From tiny acorns ...

Seattle flagship store

When President Obama selected Sally Jewell, president and CEO of REI, to be his new Secretary of the Interior, the landmark Seattle institution received another burst of national attention.

I say "Seattle institution," but that betrays my parochial perspective.  Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) is one of the nation's leading outdoor recreational equipment retailers.  REI has approximately 125 stores in 31 states.  It has 11.6 million "members," and annual sales of $1.8 billion (2011).  It sells both brand name merchandise, and some products manufactured under its own name. 

The flagship store in Seattle (pictured above) is a virtual temple to outdoors equipment of every sort -- not just camping and climbing gear, but clothing, ski and snowshoe equipment, bicycles and cycling equipment, running shoes, kayaks, travel gear, books, virtually anything related to fun in the outdoors -- dominated by a glass tower enclosing a 65-foot climbing rock.

'Twas not always thus.  When I joined REI, it occupied several old, single-floor warehouse buildings on Capitol Hill -- buildings cobbled together to create a commercial maze, somewhat like an old, funky bookstore.  It sold primarily backpacking and climbing gear.  Its formal name was already Recreational Equipment, Inc., but no one called it "REI"; it was simply "the co-op."  It was (and still is) organized as a member-owned cooperative that distributed its net profits to its members annually.  Members still receive an annual distribution, but for years the dividend has been stabilized at ten percent of purchases, regardless of the co-op's profits during the year.

The co-op had been formed in 1938 as a means of providing, at cost, hard-to-find climbing equipment to Seattle area climbers.  By the time I joined, it had expanded its scope, but climbing and backpacking equipment was still by far its primary focus.  Like most members, I took its function as a member-owned cooperative seriously.  When its annual catalog first contained what I felt were unusually flashy ads for skis, rather than simply technical descriptions, I wrote complaining that the purpose of the co-op was to serve the needs of members, not to create needs by advertising. (I received a friendly but noncommittal response.)

Such was my naiveté.  Even non-profit institutions employ real human beings, ambitious types with the human need to preside over greater and greater empires.  Annual profits may remain zero, but the officers' salaries increase as the organization grows larger.  I'm not saying that growth is bad.  REI in its present form serves my own needs, as well as those of others, for products beyond the narrow fields of climbing and backpacking.  But I still lament the loss of a certain purity of purpose and organization that the co-op possessed when I first joined, a certain form of upper middle class socialism, I suppose.

Sally Jewell leads Mt. Rainier climb

REI has been an excellent citizen of Seattle, and a strong promoter of all things good environmentally.  Despite the expansion of its mission statement, it remains run by folks with outdoors interests and an environmental orientation, not by green-shaded bean counters.  Back when I signed up, Jim Whittaker -- the first American to summit Everest -- was the CEO.  Today's CEO, our new Secretary of the Interior, is herself described as a kayaker, climber, and skier.

Time passes.  My REI number is so low that clerks look at me in surprise when I provide it while making a purchase.  That feels a bit awkward, I guess, but it's also a pleasure to have been a member during a large portion of REI's growth from a small local co-op into a giant national institution.

Vive le chat

The iron is dead ...

Once upon a time, a guy could easily buy a railroad for $200, but, oddly enough, turn around and find himself hit with a $75 bill for luxury tax.  In those days, everyone earned the same salary -- $200 -- but income equality hardly did away with class distinctions or the gap between the rich and the poor..  Rent in a flop house hotel on Mediterranean Avenue cost you only $250;  a stay in a grand Boardwalk hotel set you back $2,000.  You could be sent to jail for no stated reason whatsoever, but those in the know -- and in possession of a certain small document -- could get out of jail free.


... long live le chat.

Yes, Monopoly, of course.  The great game of depression America, and one of the continuing triumphs of the board game industry.   The game has evolved over the years, but only superficially.  Its adherents detest change.  Therefore, despite inflation since the 1930s, players still joyously accept $10 for winning second prize in a beauty contest.

One small change made front page news this week: a playing piece has died -- the sturdy (and curiously non-electric) iron -- and has been replaced by an icon more in keeping with the decadence of our own times -- a non-utilitarian cat.  The iron was voted off the island, so to speak, by players whose votes determined it to be the least favorite of present day playing pieces.

Well, duh.  I could have told them that.  I don't recall anyone ever voluntarily choosing the iron.  The thimble and wheelbarrow, yes.  Certainly the top hat.  The Scotty dog was voted most popular, and yet I don't recall his ever being in much demand when I played.  Was he even included in my set?  I don't recall.

Actually, the pieces I recall best weren't the present day metal pieces at all.  They were colored wooded pieces in various abstract shapes.  See my illustration below, if you don't know what I'm talking about.  My set had most of these same pieces, but not necessarily in the same colors.  My brother always chose what we called "the milk can" -- that cylindrical piece on the left with the groove circling the upper portion.  My first and only choice was always the piece that reminded me of an old fashioned rubber stamp -- it's black in the illustration, but a lustrous royal purple in my own set. 

It wasn't until later in my childhood, when someone gave me the "Deluxe" edition of  Monopoly, packaged in a white box, that I began using the current-style metal pieces.

