Mr. Chairman, the proud State of Alabama ....

So here we are, two days into a hurricane-truncated Republican National Convention, and I haven't yet bothered to click on my television to watch.  Not because of  revulsion against Mitt and Paul, although I certainly feels some of that.  ("No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate!")   I probably won't be paying much more attention to the Democratic gathering, next week (I actually had to look it up just now to see exactly when the Democrats were holding theirs).

What a change over my lifetime.  I was at the beach with my family -- a skinny little kid with glasses falling down my nose -- when I first learned about conventions.  We didn't have a TV in our beach cabin, so my dad and I listened to it on the car radio.  I was mesmerized.  To me, it was as exciting as the World Series would be to more typical 12-year-olds.

Four years later, I virtually turned our basement TV room into Convention Control Central, with desk and chair, convention delegate forms and scorecards, various other written resources, and even an adding machine.  I lived in that dim room for both weeks of the two conventions, yelling at the chairmen when their rulings displeased me, hanging breathlessly onto the reports of the Credentials and Platform committees, keeping track of simmering rebellions in various state delegations and negotiations between leading candidates and "favorite sons" -- governors or senators who largely controlled their state delegations -- about swinging their states' votes to one candidate or another.

I was a 16-year-old political nerd.  It was so cool!  When did it all start to go wrong?

Blame it on the rapidly increasing use of primary elections to choose bound delegates, making surprises at the conventions less and less likely.  Blame TV announcers who found the long delays while politicians argued and bargained behind the scene -- with floor time occupied by prolonged noisy demonstrations, band music and long-winded speeches -- a waste of expensive TV time -- and thus intolerable.  (I remember Walter Cronkite grumbling  that the public (meaning himself) wasn't going to put up with this sort of nonsense much longer.)  Blame the increasing idealogical polarization of the parties, wiping out  the function of conventions as a gathering of a highly diverse party faithful from far-flung regions of the country, giving them a quadrennial opportunity to get together, talk shop, whoop it up, disagree good naturedly or bad naturedly, ultimately settle on a platform and a candidate, and go charging forth into the election, more or less united.

We don't live that way anymore.  The primary system (supplemented by those bound delegates chosen in caucus states) pre-determines the winner.  The whole process, after the primaries, could be done electronically.  Except that the two major parties have learned to love the free publicity given them by the TV networks -- the free national platform from which they can solicit the affections of the electorate -- publicity freely given back when what happened at a national convention was truly news, truly a critical step in the election of the president.

And so what we have left is a few vitriolic political speeches, in addition to the "acceptance speeches" of the two nominees.  All polished, pre-packaged, and plucked clean of any possibility of surprise.

This year, I find myself hardly bothering.  I'd rather read about it all in the paper the next morning.  And wallow, meanwhile, in nostalgia for a by-gone era of messy but meaningful national conventions.

Welcome to Everlost

Allie and Nick are 14-year-old passengers in two cars that hit head-on.  They find themselves flying through a tunnel toward a bright light. Their "bodies" collide, and they wake up in a forest.  Welcome, kids, to the world of Everlost.

When I blundered onto the Hunger Games trilogy last winter, my interest was re-awakened (moderately) in the young adult fantasy genre.  As an indirect result, this past week I finished reading the Everlost trilogy -- Everlost, Everwild, and Everfound, known more formally as the Skinjacker trilogy -- by author Neal Shusterman.

Everlost is a shadow world that overlies our own.  It's occupied only by children and teenagers, kids who for one reason or another didn't "get where they were going."  Adults apparently have better defined personas, and always "get where they're going" -- i.e., when they die, they always arrive at that bright light, whatever that bright light may portend for them.

Everlost has complex rules, as we learn together with Allie and Nick as the story progresses.  "Afterlights," as Everlost's inhabitants are known, can see what the living are doing, in a somewhat shadowy way, but the living can't see them.  Afterlights can feel objects -- like freeway traffic -- as those objects pass through them.  The sensation is a bit uncomfortable, but doesn't hurt.  Afterlights are beyond being hurt.

Allie is part of a small minority of Afterlights who can interact physically with the living world by entering the body of living humans or animals.  She "skinjacks" them. (Old fashioned folks would say she "possesses" them.) She can do so because, unlike Nick, she wasn't actually killed in the accident.  "Skinjackers" have bodies that either lie in a deep coma or are kept alive in hospitals in a vegetative state. They exist in both worlds. Until Allie's body dies, she can skinjack.

Afterlights have to keep moving, or find "dead spots" on which to stand, or gravity gradually sucks them into the earth. Once beneath the surface, they fall deeper and deeper, ultimately to the molten core where they'll remain as long as the earth remains intact.  This sounds horrible, but the Afterlights in the core, like the great majority on the surface of Everlost, find increasing delight in finding one simple but interesting activity and repeating it day after day.  One Afterlight in the core taught many of his neighbors to begin singing "One Trillion Bottles of Beer on the Wall," a song calculated to keep them amused for some years.  (This is juvenile fiction, don't forget!)

Although the great majority of Afterlights grow increasingly passive as time passes in Everlost, some preserve the ambitions and passions of their earthly lives, and by force of personality contribute to great dramas that sweep Everlost.  Allie and Nick both have their critical parts to play in these dramas -- dramas that, because of the ability of skinjackers to interact with the living world, have potentially huge consequences for the lives of both the living and the dead.

Of course, most of those who die never see Everlost.  They fly down the tunnel to the light the instant their life on earth ends.  Almost all Afterlights feel somewhat stranded in Everlost, and look forward to reaching the light. But Afterlights have no better idea than we do what they'll find, once they're there.  Afterlights wonder if the light is really Heaven of some sort, as they hope.  What if the light they remember seeing at the end of the tunnel is a world of eternal hellish fire?  What if both living and dead are ruled over by malignant deities?   Is there a deity?  Or are both Earth and Everlost parts of the fabric of an uncaring universe, a universe governed impersonally by implacable natural laws?

Shusterman tells us a lot about life and about Everlost.  But even the author doesn't know what awaits us all at the end of the tunnel. Afterlights sooner or later "get to where they are going," but no one knows exactly what that means.  Shusterman's only hint is the observation that each Afterlight, just before entering the tunnel on his way to the light, suddenly remembers everything about his earthly life that he's forgotten, and that he's observed by others to have a look of peace and delight on his face.  An instant later, before reaching the light, he vanishes from sight in Everlost.

