A New Birth of Freedom -- part 1

David Domke

Professor David Domke delivered a streamed lecture tonight entitled "American Democracy in Crisis," the first in a three part series entitled "A New Birth of Freedom."  Professor Domke is the past chairman of the School of Communications at the University of Washington, and has delivered a number of prior lectures, some of which have been noted in this blog.

As the titles of the series and of the lecture indicate, Dr. Domke is gravely concerned about the state of American democracy.  He listed what he described as three existential challenges facing our Nation:

• Racism -- a threat in various forms from the time of the first European settlements.


• Covid-19 -- a threat since February of this year.


• Decay of democracy -- a threat since, in Domke's opinion, 1994, when Newt Gingrich became House Speaker, and the Republicans took a majority in both houses of Congress. 

The decay in democracy takes many forms, but he considers the most pressing to be:

• Gerrymandering, which has resulted in only about 30 of the 435 Congressional districts being swing districts.


• Undemocratic effects of the electoral college system, which have resulted in over-representation of white voters and of small states.


• Voter suppression, which he discussed in detail in an earlier series.

The electoral college system has resulted in five elections where the candidate receiving a minority of the votes won the presidency.  The candidates so elected were John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.  Biden will almost certainly win the majority vote this year, and the Republicans will then have won a majority of the popular vote in only one of the past eight elections -- the second term election of George W. Bush.

Nevertheless, Trump may well win a second term.

Domke supports, ultimately, enactment of the Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a compact that will come into effect when adopted by states representing at least half of the electoral votes, pledging that the signatory states will bind their electors to vote for the candidate who receives a majority of the nation's voters -- a compact that would reduce the electoral college to a formality with no functional importance.

Otherwise, at some point, if our system allows a minority party to retain power, election after election, a majority of Americans will give up on the concept and workability of our democracy,.

With respect to voter suppression, Domke notes that the Democrats have reacted to changes in the electorate by expanding the diversity of its membership and have come to support policies benefiting those members.  The Republicans have reacted by creating an election system that makes it more difficult for the poor and the non-white to vote, by appointing opponents of voting rights legislation  (most notably Chief Justice John Roberts) to the Supreme Court, and by following a Senate majority leader who has absolutely "no interest in democracy."

Domke's interest is in expanding American democracy by extending the franchise to all citizens, insofar as possible.  He disclaims partisan concerns, except insofar as in recent years the Republican party has fought against every attempt to make voting easier and more democratic.  He reminds us that in 1964, Congress nearly passed a bill to liberalize voting requirements, with more support among Republicans than Democrats.

He concluded with a two-minute excerpt from Representative John Lewis's 2019 speech before the House of Representatives, supporting election reform   It was a powerful conclusion to the lecture.

From Isfahan with sorrow

 

  Imagine you're evil.

  Not misunderstood.

  Not sad.

  But evil.

  Imagine you've got a heart that spends all day wanting more.

  Imagine your mind is a selfish room full of pride or pity.

  Imagine you're like Brandon Goff and you find poor kids in the halls and make fun of their clothes, and you flick their ears until they scream in pain and swing their arms, and so you pin them down and break their fingers.

  Or you spit in his food in the cafeteria.

  Or you just call him things like cockroach and sand monkey.

  Imagine you're evil and you don't do any of those things, but you're like Julie Jenkins and you laugh and you laugh at everything Brandon does, and you even help when a teacher comes and asks what's going on and you say nothing's going on, and he believes you because you get A-pluses in English.

  Or imagine you just watch all of this.  And you act like you're disgusted, because you don't like meanness.  But you don't do anything or tell anyone.

  Imagine how much you've got compared to all the kids in the world getting blown up or starved, and the good you could do if you spent half a second thinking about it.

  Suddenly evil isn't punching people or even hating them.

  Suddenly it's all the stuff you've left undone.

  All the kindness you could have given.

  All the excuses you gave instead.

  Imagine that for a minute.

  Imagine what it means.
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I'm reading Everything Sad is Untrue, by David Nayeri.  A fictionalized memoir by the author, written as though he were still a 12-year-old immigrant from Isfahan, Iran, attending junior high school in Edmond, Oklahoma.

