Using the old noggin

So you say you're 5'7", and have always dreamed of being 6'3"?  Or you're 75, still sharp as a tack, and would like a 25-year-old body to match your youthful brilliance?  Or maybe you're unhappy with your gender, and would like an instant  change to the body of the opposite sex, a change that fulfills your self-image?

Well, do we have a solution for you!  The kind of thing you may have joked around about as a kid, but never dreamed would be available!  But it's here.  Or soon will be.

I speak, of course, of head transplants.

Fox News takes a breather from denouncing Obamacare and illegal immigrants, and reports on the ultimate in plastic surgery.  Citing a neurosurgical medical journal,¹ Fox states that head transplants now seem technically feasible.  Or soon will be.  Two (presumably) willing candidates need only show up in the operating room at the same time, eagerly awaiting the Big Switcheroo.

In order for the process to work, both the donor and recipient must be in the same operating room, and the donated head must be cooled to between 54.6 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, surgeons must rapidly remove both heads at the exact same time, reconnecting the new head to the recipient’s body and circulatory system within one hour.

What could possibly go wrong?

The problem until now has been that both survivors (I'm assuming two survivors, but more realistically one donor would be performing his final good deed) would be paralyzed from the neck down.  But now, by use of an "extremely thin knife," neurosurgeons can achieve a "clean cut" that permits the body's natural healing process to achieve a proper fusion of all the axons contained within the spinal cord.

Don't show up at your local O.R. just yet.  Doctors probably will want to try this out on monkeys first.  And there's always the problem of finding a 6'3" 25-year-old who's always had a hankering to be transformed within hours into a a 5'7" 75-year-old.  But once a sufficient amount of money changes hands, this obstacle probably can be overcome.

Still, as the article concludes, "the ethics surrounding this type of surgery are hotly debated."  Again, however, if you have enough money, this ethical debate will soon enough seem somewhat academic, if not hopelessly naïve.
----------------------------
¹Surgical Neurology International

Mt. Pilchuck

Mt. Pilchuck was one of those ski areas you always heard about, but never skied.  It had a couple of chair lifts, with the highest reaching just 4,300 feet.  Under Western Washington weather conditions, that just never seemed high enough to make the drive worthwhile.

The ski area was forced to close down in 1980, when the Forest Service refused to extend its limited use permit for that portion of the ski area that fell within national forest land.  Virtually no signs remain of the ski area today, aside from the parking lot at the trail head.

Yesterday was supposed to be "partly cloudy," and that sounded good enough to make the Mt. Pilchuck climb worthwhile.  Actually, at least where I was hiking, it was pretty socked in, with even a little rain at one point near the beginning.  From the summit, the clouds kept shifting, giving tantalizing views of surrounding peaks -- especially near-by Glacier Peak, one of the five volcanoes of the Washington Cascades, but not Rainier.

The round trip to the Mt. Pilchuck summit is only 5.4 miles, but that distance is meaningless when most of the trail is obliterated by snow.  The climb was far more strenuous than last week's Annette Lake hike, and the twists, slip and falls, and grasping for handholds left most of my muscles aching this morning. 

 The trail starts out through thick forest, and is, for the most part, well improved and maintained.  About half way up, the snow covered the trail.  From that point onward, hikers were following tracks others had left in the snow.  Eventually, I reached a point at which I thought the hike was nearly complete, with just a rocky butte to ascend.  A kindly fellow, on the way down, informed me that a much higher peak, far in the distance (see inset), was my destination.  I'd been looking at Little Mt. Pilchuck. 

The soft snow was difficult to ascend in the way that soft snow always is -- two steps forward, and one slip back.  But the real difficulty came closer to the summit, where the snow wraps around large boulders, forcing repeated decisions of whether one should trust the snow or climb over the rock. 

The boulder slopes gradually become steeper and more densely bouldered, leaving little room for snow, and a final boulder scramble delivers you, with a sigh of relief, at the 5,324-foot summit.  The Mountaineers have nicely restored, in recent years, a dilapidated fire lookout on the summit that had dated back to the very early years of the twentieth century.  The restored building is a great place to relax, eat lunch (watched carefully by large, hungry dogs), and study the photos and exhibits on display illustrating the original lookout and the way in which it was restored. 

The hike back down was almost as difficult as the hike up, at least until I returned to dry land.  The footing was always precarious, although there were some stretches that allowed for some enjoyable seat-of-the-pants glissading.

In August, when the snow is all or mostly melted, the Mt. Pilchuck hike is probably just a short, moderately steep hike to the top.  In late June, it was still a bit challenging -- not technically challenging, but challenging to muscles that had grown lazy as I sat about writing blog posts over the winter!

Lament of an addict

What's the deal with coffee?

As I routinely plunked down $3.01, yesterday, for a latte at a downtown Starbucks (warning: prices may vary in your area), I daydreamed of days when a cup of coffee and a doughnut, ordered in an average Main Street coffee shop, would set you back ten cents -- i.e., a nickel each.  (Back then, I of course had not yet learned to tolerate -- let alone crave and/or physiologically demand -- coffee, but I certainly was alert to the price of doughnuts.)

