All is vanity

Woody in high school

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare.
The lone and level sands stretch far away. --Shelley

I haven't yet seen Woody Allen's latest film, To Rome with Love, but I'm sure I soon will.  Any movie that combines Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, and the City of Rome -- all in one bright, shimmering film -- can't be a movie that's gone too far wrong. 

Reviews of the film have revived the term "Ozymandias melancholia," which Woody Allen apparently coined in his movie Stardust Memories.  As far as I'm concerned, if the new movie actually is a reflection on "Ozymandias melancholia" -- well, that's just the frosting on the cake.

I'm a guy who can't look at a painting, or read a book, or gaze at a ruin, without thinking -- they're all dead now.  Once they were alive and curious, amazed at the dead people who had lived before them.  Just  as I am now.  And now they aren't.

I recall how, as a college freshman, I read Herodotus for the first time and learned how he had stood in awe before the Egyptian pyramids, marveling at the ancient civilization that had created such great works.  Herodotus was writing in about 450 B.C. The Great Pyramid would already have been two thousand years old when Herodotus's eyes first fell upon it.  Among my reactions, even as a callow 18-year-old, was melancholy at the passage of time, and at the utter vanity of any man's heroic efforts to ensure an immortal reputation among future generations.  Ozymandias melancholy. 

Woody Allen has been quoted as saying that he doesn't really care whether his films live forever.  He's more interested that he himself live forever.  It's a nice quip, but probably not true.  No one writes and directs seventy films in a 76-year (to date) lifetime simply -- as he claims -- to keep from thinking about death.  Somewhere deep inside, there lurks a hankering after a cinematic legacy that will long survive him.

But not forever, of course.  As Woody notes, even our Sun's days are numbered.  In the long run, to amend Keynes's aphorism, we're not only all dead.  We're also all forgotten.

Lake District ramble

Head up the gill on a metalled track to the ruins of Carrock Mine.  Wolfram, a rare heavy metal, was once dug here.  ...  Follow the beck up the gill, a lovely climb, even though the path is indistinct and boggy in places.

I leave for England just three weeks from today, and I've been previewing the course of my 70-mile route as it wends its way through the Lake District.  The guide book I've been provided is written in English.  No doubt about that.  It just isn't written in American English.  We'd be more apt to say:

Head up the ravine on a roughly paved road to the abandoned Carrock Mine.  Tungsten was once mined here. ...  Follow the creek up the ravine, a beautiful climb even though the path is indistinct and marshy in places.

Actually, the guide book is easy enough to decipher, once I look up the definition of a few unfamiliar words.  The more peculiar aspect of the hike, compared with American hikes, at least Western American hikes, is the minute nature of the instructions -- noting virtually every farm to be passed, style to be climbed over, and "kissing gate" to be navigated.  And, as I discovered in my two earlier hikes, these instructions are absolutely necessary to guide the hiker through the rather complicated terrain, most of it occupied by towns, residential areas, farmland, and dedicated parkland.

Here at home, we are more familiar with simpler instructions in our hiking guides, ones that may read:

Hike 3.7 miles to a fork in the trail.  Take the left fork.  In another 1.7 miles you arrive at the lake. Best areas to pitch your tent are along the eastern shoreline.

So, hiking in Britain is a different experience. But what is lost in grandiose scale and wide open spaces is gained in the beauty and variety of the intricate details of the landscape, and in the aura cast by centuries of history.

Maya (my teenaged niece) and I will not be pitching our tent beside the lake (although we expect to see plenty of lakes). We will be staying at pre-booked accommodations that emphasize the "English" rather than the rugged outdoors aspects of the trip. Photos sent as part of our pre-trip packet portray a number of substantial (but not palatial) houses, each of which typically looks as though it could nicely serve as the Bennet house in Pride and Prejudice.

Past experience tells me that at each house we will be met at the door by a pleasant, elderly woman who will greet us and show us to our rooms. In the background will be a gentleman, rarely introduced but presumed to be her husband, who, when occasionally encountered, will smile shyly at us and mumble greetings.