These are highly imaginative books.  They touch on serious philosophical issues.  They describe the passive world of most Afterlights -- memories of whose pasts are failing, each absorbed in his or her own thoughts and repetitive activities -- in a way that calls to mind a vast nursing home.  But a nursing home where the falling away of ambition and curiosity brings a strange peace and happiness, and may in fact be part of the preparation for an early voyage to the light.

The books are imaginative and philosophical and moving, but they are also full of adventure, of monstrous beings, of reflections on our own society, and of at times rather funny dialogue.  In the third book, especially, Shusterman's writing sometimes calls to mind the ironic and outrageous humor of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

What can I say?  It's "kid's lit," but I loved it.  Sometimes, youth really is wasted on the young.  You don't have to be a teenager to enjoy the Everlost trilogy.

Late summer mountain hiking

Mt. Fremont Lookout

It's been that kind of summer in the Northwest Corner.  While the rest of the nation sweltered from Global Warming, we've been chilly.  Two weeks ago, I finally did my annual climb of Mt. Si, a climb I usually do in May. 

Today, I went prowling in Mt. Rainier National Park.  It had to be one of the few really nice days we've had for hiking -- not cold and/or wet, but also not sweltering in the 90's as it was for a couple of days a week ago.  In Seattle, the forecast was for 77 degrees, and it was of course cooler at altitude.

Sunset Lodge and parking

Rather than hike in the Paradise area, as I usually do when I visit Rainier, I drove around to the northeast corner of the park and explored the trails around Sunrise Lodge.  Despite a lot of hikers, the traffic and parking were far more manageable than they are on a similar weekend at Paradise.  I arrived a little after 10 a.m., found a parking spot close to the lodge, and relaxed over a roll and coffee at the lodge's small snack bar.

Sunset Lodge is situated at an altitude of 6,400 feet -- a thousand feet higher than its cousin at Paradise.  The lodge is the highest point reachable in the park by automobile.  My goal, this year, wasn't to undertake a rigorous climb, as I did last year trudging up to Camp Muir, but simply to wander the trails, enjoy the views and wildflowers, and be glad that I lived in the Northwest.  All goals were duly accomplished. 

Frozen Lake, looking south

My planned destination was a fire lookout at Mt. Fremont, a climb to only 7,181 feet -- but because the trail goes up and down, the gross elevation gain is about 1,200 feet.  The round trip was about 5.5 miles. 

The trail is heavily traveled as far as Frozen Lake, about 1.5 miles from the lodge.  At that point, it intersects the Wonderland Trail in a five-direction intersection, so the crowds get divided among various destinations.  Also, many walkers simply make Frozen Lake their destination -- which judging from their shoes, clothes and general physical condition appeared to be a good idea.  (I hate to sound snarky -- I'm actually happy when anybody, in any physical condition, gets out of his or her car and walks any distance at all.  And Frozen Lake does provide beautiful views in itself.)

Trail to lookout (viewable in upper left)

I took the northbound trail to Mt. Fremont.  The gradient was gentle for the most part, and the hike not at all tiring.  The trail follows a ridge -- generally uphill with some areas of ups and downs.  The majority of the trail consists of easily walkable packed earth, but there is a significant portion that works its way through rock slides -- a section that requires some attention to what you're doing with your feet.  The rocks you're dancing over look like granite, but must be, in fact, broken shale.  My footsteps rang out like those of a person walking over millions of broken coke bottles at some recycling dump.

Emmons Glacier,
viewed from Second Burroughs Mountain

I had lunch at the lookout -- unmanned, but still maintained and occasionally used -- along with a number of other hikers with similarly unimaginative ideas.  Good views of Mt. Baker and Glacier Peak to the north, despite slightly hazy horizons.  The Olympics were merely a blue shadow on the western horizon, although The Brothers was discernible from the sun's shining off patches of white snow.  Someone loudly claimed he saw the Columbia Center (76 stories) in Seattle; then again, someone else probably thought he saw a flying saucer overhead but had the good sense to keep quiet about it.

It was still only about 1:00 or 1:30 when I got back to Frozen Lake, so I decided to try out another trail from the five-point intersection.  I took the Burroughs Mountain trail to the southwest.  The trail climbs to a plateau called First Burroughs Mountain, and then dips slightly before continuing upward to a much more impressive view at Second Burroughs Mountain (7,400 ft.).  Total round trip distance from Frozen Lake is only 2.6 miles.  From Second Burroughs, you feel you can reach out and scoop a snowball off the side of Rainier, and you have an excellent view of the Emmons Glacier tumbling down the east side of the mountain. 

Both trails are easy, and there were lots of children climbing along with their parents.  (And some fathers carrying pre-schoolers, which strikes me as far beyond the normal call of paternal duty.)  Enjoyable day, not all that tiring, but still a nice workout.  Total walking distance for the day: 8.1 miles.

Arriving freshmen

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't. 
~Barbara Kingsolver

As I hoofed my way across campus a couple of hours ago, I came upon a surrealistic scene.  The Upper Quad -- which during normal class days is a sea of hustling humanity -- had been gussied up as a tranquil dining arena.  Tables with white table cloths.  Hot buffets.  Student servers and bussers in uniforms. And most amazing of all, in a mixed company of students and parents, bottles of beer sitting on tables, or held in hand by standing and chattering parents.  In my day -- says the old codger -- that scene would have been as likely as a kegger held in a Methodist church sanctuary.

But nowadays it's but another sign that freshman orientation is proceeding step by step through what seem to be an ever increasing number of steps.  In-coming students have been trailing around after guides like baffled sheep for weeks now, plastic name tags hanging from chains around their neck.  These al fresco dinners -- and indeed there will be more than one such dinner over the next five weeks before class begins -- are part of what seems to be a new chore for the University: weaning the parents away from their sons and daughters.  Or at least sending the parents home with full stomachs as part of such an effort.

Some universities have actually had to shut their gates at some point, and order the parents to leave.