It's been years since I've played Monopoly.  However, in the last few years a childhood friend has re-emerged from obscurity, hurling bizarre taunts my way, claims of my supposed childhood inferiority at the game.  Sooner or later, I suppose, I'll have to put the lad in his place.  How better to do so than with the newly minted cat?  She's sleek, she's new, she's sassy.  She's so "today."  My buddy will predictably choose some favorite piece out of his fading boyhood memories, relying on a pathetic sense of nostalgia.

Nostalgia's for losers. 

A radical saint

He wore a filthy tunic, with a piece of rope as a belt, and no shoes.  While preaching, he often would dance, weep, make animal sounds, strip to his underwear, or play the zither.  His black eyes sparkled.  Many people regarded him as mad, or dangerous.  They threw dirt at him.  Women locked themselves in their houses.

After the Virgin Mary, St. Francis of Assisi is today the most popular of Christian saints.  So claims a recent six-page New Yorker review,¹ discussing two books that analyze Francis's life.  That claim may well be accurate.

We all know that St. Francis's life has been frequently sentimentalized (look at the statue by the birdbath in your neighbor's back yard), and we all know that the saint was, in actuality, a strong man and fairly sophisticated.  But the New Yorker review reminds us just how eccentric Francis was, how unsettling his example was for those who met him, and how distorted his message became even while he was still alive.

Francis was a popular and rambunctious teenager; he was no scholar.  He gladly went off to war with neighboring Perugia, dressed nattily and riding a good horse.  He was quickly captured, and spent a year as a P.O.W., during which time his conversion apparently began.  He had an oft-recounted dispute with his parents: he renounced his inheritance, stripped off all his clothes, and walked away naked from his family, never to be reunited with them.  Traditional family values were not uppermost among his concerns.

He began working with lepers, and it was while so engaged that his conversion became complete.  He gathered a dozen like-spirited men about him, and these "friars" lived together in absolute poverty.  They owned nothing.  They slept on the ground. They were allowed to receive food for a day's work, but no money, and were to save nothing for the following day.  Although his original followers deferred to his leadership, there was no formal heirarchy among friars.  They were to love all of creation, including their enemies and including the wealthy who opposed them.

The New Yorker review points out that all of these strict rules had exceptions.  He proposed the rules to help his followers guide themselves in living Christian lives.  But the friars did not live for the sake of the rules.  Francis tended to be permissive. He was not a militant leader; he was no Ignatius of Loyola.  He had, says the review,"an extreme natural sweetness.  He was courteous, genial, extroverted -- he was fun, a quality not always found in saints -- and he laid it upon the brothers, as a duty, to be cheerful."

As the order grew in size, and during Francis's frequent absences,later members took advantage of his permissiveness.  Absolute poverty was both unpleasant and often impractical, if not impossible.  The papacy took increasing note of the order's popularity and began taking control, bringing the friars' practices increasingly into line with the rules -- less obsessed with poverty -- followed by other religious orders, such as the Dominicans.  Papal support of the Franciscans deflected criticism that the Church opposed any organization composed primarily of laymen, and also deflected attention from the embarrassing wealth of the heirarchy.

As the order slipped away from Francis's original concept, Francis turned its leadership over to another member.  Francis grew increasingly ill, as well as emotionally upset by the changes in his order.  The New Yorker review suggests that Francis can be viewed as an exemplar of the "inconvenient elder" -- the guy whose ideas get the whole thing going, but who is too impractical to make it work in the long term.  We have only to look at some of our own start-up corporations to see analogies in our own time.

Ultimately, St. Francis received the "stigmata" -- the review notes that most modern biographies prefer not to attempt a natural explanation for this occurrence -- which provided him some final sense of validation as his life neared its end.  He died in "horrible pain" from his illnesses, and in some spiritual distress.

The story of Francis's life related by these scholarly biographies is not the popular, pretty story of the childlike saint talking to the birds and animals -- or at least it moves far beyond that story.  It's a story of inspiration, striving, some success, eventual fears of failure, and the sense of a man who lived long enough to see his ideals distorted and misused.  But it's also a very human story, one that represents the experience of virtually anyone who has ever strived to bring the world to a higher level of civilization.  I suspect that Karl Marx, had he lived to observe the formation and development of the Soviet Union, would have had similar thoughts and feelings.

Francis of Assisi was truly a saint with a radical vision of humanity.  As one of the books under review expresses it, Francis's example "constitutes proof that Christianity, at least once, has been lived by a human being in all its radicality within the context of a historical life."²
-------------------------------------
¹Joan Acocella, Rich Man, Poor Man (New Yorker, Jan. 14, 2013)
²André Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint

Five days in Bombay



Gateway of India

After five balmy days in India, I've spent five wretched days in Seattle, struggling with a debilitating cold (hence the delay in filing this dispatch).   Between the two experiences, India wins -- hands down.

You can see a lot in five days, but you can't see everything.  And Mumbai, at 13 million souls, is not a compact, tidy destination.  We (Kathy, Juliana and I) agreed that, physically, it reminded us of a rather unkempt Paris.  In personality, on the other hand, it bore a definite resemblance to New York.


Cricket pitch in shadow of
Bombay High Court

But after spending five days in midtown New York, no one could assert that he "knew" or "understood" New York.  And we definitely confined ourselves to "South" or "Downtown" Mumbai --  the old, original British town and still one of the city's major commercial areas.  South Mumbai has most of the monuments and sights that one associates with the city.  Without disparaging the huge swaths of the city that I've never seen, I suspect it would be fair to say that they are all Queens and the Bronx, to South Mumbai's Manhattan.

