In the moment

Glacier Peak and Image Lake

How had I allowed myself to become so busy?  How long had it been since I’d spent a day in the sun, eating sandwiches from a cooler and watching water ripple across the surface of a lake? Why do I so often behave as though there will be unlimited days to sit quietly with my beloveds, listening to birdsong and wind in the pines?
--Margaret Renki (New York Times)

We had hiked all day in rain the day before, climbing higher and higher above the Suiattle River in the North Cascades.  At six thousand feet, we had put up our tents in the rain, eaten dinner in the rain, and gone to sleep in the rain.  But when I awoke the next morning the sun was shining.

This was  1968, and the start of my first weeklong backpacking trip.  Jim (the same Jim with whom I hiked in Cornwall last month) and his friend Jason had been backpacking together since high school, so I felt very much the newbie.  I slipped out of the tent.  I marveled.  Where the day before there had been only clouds and swirling fog, this morning I was greeted by Image Lake, reflecting the image of Glacier Peak.

My friends were still asleep.  No one else was camped within sight or sound.  The air was crystal clear.  The birds were hopping around and singing with enthusiasm.  And the mountain seemed to have materialized magically out of nowhere.  I was exhilarated.  It was, as they say, a transcendent moment.  We had a long day of hiking ahead of us, but I was in no hurry to begin, or even to eat breakfast.

In the years that followed, I engaged in many backpacking excursions -- some a week long, some merely overnight.  I enjoyed a lot of beautiful scenery.  But I almost always was "goal-oriented" -- I had set myself a destination to reach, a peak that I was to climb, a number of miles I was to tramp.  The scenery was always there, and I certainly didn't ignore it.  But smelling the roses was a by-product of the hike, not its purpose or my major activity. Like a marathon runner, I was often too busy competing with myself, and achieving my goals, to meditate on what I was running through.

In Cornwall last month, I suspect that Jim -- like me -- was still goal-oriented.  Let's get to the B&B as soon as possible, was our silent mantra.  I found myself envying John, a geologist who was always ready to stop and examine both the terrain and individual rocks.  And Ann and Dorothy, whose knowledge and love of plants and flowers became obvious.  And I remember a relative, a physician, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of ornithology -- observing and identifying birds always fascinates him.

And then I read Margaret Renki's column in today's Times, lamenting how her life seemed one big rush to accomplish projects.  She had forced herself to take time to return to her home town to attend a funeral.  While there, she wandered about her old neighborhood, and pondered how much less harried and more enjoyable her life had been in her youth.

I found the place at the end of the road where rusted tracks emerged from the weeds, the exact place where my father had waited for his father to step off the trolley after work. I found the creek where my eighth-grade boyfriend first held my hand. I named to myself all the neighbors who had once lived on my street, every one of them gone now, as a scent drifted on the air that I couldn’t place. Then, finally: gardenia! It blooms in profusion in my hometown but not at all in Nashville, where I have lived for 32 years.

Well, sure, you say.  Everyone is nostalgic for childhood.  So what?  But this meant more than nostalgia for Margaret.  It was the trigger that revealed how, since childhood, she had lived more and more in her head and in the future, concerned with goals and things to be accomplished.  She lived less and less in the present, noticed less and less the people and places about her.

I don't have to be a geologist or a botanist or an ornithologist to live in the present -- although it can help.  I just need to be observant, to think about what I see, to marvel at nature and to marvel at the amazing diversity and complexity I see in the people about me.  I need to feel more and intellectualize less.  In fact, I might even find it useful to enjoy an experience without wondering how it can be converted into a blog entry!

Because, in Ms. Renki's words

I’ve recognized the reach of mortality for the better part of five decades. It is always hurtling toward us faster than spring turns into summer on a southbound highway. Faster than a sapling becomes a shade tree and a house becomes someone else’s home. Faster than a newborn baby becomes a man. And yet I conduct my life as though I have all the time in the world, filling my days in ways I can’t always account for when evening falls.

"Stop and smell the roses" is a tired cliché.  But a useful cliché.  Reminding us that whether we fill our days with questionably important goals to be accomplished or with rich experiences to be savored, time still passes, day by day.  Extra years aren't for sale.  But we can all use the ones we have in ways that are more satisfying.

Like watching the sunlight move slowly across the different ridges on Glacier Peak.

Conventional signs

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,   
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!"
--Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

While in Greenwich last week, attending a concert of only minimal interest to me, I was conscious that I was sitting upon -- or very near to -- the "prime meridian."  The British Empire, in all its narcissistic glory, determined in 1851 that longitude at any point across the entire earth should be determined with respect to its rotational distance from Greenwich, a suburban area of London that happened to have the Royal Observatory.

On a prior visit to London, sometime in the distant past, I had visited the observatory, and had enjoyed the pleasure of stepping back and forth between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere, between Longitude West and Longitude East.  I was eager to learn my longitude, east or west, while sitting at the concert, and knew that it was possible to determine it from my iPhone, but -- alas! -- was unable to locate the proper app to make the determination.

Only a day or so later did I discover that the longitude and latitude are to be found on the Compass app -- or, more precisely, on my phone, on the Compass sub-app within the "Extras" app.

I at least can tell you that my present longitude and latitude, as I type this post, are Latitude 47° 38' 7" North, Longitude 122° 18' 1" West.  How much fun it would have been to walk a few steps and watch my phone as my longitude switched from 1" East to 1" West.

Right?  Such are the joys of nerd-dom. 

I am reminded of all this as I read Eric Newby's account of his 1938 apprenticeship, at age 18, on a steel-hulled, four-masted sailing ship, carrying ballast from Belfast to Australia, in preparation for a return trip with a hold full of Aussi grain.  The book, The Last Grain Race, was Newby's first book, and is a finely told record of a form of commercial shipping that ended with World War II.

The book is full of technical data that are now, sadly, of only historical interest.  But among the data, the constant recording of latitude and longitude,  as read from the ship's navigational instruments, speaks the same language that we speak today.  Newby's narrative is full of reports such as

The upper topgallants and the mainsail were reset and by midday we were in 36° 39' 3" S, 14° 15' 1" W, having made 320 miles by log in the 24 hours.

The overall effect is fascinating; the repeated details perhaps less so.  We sympathize with certain of the crew whose navigational skills were minimal, or even based on fantasy.  Such as Yonny Valker, who maintained, despite all argument to the contrary, that longitudinal lines did not meet at the poles; in fact, he maintained, they were strictly parallel and met nowhere.  As proof, he offered a Mercator projection of the world map, showing parallel longitudinal lines disappearing into space off the map.  When told that, if he believed that longitudinal lines were parallel, he must believe that the world is flat, "Yonny looked cunning but did not answer."