The whole process of starting a new school year arouses strong emotions -- both happy and a bit melancholy. They are emotions that I share to a degree, as I observe the scene, with the more directly affected parents and students.  The students face the loss of the joys of childhood, along with the advent of the privileges of adulthood and the adventure of study at a major university; the parents, while feeling pride in their children's accomplishments, also must contemplate the prospect of emptier homes and diminished importance in their children's lives. 

Several houses down the block, a recent high school graduate named G. is preparing to leave town in the next few days to begin his university studies in Manhattan.  I met and became acquainted with G. three years ago this month, during an evening when many of the neighbors were getting acquainted with each other while watching the filming of The Details in and around my house (it opens September 7, by the way, in a theater near you!).  We've bumped into each other a few times since then, just frequently enough for me to keep track of his progress through high school.

G. reminds me in many ways of myself at 18 -- in his personality, in his interests, in his approach to life.  He's been in New York City a couple of times over the past two years, playing in invitational music competitions as part of his high school orchestra.  It's been these visits, at least in part, that have lured him to the Big Apple for college.  He approaches the start of this new phase of life, as he put it in a note to me today, "with cautious excitement."  How precisely that phrase captures the exact way I myself felt the week before I headed down to California as a newly minted freshman! 

I identify fully with G.'s combination of enthusiasm and nervousness, just as I identify with what I suspect are his parents' mixed feelings of pride and sadness.  But birds gotta fly -- and birds' parents have to learn to live with empty nests. 

And as my empathy is with G. in his endeavors, and with his parents in their undoubtedly conflicted feelings, it also goes out to the thousands of new Huskies who will be pouring onto the UW campus over the next few weeks, many of them accompanied by parents who are smiling broadly with pride, and at the same time hiding a certain moistness welling up in their eyes.  It's all part of life -- always has been, always will be.  Every door we pass through opens up a new room for us to explore, and causes us to leave behind an old room filled with poignant memories. 

Welcome, Class of 2016, to what I guarantee will be one of the more exciting "new rooms" that you will encounter during your lives!

Contractual cleaning

Like an increasingly large number of middle class citizens who are too busy, or too lazy, or too incompetent (or all of the above) to clean their own homes regularly, I have a housecleaner who comes in every two weeks and does it for me.

I've used the same contractor for years, a cleaning service that's provided me with an ever-changing cast of cleaners. Like secretaries, I've learned, housecleaners don't hang around that long. They get themselves married to affluent spouses, or go back to school, or move to Florida, or just get tired of what I suspect is a fairly unsatisfying job.

I've been using the same woman E. for about six months now. E. has been one of the best cleaners I've had in all the years that I've had cleaners. She even does (but don't tell anyone!) windows! And she's always been unusually careful to call ahead if she's had any change of plans.

But then, last week, E. didn't show up. She didn't call. The cleaning service was baffled -- she hadn't contacted them, either.

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as good cooks go, she went.
--Saki

Yeah, it was pretty much like that, I guess.

Today, the cleaning service called and told me that they would be, once again, sending me a new cleaner. They've learned that E. has been soliciting homeowners for whom she's been cleaning. She apparently plans now to manage her own cleaning business, free of the need to pay a slice of her fees to the service provider. She's thus in violation of her contract with the service, a contract that contains some form of non-compete agreement. Not only is she now persona non grata with the service, they'll be deciding soon whether to sue her.

My sympathies are with E., of course, but I also see the service's point. (They're obviously concerned that I might hire E. independently myself -- they plan to charge me only half fee for my next cleaning, as compensation for my being "inconvenienced.") But if I did hire E., she might well be deemed my employee rather than an independent contractor. I might be liable for workers compensation and social security taxes; I might be subject to other employment law regulations. I'm sure that 99 percent of people who deal directly with their independent housecleaners never once consider such issues, but I'm the sort who does. I might want to run for President of the United States some day; I'd hate to have past violations of employment laws thrown in my face by my opponent.

Speaking not as an employment lawyer -- which I'm not -- but as a casual brooder over internet articles, I find that non-compete agreements are generally enforceable in Washington. They are considered valid if their prohibitions are no greater in extent than necessary to protect the business and good will of the employer. They must not be so great in duration and geographical scope that they prevent the worker from earning a living within a reasonable distance of her home. The judge obviously has to weigh conflicting interests in making decisions in these cases, doing so on a case by case basis.

I suspect that E. has, in fact, exposed herself to liability by soliciting present customers of her now-former employer. I doubt there are enough damages recoverable, however, to justify a lawsuit against her. A stern letter from the cleaning service's lawyer probably will scare her into backing off. Seattle provides a huge market for housecleaners, and I'm sure E. will be able to find folks for whom to work without violating her non-compete agreement.

E. was an excellent and personable worker. I wish her the best. I also understand the cleaning service's need to prevent workers from staying with them just long enough to develop marketable relationships with customers, and then walking off with those customers.

Meanwhile, my house -- uncleaned since before my trip to England -- is fast becoming engulfed in cat hair. Legal maneuvering aside, I'll just be happy to get someone in here who knows how to operate a vacuum cleaner!

Keeping it real

The reference to Seattle's "Galer Street School" is what first caught my attention.  I live only a couple of blocks from Galer.  But then Galer Street, like most of Seattle's streets, leaps from place to place across the city.  It starts off from Madison Park, hops across the Arboretum into my own neighborhood, and runs up Capitol Hill where it serves as the north boundary of Volunteer Park.  After disappearing into Lake Union, it re-emerges on Queen Anne Hill, and finally ends its long life on the bluffs of Magnolia.

The Galer Street School is, of course, fictional -- a plot device in Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, reviewed in today's New York Times.  But where could such a school have existed, had it in fact existed?  Not likely in my neighborhood.  Describing itself as "a place where compassion, academics and global connectitude join together to create civic-minded citizens of a sustainable and diverse planet," the school idealogically would more likely find itself perched among the large houses atop Capitol or Queen Anne hills, or perhaps snuggled amongst the leafily liberal avenues of Madison Park.  Except that, in the book, the school finds itself in unseemly proximity to a wholesale seafood distributor -- an unlikely neighbor anywhere Galer touches down to earth.

Admittedly, a bit of the novel's flavor has infected virtually all of us Seattleites, regardless of neighborhood.  Which raises the question in my mind -- how did the honest, hard-working, down to earth Scandinavians of my youth become the oh-so-twee objects of ridicule in an acclaimed "multi-media novel," a novel worthy of 28 column inches of review in America's Newspaper of Record? 