Kathy and Juliana
Sunset on Marine Drive

My only earlier visit to India focused on Delhi, and Delhi is very different.  Delhi has more architectural history -- all those Mogul forts and monuments -- and is immersed more deeply in traditional India.  Mumbai -- the Mumbai we saw, at least -- is all about today.  In Delhi, we got around in three-wheel tuk tuks.  In Mumbai, the streets are full of small taxi cabs.  In Delhi, male and female tourists were warned that even Indian married couples do not hold hands in public.  In Mumbai, amorous couples were wrapped around each other all along the waterfront, and women were stylishly dressed in Western clothes.  In Delhi, merchants sat around chatting and drinking tea with prospective customers.  In Mumbai, office workers poured out of railway stations and down the streets in endless, fast-walking processions -- reminiscent of time-lapse films of New York rush hour.

Delhi was, perhaps, Boston; Mumbai was, unquestionably, New York.

We walked miles along the Arabian Sea waterfront.  We photographed the Gateway of India and had drinks in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.  We took a boat to Elephanta Island to explore the ancient Hindu cave carvings.  We had dinner with an upper class family (servants!) on exclusive Malabar Hill, where we learned that, for many Mumbaikars, the city is, without question, still "Bombay."   We stayed in a small hotel, with funky old-European charm, where ascending the stairway that wound around an elevator shaft was usually much faster than taking the elevator, and where breakfast was served on a roof overlooked by not-so-picturesque apartment houses.  We ate at tiny coffee shops and, the last night, at a trendy, upscale restaurant ("Indigo") under the stars.

We did, in other words, the expected tourist things.

And, of course, we cheered Juliana as she emerged from the Bombay heat and smog, crossing the finish line at just over five hours running time -- exhausted, but all grins, laughs and hugs. 

Marthon finish line with
Victoria Terminus in background

My traveling this very long distance for a very short stay almost didn't happen.  It sounded embarrassingly silly, and probably was.  But it was a great experience, and I loved every minute.  I wouldn't say that a return to Bombay (Mumbai), in itself, is high on my to-do list, but certainly a return to India is.  It's an exciting country, still "exotic" and a bit mysterious to a simple guy from the Northwest Corner, but also a country emerging into the 21st century.

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

2-1-13: Since writing the above, I've happened upon the following interesting quote:

"'You must not run down the Mogul Empire,' he [André Malraux] said and then rapidly outlined how Akbar the Great [proved to be] a universalist in the manner of the French Revolution; ... and how this explained why the Muslims made a great civilization in India and the British never did, comparing the Mogul cities like Agra, Delhi and Lahore with the Anglo-Indian Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, which he described as 'transplanted British building suffocated by bidonvilles [i.e., slums].

--Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here [discussing an interview with Malraux in 1974]. Both Malraux and Chatwin were notably opinionated. Whether you prefer the Mogul or the Anglo-Indian cities seems mostly a question of personal taste.

Mumbai Marathon

I arrived home last night from a very enjoyable family birthday celebration in Yosemite Valley.  But you, my readers, get from me today not even a few words of serious thought on nature, environmental protection, political support for national parks, humorous aspects of family life, or the peculiar manner in which birthdays seem to pass in ever faster succession.

Instead, almost as soon as I had stepped in the door of the house and assured the cats of my continuing devotion to their welfare, I was confronted with the need to prepare for a quickie trip to Mumbai tomorrow.  Wha ..... ?  Why am I going to Mumbai, the neuro-normal reader may well ask (fearing already the response)?

Well, duh!  The Mumbai Marathon is run on Sunday, and naturally one of my many peculiar relatives or near-relatives would be inspired to run it.  And how could I let her (for Juliana is indeed a she) do that without my presence?

Hence, I'll jump onto a 20-some hour flight tomorrow.  High January temperatures in Mumbai appear to be in the low 80's, so it's not as though she'll be running (or I'll be cheering) in the steaming sauna that you and I may have first envisioned.  Still, Mumbai heat isn't Sahara heat, and -- in any event -- the climate will be different from the single-digit (Fahrenheit) night temperatures that I've experienced in Yosemite over the past few days.  But it'll all be over in five days.  Juliana -- God willing and her ACLs not tearing -- will be off exploring the rest of India, joined at times by my sister.  I, on the other hand, will be flying back to face the fuel oil bills and windshield defrostings of a Seattle January.

As Yosemite habitués know well, Curry Village is the place to camp in Yosemite Valley.  The recurring joke has been that I'd be going from Curry Village to Curry Dinners in three days' time. 

Meh.  Whatever. See you in a week.

Winter in wonderland

Readers will recall my love of trains: European trains, Canadian trains, Lionel electric trains.  Even Amtrak!

Tomorrow morning, I once more board the Coast Starlight for points south.  To Yosemite.  Yosemite, you gasp?  Do trains run to Yosemite?

Well, no.  Trains don't, not into the Park.  But Amtrak does, through the magic of connecting buses.  I'll take the Coast Starlight as far as Sacramento, where I disembark at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m. (assuming -- always a dangerous assumption -- that it's on time).  A shuttle bus then takes me a few miles south to Stockton, where I jump onto a San Joaquin, heading south from the East Bay. I leave the San Joaquin at Merced, and board an Amtrak bus that will take me to Yosemite Valley, directly to the Ahwahnee Hotel.