After a good night's sleep, we will wander down to the small dining room and be served -- by the same woman, maybe or maybe not assisted by her husband -- an "English breakfast." At first glance, this will appear roughly identical to an American breakfast -- ham, eggs, and toast, with tea or coffee. Closer attention -- and perhaps some questioning -- reveals that the "ham" is what the English call bacon. Also on the plate will be what appear to be enlarged link sausages -- do not attempt to eat these loathsome, mushy items, at least not your first morning, not before vigorous hiking has had a chance to generate indiscriminate hunger. (These sausages may grow on you with time, but probably not.) Then there are stewed tomatoes (piping hot), mushrooms, potatoes in any of a number of various forms, and baked beans. And other oddities, depending on the owners' taste. The toast is just toast, but the English seem to have a horror of hot toast -- it is served in a rack designed to cool it down to room temperature as quickly as possible.

As hikers, we quickly grow used to the English breakfast -- look forward to it, really -- and depend on it for a high percentage of the day's calories. (It's included in the room rate.)

Our first night in a B&B will be in Ulverson, at the southern end of the Cumbria Way. After that, we overnight at Coniston, Old Dungeon Ghyll, Stonethwaite, Keswick, Whelpo, and -- ending up in the north, back to an urban environment -- in the county town of Carlisle. Just typing these place names is enough to make me long to head out for the airport immediately. Our hiking will cover a variety of scenic terrains -- farmland, lakeside walks, and climbs among crags over the high fells.

My camera will be at the ready. Photos and a trip summary will be presented on my return.

Kindling above the clouds

Kindles and iPads -- the bane of a flight attendant's existence.  So reports today's New York Times.

FAA regulations require that all electronic devices be turned off  below ten thousand feet, while taking off and landing.  But "petulant" passengers leave them on and "surreptitiously" continue reading.  "We're not policemen," the head of the flight attendants union laments.

There's no evidence that operation of these devices actually interferes with navigation.  It's just a rule.

You know what?  I'm not bothered.  As reported a couple of days ago ("Abandoned on the prairie," q.v.), I was deeply engrossed in a lengthy and absorbing novel on my flights to and from Oakland last week.  But when asked to turn off electronic devices, I did so without complaint and without petulance. 

Today's planes -- especially 737s -- climb very swiftly past 10,000 feet.  During that short time, I watched the airport building whiz by as we took off.  I picked out landmarks below.  I "surreptitiously" gave my neighbors a once over, observing their peculiarities.  I glanced at the in-flight magazine, studying the route map to find more interesting, more remote places I wished I were heading.  I noted once again, with satisfaction,  how all planes have "No Smoking" symbols above each seat -- symbols that are now perpetually lighted, symbols will never again blink off,  granting addicted passengers permission to share their cigarette smoke with their neighbors.

Before I knew it, the double chime rang, and I returned to my novel.  For maybe ten minutes, my reading had been interrupted.  I had been forced to amuse myself.  I had been required to be aware of myself and my surroundings, rather than lost in the more exotic world about which I'd been reading.  I had been forced to sit quietly and think my own thoughts.

Even if this ten-minute hiatus in my action-packed day was scientifically unnecessary, was it a bad thing?  People pay good money to attend retreats, places where they can be silent and clear their minds and focus on their lives.  Monks willingly spend entire lifetimes in such activities.  We were granted ten minutes, free of charge -- courtesy of the FAA.  Heck, sometimes those ten minutes are so much gosh-darn fun that I put my book or Kindle aside and spend the entire two-hour flight engaged in such non-activity -- staring blankly out the window at the clouds and landscape below.

 Call me simple-minded.  But some of those "petulant" travelers might try a little simple-mindedness now and then, and ease off on their blood pressure.

Abandoned on the prairie

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into ... their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

My tastes in books are peculiar and inconsistent.  I don't generally read "best sellers," including those blockbusters that appear on the front page of the New York Times book section.  Not out of some misplaced form of snobbishness, but simply because they rarely sound that interesting or connected to anything that makes sense in my own life.