Nor would he agree with Caroll's crew of the Snark that longitude and latitude were merely conventional signs.

Yonny.  You do understand that the lines of latitude and longitude aren't real, don't you?  That they're only on maps?

"Yeth they are," said Yonny with absolute finality.  "They are real.  AND THEY NEVER MEET."

The Last Grain Race is a fascinating narrative of a time not so long ago, but still very much over, when men sailed great ships, a narrative told with skill and humor by the writer who later described his mountain climbing adventures in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (which I discussed in July 2011).

In conclusion, I just re-checked my latitude and longitude on my phone.  The latitude is constant.  The longitude has moved to 122° 17' 60" W.  Either the tectonic plates have shifted beneath my seat, even as I type, or my iPhone app isn't infallible.  In either case, this bizarre discrepancy does not support Yonny's view of reality.

Longitude lines are just "conventional signs."  And they do meet at the poles.

Flexible tourists

(stock photo)

Susan and her 12-year-old son Leo were vacationing in France.  They were visiting Versailles.  Leo had been studying French, and she knew they would both enjoy visiting the famous palace.  But they found themselves there on a holiday weekend -- the grounds were inundated with tourists, and the lines were long.  With nervous regret, she abandoned their plans; they rented bikes, and spent the day riding about the extensive grounds of the palace.

She didn't regret her decision.  They had a wonderful day, far better than a day spent waiting interminably in line to crowd into a hot and stuffy château.  Leo was happy, and Susan was happy.  So happy, that they drove south to the Loire valley, where they went on long bike rides through the countryside.  When Leo got tired biking, and wanted to go back to the hotel and play gin rummy?  They went back and played gin rummy.

This was a feature article written by Susan Dominus in the New York Times.

It was a happy story, and it made me happy.  Then I had other thoughts.  The obvious ones, of course, were of the billions of people on earth for whom such a vacation would be beyond even the realm of fantasy.  Of the great disparities of wealth.  Of how unfair life often seems to be.

On the other hand, I could hardly argue without hypocrisy that the author should have given all her money to the poor and stayed home, sharing a crust of bread with her son.  And -- while the argument may be too facile and self-deluding -- it's true that money and the experiences money buys don't guarantee happiness.  Many people -- impoverished but satisfactorily fed and sheltered -- have lives filled with greater happiness and joy than those who occupy their hours flying first class about the world.

My more complex reaction occurred to me this afternoon, sitting outside a Starbucks on the Seattle waterfront, watching the tourists walk by.  How few of the passing children looked as though they were studying French in their spare time.  How few of their parents looked as though they might hop on a bike when their sightseeing began to feel too cramped.  How few looked as though they might ever find themselves traveling on their own about France.

The best family vacation of my childhood was a car-camping trip from our home near Portland to Glacier, Yellowstone, and Jackson Hole National Parks, with a quick excursion down to Salt Lake City, before returning home.  Besides gas for the car, we spent little along the way.  In most ways, it looked like the sort of travel that many of those passers-by on the Seattle waterfront might enjoy and might find affordable.

With three of us kids, ages two to ten, in a cramped car, I don't know how enjoyable that trip was for my parents.  But for us children, it was an adventure in wonderland.  It was one of the most memorable experiences of my childhood.

Where am I going with this?  In some ways, I suppose I'm contemplating class differences, but the differences are only indirectly related to class.  I guess, sitting in front of Starbucks, I began thinking about individual differences in experience and in desires, differences that exist independently of differences in wealth, education, and class.

Susan's decisions were largely based on what she felt Leo would most enjoy.  She did not disregard her own happiness, but her happiness derived from that of her son.  As she mused, Leo would soon be at the age where his life would be something she could observe, but not really share.  She wanted to share now his excitement and happiness, not his tiredness, frustration, and irritation.

Many parents would consider this attitude to be "coddling" the son by putting his wants ahead of their own.  That's one significant difference among groups of parents.

Many, many mothers would not feel comfortable riding a bike for any distance, with or without the company of their child.  My own mother was enthusiastic, and in some ways adventurous -- but I don't picture her biking around our home town, let alone along the roads of France.  Other mothers, especially today, would love the experience.  I watch them bicycle down my street daily. 

Susan initially showed some tendency to follow an itinerary rigidly, but she overcame that tendency after some reflection.  Many people feel, rationally or irrationally, committed to a plan once that plan has been drawn up.   They feel a fear of chaos, of ambiguity, of improvisation.

I could go on.  One could devise as many categories of tourists, perhaps, as there are tourists.  In my thinking, however, I was considering a duality between those who would love the kind of vacation that Susan and Leo ended up taking, and those who would have felt much happier if they stuck with Susan's original plan.  Today we shall see Versailles Palace, barring some natural disaster, because that's the plan.

Were my parents rigid or flexible on that highly satisfactory trip to Yellowstone? I was only ten; I don't really remember. I suspect we had a plan, but I also suspect that when we got fussy, or when my dad found a place he wanted to fish, or my mom decided we needed to find a motel where she could take a bath, they freely made adjustments. On the other hand, our parents had their own interests; keeping us happy was a significant objective, but only one of their objectives.

As is too often the case, I unconsciously classify people who think like myself as in some way superior to those who don't.  Susan's my kind of gal, and, to me, Leo's a lucky kid.  But if the parents love their child, even if that love causes them to be somewhat strict and rigid, things tend to work out fine, and everyone's happy.  People come in many flavors.  None is necessarily "better" than the other, any more than "sweet" is better than "salty," or "bitter" is better than "sour."  De gustibus, etc.

But personally, as I say, I think Leo's a lucky kid.

Kernow A'Gas Dynergh**

As I stepped off the train in St. Ives, where I was greeted by my four fellow hikers, and looked out over the twisted, picture-book streets of the town -- a larger town than I'd expected -- I knew I was going to love Cornwall.  What I didn't yet fully realize was that Cornwall, in return, had some physical demands in store for me.

My college friend Jim, his brother John, and their respective wives Dorothy and Ann had hiked with me last year in Scotland.  This year's hike was to be more wildly scenic, and considerably more physically demanding than had been Scotland's "Great Glen Way."  In nine days of actual hiking, our official mileage was 99 miles.  But several of our accommodations were located somewhat off the trail, and my phone's pedometer gave me a total of 111 miles.