A nickel in, say, 1954 was the same as 43 cents in our inflated 2013 dollars.

Now, admittedly, my latte today had milk in it, as well as coffee -- but cream and sugar came free in our not-so-distant pre-espresso past.  And, also admittedly, as Starbucks reminds me, I'm paying not just for coffee, but for the total experience, the joy of immersing myself in the ambience of their magnificent cafés.  But whether espresso or "brewed," with or without dairy components, at a coffee house redolent of 1910 Vienna or at Sloppy Joe's Real Fine Eats,  I dare you to locate a cup of coffee anywhere for 43 cents in today's world.  For 43 cents, you won't find even a spoonful of instant coffee half-dissolved in a cup of hot water. For 43 cents, you can't get even one of those cardboard cups of luke warm dreck that comes pouring out of a vending machine.

On the other hand, in 1948, you would spend $249 for a Bendix washer.  In today's dollars, that would be $2,397.  A little pricey, right, even for the better washers available nowadays at Best Buy?

As a nation, we've found ways to provide far cheaper (and better) washers.  As well as TV's, vacuum cleaners, and even automobiles.

But coffee?  Not so much.

Cassandra enraged

Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, ante, at 578; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," ante, at 567; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising "[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution," ibid.? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court.
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 604-05 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting).


The penultimate sentence of the majority’s opinion is a naked declaration that “[t]his opinion and its holding are confined” to those couples “joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State.” Ante, at 26, 25. I have heard such “bald, unreasoned disclaimer[s]” before. Lawrence, 539 U. S., at 604. When the Court declared a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy, we were assured that the case had nothing, nothing at all to do with “whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.” Id., at 578. Now we are told that DOMA is invalid because it “demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects,” ante, at 23—with an accompanying citation of Lawrence. It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here—when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it. I promise you this: The only thing that will “confine” the Court’s holding is its sense of what it can get away with.
United States v. Windsor, Dkt. No. 12-307 (2013) (Scalia, J., dissenting)


The honourable gentleman should not really generate more indignation than he can conveniently contain.
--Winston Churchill

Annette Lake

I travel all over the world to hike, and yet -- strangely enough -- too often ignore hikes I've never taken that lie within fifty miles of my own house.

So.  Today's forecast was for warm and sunny weather -- to be followed by showers for the rest of the week.  It sounded like an excellent time to do a short hike, and so I did.  To Annette Lake.  Round trip about 8 miles (or 7½, depending on which guide you read).

The trailhead to Annette Lake is located just off I-90, about three miles this side of Snoqualmie Pass.   When I arrived, about 11 a.m., the fairly large parking lot (which also serves a Forest Service nature walk) was packed, with spill-over parking taking place on the side of the approach road.  I groaned.  But the weather was nice, and I was eager to hike.

The trail gradually climbs through thick forest for about twenty minutes, until it crosses the former right-of-way of the late, lamented Milwaukee Road.  The railway tracks have been removed, and the right-of-way, now called the "Iron Horse Trail," is used as a hiking and bicycle path that runs all the way to Idaho.  The Annette Lake trail crosses the Iron Horse Trail shortly before the latter goes through the 2.3 mile Snoqualmie Tunnel.

The trail to Annette Lake continues, ever more steeply, through forest, with limited views of the surrounding mountains.  The trail is in good condition, although not groomed to perfection like the Mount Si trail I hiked last month.  The trail surface degenerates at times to rough rocks or exposed tree roots that have to be negotiated like stair steps.  But in general, it's a steep but moderate trail.  Coming down, I encountered a kid, about five, rounding a bend on his own, leaving his lagging parents out of sight, some hundred yards behind.  If he can do it, so can you!

 The trail essentially switchbacks its way up the side of the Humpback Creek canyon, the creek being lost from view in the depths of the forest, except near the outset when crossed by a footbridge.  For about the last mile, the trail stops gaining elevation as it traverses a ridge, and then drops slightly into the cirque in which you find Annette Lake. 

It's a pretty lake, with places to sit along its shore and meditate as you munch on your sandwich and apple.  The mountains forming the cirque were still partially covered by snow, and the trail crossed several patches of well-packed snow just before reaching the lake.  There's an impressivel high waterfall on the opposite side of the lake.  A shoreline trail goes part way to the falls, but the steepness of the cliff on that side of the lake precludes you from reaching the falls themselves, at least by trail. 

Despite the appearance of the parking lot, the crowds on the trail weren't bad at all -- certainly nothing like the Mount Si trail.  Lots of couples in their twenties and in their sixties and up.  Lots of groups of women in those age groups hiking together.  Back in my early days, hiking was considered a manly sport, and favored women were allowed to accompany the menfolk.  Times have changed.  Most of the women seemed supremely self-confident, and many of the younger men accompanying them looked as though they wished they were doing something else -- killing zombies on their computers, perhaps?