But when I read last Sunday's front page review of Richard Ford's Canada, and then re-read the review, I decided to squander 13 bucks and download the book onto Kindle.  I've spent the days since then traveling to, relaxing in, and returning from visits with relatives in Sonoma.  But when I wasn't visiting, I was engrossed in Canada, which I finished shortly after returning home last night.

I'm not going to review the novel.  I'm not going to compete with the New York Times reviewer, or with a large number of other competent literary writers for other periodicals.  But I owe it to you  -- after having told you how strongly the book gripped my attention -- to give some idea, from my personal perspective, of the reasons for its attraction.

The story is narrated in the first person by Dell Parsons.  He is a 60-year-old high school teacher, but the events he describes occurred in 1960, when he and his twin sister Berner were 15.  Dell, as narrator, pieces his narrative together from his own memories, from an extensive journal that his mother kept, and from newspaper accounts.  The result is a book that reads like a richly detailed memoir -- a memory of events that really happened -- not like a novel. 

In the first half of the book, Dell and his sister live with their parents in Great Falls, Montana, their family's last stop in the course of a peripatetic life, moving from air base to air base.  Their father, an extroverted former USAF officer, is now desperately seeking a new career path.  His mother, an extremely introverted fifth grade teacher, has frustrated ambitions to be a writer and poet.  Each parent lives in his or her own world, a world that has little contact with Great Falls and its indifferent, if not hostile, residents.  Dell's sister is angry, depressed, restless -- an adolescent.  Dell is quiet, studious, detached -- and appears closer to 12 in age, emotionally, than to 15.

Incidentally, the book is one of the great American debunkings of the supposed joys of growing up in a small town.  The Great Falls chamber of commerce should sue.

Dell's father, after a number of shady enterprises, ends up owing some money to some unsympathetic and possibly dangerous local Indians.  In order to repay the debt, he decides to commit the perfect crime, robbing a North Dakota bank of $2,500 and then fading into the supposed anonymity of the open West.  It takes but a matter of days for him to be arrested, together with his wife who drove the get-away car.  Both go to prison, his sister runs off to California, and Dell -- alone and friendless -- is taken by his mother's sympathetic acquaintance across the border to a small town in Saskatchewan to avoid "internment" in a Montana state orphanage.

Thus ends the first half of this 462-page novel.  Until this point, I had been puzzled by the book's title.

In Part Two, in Canada, Dell ends up in an isolated, miniscule, Saskatchewan prairie town, working at a rustic hotel that provides lodging for wild goose hunters, a hotel that's owned by an enigmatic, vaguely sinister, Gatsby-esque former Harvard student.  The plot thickens. The owner has a past and problems of his own. Dell gains experience and takes a few first steps toward self-confidence, murders are committed, and the boy finds new reasons to ponder the workings of the human heart. A friendly woman helps Dell slip out of town and head off to Winnipeg, where he once more -- and with relief -- picks up his high school education.

The book ends with a short "Part Three," an epilogue that pulls together some of the story's strings and brings Dell's life up to the present.  Dell, now a Canadian and a school teacher in Ontario, has a final meeting with his dying sister -- a woman who, after running away from home, has led an eventful, unstructured, meaningless, and unhappy life.  She is relieved to learn -- at the end -- that her twin's life, at least, has been happy.  Dell wonders to himself whether it actually has been.

 So much for the plot.  The plot is absorbing, despite (partly because of?) the narrator's habit of constantly warning his reader of future events as he reminisces.  We thus know of major plot developments before we reach them in the story -- we're just not sure how we'll get there.

The book is less about the plot, however, than about Dell's perception of the world and his "education" -- regardless of whether we feel it to be useful or functional education -- as he gains experience.  Dell, as a boy, is a seeker after knowledge, even if indifferently educated through no fault of his own, and his introversion inclines him to seek understanding of the strange universe in which he has been raised and in which he finds himself.  As a more sophisticated 60-year-old man, through whom his teenaged self speaks to us, Dell's quest for understanding continues.