We began the hike in St. Ives and hiked counter-clockwise along the coast to Falmouth.  The largest town between those endpoints fell midway at Penzance, where we spent a rest day.  (Although I "rested" by logging another 6.9 miles just wandering around Penzance.)

The first day was extremely difficult hiking -- not because of altitude changes, but because of the rocky terrain we passed over.  At times, the trail was nothing more than a route over fields of boulders.  That first day was only six miles, but felt much longer.  The second day was longer, but not quite so difficult, and the trail became increasingly conventional as the days passed.

The scenery was magnificent -- rugged coast lines, with rocky promontories and sandy coves.  Historically, this was smuggler country, where locals considered smuggling simply another profession.  Shipping was important, and sailing was difficult along the Cornish coastline.  Salvage of wrecked ships, like smuggling, was just another way to make a living.  As one church leader prayed:

Dear Lord, we hope that there be no shipwrecks, but if there be, let them be in St. Just for the benefit of the inhabitants.

It was also mining country -- tin, which was an important export from Neolithic times up until the 20th century, and the beautiful serpentine rock.  The mines and smelters are abandoned today, but the structures are still in place -- stately stone buildings, in various stages of ruin, reminiscent of ruined castles and fortifications. 

We arose each morning to a sumptuous breakfast, then hiked all day -- perhaps stopping for tea and cake if we happened on a tea house, often stopping for an improvised lunch, until finally -- finally -- we arrived at the next night's accommodation.  The names of the towns in which we slept ring with the accents of Cornwall -- St. Ives, St. Just, Porthcurno, Penzance, Porthleven, Lizard Village, Coverack, Mawnan Smith, and Falmouth. 

Every B&B or small hotel was different, every proprietor's personality was unique.  Including that amazing woman in Coverack who, in "high camp" accent, called us her "darlings," greeted us with gin and tonics as she introduced us to her bohemian friends, insisted that we bathe blisters in a bath of vodka, and, with a wink, suggested I leave my key in the door in case she decided to visit me at night.  It wasn't the Marriott.

We saw, of course, the most westerly point in England (Land's End), as well as the most southerly (the Lizard).  We also saw the beautiful Mount St. Michael -- cousin of the related French abbey at Mont St-Michel -- which is reachable by foot only during low tide.  We saw a monument at the spot where the first transatlantic "message" was sent (to Newfoundland) and received -- a simple Morse code "S" (dot dot dot).

Two of our hikers suffered severe blisters, and left the hike by summoned taxi at noon on successive days.  Spirits remained high, however, and after a day or so of recovery, both were back on the trail.

We finished our odyssey in historic Falmouth, where we visited the excellent maritime museum, and where I discovered monuments celebrating the the place where the first news arrived in England of Nelson's triumph at Trafalgar, and the place where Darwin returned to England on his craft, the Beagle.  It was hard to forget that England was a seafaring nation, a nation that considered the sea both its highway to the world and its defense against invasion.

Jim and I left Falmouth by train for London, where we were later met by Dorothy.  London -- very much the England of the cosmopolitan present, after a week of dwelling in its picturesque past.  As mentioned in an earlier post, I was enticed by Jim and Dorothy to a Mark Knopfler concert at Greenwich's O₂ Arena, joining tens of thousands of enraptured spectators.  It was, um, loud.

We spent our last night watching a local production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution.  Somehow, Jim and I ended up cast as members of the jury.  We of course vote for acquittal, to our later bemused chagrin.  Excellent production, very good acting.  Clever jurors.

Would I do it all again?  Of course.  But there are other hikes in Britain, just waiting to be sampled. 
-------------------------------

** "Welcome to Cornwall."  In Cornish, a Celtic language closely related to both Welsh and Breton.

As I was going to St. Ives ....

Land's End 
Most westerly point in England

After my planned visit to Kashmir, India, in March collapsed at the last minute, because of a crisis between India and Pakistan, I began holding my breath about the viability of my planned hike in May along the coast of Cornwall, England. 

My readers have been offered various previews of that trip, various references to oddities to be learned about Cornwall, various hints that the time for Cornish hiking was drawing near.  Always with my fingers crossed, fearing that talking about it would cause it also, like Kashmir, to evaporate .  Wondering if Brexit, originally planned for March 29, would lead first to riots, and then to the collapse of civil government by mid-May, requiring us to cancel this trip as well out of fear of being drowned in ale or pelted with scones upon our arrival.

But all seems calm in the still barely "United" Kingdom, and I intend to board an Icelandair flight to London via Reykjavik tomorrow afternoon.  Let the wild coastal hiking begin -- starting out from St. Ives, rounding Land's End and Lizard Point, and ending up in Falmouth!

The downside, of course, is that you'll be without your twice-weekly (or so) stories on the pages of what Trump would call "Your All Time Favorite Blog."  But I'll be back by the end of the month, and soon thereafter will be churning out the posts that have so cleverly eluded, to date,  a Pulitzer Prize.

The messy homeless

Seattle Times photo

Seattle in springtime has been beautiful this week, each day warmer until it reached the mid-80s today.  My neighborhood is bursting with flowers -- as is even my own house, the house of a guy who has never planted anything throughout his adult life.  And we are on the edge of the Seattle Arboretum, which has become a paradise of leafy trees and blooming rhododendrons and azaleas.

So it was discouraging a couple of days ago, as I was returning home from a stroll through the Arboretum, to find a decrepit tent erected a half block from my house, with a stolen Safeway grocery cart beside it.  The owner had made no attempt to conceal the tent -- it was perched right beside the arterial leading into the Arboretum, and was sitting right on the property line between the backyard of one of my neighbors and the Arboretum property.

The owner wasn't in residence, but this was clearly not the tent of neighborhood children, the sort of tent we played in as kids.  It was someone's short-term home.  Very short-term, as it was gone today. 

During the last couple of years, around twilight, I've seen a number of men, and a few women, carrying backpacks into the park.  I don't think they were flower lovers or bird watchers.

It's a dilemma.  Seattle is an expensive place to live, and houses are difficult to find, for either purchase or rent, even by people with money.  And we have a lot of people with little or no money roaming the city.  The city needs to provide housing of some sort for those who need housing but can't find it.  And it's struggling to do so.

But there's another problem.  A minority of those without housing don't really want housing.  At least, they don't want to live in a structured environment, the sort of housing the city hopes to provide.  Some are simply individualists who like to live under the stars -- but under the stars in a city, not in the wilderness.  Many are mentally ill.  And many are so drug addled they hardly know what they're doing.