How did we become a city, even in satire, where a school gives not the five traditional letter grades of yesteryear, but three grades worthy of a community where all the kids are above average:  "Surpasses Excellence," "Achieves Excellence," and "Working Toward Excellence."  

Apparently, it's all the fault of Microsoft and Amazon, and their brilliant but disrespectful employees.  Things sure weren't like this when Boeing and the Teamsters ran the town!. 

I haven't read the book, of course, but I suspect that it describes Seattle with the same fidelity as Portlandia depicts our sister city to the south -- exaggerating a bit of the froth emanating from the hip and frothy, suggesting an embarrassing tone that's gradually infecting the rest of us, and yet missing a sense of the real substance of life here in our world of Douglas fir, constant drizzle, and patrons who wear jeans and hiking boots to the Symphony.

Someone needs to write a novel that captures the true spirit of Seattle, captures it in the same way as David Guterson caught it for the rural portions of the state in Snow Falling on Cedars.  But, as a character reportedly exclaims in Semple's novel:  "Grab your crampons because we have an uphill climb."

(Bold face in text.)

Underground trains

Subways fascinate me.  In part, they fascinate me as an environmentally sound alternative to automotive gridlock.  But they fascinated me long before I appreciated their eco-advantages -- they fascinated me as systems worthy of being mastered, as puzzles to untangle. Almost as a sufficient cause in themselves to visit big cities. 

I've written earlier my review of the novel Lowboy, a story about a psychotic youth who lived underground in Manhattan's subway tunnels.  I've returned recently from London, where I once more enjoyed the challenge of working my way, mole-like, from one landmark to another.  Just blocks from my house, here in Seattle, work continues daily on the underground light rail line from downtown -- our own poor man's version of a big city subway.   And today, the New York Times Magazine delights me with photos and text relating to on-going excavation of the Second Avenue subway extension in New York.

The history of the Second Avenue line resembles more the raising of a medieval cathedral than it does construction of a modern public works project.  The line was first proposed in 1929 as an expansion of the then-independent IND line.  Construction was sabotaged by the Depression, and then World War II.  Actual construction began in 1972, shortly before New York City became insolvent.  Several short segments of the route were excavated; they have been quietly awaiting further work for several decades.  In 2007, work recommenced on the first phase of the newly conceived project.

As all New Yorkers are well, aware, the East Side is served by only one north-south subway line, the Lexington Avenue IRT line, serving No. 4, 5, and 6 trains.  (An elevated line running up Second Avenue closed in 1942. The Third Avenue El was supposed to continue in operation until a Second Avenue subway line was opened, but commercial pressure caused it to be shut down in 1955.) The Lexington Avenue line now serves 1.3 million passengers a day -- according to the NYT article, more than are carried at the same time by the entire transit systems of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco combined. 

The phase now being developed will extend the existing Q trains -- which now run up Broadway in Manhattan on their way north from Brooklyn and then east to Queens -- from 63rd and Lexington over to Second Avenue, and then north up Second Avenue to 96th.  That extension should be open for business by the end of 2016.  Three more phases of construction on Second Avenue are planned, which will give rise to a new line, designated the T line, running from 125th to south Manhattan. None of these three phases has yet been funded:

• Phase 2 -- Extension north from 96th to 125th Street.
• Phase 3 -- Extension south from 63rd to Houston.
• Phase 4 -- Extension south from Houston to Hanover Square.  Eventually, the T trains may extend north into the Bronx and south to Brooklyn.

In my ideal world, no one would ever be tempted to drive a car into a major city.  The rapid transit infrastructure would be so highly developed, the trains so comfortable to ride,  that it would seem madness to risk traffic jams and sky-high parking fees by bringing your own vehicle.  The Second Avenue line won't achieve that level of nirvana -- it will barely keep up with growing demand, and no one's ever been exhilarated by the luxury of New York's subway cars.

But it's a step in the right direction.  That poor kid in Lowboy may have been psychotic in his devotion to the underground world of trains.  If so, it's a psychosis with which I can fully sympathize. 

Beneath desert skies

Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air...  A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it takes its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.
--Paul Bowles 

As an antidote, perhaps, to the rains of England through which I've just finished hiking, my nephew Doug and I will visit Morocco in October.  It's a country that's always fascinated me, probably ever since I first watched Casablanca -- a film shot entirely in the Warner Bros. studios, with the exception of one scene shot at the Van Nuys airport!  The magic of the silver screen.

The trip is sponsored by the same "adventure company" that guided Pascal and me to 18,000 feet in Nepal last October, but this "adventure" will be somewhat less strenuous.  We will fly into Marrakesh about three days before the tour begins and drive to the coastal city of Essaouira, originally a seventeenth century Portuguese fortress.  So exotic and unknown a destination that (to me) it seems odd that Jimi Hendrix hung out there in his early days!

The tour proper begins back in Marrakesh, an eleventh century Moorish city. We then drive into and over the High Atlas mountains and down into the Sahara. We will stay overnight at various villages along the way, as we plunge deeper and deeper into the sea of sand and rock.  The central feature of the trip will be four days traversing a bit of the Sahara atop spiteful camels, staring up at the swirling stars at night.  Remember Lawrence of Arabia?  Remember that scene where he dressed up as an Arab for the first time, strutting back and forth in front of a mirror, swirling his robes about him?  You know that floor-length mirror in my guest bedroom?   Well, never mind.  You get the idea.  So, yeah. I daydream.  And I'll be riding camelback for four days.  Or, as the itinerary tactfully puts it, we can alternately walk and ride, depending on our feelings about the experience. And, as the itinerary also tactfully puts it:

[The camels'] saddles are cushioned with traditional blankets to make our safari a comfortable experience over the magical seas of orange dunes and contrasting spaces of shiny black volcanic rock.

Okaaaaaay!  It sounds very cool in theory.  I'll let you know how it works out on the ground, as it were. 

The trip ends up in Fez (or Fès), a medieval city with a large, ancient native quarter, or medina. Its medina is the sort of place in which I like to imagine (romanticist that I am) that I could end up losing my way, unable to find my way out, forced to spend my remaining days living hand to mouth in a native hovel, cadging dirhams (or euros) from tourists to pay for my couscous, and attempting each day to write the great novel that will earn me enough in a cash advance to pay my airfare back to America.