Why did his father, seemingly a normal human being, turn to crime as the only solution to a rather small financial problem?  Why did his mother -- who strongly opposed the robbery, and who had little respect for her husband -- assist her husband, dooming herself to prison and suicide?  Why did his parents show so little concern for the problems facing their children, both before and after they had formulated their plans for the robbery?  The questions seem unanswerable to Dell; he can only speculate.

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

It is ruminations like these that render Canada more than simply a tale of growing up with wacko parents in Montana. They convert the somewhat melodramatic plot into something darkly philosophical, something almost Dostoevskian.

Dell recalls the look in his father's eyes shortly before the robbery, a new look, the look perhaps of the man -- a criminal --that he had always been, but that was only now finally coming to light.

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

Canada is a beautifully written book, told in a cadenced English that is both formal and, at times, slightly ungrammatical.  Or perhaps, more accurately, idiosyncratically grammatical.  Like a combination of the speech patterns of the educated English teacher who describes and analyzes the formative events of his life, and the young boy, articulate but still feeling his way, through whom the narrator speaks.

In its telling and in its conclusion, Dell's story is a somewhat hopeful story, somewhat hopeful and a bit optimistic in the same sense as David Copperfield relates a horrific tale that is somewhat hopeful and a bit optimistic.  And yet we are left disturbed by the ease with which lives, both young and not so young, can be ruined or crippled by one simple, careless decision, a decision not carefully thought through at the time, and at the difficulty we all have in reconstructing our own pasts, and in understanding the people and events that have made us the individuals we are today.

Hollywood in Seattle

Those of you who have stuck with me since 2009 may remember that year as the summer when a movie was filmed, in part, in and around my house. 

I was evicted from my house for 17 days; joined the neighbors in watching as much as possible of the filming; examined with awe and loathing what the set directors did to the interior and exterior of my house; met and shook hands with actors Tobey Maguire and Laura Linney; chatted at some length with the very approachable director/writer Jacob Estes; and even served as an extra, down at the King County Building Department office, standing in line behind Maguire as his character waited to get a building permit. 

In sum, for a couple of weeks I had a chance to consider myself part, in some tiny degree, of what Angelenos call "the industry."

After the filming, the movie (The Details) seemed to languish in the bowels of Hollywood.  But it was shown at the Sundance film festival in January 2011, where it was picked up by The Weinstein Company (formerly Miramax).  It's now scheduled for nationwide release on September 7.

But here in Seattle, we didn't have to wait for autumn.  The Details was shown last night, one showing only, at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF).  I, of course, went to see it -- largely, but not entirely, to see how my house would appear up there on the silver screen.

The movie, a "dark comedy," involves a young doctor who, with his wife, buys a house in Seattle and runs into immediate conflict with the local raccoons; tangles with a friend over a one-shot affair with the friend's wife; and is harassed by a crazy woman next door, the epitome of the neighbor from hell, whom he unwillingly makes happily pregnant and accidentally causes to be assassinated.  I had read the script while the movie was being shot, and it was fascinating to see how the movie on the screen  reflected, and did not reflect, my expectations. 

Estes took questions from the audience following the show.  He noted that, following Sundance, he had re-edited the film and re-shot a few scenes in other cities, primarily to make the plot flow more intelligibly.  I was disappointed that at least one of the craziest scenes in the script -- a dream sequence involving a house filled with racoons -- had been toned down a bit (a racoon does not flush the toilet after using it in the film!), and was over more quickly than I would have predicted from the detailed descriptions in the script.

In fact, my reaction to the racoon scene was perhaps my general reaction to the movie as a whole.  Scenes that could be read at leisure in the script, and pictured as lasting several minutes, were over in the film almost before they could be digested.  Filming that seemed to take hours in 2009 was edited down to minutes or less in the film.  We all know that, in the filming of every movie, far more footage is shot than ever appears in your local theater.  But my contact with The Details made me really understand for the first time the "waste" of time necessary to come away with scenes that convey exactly what the director wants to say.  And sometimes, the director doesn't really decide what he wishes to say until he reaches the final editing process.