Seattle has been -- and remains -- quite tolerant of homeless encampments.  It shuts them down only when they become unsanitary or overly offensive to others living in the area.  The Seattle Times ran a story a couple of days ago about efforts by volunteers to clean up these camps.  Seattle residents themselves, relative to citizens of many other cities, share this tolerance.  It isn't the camps that drive them nuts, so much, but the mess they generate.  Hence the volunteer efforts to both help the homeless to live in a safe environment, and to calm the nerves of more fastidious neighbors.

Many of the homeless try to keep their areas clean, but are frustrated by the messiness of some of their homeless neighbors.  The Times story reported that many of the homeless have a "hoarding disorder."  Who knew?  I thought I was the only one. 

But the problem is that only a portion of the homeless are capable of acting rationally.  I don't think a rational illegal camper would pitch a tent on a busy, major street, partly on a resident's property.  Many are too confused by mental illness or drug addiction to worry about finding a safe and hidden campsite, let alone living neatly and tidily.  As one such man, whose campsite was being cleaned up by volunteers, admitted -- he was embarrassed.

"This feels really awkward," he said.  "It's my mess.  I'm a drug addict -- I hate to fall back on that -- but I'll just be brutally honest.  I can't get my [expletive] together."

The volunteers are doing wonderful work, both for the community and for the homeless with whom they are working.  But the problem appears intractable.   Even if Seattle built beautiful free housing for those unable to pay rent, that housing would solve only part of the problem.

We have evolved a segment of the population that is unable to function in an organized society.

Canterbury Cathedral

In 1162, Henry II, King of England, nominated his closest friend, Thomas Becket, to be Archbishop of Canterbury.  The Pope duly approved the appointment. 

From that point on, everything went downhill for Henry -- I'm reminded of Trump's appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general.  Becket's newly-acquired loyalty to his God proved superior to his long-standing friendship with his King.  Becket argued repeatedly for the rights of the Church as opposed to those of the Monarchy.  In a fit of rage, Henry uttered the fateful words -- "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"  Four knights did just that, on December 29, 1170, attacking Becket and dashing his brains out in his own cathedral. 

The story is familiar to most of us from the Jean Anouilh play, made into the 1964 movie starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole.  It has special meaning to me, because in 1961, I wrote my junior year history thesis -- some thirty pages with voluminous footnotes -- on a topic relating to the dispute between the King and the Archbishop.

I visited Canterbury Cathedral for the first time when I was 21, just three months after completing my thesis.  The Cathedral was sacred ground to me, like walking through an incarnation of my own research and writing.  There, I told myself, was the spot where Becket was stricken down by four swords.  And over there was the place where King Henry voluntarily submitted to a lashing by four monks, doing penance for his part in the death.

I visited the second time when I was 31, while hitchhiking in England with my friend Jim.  I guess I was less awed that time, especially because I was with another person, and we had similar senses of humor.  We hadn't yet had breakfast.  We sat down on the grass in the middle of a cloister, poured dry cereal and milk into our aluminum mess kits, and dined.  We were unaware that The King's School (founded 597 A.D.) was located on the cathedral premises until a line of smartly-uniformed students came pouring out one of the doors onto the cloister, did a double-take, and stared at us with delight and amazement.  A priest came rushing up and told us that this simply wouldn't do, dear boys, and hustled us and our unfinished breakfasts off the premises.

I hope to visit the cathedral for the third time next week, the day before I climb aboard a train headed for St. Ives, Cornwall, where I'll join my fellow hikers.  I suspect my visit will be neither so filled with awe as in my first visit, nor so oblivious to proper standards of behavior as in my second.

In writing my junior thesis, and in both my earlier visits to the cathedral, I approached Canterbury with the attitude that I was doing homage to the site of a martyrdom.  Thomas Becket was canonized just two years after his death, and it was while they were making a pilgrimage to honor St. Thomas Becket that Chaucer had his fictional pilgrims tell their "Canterbury Tales" a couple of centuries later.  Aside perhaps from those with strong anti-clerical leanings, most people view Becket as the hero of the tragedy -- not only as a religious hero but as a symbol of resistance to the absolute rule of kings.

An exception might be the writer André Aciman.  As a 14-year-old boy, he first viewed the Oscar-winning movie in 1965, the year his family was to be driven from Alexandria. He recalls the movie's being the sensation of the European community in Alexandria.  He himself was obsessed by it, saw it every night for a week, and has continued seeing it whenever possible ever since.  He claims to know by heart much of the film's dialogue.

And to him as a boy, the hero -- or at least the man with whom he could identify -- was not Becket, but Henry II.

The King, one senses, has lost everything he cared for and is now condemned to wander the icy, wintry palace rooms, learning, as he says, "to be alone again."
…
I, too, like King Henry II … was learning how to be alone.  In this, I had found a sister soul.  My sympathies were always with the lonely King, never with Becket, or the honor of God.

--A. Aciman, False Papers, "Becket's Winter"

Aciman certainly gives me insights to consider, and perhaps new empathy for the powerful -- if lonely and bereft -- King Henry.
But I suspect that, as I view Canterbury Cathedral next week, my hero will still be Burton's St. Thomas Becket, not O'Toole's King Henry II.

Primavera a Levanto

Next spring, as some of you know, I celebrate a landmark birthday.  (For purposes of this post, we shall designate it as my 30th.)  I'm arranging a two-week celebratory stay in Italy, which -- to this point -- some 28 persons, in addition to myself, have indicated a desire to attend.

I don't fool myself that my birthday -- rather than any old excuse to hang out in Italy -- is the chief drawing card.

Anyway, as always, my motto is that if you want something done the way you want it done, you do it yourself.  Hence, I myself am planning the logistics for this extravaganza.

We have picked Levanto -- a beach town on the Ligurian coast, between Genoa and Pisa, as the destination.  Levanto is a gateway to the Cinque Terre, five small, impossibly picturesque villages hanging on hills overlooking the sea -- all of them reachable from Levanto by both mountain hiking trails and railroad.  In high season, the area is overrun by tourists.  We will gather in late May -- a couple months after my actual birthday, but a time when the weather is becoming recognizably warm and "Italian," and (hopefully) before the crowds of summer descend.

My original plan was to find a small town where I could sit, drink espresso, and mull over my life for two weeks -- with friends invited to drop by for visits.  But, like Topsy, the plan just grew.  They say that planning a vacation is, for many, half the fun -- and I find that it's an aphorism that applies to me.  So I'm enjoying the experience of finding ways to fit some 29 people into residences in a small beach town, all in the same two-week period.