Ah, yes.  The Ahwahnee.  Perhaps the crown jewel of the lodges offered anywhere by the National Park Service, one equaling in quality the excellent lodges found in the Canadian national parks.  As its web page proclaims:

The Ahwahnee was specifically designed to highlight its natural surroundings, featuring Yosemite Falls, Half Dome and Glacier Point. The destination of queens and presidents alike, this distinctive Yosemite hotel offers a perfect balance of history, hospitality and elegance.

Hardly the sort of place in which I'd ordinarily pass the night in a national park.  But this trip is special.  A family gathering, to celebrate Barton and Clinton's .... birthday.  Well, let's not embarass the twins by announcing their age publicly.  We'll just say that, as birthdays go, it's an important landmark.

So.  I'm about to pack.  A friend writes to advise me that I really should pack a sports jacket if I'm staying in the Ahwahnee.  A sports jacket!  In a national park?  The outdoorsman in me rebels.  As does the logic of a practical packer! How will I squeeze a cotton sports jacket (I know, I know, but it's all I have handy) into my bag without crushing the soul and spirit out of it?

Oh, hush, you barbarian.  You're not going camping.  It's a rare and special event at a magnificent and special place.  It won't hurt you to dress up a little.

Yosemite, here I come.  Temperatures in the low 20s are forecast.  I look forward to seeing your Half Dome dusted with snow, your many waterfalls brilliant with icicles.   

Living life before a camera

Neil at age 14

"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man."
--St. Francis Xavier (attributed)

In 1964, British television produced a documentary, later released in theaters as Seven Up!, showcasing the lives of fourteen British seven-year-olds from various socio-economic classes.  Since then, every seven years a follow-up film has been released, following the lives of these kids as they grew up and aged. 

This year, 56 Up is being released, reviewed in yesterday's New York Times. The series explicitly takes the quotation from St. Francis Xavier as its theme.

I'm not sure when I began watching the series, but it probably was with either 21 Up or 28 Up.  Each film to date has set the stage for its discussion of each participant by showing brief scenes of his or her life from earlier films.  The primary lesson of the project is the continuing lack of social mobility in the United Kingdom, contrary to the expectations of the producers of the initial film. 

The boy from a privileged school, who at age seven told the camera that "We think I'm going to Cambridge and Trinity Hall," was close enough in his foresight.  He went to Oxford and is today a successful lawyer.  The three girls from a working class school grew up as genial, friendly, but clearly lower class adults.  The most riveting story, as most viewers agree, and the one least representative of the series's eventual thesis, was that of Neil.  As a seven and fourteen year old, Neil appeared to be scientifically precocious with dreams of being a physicist.  By his twenties, he had lost direction, and for years was a homeless wanderer.  By the time of 49 Up, he had regained some minimal direction to his life, although at a far lower level than one would have expected from his childhood.

The study of the persistence of class distinctions is interesting, although probably more so to a British than to an American audience.  For me, the fascination has been the ability to watch kids from different walks of life grow into middle aged adults.  Fascinating, and -- to me, at least -- saddening.  Neil is but an extreme example of my general observation that children -- no matter how "successful" -- rarely live up to the hopes and expectations of their childhoods.  I suppose this is logically necessary and obvious -- a child has a million potentialities; an adult, in the limited years of human life, can fulfill only one, or a very small number, of those potentialities. 

The uppermost quotation on my sidebar begins: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel."  I suppose that much of life's tragedy is rooted in this contrast between the seemingly unlimited potential of children and their limited accomplishments as adults.

I'm reminded of a novel I read long ago about an English boys' school.  An assistant headmaster, watching a graduating class assemble, mused over this same question.

Chaps came back, sometimes up to his room at night for tea and biscuits, and one could sense a disappointment.  They found him old, limited, unaltering, parochial.  ...  They were all profoundly unaware of the fact that they had been remarkably curious young birds, filled with unexpectedness, humor, vitality and promise, and were now ordinary, domesticated young men and, by comparison with their former selves, cracking bores.

--Michael Campbell

The teacher was wrong to blame the boys, who had moved on with their lives, and it's wrong for us to blame either 56 Up's now-aging adults personally, or the British class system in which they live, for the sadness we may feel as we watch their lives pass swiftly before us.

Similar sadness has been felt in every era of mankind's history.  This sadness flows necessarily from the shortness of our lives and the dwindling levels of curiosity and energy that begin for many of us almost before we leave home.  Such sadness represents a significant part of the "tragedy" of the human condition.

Happy New Year

Is it just me?  Or is that traditional New Year baby showing signs of apprehension and exhaustion, even before he's born?

It's hard to get ourselves excited about 2013.  The Democrats and Republicans have converted governing into a private grudge match, ignoring the real problems facing the country.  Analysts warn us that political wrangling will be only worse in the year to come, even if a temporary patch to the financial "cliff" is somehow patched together this week.  The re-election of Obama didn't persuade the Republicans that they had drifted out of touch with the nation's majority.  It just made them madder.  "Mad" in all its definitions.

Politics aside, everything just seems to be getting worse.   Hurricanes and other storms, attributable to global climate change.  Crazy mass killers in Connecticut and Colorado, as well as nonsensical killings on a lesser scale all around the country.  A nation arming itself to the teeth.  Mass unemployment.  Rampant drug use, especially in rural areas and small towns. 