I passed a Scout troop, in full uniformed regalia, taking a trail-side rest stop, on my way up.  After lunch, as I started back down, I ran into them again as they finally approached the lake.  The scoutmaster, bringing up the rear, rolled his eyes at me and muttered, "Thank god it was only four miles."  It's reassuring, I guess, that kids still are kids.

A short enough hike to get me back to Seattle by mid-afternoon.  Very enjoyable, but my next one will be longer!

Regrade reborn

Washington Hotel atop Denny Hill

Seattle, like Rome and San Francisco, is a city of hills.  One of those hills -- the one most closely associated with downtown -- was Denny Hill. Note that I say "was." The hill stretched out over a fairly large area, roughly a hundred feet in height, with a summit at about Third Avenue, between Stewart and Virginia.  Atop Denny Hill was the magnificently Victorian "Washington Hotel."

The Washington Hotel no longer exists.  Nor does Denny Hill.  The city, fearing that a hill would impede the rapid development of downtown northwards, washed the hill into Elliott Bay in a series of "regrades" between 1900 and 1930.  The hotel was demolished in 1906.  To the northeast, the Denny School, described as "an architectural jewel... the finest schoolhouse on the West Coast," succumbed during the final stage of the regrade in 1928.

Ironically, although the regrade was undertaken to open up flat land for future development, the Great Depression removed all demand for buildable real estate.  The vast area, known as "the Denny Regrade," remained until recently a bleak, boring expanse of single story buildings surrounded by acres of parking lots and used car lots.  Although I do a lot of walking, I rarely walked through the regrade. Like Gertrude Stein's Oakland, there was no "there" there. So boring and so unattractive was the area that every so often some one would humorously suggest, as a major public works project, "the reconstruction of Denny Hill."

The term "Denny Regrade" has been heard less in the past twenty years or so, probably because developers disliked the unfortunate image of undeveloped desolation it brought to mind.  The Regrade has been carved up linguistically into two new neighborhoods -- "Belltown," closer to the Sound to the west, which for some time now has been a trendy place to live, eat, drink and socialize; and the "Denny Triangle," east of the Fifth Avenue monorail, which merges, once past Denny Way, into South Lake Union proper.  Increasingly, however, in the public mind, South Lake Union proper is increasingly joined with the Denny Triangle as "South Lake Union," a single neighborhood built around Westlake Boulevard, the central corridor connecting the traditional downtown with Lake Union.

This lengthy backstory leads to the point of this essay.  Which is -- Regrade-wise, things are looking up!  In December 2008, I wrote a gloomy post about the state of the economy, noting that I could see no new construction starts under way in Seattle.  Since then, happily, I've observed an explosion of new commercial construction.  Much of it is in the old Regrade, or its South Lake Union extension, and much of it is being built by or for Amazon, the Seattle on-line retailer. Amazon has been constructing one building after another throughout South Lake Union.

During the past few years, while construction in general has been at a standstill, Amazon has been filling in the blocks along Westlake, near Lake Union. At the same time, partially in response to Amazon's expansion, new housing and retail has been constructed in the area, especially in the area where Westlake crosses Denny. The city has helped development of this neighborhood by laying track for the South Lake Union streetcar, and developing South Lake Union Park where Westlake meets the lake. The endless blocks I at one time avoided walking have suddenly become a vibrant and fascinating destination. Auto mechanic garages have been replaced by outdoor cafés, warehouses by shops; on-going construction projects guarantee that every visit rewards me with something new to applaud (or abhor).

But the most obvious new construction at present is at the downtown end of Westlake, where Amazon is well into excavation of the first of three large adjacent blocks on which it's constructing its world headquarters. The second block has already been razed to the ground, and now also awaits excavation.

Most of this development actually lies slightly to the north and east of the actual physical footprint of the regraded Denny Hill, but -- because sharing the same image of flatness and bleakness with the actual regrade itself -- has long been tarred with the same gray, gloomy epithet -- "the Regrade."

Now, I suppose, we should call its sparkling reincarnation "Amazonia." A resident of the old Washington Hotel, looking out his window at the city below him, would have found it difficult to imagine the changes that were to take place a century later.

Whither now the Whigs?

[Obama's] winning formula [in 2012]:  higher margins than John Kerry racked up against President George W. Bush in 2004 among blacks, Hispanics, Asians, city-dwellers and young voters, even as he suffered larger deficits among whites, rural residents and older voters.
--New York Times

That sentence popped out at me from an article discussing dissatisfaction with the president among some minority groups.

The article was interesting, but that sentence -- and it certainly said nothing new -- pithily summed up for me today's Republican dilemma.  How do the Republicans ever again win nationally when they depend for their support on whites, rural residents and older voters -- three demographic groups that are declining drastically in percentage of total votes, year after year?  (I view "older voters" as a specific phalanx of voters, maybe 65 and older at present, that is aging and dying off, their age group being replenished by baby boomers who do not, in general, share their values and/or prejudices.)