Luckily, the relatives and friends invited are, with few or no exceptions, pretty laid back and accepting of whatever comes their way.  In my experience, moreover, long hours in the Italian sun, nourished with pasta, wine, gelati, and strong coffee, only accentuates that pleasant languor, that relaxed sense of la dolce vita. 

I have a year to complete arrangements.  While I refuse to wish a year of my life away, I admit I'm looking forward to Birthday 2020.

The Bell

An abbey of cloistered nuns hidden in the dense woods of Gloucestershire, in the West of England.  Across the small lake from the abbey, Imber Court -- an ancient manor house, now somewhat decayed, where a small band of Anglican men and women attempt to live, under the shadow and guidance of the abbey, lives falling half way between that of the mundane, modern, daily world and the exalted and almost medieval world of those subject to religious vows. 

Religious sincerity, inter-personal strife, ancient legends, self-delusion, jealousy, and revenge -- all take place within a small, self-contained world reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel.  And in the lake -- legends of an ancient bell that long ago flew from the abbey into the lake in response to a bishop's curse.

I first read Iris Murdoch's The Bell when I was in my twenties, and those were my vague memories of what I had read.  I have never read any other novel -- and there have been twenty-five -- written by Ms. Murdoch, but a recent article about the author encouraged me to re-read The Bell.

Murdoch, a graduate of Oxford, where she pursued a course combining literature and philosophy, and a fellow at Cambridge where she did post-graduate work in philosophy, taught philosophy at Oxford for fifteen years in the mid-1950s.  She wrote her first novel in 1953.  The Bell (1958) was her fourth work of fiction.

I detail her background to emphasize that Iris Murdoch's novels -- which are quite readable, and many of which were quite popular -- were not superficial pop fiction.  However, I'm afraid that's how I read The Bell on first reading -- as a rather curious, almost Gothic adventure.  After re-reading the 1999 introduction (in my edition) by A. S. Byatt, I realize that even this time around I missed many of the philosophical currents in the novel. 

Therefore, I warn you that my comments are those of a reader trained in neither philosophy nor literary criticism.  I hope merely to suggest why I enjoyed it and why you might find it a good read.

Murdoch writes the novel formally in the third person, but writes from the viewpoint of three characters in alternating chapters -- Dora, Michael, and Toby.

Dora is in some ways the main character, and may be viewed as representing a typical modern type -- she has no belief system, she reacts rather than thinks, she sees herself as practical-minded and yet is intimidated by the high-minded people about her at Imber Court.  She comes from a lower middle class London background, has studied art although she has no real talent, and has married Paul, a totally unsuitable spouse who is considerably older than Dora, is an intellectual of sorts, and is rigid in his thinking and selfish in his dealings with other people, especially Dora.

The story begins with Dora's arrival in Imber, where she has come to rejoin her husband after she had briefly "abandoned" him.  Through her eyes, we picture Imber -- luxuriant in vegetation, imposing in architecture, and filled with people who seemingly share a religious commitment and dedication which is wholly foreign to her way of thought.  Imber -- the abbey, the Court, and the surroundings -- are described in exquisite detail, but even so I wished a map had been provided.  But it wasn't necessary -- the detail is provided to create an impression of intensely dense surroundings, not facts essential to follow the story.

Dora arrives by train at the same time as James -- a co-leader of the Imber group -- and as 18-year-old Toby.  Young Toby has had an excellent upbringing and "public" school education.  He is innocent, happy, adventuresome, and religious, and he wishes to spend a portion of the summer at Imber before beginning his studies at Oxford.

On arrival, they meet the other members of the religious community, most critically Michael, who has inherited the Imber Court property and who, together with James, leads the community. 

The community engages in agricultural work, and is developing its own religious program -- a very "high church" program, parts of it in Latin, that observes the traditional monastic daily hours  -- with some guidance from an Anglican priest who also offers daily Mass.  The Abbess from across the lake is revered by all, and communicates rarely but with wisdom and compassion when she does.

Even the casual reader picks up the fact that James and Michael -- who are on excellent terms with each other and are equally dedicated to the Imber community -- have differing ethical philosophies.  James believes ethics is simple; we know the rules, and all we need to do is follow them,

The good man does what seems right, what the rule enjoins, without considering the consequences, without calculation or prevarication, knowing that God will make all for the best.  He does not amend the rules by the standards of this world.  Even if he cannot see how things will work out, he acts, trusting God.  He does the best thing, breaking through the complexities of situations, and knows that God will make that best thing fruitful.

Several days later, Michael delivered his own sermon, in which he compliments that of James and never suggests that their two sermons said quite the opposite in some ways:

We must not … perform an act because abstractly it seems to be a good act if in fact it is so contrary to our instinctive apprehensions of spiritual reality that we cannot carry it through ….  We must work, from inside outwards, through our strength, and by understanding and using exactly that energy which we have, acquire more.  … This is the struggle, pleasing surely in the sight of God, to become more fully and deeply the person that we are; and by exploring and hallowing every corner of our being, to bring into existence that one and perfect individual which God in creating us entrusted to our care.

The plot itself is simple and somewhat melodramatic.  As a teacher, fourteen years earlier, Michael had fallen in love with Nick, one of  his students.  Nothing had "happened" beyond long, intimate conversations, and Nick's hand, once, flirtatiously on Michael's knee.  But, in a moment of religious scruple, Nick had "confessed" their mutual affection, and Michael had been fired.  Nick, through an improbable coincidence, has ended up arriving at Imber, now a bitter alcoholic, and Michael has avoided him so far as possible.  Meanwhile, history repeats as Michael finds himself attracted to Toby.  Again, nothing happens aside from a quick, impulsive kiss, quickly regretted.  Nick learns of it, however, and -- apparently jealous and offended at being ignored -- orders Toby to "confess" Michael's attraction to James, which he does.  James is upset, but by then other developments are causing the Imber group to break up. 

As a final affront to Michael, Nick blows his own brains out with a shotgun.  Michael, who still cared for Nick despite Nick's sad degeneration, is overwhelmed with guilt.

Michael meets with the Abbess and reveals to her the entire story.  She is sympathetic, but suggests that Michael should have been more aggressive in approaching Nick and trying to help him, rather than worrying so much about his own feelings, fearing for his own moral purity and a possible revival as adults of the prior closeness they had as teacher and student.  In other words, Michael should have followed his own sermon, rather than acting according to James's more rigid standards of conduct.

And what about the bell of the title?  Oh there's a bell all right.  In fact, two bells.  I strongly suggest you read the book to learn about them.  Because … this post already is too long!