The dying year, 2012, did have its good moments, the November election being one of them.  On a more personal level, my two great nieces had their second and third birthdays, showing already those tendencies toward rich talent and amazing genius that so typify my family.  I had two highly enjoyable trips overseas: to England with a 14-year-old relative, and to Morocco with my adult nephew.   I plunged into the Grand Canyon, hiking down to the river and back, all in one day -- something I'd been wanting to do for years.  

In times of stress, such personal enjoyments can tide one over until things get better.  Families during the Great Depression often found happiness in private lives that were loving, if austere.  We may be learning to follow their footsteps during our own Great Recession.  But I worry about the temptation to focus solely on private pleasures and ignore the infighting of doctrinaire politicians who seem increasingly beyond our control.

The greatest political events passed over the heads of the people like black or golden clouds.  Later it was to watch even the ruin of the Empire and the coming of the barbarians with indifference.   It was a worn-out body whose fibres no longer reacted to any stimulus.

--Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages.

I once included that quotation in a commentary on the Watergate crisis, concluding that, as bad as things seemed at the time, "the fibers of our civilization remain healthy."

Today, I'm not so sure. 

But, tonight, whatever our optimism or pessimism, 2012 comes to an end, and 2013 finds himself born -- willy-nilly.  Let's all hold our breaths, vow that we'll attempt to make our civilization better and stronger, and welcome the poor, naked little tyke into the scary world that awaits him.

Happy New Year!

Traditions

Noted pianist Hayden Grey plays her original
composition, Christmas Boogie, for a
dog and a naked baby.



During their days of colonial hegemony, the British were famous for their attempts to convert every far-flung colony into a small piece of home. 

I recall a movie scene set in 1930s India.  It was a New Year's Eve party.  The men and women were dressed in formal wear, as though at a party in London.  At the stroke of midnight, the band struck up Auld Lang Syne, and the guests concluded by singing a rousing chorus of God Save the King.

In America, we're less rigid in our observances.  Even so, at least for those of us not strongly attached to alternative religious traditions, our common observance of Christmas -- including Santa, reindeer, and shopping overload -- plays a similarly homogenizing function -- not throughout any external colonial possessions, but within our own, otherwise heterogeneous and far-flung home territory.

Which is to say, I spent three days in far distant, exotic Los Angeles county, and gosh -- it was just like celebrating Christmas up here in God's own country, the Northwest Corner.

I was visiting my niece and her partner in Glendale, joined by my brother and his wife.  But the star of the Christmas celebration, of course, was the newest member of the family -- my great niece, Hayden, so recently born but already a highly personable two-year-old.  Just as when my brother and I were children, just as when my niece herself and her cousins were young, almost everything revolved around Hayden.

It all felt comfortingly familiar.  The tree.  The stockings hung by the chimney with care.  The mounds of beautifully wrapped presents, which revealed themselves when opened to be offerings to Hayden of virtually every age-appropriate gift to be found in any toy catalogue.  The rest of us unconsciously played, in our small bumbling way, the part of Magi offering our gifts to a Child.

Also familiar were the Christmas morning breakfast traditions invented by my own mother.  The turkey dinner.  The televised football games.  The mandatory viewing of A Christmas Story.  (We somehow missed, this year, both Dickens' Christmas Carol and the more modern but still usually obligatory tale of Seuss's Grinch.)

Best yet, the weather was the kind of weather that to me spells "Christmas":  Not snowy rides in one-horse open sleighs, and certainly not balmy, beside-the-pool, Los Angeles sunshine.  No, the skies were cloudy and the rain was intermittent.  Just like home!  Just like the Christmases of my childhood!

And best of all -- the jokes, the games, Hayden's wide-eyed excitement.  The sense of being surrounded by family members, of being part of a family that maintains its continuity, generation after generation.   A family whose members come and, unfortunately, eventually go -- but a family whose warmth and traditions continue year after year.  It was a great visit and a great Christmas.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Mayan endings

If you've been paying attention, you realize that at approximately 6 p.m. tonight, Pacific Daylight Time, those chosen by God will disappear from the face of the earth, having been assumed body and soul into heaven. I hope this warning reaches you in time.
--Northwest Corner blog (May 21,2011)

If you've been paying attention, you realize that at 3:12 a.m. tomorrow morning, Pacific Standard Time, the entire Earth (together, perhaps, with the Universe that surrounds it) will vanish.  A new world will replace it, but we won't be part of it.  I hope this warning reaches you in time.

Yes, these apocalypses seem to be coming around more and more frequently.

Excitement about the end of the current, 5,125-year Mayan calendar cycle has been growing now for some time.  Some experts have tried to tell us that the end of the cycle meant no more to the Mayans than the flipping of the calendar from 1999 to 2000 did for us.  But we will have none of it.  The world must end.  It'll turn itself off, as when a light switch is flipped.  Or end in a crunch when we collide with the mythical (and oddly-reclusive) planet Nibiru. 

If not the literal end of the physical world, at least our old corrupt world must end, to be replaced by a new world order of spiritual enlightenment, telepathic communication, and perhaps levitation and teleportation.  Crystals, certainly.  Vortexes.  Bright shiny beads.  Magic mushrooms.  Pyramid power.  Maybe even bell bottoms and giant afro hairstyles?  Without a doubt..