I'm only about one-fifth of the way through.  The story is narrated as the boy's presentation to his class, telling them of his memories of his homeland, but presenting it -- as he clearly states -- sometimes as literal truth, sometimes as myth, and sometimes as historical legend.  He tells it in segments, as Scheherazade told the One Thousand and One Nights, ending each segment with a "cliffhanger."  He is a boy who speaks of the great Persian poets, a boy who begins the book with an epigraph from The Brothers Karamazov.

You might be thinking.  "What kind of twelve-year-old talks like that?"
And I would say, "The kind of twelve-year-old that speaks three languages."

He speaks Farsi, Italian, and English.  Plus a private language he made up when he was younger.

I'll review this book when I finish it.  It's a story of myth, history, geography, and private fantasy -- all used as means to tell a greater truth -- and a memory of how it felt being a sensitive and highly imaginative Iranian child plunked down in the aggressively unimaginative world of an Oklahoma junior high.

Regardless of how the story ends, I know my review will be favorable.

Need to travel

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” 
– John A. Shedd

Eleven days ago, I drove about 120 miles north to the tiny town of Newhalem, where I took custody of my new kittens.  That's the only time I've been outside the city limits of Seattle since mid-March.  The only time I've been really beyond walking distance of my house, for that matter -- luckily, walking distance for me is a fair distance.

As I've noted before, I confess that I'm lucky.  I don't live in a small flat in Queens, with total congestion outside my apartment building.  I can venture out for a walk without much fear of contagion.  I hate to complain.  I urge others to be patient.  I keep so urging myself.

But today, one of my relatives-by-marriage, a resident of San Diego, posted photos of her husband, her dog, and herself on the ferry to Block Island, where her dad has a vacation home, back East in Rhode Island.  I was too flabbergasted to ask for further details, but I assume they flew.  They all looked happy.  

I seethe with jealousy. 

I'm jealous not out of any particular interest in visiting Block Island, but because she's traveling.  Not just 120 miles, but across the country.  

Some people need to socialize.  Some need to play sports.  Some need to make origami animals.  I need to travel.  It's in my history.  Since childhood.  It's in my blood.  I canceled three planned trips out of the country this year, because of Mr. Covid-19, and my heart is broken.

Oh, did I tell you?  I also like to whine.

I still have precarious plans to travel to Levanto, Italy, in May.  A one-year postponement of a birthday party I had planned for May 2020.  Only one couple who had been signed up for this year has indicated that they can't do it next year.  And we have two new couples who want to join us next year.  The deposit for the rentals last year has been retained, holding our rentals for 2021.

But my willingness to go through with it, and the willingness of most of the others to join me, depends on the availability of a vaccine that we believe to be both safe and efficacious.  The rumors about the date such a vaccine will be available vary wildly from day to day.  Will it be ready by November?  The end of the year?  Sometime in the spring?  Not until mid-2021?  In two years?

We hear all of these predictions.  I discount the November date completely.  I'm not interested in being injected with an "election special" vaccine that hasn't been proved both safe and effective -- i.e., that hasn't completed its Phase 3 testing.  But America's hero, Dr. Tony Fauci, says that at least one of the vaccines under development may be available to priority recipients by January.

I'm (cough cough) old enough to be a priority recipient.  So are many of the others in the group, and those who aren't may not be as concerned about the risks of travel.  (Exhibit A being those irritating relatives now lounging about on Block Island.)  If I could be assured of being vaccinated by April, the trip would be on.

There would still be issues to be resolved, such as how long the vaccination is effective, and whether Italy will drop its bar against American tourists by May.

I'm trying to be very rational in balancing my desire to travel against the risks involved.  But I begin to see why college kids throw caution to the winds, especially after a drink or two, and go dancing on crowded dance floors with their masks flung aside.

I really need to travel.  I need to hear spoken Italian, to walk Italian trails, to drink Italian Campari and Chianti, and to indulge in all the Italian varieties of pasta.  As done by Italian chefs.  I also need to talk to relatives.  Face to face.  One on one, and in groups.  Zoom is great, but it's not the same.

Well, we all have our little Covid-19 problems, and mine at least aren't medical.  I hope my readers are all doing well, physically and psychologically.  I find that keeping a sense of humor about my frustrations and irritations does help.

