "brain-death," doctors give "two rounds of tests with a Q-tip, a flashlight, ice water, a rubber hammer and the removal of the ventilator," Ms. Royte points out. Or, as author Teresi himself puts it, doctors are being allowed "to declare a person dead in less time than it takes to get a decent eye exam."

If you don't let the docs know otherwise during those two rounds of tests, the knives descend.

This unsettling information reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, a riveting tale of a future (or alternative) England in which human clones are produced and raised for the sole purpose of supplying an aging world with harvestable organs. These clones, the novel postulates, are unable to reproduce, and are therefore deemed animals without human souls -- even though they look, talk and act like everyone else. Once past adolescence the clones are required to check in -- like kids of an earlier era reporting for the draft -- for a staggered series of "donations" of organs. The first donation is rarely fatal, but few survive a third. When it becomes apparent that death is near, all remaining useful organs are immediately harvested, even when the patient still appears fully conscious.

I enjoyed the Ishiguro novel immensely, and was appropriately chilled by the ultimate fate of the clones -- young folks whom we had learned to love during the course of the story -- but I didn't really see any connection between their fate and my own long-contemplated, and completely voluntary, organ donation.

But now I do.

As Ms. Royte points out in her review, Teresi's book is a little one sided. It doesn't make sufficiently clear that in the overwhelming majority of cases, brain death does in fact indicate an irreversible condition, unaccompanied (at least, so far as anyone knows) by consciousness or sensation of pain, a condition that can result in a long period of vegetative deterioration before total organ failure results. And the book fails to give weight to the great need for fresh, undeteriorated organs for the use of otherwise healthy patients, organs that would make the difference between these patients' own imminent death and many future years of vigorous life.

(I'm tempted to add, "patients like Dick Cheney." But I'll refrain.)

Weighing these risks and benefits, I have no temptation whatsoever to revoke my organ donor status. But I can't help contemplating a creepy image of myself lying on an operating table, unable to whisper "I'm alive," as the scalpels are being readied.
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¹And subtitled, revealingly, Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers -- How Medicine is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death.