I know.  It all seems déjà vu-esque.

Even as I write, the Yucatan is packed with spiritual pilgrims -- looking forward to joining the vanguard of this renewed universe, hanging around Mayaland in the off chance that tomorrow morning doesn't bring literal obliteration.  China and Russia are reporting panic buying of candles and "essentials."  (I'm not sure what's essential if the world is to vanish.)  Famous scientist and intellectual Ron Hubbard is going underground, not to emerge until the 23rd -- just as a precaution.

A college-aged friend writes -- with controlled but perceptible rolling of his eyes -- that he is going out into the desert with his mother to bang drums, dance around a campfire, and otherwise signal to aliens that they seek sanctuary in their spaceships before the world terminates.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
--Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Yeah, terminating kind of like that, I guess.

Saturday morning the sun will come up.  The Yucatan tourists will put away their scented oils and joss sticks.  The Chinese and Russians will put their candles and essentials to some other good use.  Ron Hubbard will emerge from his hobbit hole, grinning (?) sheepishly and reminding us that he never said he really believed anything was going to happen.

And someone will discover that a numerological interpretation of a certain phrase in the Talmud reveals that the world will end on April 1, 2013.  As Huck so wisely expressed my own feelings, "I can't stand it.  I been there before."

But then, they laughed at Noah, too, didn't they? As he was sawing and pounding away on his ark? And look where it got them.

Jumping in with both feet

When I was a kid, on one of those fairly rare, warm, Northwest summer days when my family decided on a picnic, I could play for hours in a creek or lake without getting cold.  But if I emerged from the water for a while, dried off in the sun, let myself get warm and drowsy, and then waded back into the water ....

Yikes!

Well, we've all had that experience.  The water seemed to have dropped twenty degrees.  It was literally¹ freezing.  You'd stick in your toe, wade in up to your ankles, then your knees, your hips ... it was excruciating.  Finally, you'd hurl yourself into the Arctic sea -- or be thrown in by disgusted fellow swimmers.  Within a minute or two the water again felt fine.

Rather than pursue this metaphor -- for such it is, rather than simply a tedious recollection -- any further, let me get to the point.

This is my first post in 32 days.  The longest gap between posts, in the almost six years I've been putting out the Northwest Corner.  The longest, I think, even including periods when I've been away from my computer, engaged in foreign travel.  I can't tell you why I haven't been writing.  Nothing much has happened in the past 32 days, it's true, but -- as regular readers are well aware -- lack of viable real world referents has never stopped me from writing before.

No, what puzzles me has been my failure to respond with either delight or outrage to even those insignificant events -- both nationally and in my own small life -- that usually make up my subject matter.  The problem is circular.  When I fail to react viscerally to events, I lack incentive to write.  And when I stop writing, I also stop seeking out and perceiving events worthy of my reaction.

And as the circle continues, I become more and more hesitant to take even that first step, that dabbling of my metaphorical child's toe in the literary waters of quasi-literature.  I find myself awaiting some topic worthy of a Russian novel, not simply one worthy of a short feature on the back page of a shoppers' gazette.

So, today I decided to force the issue.  To jump right into the lake -- to commit self-immersion in one fell swoop.²   Get myself wet and re-acclimated.  And so ... here I am, sputtering, coughing, and shaking the water out of my metaphorically boyish crewcut.

Will our hero thus have overcome his unseemly writer's block, and find himself reinvigorated with the juices of literary production?  As that time-honored closing formula of hack journalism reminds us: "Only time will tell!"

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¹  By "literally," I mean, of course, "figuratively."

²  "Fell swoop"?  Why do we say that?  The expression, like so many others, is from the Bard:

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

--Macbeth

The "kite" -- we still use the word -- which did the (in Macbeth, metaphorical) swooping is a species of hunting bird.  "Fell" is an ancient adjective, dating back to the 13th century, which the OED defines as: "fierce, savage; cruel, ruthless; dreadful, terrible."  "Felon" is derived from "fell" in this sense.

Garfield county: the place no one knows

Most of us -- those of us who love to travel, at least -- have in the back of our minds an idea of a place that is totally remote. 

A place we've never been, a place no one we know has ever been, a place we hardly even hear about except as shorthand for legendary inaccessiblity.  A place not only remote physically, but also living in a time warp, still primitive or medieval culturally and socially.   There aren't that many left.  Timbuctu, maybe.  Yellow Knife.   Upper Congo Basin.  Tannu Tuva.

But while perusing last week's election results, I found such a spot closer to home.  Garfield county.

Garfield jumped to my attention as I reviewed, county by county, the voting results for each candidate and measure on the Washington state ballot.  Garfield's results were as far from the over-all state results as seemingly possible.

Democrat Inslee became governor, although losing most of the counties outside King (Seattle).  But he lost those counties by generally moderate percentages;  he lost Garfield, winning only 26.48 percent of the vote.  Democrat Cantwell was re-elected U.S. Senator with 60.19 percent of the state's votes.  She lost Garfield, winning only 36.47 percent.