The obvious answer, and the one being pushed by "mainstream" Republicans -- i.e., "traditional" Republicans or big business Republicans or non-radical-right Republicans -- is for the party to ally itself with one or more of those groups of Obama supporters whose values over-all may actually be more conservative than liberal.  Middle class Hispanics and Asians, maybe, or libertarian young people. 

The problem with being an idealogical party, as opposed to a party with general principles, is that you paint yourself into a corner.  Non-mainstream Republicans -- those in ascendency in the House -- have rigid beliefs about immigration that make it impossible for them to appeal to Hispanics (or to many Asians).  They have rigid beliefs favoring foreign triumphalism and support for Israel, as well as rejecting legalized marijuana and same-sex marriage, that repel young libertarians.

By the time they've added up all the people they can't tolerate, or who can't tolerate them, they don't have much left to work with.  And, demographically, things are getting worse, year by year.

For all their rejection of all things European, the new Republicans have essentially formed themselves into a European-style political party, a party with rigid idealogical beliefs.  These parties do become governing parties in Europe -- not by being inclusive but by joining coalitions to form parliamentary governments.  The compromises come not from within, but in their negotiations with other parties.

How would that work in a presidential system?  And, more importantly, with just which political groups, not already within the party, would today's Republicans be willing to form coalitions?   

Republicans should note -- and this idea certainly isn't original with me -- that other political parties have also painted themselves into idealogical corners, trapped in corners from which they could only watch as history marched by.  They might want to consider the histories of the Federalist and Whig parties, and, although it was never a "major" party, the curious history of the Know Nothing party.

None of this is new to Republican leaders.  They fully understand their dilemma.  But the days are long gone, for both parties, when a Sam Rayburn or a Lyndon Johnson could crack the whip, and lay down the law for his rank and file.

If a serious immigration reform bill doesn't make it out of the Senate, or is derailed in the House, the Republican party faces a bleak future.  It will find itself, at best, a party of permanent opposition -- winning national elections only in protest against temporary missteps by the Democratic majority, never as mandates to enact its own programs.

Off with these clothes ...

Faster than a speeding bullet!
More powerful than a locomotive!
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
Look!  Up in the sky!
It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's SUPERMAN!!

The movie Man of Steel opens in Seattle tonight.  It received a luke-warm review from the Seattle Times.  I probably won't see it.

The reviewer, Moira MacDonald, writes:

This is no zippy super-hero adventure, complete with zows and pows and quips, but a dark meditation on good and evil, shot in shades of gray as clouds loom and brows furrow ....

Don't misunderstand.  I'm all in favor of dark meditations on good and evil.  But not attached to Superman, idol of my joyous youth. 

When I was a kid, America was still developing its post-war confidence.  We knew our hearts were pure, but that  our abilities still were weak.  We needed leaders whose powers were as great as their righteousness.  We needed superheroes whose goodness was as unambiguous as we believed our own to be. 

We needed Superman. A hero for our times, all for ten cents from DC Comics, or courtesy of Kellogg's Pep on the Mutual Network.

Today, we live in a world of irony and cynicism.  We now know that no one is pure, no one is wholly good.  All our acts and decisions are morally ambiguous.  We no longer want or need the original Batman, but a "Dark Knight."  Nor the original Superman, but a "Man of Steel."  We want heroes whose confusion matches our own.  (I'm only guessing, from the tone of the review, that this latest embodiment of the Superman legend is himself as psychologically dark and disturbed as the Batman of the Dark Knight series.)

Not for us a mild mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, a shy bumbler like ourselves who daily earns the contempt of his co-worker Lois Lane.  We no longer dream that we ourselves hide great powers behind our seemingly pitiful personal personas.    Man of Steel, according to the review, focuses primarily on Superman's difficulties in contending with grave concerns involving Krypton, his planet of origin.  This modern Superman has bigger fish to fry, obviously, than finding a phone booth where he can change clothes in time to save Lois from an out-of-control speeding car.  His concerns today are as remote from our own petty worries as were the Russian Tsar's hopes from those of his subjects. 

Folks today would be bored with the plots of yesteryear; they would laugh at the uncomplicated, moral earnestness of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne.  Hence these movie updates, giving us protagonists with more complex psychological motivation, not to mention cinematography with lengthier and more spectacular mayhem.

And I don't object.  But film makers should invent their own superheroes, ones that match the times -- not cannibalize the simpler dreams of yesterday's kids. 

At home with George

I knew, of course, that George Washington's home was called "Mount Vernon."  Just as Jefferson's was "Monticello." 

Here in the Northwest Corner, we even have our own "Mount Vernon, Washington," where our world-famous I-5 bridge collapse occurred last month.  (We even have -- so help me, I'm not making this up -- our very own "George, Washington" (population 501).)