That American writer, Paul Bowles, after all, ended up spending most of his years in Tangier, and actually finished up his great existential novel, The Sheltering Sky (which I read a couple of weeks ago while hiking in England!) in Fez.

The sky hides the night behind it and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.

Maybe so.  Maybe not.  But the trackless dunes beneath the desert sky should be an excellent place to test Bowles's scary epigram. 

And Morocco has plenty of desert.

Iolanthe

When in that House M.P.'s divide,
If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too,
They’ve got to leave that brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to.
But then the prospect of a lot
Of dull M. P.’s in close proximity,
All thinking for themselves, is what
No man can face with equanimity.

In an election year -- especially in this election year -- what could be more enjoyable than a musical about a young man, half-human and half-fairy, being sent to Parliament where he becomes head of both opposing parties and passes a bill requiring that members of the  House of Lords be selected by competitive examination, rather than by noble birth?  Especially since this musical comedy dates back to 1882, and, as we know, things have only grown worse in the interval?

Yes, it's July and time once again for the annual production of the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society.  This year, the production is Iolanthe, an operetta dear to my own heart since it was the first G&S show I ever saw live, back when I was a college freshman.

As I've said in past years, if you've seen one G&S show, in a sense you've seen them all.  But Iolanthe does have some interesting twists of plot, what with the fairies and all. 

Iolanthe, a luscious young female fairy (they all are luscious -- they never grow old, don't you know) married a human.  Although a capital offense, the Queen of the Fairies commuted the sentence to a permanent ban from fairydom.  In the fullness of time, Iolanthe brought forth a halfling son, Strephon, a radiant and unbearably cheerful young twit who, as the story commences, is 25 years old.  He, a shepherd by profession,  has fallen in love with a Bo Peep of a wife who, as an orphan, is a ward of Chancery. 

As all of us British Constitutional Law nerds know, the Lord Chancellor -- in whose hands Phyllis's matrimonial future lies -- sits (or did until 2005) on the wool sack,  presiding over the House of Lords.  Unfortunately, all of the Lords, including the Chancellor himself, have their own connubial designs on Bo Peep (I mean Phyllis).

The Law is the true embodiment
Of everything that's excellent.
It has no kind of fault or flaw,
And I, my Lords, embody the Law.
The constitutional guardian I
Of pretty young Wards in Chancery,
All very agreeable girls — and none
Are over the age of twenty-one.
A pleasant occupation for
A rather susceptible Chancellor!

Complications ensue, as they are wont to do in these little plays, complications that include Iolanthe's return to fairydom and the Lords' incurring the wrath of the Fairy Queen.  Her Fairy Majesty, fortunately controlling a rotten borough or two, sends Strephon to Parliament armed with a spell requiring all other M.P.s to obey his commands.  To the horror of the Lords, his bill to require members of the Upper House to possess intelligence is rushed through its second reading.

Strephon’s a Member of Parliament!
Carries ev'ry Bill he chooses.
To his measures all assent –
Showing that fairies have their uses.
Whigs and Tories
Dim their glories,
Giving an ear to all his stories –
Lords and Commons are both in the blues!
Strephon makes them shake in their shoes!

More complications.  The Lord Chancellor (played by local talk radio host Dave Ross, who always scoops up these most juicy roles) grants a request from himself to marry Phyllis himself.

Lord Chancellor. Victory! Victory! Success has crowned my efforts, and I may consider myself engaged to Phyllis! At first I wouldn’t hear of it – it was out of the question. But I took heart. I pointed out to myself that I was no stranger to myself; that, in point of fact, I had been personally acquainted with myself for some years. This had its effect. I admitted that I had watched my professional advancement with considerable interest, and I handsomely added that I yielded to no one in admiration for my private and professional virtues. This was a great point gained. I then endeavoured to work upon my feelings. Conceive my joy when I distinctly perceived a tear glistening in my own eye! Eventually, after a severe struggle with myself, I reluctantly – most reluctantly – consented.

In the face of such a disastrous potential marriage by her daughter, Iolanthe abandons her inclinations toward secrecy and confesses to her daughter -- and to the astonished Lord Chancellor -- that the Chancellor himself was the man whom she had married yea these many years ago.  The Lord Chancellor could hardly marry his own daughter.

Nor did he wish to, now that he had his fair Iolanthe back again, aged not a whit over a quarter century.  Immediately, all the fairies and all the Lords wish to be married off together.  The fact that such a marriage is a capital offense under fairy law is overcome by the sort of adroit legal maneuvering one would expect from a Lord Chancellor, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Damn!  Who would want to waste an evening watching The Dark Knight Rises when he has meaty fare like Iolanthe at his disposal.  Guess there's just no accounting for tastes.

Tonight's is the final night's performance at the Bagley Wright -- see it if you have a chance. And watch for next July's Gilbert & Sullivan production.

Chiroptophobia

Now I have no objection in principle to taking a simple story of adventure, hyping it up with pop psychological analysis and dark metaphorical portent, and creating a complex artistic endeavor worthy of being subjected to the full battery of tools available to critical analysis.  Richard Wagner proved that such an elevation could work quite nicely, transforming simple heroic tales told by Germanic warriors as they sat around a campfire into the heavy-breathing Sturm und Drang of an opera like Götterdämmerung.

But Batman?  I have just finished reading the New Yorker's review of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan's third part of his ponderous Batman trilogy.  The review cleverly (and rather snarkily) mocks the seriousness of the entire enterprise, notes the uncoolness of both Bruce Wayne and his Batman alias, laments Batman's frustrating (to the reviewer) asexuality, and remarks on the absence of any real political relevance of the movie to today's political world.  What we have left, according to the review, is cool gadgets: the Bat-Pod and "the Bat" (a sort of airplane).  The review observes of the director:

We go to his films to gasp, not to yearn or pity or weep, except over the paucity of our own automobiles.

I haven't seen the latest Dark Knight, nor do I intend to.  (I did see Batman Begins, the first of the series.)  I can't analyze the movie, therefore, but I have some thoughts about the entire endeavor.