Trains for the sake of trains

Life is a journey, not a destination,
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always keep Ithaca in your mind;
to reach her is your destiny.
But do not rush your journey in the least.
--C. P. Cavafy

Lee Wachtstetter, who turns 90 next month, has lived aboard a cruise ship for the past 13 years.  She prefers it to a retirement home, and she is warmly welcomed by the crew.  The fare, after discounts offered by the cruise line, amounts to about $100,000 per year.  She doesn't disembark when the ship is in port -- she's seen it all already.

For Ms. Wachtstetter, cruising isn't about exotic destinations.  It's all about living a comfortable life aboard ship.  It's all about the journey.

I tell you about this lovely lady for a reason, aside from my finding her lifestyle to be genuinely interesting.  I want to desensitize you, to make what I'm about to tell you about myself seem tame and rational by comparison.

Sunday, I'm taking a train to Oakland, California.  Monday, I'm flying home.  Why am I traveling to the city about which Gertrude Stein famously declared, "There is no there there"?  And leaving again so hurriedly?  Not because of the destination, clearly, but because of the journey.

If you've followed this blog for several years, you know that I love trains.  Always have.  I traveled on sleepers from Portland down the Valley to Roseburg with my mother, to visit my great grandparents, when I was 3 and 4, and to Sacramento when I was 6..  I traveled alone by train to Chicago, and back again, when I was 14.  I traveled from Seattle to Boston ten years ago.  I've traveled overnight from Nairobi to Mombasa, and from Surat Thani to Bangkok.  And all over Europe, at all stages of my life.

Furthermore, to establish my point beyond fear of contradiction, by the age of 10 I had virtually memorized the Lionel Electric Train Catalogue.

I last took the train from Seattle to Oxnard, CA, at Christmas 2017.  But nothing since.  It's time for a train ride.

As a student, I often traveled as cheaply as possible.  As a concession to advancing age, I now do my overnight travel in a roomette.  The fare is considerably higher than coach, but I'll get lunch, dinner, and breakfast included in the fare.  The scenery is great, the meals aren't bad, drinks in the lounge car are always available, and -- for me, but not for all folks -- bed in a gently swaying roomette is conducive to a great night's sleep.

I leave Seattle at 9:45 a.m. Sunday, and arrive in Oakland at 8:35 the next morning.  I then transfer to a regional train for an eight-minute ride to the Oakland Coliseum station.  From there, I transfer to BART's odd little automated, unstaffed shuttle that runs from the station to Oakland airport.  There, I'll rent a car, and drive to Palo Alto, crossing the Bay on either the San Mateo or Dumbarton bridge.  I'll revisit old student haunts, pretend I'm still 18, deplore changes to the campus while envying the kids who are still students, and all too soon find it time to return to Oakland.

Thence, by Alaska Airlines back to Seattle.

I'm nuts?  No doubt.  But then, aren't we all in one way or another?  Some of us just don't reveal it  to the world in a public blog.

You can't go home again

I think of the … young man of fourteen I used to be back then, and of myself now, and of the person I might have been had I stayed here thirty years ago.  I think of the strange life I'd have led ….  And I think of this imaginary self who never strayed or did the things I probably regret having done but would have done anyway and don't wish to disown, a self who never left Egypt or ever lost ground and who, on nights such as these, still dreams of the world abroad and of faraway America....

I wonder if this other self would understand about him and me, and being here and now and on the other bank as well -- the other life, the one that we never live but conjure up when the one we have is perhaps not the one we want.

--André Aciman, False Papers, "Alexandria: The Capital of Memory"

As six months of student life in Florence, Italy, drew to a close, one of my classmates pointed out that our time of feeling at home in Italy was almost over, and that it had been a feeling that would never return.  We probably would return to Florence in the future, she said, but always as tourists.  Not as men and women who felt -- however ludicrously -- that we were honorary Italians.  And, of course, not as college students.

In fact, I have returned many times to Florence.  And every time I've returned, I've walked toward the Fiesole hills, walking up via della Piazzola to No. 43 -- to Villa San Paolo, our home away from home.  Each time, I've stood at the gate in front of the three-story stucco building, and looked up at the green-shuttered room that another guy and I shared for six months.  Each time, I've hoped for the sensation that I've returned home, that someone from the Villa would emerge to welcome me back.  That I could enjoy even an instant of reliving the past.  Each time, I walk away -- glad I returned but with a sense of disappointment.

I'll be back in Florence again in August.  I'm sure I'll once more make that pilgrimage.  I'm sure the pleasure, shadowed with disappointment, will be the same.

I experience analogous feelings whenever I return to my home town.  I wander the streets, visiting each of the neighborhoods in which I lived growing up.  Deep down, I hope to see a childhood friend emerge from one of the houses and greet me, a friend unchanged from the time I was 8 or 12 or 16.  As I walk about, I remind myself of the 1950s Twilight Zone episode in which an adult man dreams constantly of his happy childhood and eventually, miraculously, ends up a child again, playing baseball with other kids.  The guy seemed rather pathetic and creepy when I watched the show as a teenager.  I'm more understanding now.

The author André Aciman has made something of a career out of studying this phenomenon, this desire to relive our pasts, and the impossibility of doing so.  His obsession, if that's what it is, was triggered by his family's expulsion from Egypt when he was fourteen, torn from the once-cosmopolitan city of Alexandria where he was born and grew up.  Many of his essays, including the one quoted above, deal with his futile attempts to relive the past -- even just in his mind -- by returning to Alexandria. 

But beyond Alexandria, he has found the same difficulty in dealing with past experiences throughout his life.  For example, living in New York he is nostalgic for his experiences as a teenager in Paris, but when he arrives in Paris he feels nothing.  He can regain his nostalgia for Paris only through developing a nostalgia for New York, specifically, a nostalgia for those times in New York when he was brooding nostalgically for Paris.  (See "Square Lamartine" in the same collection of essays.)

He concedes, resignedly, that these labyrinthine workings of his mind and imagination drive his friends and family batty.

Most readers understandably read his best-selling novel Call Me by Your Name as a summer romance between two boys, and the movie based on his book certainly was just that.  But Aciman's underlying concern in his novel was our inability to return to the past, and his haunting sense that our lives split into parallel universes with each critical decision we make, in only one universe of which we can actually live.  

By the time we're middle aged -- or at least by the time Aciman was middle aged -- we are inundated with thoughts of the possible lives, both better and worse, we might have lived.  We go back to earlier times and places to see how we might have decided differently, but our lives in those earlier times can't be relived as they were originally lived.  We find ourselves instead watching a grainy, poorly preserved film image of our earlier selves.