This "cutting room floor" effect hit me particularly hard.  My non-speaking part -- consisting of standing in line behind Tobey Maguire -- was part of a scene with a bored bureaucrat that must have been shot twenty times, with cameras filming from different angles each time.  I fully recognized that the scene merely presented some background and wasn't a key part of the plot development.  But it was fun, the camaraderie among the director and actors was enjoyable, and I looked forward to seeing my face on the movie screen.  But not only was I cut from the scene -- a major loss to the film, I might note -- but the building department scene lasts no more than five seconds, I'd estimate, near the very beginning of the film.  The humor of Maguire's frustration in dealing with the bureaucrat -- admittedly irrelevant to the plot -- didn't survive the cutting..

The scenes inside my house? Totally eerie. To see rooms that I occupy daily -- albeit gaudily decorated -- up there on the screen in front of the entire movie-viewing world was a weird experience. And there was my refrigerator, looking the same as always but with someone else's magnets stuck on the door! And the front door to my house, which looks a bit weird even in "real life" -- a Gothic arch with a stained glass window -- showed up in a number of scenes. The camera seemed positioned to include it frequently in the background of interior shots.

All in all, from my perspective the entire production of the film, culminating with my viewing of the final product last night, was highly enjoyable -- and educational.  People I talked with -- "normal" people who had no personal involvement with the film -- also seemed to have enjoyed it.  I recommend giving it viewing when it comes to your local theater in the fall.

Never too old

Moreover, in his old age he [Socrates] learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment.
--Diogenes Laertius

[T]here on one of the benches sat a man who, being about forty-five with a grizzled beard, looked certainly rather old to be studying the first thing children learn. ... I  ... asked why an old man like him wanted to come to school.  He replied ... that it was much more disgraceful for an old man not to learn what could make him better, than for boys, since he had had time to know the worth of it....
--Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

In her excellent novel of life in ancient Athens, Mary Renault fleshes out the historical account of how Socrates, as an "old man" (45?), joined a class of young children who were learning to play the lyre.

I'm not Socrates.  But I get the point.  Unlike Socrates with his lyre, I did have a chance to continue piano lessons as a teenager, when it would have come more easily.  And once past my teens, I've always felt that even a modest level of musical accomplishment on that instrument would somehow make me "better." Therefore, it would be "disgraceful" to refuse to do so, out of misplaced embarrassment. Right?

And embarrassment there will be, come Saturday, when -- for the second time in six months -- I sit at the piano and show off my "talent" at my teacher's semi-annual recital program.  I do feel like Socrates, sitting in a music class surrounded by elementary school students. Embarrassed just because of the difference in age, and embarrassed because I'm showing off accomplishments that most kids -- those, at least, at all interested themselves in piano -- would have mastered by their early teens.

But I will try to imitate Socrates's philosophical bent of mind.  Maybe my fumbling attempts will plant seeds of inspiration in the minds of my fellow pianists, showing them that you're never too old.  Perhaps a parent or two will be inspired to take up an instrument of his own, so he and child can play duets.

I will play Chopin's Nocturne in F minor, one of the easier Chopin nocturnes.  I still fumble over various portions of it, but my teacheer assures me I'll do just fine.  She reminds me that I'm not playing in front of music critics -- just parents of young pianists.  And she insists that I play with very good musicality, which she further insists is more important than technical accuracy.

Since the recital has more of an impact on her reputation as a teacher than it does on my chances of winning a scholarship to Julliard, I'll trust in her assurances.  I'll proceed to Saturday with attempted equanimity.  I've taken five-day lawsuits to trial with less preparation.  Surely, I can get through a five-minute nocturne?

Examples might be given of men who have applied themselves at an advanced period of life to an art or science of which they had no previous knowledge. Solon used to say that he learnt something new every day. Old as I am, it is only lately that I took up the study of Greek, and you will remember that Socrates learned to play the lyre when he was past middle life.

--Cicero, On Friendship and Old Age.