Gay marriage won state-wide by 53.35 percent.  It lost in Garfield with only 28.59 percent.  Marijuana legalization won state-wide with 55.53 percent, carrying a number of generally conservative counties from east of the mountains.  Garfield, just 37.91 percent.  Charter schools squeaked by with 50.72 percent of the vote, cutting across usual liberal/conservative voting lines, and losing slightly in King county.  It attracted only 41.6 percent of the votes in Garfield county. 

Garfield county appears not only to be very conservative, but to be essentially opposed to anything that comes up for a vote.  Where is this place?  I actually had to dig out a state map to find out.

And there it was.  In the southeast corner of the state, bordering Oregon to its south, and just one small county away from Idaho to its east.  Garfield isn't the smallest county geographically -- there are six smaller.  But, with 2,266 residents, it is by far the smallest in population.  It has only one incorporated city, its county seat -- Pomeroy.  Pomeroy boasts 1,425 of the county's total population. 

But, you know ... unlike the Upper Congo, or even perhaps Tannu Tuva, Garfield doesn't sound like that bad a place.  Especially if you're respectably conservative.  As an unofficial website describing the city boasts: "The Republican party stood out in its ability to raise compaign money in Pomeroy."  I'm sure that's true. But I don't think that means that well-behaved liberals wouldn't be welcomed.  The website of the Pomeroy Chamber of Commerce (yes, there is one) states:

Here in Pomeroy you'll always be greeted with a smile! We have the appeal of a small farm town with possibilities that are endless.

The Chamber's website lists upcoming attractions:  "Holiday Bazaar," "Old Fashioned Christmas," "Chocolate Extravaganza," and "Twinkle Light Sale."  That's all within the next three weeks, and, before you urbanites say anything snarky and supercilious, ask yourselves whether any small town of about 1,500 that you know of has such an active Chamber of Commerce.

Pomeroy has a junior-senior high school with 184 students, and an elementary school with 156.  Test results well exceed the state averages, with 96.3 percent of tenth graders passing both the reading and the writing tests.

I'd never live in a place where I'd be considered the "County Liberal," but Garfield county might well be worth a visit, especially if I'm ever headed into Oregon to see the nearby Hell's Canyon area.  Local lodging, listed on the website, tends a bit toward the trailer court and RV park variety, and restaurant listings are heavy on coffee houses and drive-ins, but that may be part of the charm.

My investigation into the world of Garfield county reminds me that it isn't only red-staters who at times live in ideological and cultural bubbles.  It's also easy for us who rejoice at living in liberal bastions to forget that life in more conservative areas -- e.g., all the "fly-over" states -- can be just as happy and satisfying for those who choose to live there as (and often lived with greater community spirit than) anything with which we're familiar.  Not as culturally or intellectually challenging, as a city like Seattle, perhaps, but all choices of lifestyle have their trade-offs.

Twinky farewell

Just a quiet moment of silence, please, for the death of the Twinkies.  And the Ding Dongs.  And Sno Balls.  And, notably, Wonder Bread.

But -- to me, most tragically -- Hostess CupCakes.

Hostess Brands, Inc., the maker of all the above, and more, announced today that it's shutting down operations.  The company has been in bankruptcy since January, and a strike this week delivered the final blow.

American's changing food preferences have been cited as the underlying cause of the company's financial woes.  In other words, there is junk food and there is junk food.  And Hostess's products were really junk food. 

I could never fathom how anyone could eat Twinkies.  Ding Dongs were ok -- it's hard to dislike chocolate.  Sno Balls -- remember them?  one pink and one white per package? -- always looked good, and sounded good in concept, but never quite passed the eating test with me. Just a little too marshmallowy, maybe. 

Wonder Bread was the bread of my childhood.  White bread only, of course, although the brown bread seemed to differ from white only by the addition of food coloring.  You knew a brand of bread had to be good when it was so wonderfully soft and plushy that you could wad a slice into a tiny ball, a pellet of carbs so small that you could fit it into your bean shooter.  (No, I'm not sure that's true, but I'd be surprised if someone didn't do it.)

But the chocolate "CupCakes" -- the package of two chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and a white squiggle across the top -- were a childhood favorite.  Happy (and rare) the day that I'd find them in my school lunch sack.  I loved them in high school.  And in college.  I'd pack them for energy and solace when I started off on a long day hike.  They were a pleasure that became guiltier and guiltier as the years passed, and as I became increasingly conscious of health concerns.

The Hostess cupcakes had one nutritional value: sugar.  Or as the British nutritional labels more coyly express it: "energy."  But they had a taste and a consistency that was well nigh irresistable once you had a package in your possession.

So today we lament not just the demise of an iconic American company, not just the passing of another set of familiar products from our childhood, but the passing of an era.  A time when depression-starved bodies craved "energy"-packed food, when processed food was a novelty that quickly replaced home baking, when our tastes were uncomplicated and unevolved.  When we ate whatever tasted good.

The government saved Chevrolets and Chryslers -- even greater icons of our youth -- but the maker of Twinkies and CupCakes apparently is not "too big to fail."  Our tastes in transportation remain pretty much the same as they were fifty years ago, but our tastes in food have moved along.  So rest in peace, Hostess Brands.

If I could have just one last Hostess cupcake with a glass of milk, I'd feel that I'd properly and happily celebrated the wake of a memorable American company.

Clouds from hell

Hurricanes like Sandy and Katrina aren't the only weather-related disasters our country has faced within the lifetimes of people still alive.  It's easy to forget the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, a multi-year catastrophe that ruined farmers' lives and drove them and their families from their homes.