We go back to Florence, hoping to still be the student we were then.  But we can't relive, with the proper intensity, our worries about future careers or our concerns about how our friends view us. Nor our joy at seeing for the first time sights to which we've since become accustomed -- e.g., that Easter morning after our nighttime arrival, stepping for the first time out into an Italian street and seeing ancient women, clad in black, vigorously washing and sweeping the steps in front of their buildings.  Instead, all we see now, standing on the same street and looking back, is a clueless kid wandering around a foreign city.

Most of us understand this, subconsciously at least, and have long ago made our peace with it.  Aciman has built a writing career struggling with its necessity.  And taking us along with him for the ride. 

Ghost language of Kernow

My visit to Cornwall will be my first to that part of England.  Saying that I'm visiting Cornwall is a bit more exotic than saying that I'm visiting Sussex or Yorkshire.  Cornwall is, in some ways, a rather odd part of England, not quite England but not quite anything else either.  Its English name derives from the Cornish kernou ("headland) plus the Anglo-Saxon walh (foreigner).  Cornwall's name today in Cornish is Kernow.

Like all of England, Cornwall before the coming of the Roman Empire was occupied by a Celtic people usually called the Britons.  Cornwall is way off in the southwest corner of the island, and its form of Celtic eventually differed from that spoken elsewhere.  A major resource of Cornwall was its tin deposits, which played an important part in its economy until quite recently.

The Roman occupation had less impact on Cornwall than on other parts of the island.  The Romans had more critical thing to worry about than control of  the isolated Cornish peninsula.  When the Romans finally left Britain, the Germanic tribes moved in -- the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.  They also had bigger fish to fry than subjecting isolated Cornwall.  Cornwall and neighboring Devon held out as the Celtic kingdom of Dumnonia until late in the ninth century when Dumnonia was finally brought under the control of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex.

The ascendency of Wessex caused some Celtic speaking people of Cornwall to flee across the channel to what then became known as Brittany, carrying their language with them.  The neighboring region of Wales was, of course, another Celtic holdout, and caused the English kings much more difficulty.  Celtic as spoken in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany was almost identical, with slight regional differences, as late as the twelfth century.  In fact, the Anglo-Saxons called Cornwall "West Wales," to distinguish it from the larger "North Wales."

Along with other regions, Cornwall became part of a unified Anglo-Saxon English nation by the eleventh century.  After the Norman Conquest, the Norman kings brought Cornwall under their control and appointed a Norman aristocrat as Duke of Cornwall.

Since 1421, to the present day, the eldest son of the English monarch has been automatically named Duke of Cornwall. 

Cornish continued to be widely spoken in Cornwall until Henry VIII not only abolished the use of Latin in the church, but required that all services be offered only in English.  The last native speakers of Cornish are believed to have died by 1800.  The language has enjoyed a small revival during the last hundred years.  I'm told I can expect to see occasional street signs written in Cornish as well as English, similar to the use of Gaelic in the Scottish Highlands.  Cornish (along with Welsh and Breton) is a Celtic language, as is Gaelic, but they constitute separate branches of Celtic and are mutually unintelligible.  (Today, I've read, even speakers of  closely related Cornish and Welsh would understand only "bits and pieces" of each other's conversation.)  In 2011, only 464 residents of Cornwall declared Cornish to be their first language.

Despite its rich local history, therefore, I doubt if I'll meet anyone who speaks (or understands) Cornish.  All Englishmen today speak English, even when their accents are mutually difficult to grasp.  And Cornwall has long been fully integrated into the English (now British) legal and political system, despite a modest political autonomy movement.  Such is the sadness, as well as the benefits, of a global civilization tied together by television and the internet.

Post-hike musical interlude

Mark Knopfler in 2017

I'll be hiking along the Cornwall coast next month, as I've mentioned on occasion, with some of the same people with whom I hiked in Scotland last year -- Jim and Dorothy, and some of Jim's relatives.  Following the hike, some (or maybe all) of us will end up in London for several days before returning to the States.

So, I get an email from Jim informing me that, while in London, he and Dorothy plan to zoom out to Greenwich (of GMT fame) to see a concert by Mark Knopfler.  Would I be interested in joining them?  The more musically literate among you will be incredulous, but that name meant nothing to me.  He used to sing, play guitar, and compose for Dire Straits, Jim added -- the name of a group that did ring some historical bells, but no actual tunes, in my puzzled mind.

I should explain that my appreciation of rock and pop music was tragically truncated long ago.  In the late 1960s, while not a fan like many of my peers, I did listen to the music then currently in vogue, and tried to keep up.  It was clear that the times were a-changin', and that it would be suicidal to be left behind, musically and otherwise.

 Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.

Right? Exactly. And it wasn't just self-preservation.  I actually liked much of the music of the late 60s.  Not as much as I liked Bach, ok?  But the two weren't actively competing.

A quick perusal of old LPs -- remember, you had to actually buy albums back then, you didn't just go to YouTube -- reveals purchases of the Rolling Stones, John B. Sebastian, Joan Baez, the Beatles, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Country Joe & the Fish, Simon & Garfunkel.  Sort of a mixed bag, but my selection demonstrates the era I'm talking about.

But by 1970, I was no longer in school, and my interest in current hits, and even my opportunities to listen to the radio, were fading away.   My friend Jim -- with whom I'm hiking next month -- visited me in San Francisco in 1969, and we went to the Fillmore West, a well-known venue for current music.  I was fascinated by the place from a typically (for me) detached point of view -- doing a sociological study, and observing with interest the psychedelic light show effects.  But the music itself just seemed loud.

I think the Fillmore West visit is my last memory of seeking out or trying to understand contemporary music. And, of course, in 1971 I began law school. Life as I'd previously known it came to a screeching halt, and my mind was crammed full of 17th century English precedents. Nineteen seventy-one -- the year the music died.

But putting that all aside, and returning to the present, I told Jim sure, I'd be happy to join them at the Greenwich concert.  Jim said we could pretend we were all 20-year-olds again, which sounded a little problematic, but, hey, I liked his spirit.  And if I've learned anything in life, it is that doing things outside your comfort zone is rarely enjoyable at the time, but still pays off in the long run in your ability to regale others with stories of your daring and open-mindedness. So I'll be in Greenwich on May 28.

And then finally, tonight, I did what I should have done at the outset.  I went to YouTube and listened to several clips both of relatively recent Mark Knopfler concerts from the past ten years, and of Dire Straits from the 1980s.  I found Dire Straits quite tolerable (although I was a bit amazed at the worship that many of the comments paid to them), but the later performances by Knopfler himself, seemingly aged and mellowed, accompanied by his intelligent commentary discussing his approach to singing and playing, actually quite enjoyable.