There you go.  Socrates again.  An inspiration to all of us who find ourselves past the first blush of youth.  I do know the worth of my piano studies.  Saturday night, I embrace you!

Buying booze

After 78 years of state socialism, the voters of Washington last November attacked the evils of government by voting to abolish the state monopoly on sales of hard liquor.  (An earlier initiative failed, but this time Costco brought out the big guns and big bucks to get it passed.)

Yesterday, the shining sun of capitalism arose in all its glory over the State of Washington.  The state has auctioned off, or is in the process of auctioning off, all of its state liquor store locations.  Over 1,600 stores have applied for liquor licenses.  My own Safeway has been crowding its floor space to make room for more shelves -- shelves resplendent with liquor bottles.

Price comparisons at Safeway for purchase of a bottle of Jack Daniels showed that it now cost about one dollar more than it did yesterday from the state.  That's with a "Safeway Club" card.  Otherwise, about five dollars more.

One Safeway shopper estimated that most bottles of liquor cost four to five dollars more.  Unlike the  state stores, private stores mark prices before addition of the state liquor tax.  The tax is not applied until you go through check-out, which makes it difficult to compare before and after prices.

Grocers said the easier access to liquor -- sitting there right next to your bread and milk -- should make up for the higher prices.  That claim assumes that easier access to liquor, and contemplation by shoppers (and their kids) of shelves and shelves of liquor bottles, is a benefit to society.  Sorry if I sound puritanical.  It's not as though I never drink.  I just never considered a visit to the conveniently located and nicely organized state stores to be a burden that I needed to escape.

"It's exciting -- just the option of being able to get liquor at my favorite Costco," said Kellie Landry, 37, of Covington.

--Today's Seattle Times.

"Exciting"?

Whatever. 

Tragedy in Seattle



Seattle Times photo

Ironically, just one day after I posted Tuesday's essay -- in which I lamented the prevalence of hand guns in our society, and the reprehensible influence of the NRA and the gun industry -- Seattle made the national headlines when a "mentally disturbed" gentleman shot and killed without provocation five strangers and injured two more. 

Yesterday morning, about 11 o'clock, Ian Stawicki walked into a quiet café, an artists' hang-out, a few blocks from the University of Washington. Within 63 seconds, he had killed four people and left two injured.  He somehow escaped the scene and headed south a couple of miles to First Hill, on the outskirts of downtown.  There, he saw a Mercedes SUV he wanted, killed its owner, and drove away.
News sources at first reported these two shootings as isolated events, giving the impression that the city was descending into homicidal chaos.  Police finally located Mr. Stawicki in West Seattle, where he deprived us all of any explanation for his remarkable behavior by putting a bullet into his own brain.

Seattle has now had 21 homicides already this year.  One week ago today, a man running errands in the Madrona neighborhood was killed by someone aiming at someone else.  Last Saturday, a folk festival attendee at the Seattle Center was injured -- again "collateral damage" of someone's aiming at someone else.  Today's newspaper is full of articles asking what's wrong with Seattle, where have we gone wrong, what can we do about it?

Well, gun control would be an excellent start.  Gun control to the full extent allowed us by Supreme Court decisions disastrously interpreting the Second Amendment.

But let's not exaggerate.  Seattle has gun problems that most cities would happily accept.  I received an email this morning from a Southern California friend expressing his concern and hoping that neither I nor any of my friends were among the victims.  Not really. Life goes on.  Spring is beautiful.  I walked for an hour and a half last night through areas close to the shootings, areas where the local high school and middle school had been on lock-down with all curtains drawn only hours before.  College kids were enjoying a spring night on campus.  The fraternity kids were acting as fraternity kids are wont to act. 

No one openly packed heat; no one looked ready to dodge bullets.  We're a city of over 600,000.  We can absorb a few killings without succumbing to panic.

Of course, if you later learn that my head was blown off as I stepped out the front door tomorrow morning to pick up my New York Times, this posting will seem strangely prescient.  Heave a sigh, should that be the case, print out my final "Confused Ideas" posting, and file it away in your folder labelled "Irony."

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.