As does having a blog in which to vent. 

 "Stay healthy, y'all," as the saying goes!  

Leaving home

"Empty Rooms" ¹ is one of André Aciman's most accessible essays.  In it, Aciman is just a father, musing about the trauma of his sons' departure as they head off for college, leaving their childhood home on the Upper West Side of New York.

The essay contains a few of Aciman's favorite Proustian tropes -- for example, recounting how each night for years he deliberately imagined his future separation from his kids as he waited to pick them up from their school bus stop.  Why?  In order to dull the pain when the time arrived for the boys' actually departure.  But, more than with many of his essays, "Empty Rooms" is a musing over an experience that most parents confront, sooner or later, and a catalog of reactions that those parents share.   

His description of his relationship with his school age sons was so vivid that the last time I was in New York, staying in a hotel on the Upper West Side, I actually made a point of visiting the intersection of Broadway and W. 110th Street, the magical corner where Aciman waited each night to greet his sons.  My experience with that street corner was underwhelming.  But Aciman would not be surprised.  He has often described his belief that the romance or magic of a place depends less on its physical appearance than on the feelings and past experiences that the viewer brings to it -- an emotional "film" that covers the physical bones of the place, "a scrim, a spectral film that is none other than our craving for romance -- romance with life, with masonry, with memory, sometimes romance with nothing at all." ²

I had brought no "film" of my own to Broadway at 110th -- just my reading of Aciman.

I don't mean to analyze Aciman's essay.  But when I read "Empty Rooms," I came across a casual remark that started me thinking about my actual subject in this posting.  Aciman mentions that separation from his boys didn't hurt as much as he had feared, because "e-mail and cell phones kept my eldest son, in college, present at all times." and "In the morning, on his way to class in Chicago, he always managed to call.  A new ritual had sprung."

Similarly, I've read mothers' descriptions of how their son or daughter always calls on the way to class, of how her daughter calls in the morning and wants advice on what she should wear to class that day.  It seems like the kids never, for better or worse, really left home.

My own memories of "leaving home" are vivid.  My dad took time off work, and drove me to the local railway station.  We stood there, a bit awkwardly but companionably, waiting for the southbound train that would take me to California.  We were a bit like that Norman Rockwell painting.  And then I was gone until Christmas.  Long distance calls were expensive.  I may have called once or twice during the quarter, to share some information or ask some advice -- but we always remembered that after the first three minutes, additional charges began adding up.

I was just seven hundred miles from home.  I felt like I was in Africa.  When I stepped off the train home that first Christmas, the Christmas of my freshman year, the town looked strange and dark, hemmed in by the hills surrounding it.  Very unlike the sun and palm trees I'd begun to take for granted.

My nephew Denny now lives and teaches in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  A few weeks ago, Denny called me by Messenger video chat.  I was sitting in Seattle, he was sitting in northern Thailand.  The call was free, and the quality was so good that he could have been calling from the next room.  If Aciman's sons were in college today, they'd be grinning at each other on video chat.

Again, I'm reminded of my six months in Florence, Italy, during my junior year.  I suppose that a long distance call home would have been theoretically possible, but no one I knew ever attempted it.  The price would have been out of sight, and the quality -- judging from other Italian services at the time -- would have been poor.  My only communication with home was by aerogram -- a handwritten letter on thin paper that folded over itself for mailing.  I don't recall the postage being surprisingly high, but it took at least a week for it to be delivered, and another week for a reply to arrive back.  The only other form of communication, so to speak, was my parents' wiring of money to a bank in Florence to keep me afloat financially for another month or so.

What a different experience it would have been, for both me and my parents, if I could have video chatted with them -- if I could have waved the iPhone around to give them a glimpse of the Colosseum or the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

It would have been fun.  And yet.  And yet.  I wonder if something wouldn't have been lost -- whether I was just 700 miles away in California, or a hemisphere away in Italy?  The feeling that I was off on my own, surviving without the support of my parents.  An illusory feeling in some ways, considering the number of checks and wired payments moving from my home town (from a family that was really just scraping by at the time) to wherever I happened to be.  But psychologically, subjectively -- yes; I felt independent,  a feeling that left me both proud and a bit scared.