What I didn't know, exactly, was where one might find Mount Vernon.  I mean, yes, I knew it was somewhere in Virginia.  I guess I vaguely pictured it as down near Richmond.  But, after my recent trip to Washington, D.C. -- I now know the truth.

On Sunday, I took the Metro a couple of stops south from my hotel -- adjacent to National Airport -- to Alexandria.  Back in the good old days, before the District ceded its Virginia donation back to Virginia, the District of Columbia contained three incorporated cities:  Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria.  So, Alexandria was sort of a big deal at the time -- quite the port on the Potomac -- and it's a fascinating city to visit today.  Lots of small, brick buildings that now house hotels, restaurants, bars, antique and bric-a-brac shops.  Alexandria Old Town resembles a large-scale Carmel, but less ersatz and built in the original colonial architectural idiom.

The walk from the Metro station to the waterfront was a full mile, but a mile of street so lined with interesting sights that the walk went by swiftly.  My objective was the dock where I was to catch the boat to Mount Vernon.  Because -- as I by then realized -- Mount Vernon is just a few miles -- maybe ten or fifteen -- down river from Washington.

At the dock, I quickly located the kiosk for the Potomac Riverboat Company, where -- for a mere forty bucks -- I secured a round trip ticket to Mount Vernon, including entrance fee to the site.  The 90-minute cruise, atop an awning-covered boat, was scenic and relaxing, with a continuous narration describing what we were seeing.  I had no previous experience with this area, so the talk was welcome (if at times a bit corny).

We arrived at Mount Vernon's wharf, diametrically opposite the grounds from the noisy official entrance for tour buses and autos, and strolled on our own up the hill to the "mansion." We had four hours to kill before our return to Alexandria.  The place was humming with tourists, but the only time the grounds seemed at all crowded was while we waited in line for the tour of the mansion, and shuffled through the mansion itself, hustled along from room to room at a steady pace.  The rest of the grounds, some 500 acres, including a substantial number of outbuildings, trails, gardens, a "pioneer farm," and livestock paddocks and stables, was there to be seen at our own pace.  Including the time I allowed for a fast lunch, I found four hours to be an appropriate length of time to spend.

George Washington considered himself primarily neither a politician nor a general -- but a gentleman farmer.  He reproduced, insofar as possible within the limitations of colonial life, the amenities of an English estate, but an estate that was virtually self-sufficient.  Everything possible was grown, manufactured, and/or serviced on the grounds (which at the time were a far more extensive eight thousand acres).  George experimented continually with new ways to improve the efficiency of the farm and the lives of his family and his workers.  The Washingtons lived a good life, and his hired workers appear to have been housed and fed well.

Slavery, of course, is the inescapable issue.  The Washingtons had a large number of slaves, both field and house slaves, who worked from sun up to sun down.  Although some of the slaves with higher responsibilities -- supervisors, dining room servants -- didn't seem too bad off, the great majority of slaves had diffiicult lives, often compounded by separation from family members except on Sundays.  On the other hand, hired workers doing similar work also had difficult lives in those days, and the Washingtons seem to have been stern -- but not cruel or despotic -- slave owners.  (George Washington's slaves were all freed at his death, pursuant to the terms of his will.  Martha, reportedly, was not pleased.)

For those of us who grew up and live in the West, "olden times" means the late nineteenth century.  Mount Vernon gives a fascinating introduction to daily life as lived at a certain social level, a century earlier, by Americans still strongly influenced by their British antecedents.  Mount Vernon -- at least as presented by those managing it -- gives a sympathic picture of our first president, and an understanding of important social and economic aspects of his life not emphasized in our high school history classes.

Potomac musings

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
--Abraham Lincoln (1864)

I watched Abraham Lincoln stare his eternal stare, gazing down the Mall toward the Capitol. 

Funny how a portrait (the Mona Lisa, for example) or a statue seems to change its expression each time you look at it, the expression sometimes reflecting more the mood of the viewer than the intention of the artist.

I happened to be in Washington, D.C.  No particular reason.  A few months ago, I realized it had been a long time since I'd visited our nation's capital.  I arbitrarily picked several days in June.  I returned to Seattle this morning.

I love to walk, and Washington's a walker's paradise.  After a day devoted to Smithsonian museums, I wandered about in the twilight, past the Washington monument (now enshrouded in scaffolding and surrounded by construction fences), down alongside the reflecting pool, and up the steps to Mr. Lincoln's memorial.  I stared at the creased face of the gentleman from Illinois for a while, trying to gauge his mood, and then sat down on the steps, gazing back toward the Capitol in the failing light.

I was surrounded by middle school and high school students, kids understandably far more interested in each other than in our Sixteenth President.  I suspect Lincoln would have understood, although I suspect that in his day, teenagers were, on the whole, a more serious and less undisciplined group. Maybe he would have seen the laughter and frivolity surrounding him as the happy fruit of his efforts to preserve the Union, well worth the horrible deaths that teenage boys in his own time suffered on behalf of that goal.