Batman was my favorite comic hero as a kid.  He didn't leap tall buildings in a single bound, he didn't achieve super powers by exclaiming, "Shazam!", he didn't fly like a hawk, or have magic bullet-repellent bracelets and lariat, or possess a power ring and power lantern.  He was just an ordinary guy -- an ordinary hyper-rich guy, admittedly -- who was fed up with lawlessness in Gotham City and had the money and determination to do something about it.   Luckily, his mansion rested astride a large cave (the Bat Cave, of course), whence he and his sidekick Robin jumped into the Batcar and shot out into the night in response to Commissioner Gordon's Bat Signal.  That was pretty much it.

(And no -- no decent all-American kid ever questioned Bruce Wayne's relationship with young Dick Grayson.  That was left to decadent literary critics of the day.  What could seem more normal to us than that a hero should be accompanied by a young sidekick?  A Tonto to his Lone Ranger, a Lucky to his Hopalong Cassidy?)

We knew the general lines of the back story -- that Bruce had witnessed the murder of his parents, and had vowed a revenge on criminals -- albeit a revenge taken within the law and tempered with justice.  That was all we needed to know.  We didn't worry about Bruce Wayne's psychological profile, his presentation of symptoms codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, his complicated relationship with his butler Alfred, his obsession with bats.  Batman was not acting out some obsessive-compulsive disorder resulting from childhood trauma.  As American kids, we had a simple trust in free will, untainted by Calvinist intellectualism.  Good people chose to be good; bad guys chose to be bad.  Batman was good.  Commissioner Gordon, although at times obtuse, was good.  The Joker, the Penguin -- they were evil -- although fascinating, like Milton's Satan -- and fully deserved whatever blows to the jaw (and their egos) came their way in the course of each episode.

The stories of Batman and Robin were no folk tales arising out of a nation's childhood. They were simple commercial kid's stories arising out of the need to make a buck (or a dime) during America's 1930's. Batman should have been left to those murky drawings of DC Comics, not transformed into a cinematic blockbuster superhero, encased in a rubber batsuit worthy of some S&M cult.  If the age-old struggle between the noble Caped Crusader and DC Comics's peculiar agents of Evil seems too old-fashioned and naïve for today's audiences, then let's leave Batman (and the now-neglected Robin) to those piles of old comic books still stored in the attic.  The original Batman premise was too simple and straightforward a base on which to build a trilogy of multi-million dollar epics (the estimated cost of the current movie being $250 million).

Next it will be "Goldilocks: Porridge Too Hot! -- A Modern Tale of Blonde Aryan Lust and Familial Ursine Rivalry, Deep in the Dense Forests of Northern Europe." Bah! I'm going up to the attic to dig out my old comics.

Astray in the Langdales

Near Stake Pass
(in decent weather!)

The UK public has already endured the wettest April for over a century and the wettest June since records began and more bad weather is forecast. However, it seems this has merely spurred people to invest in waterproof jackets and trousers, determined to get outdoors to enjoy the British "summer" no matter what it takes.

--PR Newswire (7-16-12)

As Maya and I neared the end of our second day of hiking, we felt pleased.  Despite the dire forecasts of daily rain, we had encountered at most an occasional sprinkle.  Twenty-nine miles of hiking already lay behind us -- through farm lands, along the forested lakeshore of five-mile Coniston Water, circling the park-like Tarn Hows, crossing over the picturesque stone arch of Skelway Bridge, and following generally flat trails through ever-narrowing valleys into the mountainous realm of the Langdales.  We were tempted to laugh at the weatherman.

As we approached the ancient inn of Old Dungeon Ghyll, however, the skies darkened, the first drops fell, and before we could reach the shelter of the inn -- our stop for the night -- we were soaked to the skin. 

The following day -- the third of the hike -- was  supposed to be a more relaxed seven miles -- over a pass and down a valley into the hamlet of Stonethwaite.  That morning, the skies remained dark, but the night's rain had ceased and we began hiking optimistically.  The first mile took us from the inn to the closed end of the Mickleden valley.  The trail then became much rougher, and we began a steep climb over switchbacks to Stake Pass.  Stake Pass, according to the guidebook, is only 1,400 feet in elevation.  But its setting is bare and desolate, reminiscent of photographs I've seen of northern Alaska, or of some of the New Zealand terrain used as the setting for Lord of the Rings.  Rain began to fall, and visibility was obscured by mist.

We were experiencing for the first time the High Fells of England. 

The path remained clear and distinct, and so I led us forward without much serious reference to the guidebook.  We continued climbing, often quite steeply, but the guide had mentioned that the pass was not a sharp divide but continued for some distance as a rising plateau.  We overtook and passed well-outfitted groups of teenaged climbers, burdened by heavy packs, chugging wetly up the trail with varying degrees of self-confidence and enthusiasm.  Maya and I, carrying only daypacks, were talking and enjoying the scenery.  Then we encountered an older group, less buoyant in expression, coming down the trail.  It occurred to me that we had been hiking quite a distance from our first contact with Stake Pass -- hiking steadily uphill.

Finally, at a wind shelter on a flat rocky plateau, we stopped and talked to a group of obviously experienced climbers.  They had turned back, they said.  The weather ahead was too threatening.  Too threatening for what, I asked myself? Too threatening for a simple descent to Stonethwaite?  I asked them to show me on a map exactly where we were.  Yikes!  We had been ascending the trail to Scafell Pike, the highest peak in England -- just 3,209 feet in elevation, but in the context of its surroundings, and on a wet  and misty day, certainly a more ambitious climb than we had contemplated.

Further review of guidebook and maps revealed that we should have followed a trail branching off to the north at Stake Pass.  We returned to the pass -- a rather large plateau, as the guidebook described -- and spent perhaps an hour or so in the rain, following various promising trails, none of which ended up going anywhere that made sense.  We never did locate the correct path.  As I sit now -- dry and warm in my study, coffee in hand, perusing contour maps -- I still find it impossible to locate the point where our trail -- clearly a major route -- turned off from the Scafell trail.  And yet -- obviously -- hundreds of hikers every year follow the Cumbria Way trail from Dungeon Ghyll to Stonethwaite, apparently with no difficulty.

I do suggest that a clear Cumbria Way signpost or marker at Stake Pass would be well worth the minor expense.