I may actually have fun.  Despite myself.

The kids return

Thirty-two years ago, I moved from the historically-Scandinavian Seattle neighborhood of Ballard to my present home, just south of the University of Washington.  My new home was in a quiet and dignified neighborhood.  Most of my neighbors were well past the first bloom of youth, many of them professors or in other staff positions at the university.  When I saw children outdoors, it usually meant that someone's grandparents were being visited.

In the past ten years, however, there's been a change in the 'hood.  Younger homeowners, many of them high tech workers -- employees of Microsoft, Amazon, and many smaller companies.  Furthermore, they began having kids.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, more and more houses now have tell-tale basketball hoops out in front.  I see more and more kids out on bikes -- earlier, in the company of doting and protective parents, but within the past five years, often alone or in the company of their age peers.  The 1950s revisited!

These changes aren't just my imagination.  The Seattle Times ran an article today reporting that as of 2017, the Seattle population under the age of 18 had risen to 115,000 -- the first time it exceeded 100,000 in decades.  Admittedly, the kid population in 1960, fueled by the Baby Boom, was 167,000.  Those were the golden days of kiddom.  The schools were crowded.  Seattle neighborhoods were quite similar to suburban neighborhoods, both in appearance and in the number of children present.  The city was so focused on the rearing and education of the next generation that I well recall -- I moved to Seattle in 1963 -- the Seattle Times printing the name and photo of each Boy Scout as he achieved Eagle rank. 

Then -- nationwide -- came the great hollowing out of the cities, as the middle classes, especially the white middle classes, fled the urban areas and their schools.  By 1980, there were only 87,000 children under 18 in Seattle, and Seattle had closed two of its more prominent high schools -- Lincoln and Queen Anne (Lincoln re-opens this fall, another sign of the times).

The tide has been reversed, but you still won't see photos of Eagle scouts in the newspaper.  Only 15.8 percent of Seattle's population, even now, is under 18.  (In 1960, that percentage was 30 percent.)  Seattle has the third lowest percentage in the nation of its population under the age of 18 (only San Francisco and Boston have fewer).  We still remain an expensive city in which to raise a family, and we would have fewer kids even now if our median incomes weren't so high.  The median income for a married couple with children is $161,000. 

Will the trend continue?  Will we have gangs of kids roaming the streets, doing wheelies on their bicycles?  Who can predict?  But not all couples seem to require children, when suitable substitutes are available.  We may have 115,000 children -- but we also have 150,000 dogs. 

Cats?  Cats refuse to speak to the census workers.

Traveling by thumb

"Nowadays, no one ever hitchhikes."  That was a nephew's response to a remark I had made about having hitchhiked once through a particular area of England. 

"No one" is an exaggeration.  But to a large degree, he's right.  Several reasons, I suppose.  There's always the perceived danger, although I strongly doubt that there's a greater abundance of dangerous characters lurking out there today than there were fifty years ago.  But not only have we turned into a bunch of helicopter parents -- we hover over ourselves as well, avoiding the darkness we fear all about us.

Another reason is that we're all -- by we, I mean you and me and most people reading this blog -- wealthier today.  The vogue for hitchhiking around Europe, especially, but around America as well, arose after World War II when not only was there a pent-up desire to get out and see the world, but also a lack of disposable income with which to do it.  Especially in post-war Europe, where for several years after 1945 you could still buy a lot of favors with a pack of American cigarettes.

Both before and after the war, young Europeans had developed a sense of wanderlust -- Fernweh in German -- to which the youth hostel movement had been one response.  Hitchhiking (as well as biking and hiking by foot) was a good fit with the widespread availability of youth hostels.

Now, when kids do travel about Europe -- which fewer seem interested in doing -- they travel by cheap airlines, or by trains, or by rental cars.  Their folks usually bankroll the summer's adventure.  If they choose, as they often do, they can afford to stay in hotels now, although hostels are still available and still attractive to a subset of the youth travel market..

In 1971, my friend Jim (with whom I'll be hiking (on foot) for a couple of weeks next month in Cornwall) and I hitchhiked in Britain and Ireland.  We hitched up the eastern side of England from London, to Cambridge, to Lincoln, and to York.  In Yorkshire, we stopped to visit Jim's British cousin, who was raising pigs in the rural countryside.  We continued up through Durham and Berwick to Edinburgh, all by hitching rides.  We met a lot of interesting drivers, whose accents became increasingly difficult to make out as we moved ever farther north. 

Finally, we met a Waterloo of sorts at Pitlochry, in Scotland, where the cars heading north were all filled with vacationing families bound for the Highlands.  They had no room for two grungy looking kids, although they often made politely apologetic hand gestures as they roared past.  We finally abandoned our hopes of going farther north, and took a train to Glascow, and then across the Irish Sea by ferry to Belfast.  After a stay at a hostel in a small seaside town north of Belfast, we got a ride to Dublin -- whoo-hoo!  After being awakened in the middle of the night by a cop, who found us sacked out in the largest park in central Dublin -- he just rolled his eyes and told us to be careful, once he heard our accents -- we toured the Guinness brewery down on the banks of the River Liffey, which for obvious reasons was a highlight of our Dublin experience, as was the related experience of listening to Irish folk music in a central Dublin pub.. 

My five weeks in Britain and Ireland cost me $160, excluding air fare. Jim thought me too lavish, and spent $140.

But I guess that in addition to perceived danger and economic improvement, there's a third reason hitchhiking has lost status and popularity -- we all today, including many teenagers, have become less free-wheeling in our travels.  We're more tied to schedules.  Today's kid can arrange hotel reservations throughout Europe for every night of his visit, by simply sitting at home playing with his computer.  In my travels, I sometimes would arrange a first night's reservation -- although I didn't in 1971 -- but to do so required an exchange of correspondence by mail and the complications of currency transactions.  It was simpler to just fly by the seat of our pants or, to change metaphors, play it by ear.  Things never worked out exactly as we had hoped -- Pitlochry being a prime example -- but we didn't care.  The complications, and how we handled them, were a major part of the experience.

I close my pondering on the glories of yesteryear by confessing that I have an appointment at the airport tomorrow morning to become approved for TSA Pre-Check.  God forbid that I should have to stand in line to go through airport security, let alone remove my shoes.  I'm a busy man; I can't waste time standing around doing nothing. I'll happily turn over all possible data, including fingerprints, to the Government -- in exchange for convenience.

Yes.  I've met the enemy, and he is me.