A day earlier, I had taken the Metro to Dupont Circle, planning to check out some of the mansions and embassies in that popular area, and then walk down P Street, across Rock Creek, and into Georgetown (which I in fact did).  I emerged from the Dupont Circle station and found myself smack in the tumultuous center of Washington's gay pride festivities.  The parade spread out for blocks along the very P Street I was to follow into Georgetown. 

I'm always a little puzzled by gay pride parades.  They bring to mind the analogy of a parade in support of Black/Afro-American rights -- a parade in which barefoot "darkies" ride on floats, playing banjos, eating watermelon, grinning and rolling their eyes at the viewers.  But, whatever. I suspect that Abraham Lincoln, had he been still alive, would have watched the weekend's goings-on in amused silence.

No, Lincoln's eyes didn't seem directed at the children running around, shouting at his feet.  Nor were they on Dupont Circle.  They were, as always, trained on the Capitol and on the government it represents.

He was watching a Congress grinding to a stop, derailed by a political party determined to prevent the government from effectively governing, as a means of persuading voters that -- because government is ineffective -- they should oppose any and all activities of government.

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
--Lincoln (1854)

Not so, says today's GOP.  Were Lincoln to step down from his Memorial and wade back into the sea of politics,  today's Tea Party Republicans would view the first Republican president with horror and contempt as a "RINO" -- a "Republican in Name Only."

But Republican obstructionism is old news.  Something new was also afoot. Once I arrived in Washington, the newspapers were full of stories of the recent leaks that had revealed the Administration's secret  surveillance policies.  President Obama, himself a constitutional law scholar, apparently has decided that our personal liberties are best protected not by the courts, not by traditional checks and balances --  but by himself.  "Trust me," appears to be Obama's announced approach to warrantless searches.  Trust him, and trust, by extension, all persons who later fill his office.

Washington looks more beautiful than ever.  The public buildings are gleamingly white.  The parks are well tended.  Once-dicey parts of town north of Pennsylvania Avenue have been gentrified, the sidewalks lined with open air cafés in which beautiful and/or powerful men and women sit and dine.

I loved my visit.

But what I saw also recalled thoughts of Rome's first emperor, Augustus Caesar.  The emperor who bragged that he had found Rome a city built of brick, and left as his legacy a Rome built of marble.  The emperor who modestly declined to call himself a king or dictator.  He was merely a consul of the Roman Republic, a consul who ultimately was persuaded to accept the honorific of "First Citizen."  The Senate still met.  The Republic's institutions continued to exist.  But, insofar as real decision-making was concerned, Augustus himself made the decisions. He essentially asked the Roman people to "Trust me."

Lincoln was frowning.  He looked troubled.  And had he, during his lifetime, been able to look ahead to 2013, he would have been troubled.  So should we be.

Falling down, falling down ...

Lucky indeed this week the Seattle attorney who had no depositions -- or, even more -- court hearings scheduled for Bellingham.  Bellingham, the county seat of Whatcom county (a county that hangs off the Canadian border), is a fair-sized city, and one that generates a fair amount of litigation not only for its own attorneys, but also for attorneys in Seattle.

The drive to Bellingham, up I-5, is a pleasant drive that takes about an hour and a half.  Time enough to compose your thoughts, or compose your oral argument.  Time to get out of the office, enjoy the scenery, and bill easy time to your client.

But not this week.  A week ago Thursday, as the entire nation now knows, a segment of the bridge spanning the Skagit river between Mount Vernon and Burlington came tumbling down.  The 70,000 vehicles that use the bridge daily were being re-routed onto city streets across smaller bridges.  It was not a pretty experience, as I understand it.

I have crossed the Skagit bridge innumerable times.  Never gave the bridge much of a thought.  It's possible to drive for an hour or so on today's freeways with no thought at all about the infrastructure that permits your driving hypnosis, that vacant stare as you follow the lane markers mile after mile on a smooth ribbon of roadway.  Unless the scenery is spectacular, or the bridge unusual, you hardly notice that at times you are driving a hundred feet or so off the surface of land or water.

Until a girder gives way, a bridge is down, and you find yourself staring down at water flowing past.

Luckily, and amazingly, no one was seriously hurt by the collapse, despite several cars' being dropped into the river, but the impact on economics and personal convenience has been far more serious.  For harried folks, like Seattle attorneys, who just have to reach Bellingham, Amtrak has temporarily added another train in each direction between the two cities.  A solution is not so easy for merchants in the area who depend on the freeway to deliver customers to their shopping centers.  Motorists poking along, bumper to bumper, have shown little interest in pulling out of line to do a little shopping.

Supposedly, the bridge will be sufficiently patched up to permit freeway traffic in another two or three weeks.  Meanwhile, we learn once again how our vaunted "self-sufficiency" as individuals depends on the reliability of an infrastructure on which many others have worked together, working to create and maintain it for our convenience.