I suspect that  more than the average college student, I began my freshman year still very attached to my family.  And, of course, I still am.  But not having cheap cell phone service, not having video chatting, forced me to undergo a loosening of those ties that was necessary eventually and best accomplished when it was.  Even as I remained financially dependent, to a large degree.

So, I envy Aciman and I envy his sons.  I envy my nephew who -- unable to travel or receive visitors because of Covid-19 -- can at least speak effortlessly and with visual accompaniment with family and friends back home.

But I'm also glad that I came of age when I did, with the limitations that were imposed on us.  And of course, because we couldn't imagine the marvels of the future, those limitations seemed just a necessary part of real life.
--------------------------------------

¹  André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere, "Empty Rooms" (2011)
² Ibid., "New York, Luminous"

Read my mind

"The Mind Readers."  This was the headline over a fascinating two-page article in today's New York Times, a discussion of recent developments in scientists' ability to read and use the thoughts of a person as they appear in his brain, and -- moreover -- to control those thoughts from the outside.

Our ability to do so is still rudimentary, but impressive.  For example, some victims of disease or accident with damaged motor nerves are unable to move an arm or leg.  Scientists are able to decode blocked messages from the brain  instructing muscles to move the limb, and can now wire a signal directly to the intended muscles.  The person desires to move his arm, and, yes, the arm moves -- exactly as it would in an uninjured person.  It's only one step further to hook up a prosthesis that has replaced an amputated limb, and to enable it to respond to the same signals

Patients who have lost the ability to speak, say from a stroke, while still remaining cognitively intact, can be connected to an artificial speaker, like Alexa's, and "speak" the words that their brain tries unsuccessfully to make the mouth speak.  More prosaically, the author notes that we already are able to control drones by brain signals.

The article projects far more extraordinary abilities that we may develop in the future, both to control our environment merely by brain signals, and to receive information directly into our brains without using eyes or ears as intermediaries.  The article also discusses at some length the ethical and legal dilemmas that may soon arise.  Do we really want to allow Google to tell our brains that we have an irresistible craving for an advertiser's candy?

While reading, my own mind was applying some of the developments discussed in the article to my own pathetically parochial interests.  Primarily, my two new kittens.

One obvious difference between a dog and a cat is transparency.  A dog would never make a good poker player -- not with that wagging tail, drooling tongue, panting breath, and big happy grin.  A cat, on the other hand, could look you straight in the eye and bluff a pair of nines into a winning hand.  You never know what's going on in their heads.

My kittens aren't even teenagers yet, in cat years.  They have no conscious secrets or desire to deceive.  (Or do they?)  But I'm almost convinced that the word "inscrutable" somehow shares a common etymological ancestor with the word "cat."

They will be wrestling on the floor, seemingly oblivious to me, that guy in the chair reading a book.  And then one of them will glance over at me, appearing to check out whether I'm watching them.  As though their little tussle is an act put on for my amusement.  With an older cat, I've looked up from my reading to see him sitting on the arm of my chair, staring at me, studying me.  What's he doing?  What's he thinking about?

When a human is so bored or tired that he "stops thinking," just staring off into space, his brain is still quite active -- thinking, even if not consciously, about plans for tomorrow, maybe worrying what his boss meant by that possibly insulting comment as he left the office.  But they've run EEGs on cats -- yes, honestly, they have! -- and discovered that when a cat stares off into space, his brain wave goes totally flat.  He is essentially, if temporarily, brain dead.

I'd love to read their minds.  Are they constantly conscious of me and my reactions to their wild activities?  Do they stare at me, trying to read my mind?  What happens to their thoughts as their brain wave flattens -- is it like listening to HAL's voice as he/it dies, in 2001 Space Odyssey?

Are they happy to see me?  Or is their apparent happiness ironic?  Do they look at each other and roll their eyes when my back is turned?

These would be wonderful things to learn.  On the other hand, why do I love cats?  Isn't it because they are so often mysterious?  So unlike a dog?  Do I really want to know their every thought?  Wouldn't it really be like discovering that the sophisticated woman you find so enchanting -- loving, but always mysterious -- actually spends the time away from you watching daytime TV, and says so little because she has so little to say?