Considering the lateness of the day and the nature of the weather, I finally made an executive decision to retreat.  We hiked back downhill to Dungeon Ghyll. Our baggage had, of course, been sent ahead to our next night's lodging. I called a taxi, and paid £90 for a 50-minute drive from Dungeon Ghyll to Stonethwaite -- seven miles by trail, but a long, circuitous drive through Keswick by highway.  A defeat of sorts, but the sort of defeat that presents its own amusing and instructive aspects. In retrospect, at least.

Our adventure on Stake Pass gave me a proper respect for both the High Fells and English weather.  The Langdales, through which we were ineptly navigating, are only one portion of the High Fells of the Lake District.  We were to pass through another portion (past Skiddaw House) on Day Five.  And yet -- as that distinguished geographer Bill Bryson points out¹ -- the entire Lake District (fells, dales, becks, gills, tarns, waters, pastures, forests, and all) could be dropped comfortably into the geographical area occupied by Minneapolis-St. Paul. 

It's not the size of your country that matters.  It's what you have within it, and what you do with it.  The English need make no apologies to other, larger countries for the scenic beauty and recreational opportunities it offers in its Lake District.

Their weather this July, on the other hand, has been a disgrace!
--------------------------------------------------
¹Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island (Harper Perennial 2001) at 254.

Walking in the rain

Cries of complaint from many readers have been pouring into the Northwest Corner's editorial offices -- well, one cry from one reader -- regarding the diminishing quantity of posts over the past few weeks.  (We'll skim over any complaints about diminishing quality, complaints perhaps becoming more frenetic following my contemplation of living out my life as a Laird.)   I like to think of this slowdown as quantitative easing, but that term doesn't seem popular either.

And it will only get worse.  I leave within the hour for nearly two weeks in England where -- as mentioned in an earlier post -- I will hike the Cumbria Way with my niece.  This trail runs 70 miles from Ulverston to Carlisle. 

It seems to be a typical summer in Britain, especially in the west.  I've been following the weather in Ulverston, and it seems to have been raining daily for the past month, with the ten-day forecast showing more of the same.  Most of the rain is forecast as "showers," a flexible term that can mean most anything.  But I have to say that in my prior years of British hiking I can recall only one day when it rained all day.  Generally, the rain comes and goes, and actually goes more than it comes.

So I'm off, and the Northwest Corner is in abeyance for a couple of weeks.  I'll come back a damper, but more energetic, writer.

I'd make a rum laird, an odd eigg

Isle of Rùm, taken
last summer from Maillag

I crave a title.  What kind of title, you may ask?  Mayor of Seattle?  King of Siam?  Emperor of China?

No.  No, the title that's captured my fancy is "Laird of Muck."

Last summer, after completing my West Highlands hike in Scotland, I took the train from Fort William to the little coastal port of Maillag, just for a day's visit.  From Maillag, I looked across the water to a number of islands making up a portion of the Inner Hebrides -- to the giant Isle of Skye, but also to the smaller islands of Rùm and Eigg (it occurred to me, as it must have occurred to many others, that these isles were the fixings for a delicious eiggnog).  The islands looked somewhat bleak, but tantalizing.  I only wished I had time to take one of the small ferries across the straits -- an exploration saved for perhaps a later date.

What I didn't see, however -- because it was obscured behind the misty shores of Eigg -- was the Isle of Muck.

I knew nothing of Muck, or of its owner, the Laird of Muck, until I opened this month's issue of National Geographic Traveler.  There I found a nicely illustrated article by an adventuresome  young Kansan, a writer who took the time to explore the Inner Hebrides -- even as I would love to do -- but who also seems to have had the connections (or the chutzpah) to spend a day hanging out with the Laird himself -- a fellow named Lawrence MacEwan, a proprietor who raises sheep on his small island. (His wife manages a group of vacation cottages; his daughter runs the lairdom's only hotel.)  The island is a family venture, as you can see, one handed down from laird to laird, from time immemorial. (Which in this case, means since 1896.)

Muck is just about the largest sized dominion over which I could competently reign.  Two and a half square miles.  Population, 30.  Major (and only) town, Port Mòr.  As laird, I would daily manage my herd of sheep, trying to stay one mental step ahead of them.  Grass for grazing grows well on the Isle of Muck; no shortage of rain, you know.  There'd be lots of squishing around in the muck, ha ha ha!

But my estate -- my lairdom -- would consist of more than sheep and hotels and muck.  I would also rule over a resident seal population, and be on at least speaking terms with porpoises in the surrounding waters.  In short, this island has virtually everything that a laird could ask for. Including privacy and lots of silence.  Except when the occasional writer dropped in to see what it was all about.

As my friends, of course, you my readers would always be welcome to visit.  How to address me?  Well might you ask. According to Wikipedia, a "Laird" occupies a spot between an Esquire and a Baron.  As an American lawyer, I'm supposedly already an Esquire (or at least an Esq.), so becoming a laird would be one step up the social heirarchy.  Many of my countrymen would argue that, as an attorney, my esteem in the public eye is so low to begin with that -- while a lairdom might be just one step upward -- it would be a hell of a long step upward.  But to return to the question of address:  I would become "The Much Honoured Rainier96."    (Don't forget that "u" in "Honoured.")  My eldest son -- the heir apparent (primogeniture, you know -- look it up) -- would add "Yr." ("the younger") to the end of his name. Until that fateful day, of course, when he himself became the laird.  

Sure, it'll be wet.  It's the Hebrides, after all.  But I'm from Seattle, right?  Better a wet laird than a wet esquire.  And as Dean Monro commented so perceptively about the island in 1549:

Be ane haffe myle of sea to this ile, lyes ane ile of twa myle lang, callit in Erische Ellannaneche, that is the Swynes ile, and very fertill and fruitful of cornes and grassing for all store, and verey guid for fishing, inhabit and manurit, a good falcon nest in it. It perteynis to the Bishope of the iles, with ane guid heighland haven in it, the entrey quherof is at the west cheik.

Amen to that, I say.  I now plan to become Laird of Muck in my own right, and in the historically correct manner -- by conquest.  I'm off to the nearest ship's chandler to outfit my vessel.  As soon as I secure a vessel. 

Light it and run!

Fireworks and daylight saving time.  When I was a boy, those were the two big local option issues that voters regularly confronted.  Some years, adjoining towns -- like where I lived -- had summer clocks an hour apart.  And fireworks were a perennial problem. 