Memories

Scientists -- and parents -- have long wondered why we don’t remember anything that happened before age 3.
--NBCNews.com

Actually, I -- for one -- do.

 My family moved from a small triplex unit to our first real house just one or two months before my third birthday.  I have distinct memories of quite a few events while living in the triplex, and also good memories of checking out the new house before the furniture was moved in.  (I recall being fascinated by the location of the electrical outlets, and how the normal outlets varied from the large three-prong outlet for the kitchen range -- and yet, despite this early start, I never became an electrician).

The article explains that "infantile amnesia" results from the rapid growth of the hippocampus during a child's early years, a proliferation of brain cells that causes memories to be lost as the hippocampus develops.  The hippocampus keeps track of where long-term memories have been stored; it presumably loses track of these locations during its rapid development.  A scientist was quoted as saying that his four-year-old daughter had detailed memories of a vacation a few months earlier.  "But four years from now she won't remember anything."

Don't bet on it professor.  My memories as a four-year-old are also rather clear.  Not day to day, of course, but memories of events that, for one reason or another, made an impression on me.

“The hippocampus matures slowly and probably doesn’t reach any reasonable maturity until we’re 3 or 4,” [Dr. Eric] Kandel says. “While 2- and 3-year-olds can remember things for a short time, the hippocampus is required for long-term storage of those memories.”

Either these scientists' data regarding storage and retrieval of memories are incorrect (based on my own highly-persuasive anecdotal evidence), or my hippocampus -- unlike the rest of my physiology -- was an exuberant early bloomer.

I should submit a paper based on myself.

Welcome to scouting

The Boy Scouts of America finally got around to changing its rules, yesterday.  Beginning in January, the organization's doors will be flung open, and openly gay boys will be accepted into the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Explorers.  I say "openly gay," because no one doubts or questions that gays who kept their mouths shut have been scouts for generations.

Immediately, news stories began reporting attacks from two opposite ends of the political spectrum.  First, gay activists are understandably outraged that openly gay men still will not be welcome as scout leaders -- that they are seemingly still equated with sexual predators.  A spokesman for one gay rights organization says that his group will continue pressing corporate donors to refuse aid to the BSA.

My own feeling is that scouting exists for the benefit of boys, not for the benefit of men -- however generous and well-meaning -- who wish to volunteer as scout leaders.  Offering a welcome to gay boys will provide an enormous benefit both to the boys and to the country in general -- helping both gay and straight boys to grow up with the self-confidence and all the other virtues that scouting attempts to instill.  Scouting, together with attitudinal changes occurring among their peers, may well help create a generation of future gay adults free of the crippling personality problems that have stigmatized many gays in the past.

Acceptance of gay leaders in scouting will come, sooner or later.  Such acceptance will be a step forward for gay equality, but that political step forward seems to me far less important than the opening up of scouting to all boys.  The BSA obviously faces enormous strains within its membership.  It should be rewarded for making the decision that it did -- not threatened with continued sanctions.

The other attack comes from conservatives.  Despite resigned acceptance of the change by the Mormon and Catholic heirarchies, there are a considerable number of evangelical groups who are insisting that their members pull their children out of scouting.  It's hard to tell whether they fear that contact with gay scouts -- sleeping in the same tents! -- is apt to infect their children, or whether they simply wish to punish the BSA for surrendering to "liberal" pressure, and promoters of the "gay agenda."

The best response I've read today came from an evangelical father, whose church is strongly opposed to the admission of gay scouts. 

"If I place this situation in the context of my religious beliefs, I'm forced to ask myself, 'Would I turn a homosexual child away from Sunday school? From a church function? Would I forbid my children to be friends with a gay child?' I can't imagine a situation where I would answer 'yes' to any of those questions. So how can I in this one?" he wrote.

This parent isn't interested in scoring political points or punishing the scout leadership.  He is concerned with his children, and their best interests.  If I wouldn't forbid my kids to be friends with a gay classmate, he reasons, why should I refuse to permit him to belong to the same troop?

Why, indeed?  And this is the sort of careful thinking that I hope prevails among conservative parents, once the shock of the decision wears off.  Some parents will decide otherwise, just as many parents once pulled their kids out of desegregated schools.  In the long run, however, I trust that the scouting program will not lose the hundreds of thousands of members that is now being prophesized by evangelical Protestant leaders.

Not hippies anymore

The University District's annual street fair is reputed to be the oldest such street fair in the nation.  Today, it's also the first each year of about twenty Seattle street fairs.   I wandered into it by mistake this afternoon, and ended up strolling the entire five or six blocks.

Scary to admit, but I well remember the street fair's very first year -- in 1969 (or 1970, depending on who you believe).  University Avenue ("the Ave") had by then become hippie heaven, attracting both University of Washington students and a large number of high school students, non-students, former students, wannabe students, and wouldn't-dream-of being students.  The Ave -- which a couple of years earlier had been merely a shopping area specializing in bookstores, restaurants, and other businesses catering to the university crowd -- had become what -- to shocked adults -- appeared to be a freak show, a zoo, an exemplar of American decadence, a multi-block cloud of psychedelic smoke.