Like Sandy, the drought-related dust bowl was caused in part by mankind.  Throughout the 1920's, farm land in the affected area -- the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, parts of Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico -- had been offered for sale at low prices by land speculators.  Land that had existed as grass prairies for centures was ruthlessly plowed under, primarily to grow wheat at subsidized prices.  Favorable rainfall had created good crops, and had encouraged ambitious young families from other parts of the country to move to the Southwest.

The drought began in 1930, and reached its peak in 1934-36.  Enormous dust storms blew uprooted virgin soil across the area, forming clouds so dense that they turned day to night, and deposited soil on streets as far away as Chicago and Cleveland.  Families at first thought they could ride out the drought; they gradually, year by year, went bankrupt, losing everything they had, including hope for the futures of themselves and their children.  The ambient dust, breathed into the lungs, caused an epidemic of pneumonia, affecting especially the kids.

Ken Burns has produced a four-hour documentary of the history of the Dust Bowl, including extensive interviews with elderly survivors, folks who were children at the time.  Burns spoke Friday night at a packed Neptune Theater in Seattle, illustrating his talk with about 50 minutes of clips from his documentary, to a silent and stunned audience.  The surviving motion picture clips of approaching dust storms -- looking like distant mountain ranges moving inexorably closer -- are breathtaking.  The survivors' stories are heartbreaking. 

Many of the families migrated to California -- where they were reviled as hated "Okies."  Their treatment by the already depression-impoverished residents of the Central Valley is eye-opening.  "Niggers and Okies seated only in balcony," read signs outside movie theaters.  Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and the songs of Woody Guthrie evolved from those artists' own familiarity with the migrants' hardships in California.

The documentary concludes with mention of a lesser drought in the late 1940's and 1950's.  Since then, more favorable weather, better planting techniques and -- most critically -- irrigation, have created a relative prosperity in the area.  But Mother Nature will have the last laugh.  Irrigation has been dependent on wells drawing water out of the Ogallala Aquifer, a reservoir of subterranean water left over from the melting of the last glaciers.  The aquifer has already lost 50 percent of its depth.  Scientists estimate it will last another twenty years.

One expert pointed out that future generations will curse us for having used the water they needed for drinking to grow water-thirsty wheat on soil suited only for plains of grass.

The documentary will be shown in two parts on PBS, November 18 and 19.

Almost too good to be true

We all recall occasions when we had no lofty expectations -- but when things, nevertheless, turned out much better than expected.  The Christmases when we unexpectedly hit the jackpot with our first bicycle or our much longed-for electric train.  Or the in-class essay we merely felt good about, until we got it back with an A+.

Tuesday evening was something like that.  I had been fearing the worst all year long -- a Republican landslide at every level.  I gradually got my hopes up during the summer, only to have them dashed by Obama's dismal performance in the first debate.  By last week, I still felt pessimistic, but hoped against hope that the amazing Nate Silver -- he of the statistical analyses for the New York Times -- actually knew what he was talking about when he predicted first a 70 percent chance, then an 86 percent chance, and finally a 91 or 92 percent chance of an Obama victory.

What I did not foresee was Obama's ability to carry every state he had carried in 2008 except Indiana (how did he ever carry it in 2008?), and -- barely -- North Carolina.  The evening just got better and better as I flipped channels with one hand, and joined like-minded friends in Facebook exchanges of rumors and mutual exultations with the other.  I was practically delirious by the time of Romney's gracious concession speech and Obama's surprisingly sober and moving address to his followers.

But the presidential race was just the highlight.  The first votes ever supporting same-sex marriage in Washington, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota.  The first votes ever fully legalizing marijuana in Washington and Colorado.  Neither vote will have the slightest impact on my life, I hasten to note, but both show signs of liberality of thought and willingness to experiment that -- based on the deadeningly negative, ignorant, and angry comments I've been used to reading on-line -- I had thought dead. 

Washington figured in both those stories, you'll note.  Also, we apparently have once again elected a Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, after a strongly contested campaign against the Republican attorney general.  The attorney general, Rob McKenna, the only elected state-wide official who was a Republican, had defied the rest of state government to single-handedly join the State of Washington as a party to lawsuits opposing Obamacare.

The new attorney general also will be a Democrat.

And, although the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is gerrymandered into place for the present, the Democrats -- supposedly at strong risk to lose control of the Senate -- have actually gained two seats in the upper chamber.

Well, my cup runneth over.  I know that this is to some extent just a lot of game playing.  I'm cheering for the liberals the way I cheer for my college football team.  Enormous problems confront the nation.  The Democrats may handle those problems no better than would the Republicans had they won.  Democrats and Republicans will need to cooperate if we're going to accoplish anything.

But my happiness stems primarily from a renewed confidence in my fellow citizens.  They are not all writers of idiotic comments, posted at the end of Yahoo! news stories.  The tea party does not represent the majority of Americans.  At least fifty percent of the voters -- if not necessarily thoughtful political theorists -- have been at least intelligent enough to sense what was best for the nation.  And for themselves.

In 2012, that itself is cause for celebration. 

So, yeah!  America got that new bike on Tuesday.  America aced the test.  We've been celebrating.  Now, let's tackle the real problems facing the country -- with intelligence and mutual understanding.