Some years, my town allowed everything, or at least winked its eye at their sale and use.  Other years, fireworks were strictly prohibited.  Several years, sales were strictly prohibited in my county, but wide open in the next county to the west.  My brother and I would bike fifteen miles or so to the county line, a line marked by the joyous sight of red, white and blue fireworks stands, clustered -- like casinos at the Nevada state line --  awaiting our business.

The daylight saving time issue was solved years ago, with uniform time enforced first in the state and ultimately nationwide (excepting ever-dissident Arizona).  But regulation of the sale of fireworks in Washington is as balkanized now as ever.  Sale and use are forbidden in the bigger cities, but every county, city and town is free to permit their sale and use, and many do.  And the Indian reservations -- from huge county-sized tracts like those of the Yakimas, to tiny micro-reservations of a few acres each in Western Washington -- are a law unto themselves (and they can sell firecrackers, rockets, and other delights otherwise forbidden by state law).

In other words, no matter where you live, it's easy to reach an area where fireworks are sold.  And no one's apt to toss you in jail if you set them off, especially on the Fourth itself. 

The usual newspaper headlines have already started to appear -- the same ones we read and despised as kids .  "Officials Warn About Illegal Fireworks," reads today's Seattle Times.  "Injuries already starting."

As I try, without much success, to explain to libertarian friends, I see most of life in shades of gray.  I don't oppose governmental attempts to keep people from inadvertantly killing and maiming themselves.  Seat belt laws and bicycle helmet laws do not appall me.  They do not impress me as being "governmental use of force and violence against citizens," simply because the government has the power to enforce them.  On the other hand, I share the libertarian impulse that we should be allowed to be wild and crazy at times, despite the risk.  Thus, I'd be seriously upset if the National Park Service banned the climbing of Mount Rainier, justifying the prohibition by the predictably frequent deaths of climbers and rescuers.

Fireworks falls in that gray area between those two poles.  No, I wouldn't want my child or other relative to blow off his fingers or lose his hearing because of misuse or misperformance of a firecracker.  From my own youth, I know that fuses do sometimes burn faster than expected, with painful results.   And I realize that parental prohibitions may not be sufficient to prevent kids from getting their hands on fireworks -- my great childhood memories of evading parental desires have not faded all that much.

On the other hand, personal use of fireworks is a traditional form of celebration.  Not only an American tradition on the Fourth, but among the Chinese and their American descendants at Chinese New Year, and among other national groups.  We have to weigh the occasional accidental injury from use of fireworks against the fun and sense of tradition that inhere in their use, keeping in mind that the problem exists for only a two or three day period each year.

Everyone does his own weighing of pros and cons.  Mine comes down on the side of allowing pretty much wide-open sales and use of fireworks, within the five-day maximum time period permitted by Washington state law (when not prohibited or further limited by local authorities).  Many thoughtful and respected citizens obviously feel differently, including the writer for the Times.

I just remember the thrill of visiting the fireworks stand and staring agog at the immense variety of explosive and incendiary devices awaiting my purchase, the fun of lighting a fuse and jumping backward before the damn things went off in my face, the disgustingly militaristic delight in blowing up my toy jeeps and tanks. 

Even as a presumably cautious adult, I can't now deprive today's kids of all that excitement and fun; I couldn't now hypocritically join the once-despised (albeit socially responsible) chorus of exhortations that beg us to keep the Fourth "Safe and Sane."

Happy Fourth of July!

Small miracles

I joined a surprisingly large audience last night to watch the Japanese film I Wish.  "Surprisingly" large, because the film is in Japanese with English subtitles, stars a somewhat withdrawn and gloomy 12-year-old hero, has the sketchiest of plots, and ends in disappointment of the boy's original hopes (although with an ending that is nevertheless upbeat).

What the movie does have going for it, however, as amply displayed in the trailers that have been playing in recent weeks, is a wonderful cast of Japanese kids filled with the effervescence of pre-teen youth.  If we had seen the film in 1945, we might have felt even greater ambiguity about our bombing of Hiroshima.  On the other hand,  maybe not.  In 1945, Japanese kids probably didn't act like a bunch of unusually well-mannered (but mischievous) American kids, set down in a small town locale where only the signage seemed definitely foreign.

The film was apparently commissioned by Japanese Railways as publicity for a new bullet train service.  The railroad got more, I'm sure, than they bargained for.  Our hero, Koichi, is the child of divorced parents -- a status less familiar in Japan than in America.  He lives with his mother and grandparents, while his slightly younger brother Ryu lives in a distant town with their rock musician father.  Ryu -- extroverted, funny and bubbly in personality -- tends to steal the show from his more stolid brother.  (The two actors are brothers in real life, as well.) The boys stay in daily wistful contact by cell phone.

The plot centers on a rumor that Koichi has heard, a claim that if you stand beside the point where two bullet trains pass from opposite directions, the force field created will make your wishes come true.  Koichi's wish is for the St. Helens-like volcano that looms over the new town where he lives with his mother to erupt, causing the town to be evacuated and his family thus somehow to be reunited. 

Koichi recruits his two best schoolfriends to join him in a journey to the midpoint on the new bullet train route, the point where the trains coming from either direction will meet.  Ryu, with friends of his own from their father's town, meets them at the midpoint.  Most of the film treads predictable ground, watching adventurous kids who sneak away from their homes and attempt to make it on their own in adult society.  What's different about this film, perhaps, is the warmth and caring that Japanese society unexpectedly offers these wandering children.

Each kid brings to the midpoint his or her own wish, a wish that's written down on a signboard to be waved at the passing trains.  Most poignant is the boy who carries his dead dog in a backpack, hoping for its resuscitation.  This film isn't a fantasy, however, and the wishes aren't granted.  Not granted, at least, in the ways expected.

At the last moment, Koichi declines to make his own wish.  Since leaving home, he has realized the death and destruction that a volcano eruption would cause.  Sober and thoughtful child that he is, he decides to embrace the overall welfare of "the world," rather than sacrifice it  to his own selfish needs.

The name of the film in Japan was Kiseki (translated as "the miracle").  The Japanese title is apt on several levels, and the film itself -- although slow in its pacing -- is a something of a miracle itself in today's commercial film market.