It was hard to walk a block along the Ave without receiving at least five offers to sell various drugs.

The tradional merchants weren't pleased.  And the typical 1969 habitué of the Ave couldn't have cared less about what traditional merchants felt.  But some peacemakers apparently decided to effect, at least for a weekend, a reconciliation.  Actually, I don't recall exactly who first proposed the idea of a street fair -- to me, it seemed to just happen of its own volition.  But the Seattle Times has claimed (in a 1991 story) that it originated "as a gesture of good will between area merchants and "hippie" students and artisans."

My own recollection is that the street fair was conceived by idealistic young people as an alternative to the profit-hungry businesses along the Ave.  The concept was to offer goods and services to those who needed them, with payment being a necessary but secondary concern.  But my memory is hazy, probably dulled by all the second-hand smoke I inhaled.  At any rate, there were lots of psychedelic paintings for sale.  Lots of scented candles, homemade carpets, "powerful" healing oils, and the like.  There were performers dressed in torn jeans, bright clothes and peasant dresses; in feathers, painted skin, and lots of hair.

Finding myself on the Ave today, not having attended the street fair for years, I was interested to see how the concept has changed.  It's changed exactly as you'd expect, reflecting a university world where majors in African-American studies, women's studies, sociology, English, and philosophy have largely given way to majors in engineering, business, computer science, and pre-med. 

College kids -- scrubbed and well-groomed, with cheerful smiles replacing the cynical sneers or stoned grins of yesteryear -- stroll along, often with their parents.   The merchandise -- most of it still small arts and crafts rather than commercial manufactures -- appears to be made with far superior ability and technique, and is much more tempting to purchase.  The food -- much of it now specialty ice cream -- looks delicious and is much harder to resist.

In place of ad hoc musical performances, formal, scheduled musical events are now being offered at a couple of venues along the Ave, featuring local bands and singing groups.

The street corner buskers and solo musicians remain, although today's music is naturally the music of our own era, rather than 60's rock, supplemented by recitals by a few surprisingly talented classical musicians. (I listened for some time to a teenaged cellist, who had drawn an appreciative crowd about him.)

In a sense, today's street fair seems a betrayal of everything the "hippies" of 1969 held dear. The hippies lost; "the Man" won. But, in another sense, many of the social goals of the young people of 1969 have been accomplished. We all became "the people our parents warned us against." And, eventually, so did our parents.

As the years passed, we merely took a bath and cut our hair. And prepared to buy our marijuana at state-licensed stores. As I walked along the Ave, I saw the results.

Into the western Pamirs

After this past week's sybaritic visit to sunny Santa Catalina, it's time to pull myself together and confront the strenuous adventure that I -- for some unknown reason -- have committed myself to undertaking in September.

I've never been to Central Asia.  What do I know about Central Asia?  Well, it used to be part of the USSR.  It lies, historically, on the old Silk Route to China.  Its peoples were pawns in the Great Game between Britain and Russia in the nineteenth century.  And, of course, that Russian fellow, Alexander Borodin, wrote some rather nice music about the "Steppes of Central Asia."

That's about it.

Most of my visit this year will be not to the steppes -- the flat grasslands -- but to the mountains of Tajikistan.  These peaks, the Fann Mountains, constitute a western section of the Pamirs.  I'll be hiking with a British trekking company, a group of no more than twelve hikers.  We'll be hiking and camping in the Fanns for eleven nights.  Compared with my 2011 climb to Renjo La, in the Everest region of Nepal, the altitudes I encounter on this hike should seem somewhat trivial -- most of our campsites will be in the area of 12,000 feet.  We'll be doing a lot of up and down hiking, however.  We'll be hiking about six or seven hours each day, while dipping down maybe 3,000 feet into canyons and regaining the same elevation before dark.  

We also have a personal option, near the end of the trek, to climb to Chimtarga Pass at about 15,000 feet.  (I've discovered that these options tend to be "optional" only if one doesn't mind wholly surrendering the hard-earned respect of his fellow hikers!)

As a treat, once we emerge from the mountains at the end of the trip, we'll drive across the border into Uzbekistan, where we'll spend two nights in the medieval city of Samarkand -- a central city on the Silk Route, conquered in turn by Alexander the Great, the Muslims, and the Mongols, and made capital of his empire by Tamerlane in the fourteenth century.  A lot of history, a lot of architecture.

We end our trip by taking the train from Samarkand to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, and thence flying home.

I have just four months to get myself in shape for some vigorous hiking, and to read up on my history of Central Asia.  The time will go fast.  I doubt if I'll ever get around to following the trekking company's advice that I pick up some useful phrases in Tajik before leaving home -- someone had better be ready to translate for me!