The New York Times writer anticipates my concern, if not my cats:

Not even Dr. Gallant, who first succeeded in translating neural activity into a moving image of what another person was seeing -- and who was both elated and horrified by the exercise -- thinks the Luddite approach is an option.  "The only way out of the technology-driven hole we're in is more technology and science," he told me.  "That's just the cool fact of life."

Well, I'll leave it to the next generation to worry about.  My own cats will remain enchanting and mysterious.

Adoption: successful

Ah, yes.  My new kittens.  I suspect everyone has heard more than enough about them.  But, for those of you who are concerned about the success of the adoption, this final post (at least for a while) should bring some closure.

On schedule, I made the long (and beautiful) drive to Newhalem on Tuesday.  Anne and Tony arrived at almost the same time.  Greetings were exchanged.  The kittens in a large carrier were handed over, together with adoption certificates from the Okanogan County Animal Foster Care Service (together with a number of stern written warnings about proper care).  We turned our cars about, and headed home.

The five cats I've adopted in the past all came from animal shelters, where they had been confined in small cages.  They treated adoption as a release from prison, to be celebrated.  These kittens, however, were born into foster care.  They had lived pampered lives.  They knew not me, nor wished to.  They were about as pleased to arrive at my house as would be a shy eight-year-old sent off to summer camp against his will.

They hid.

By the end of the day, they were wrestling together -- their major past time -- but would bolt if I made any advances toward them.  The next morning, they approached me while I was on the floor reading the paper.  They accepted, very tentatively, pats on the head.  By Thursday they were following me from room to room, keeping an eye on my activities.

Today, first one and then the other approached me while I was sitting in a chair reading.  They fought for a while for sole possession of my lap.  One retreated to my ankles, the other curled up on my lap and immediately went to sleep.  (See photo.)

Things are working out well.  They eat well; they know all about litter boxes.  Their adoptive owner is relieved.

Their names?  Yes.  Well, they have been named Castor and Pollux, the twins, Gemini.  Those names seemed appropriate.  The Greek heroes were great fighters, and showed devotion to each other.  The names fit.

I'm happy.  The house seems more home-like.  And cats, unlike that 8-year-old camper, don't spend weeks being homesick.  We're all well; hope you are, too. 

Kush

All right, let's talk about Kush. 

No, not the "Hindu Kush" (Hindus-killer), the western extension of the Himalayas and the Pamirs that Eric Newby brought to our attention in his climbing adventure, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

No, my Kush for today is something I knew nothing about -- unlike you, my erudite readers -- until I read the cover article, beautifully photographed, in this month's issue of Smithsonian.  The Kingdom of Kush.  An ancient kingdom located in the northern portion of Sudan (known to my childhood as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a joint colonial venture of Britain and Egypt, usually described as a "condominium").

The Kingdom of Kush ruled what the Greeks and other Europeans called Nubia, a region between the First Cataract of the Nile (today's Aswan) and the Fourth Cataract, approximately two hundred miles down river from Sudan's capital, Khartoum.   I'd never heard of Kush.  What did I know of Nubia?  Exotic black Nubian slaves, of course.  Attractive appendages to ancient Greek and Roman civilization. 

The author of the Smithsonian article -- himself a Sudan-American -- wants us to know there was more in Nubia than slaves for Greece -- to wit, Kush.  Kush's civilization dominated Nubia, within various geographical borders, from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 300.  For years in modern times, Nubia (and Kush) was written off as an outpost of Egypt, a people who had picked up bits and pieces of Egyptian and Mediterranean civilization, in the same way as the British Celts were influenced by the Romans.

Certainly there was influence from Egypt, Greece, and Rome.  But, the article points out, Kush had a rich and distinctive civilization of its own, most apparent to today's casual observer in their unusual, steep-sided pyramids.  In 1500 B.C., Egyptian forces occupied Nubia as far south as the Fourth Cataract, and stayed until the Eleventh Century,  Then the Kushites returned the favor.  The Kushite kings declared themselves the rightful ruler of Egypt, marched north, and established Egypt's 25th dynasty -- the "Black Pharoahs" of Egypt, ruling from from their Nubian capital.

The Black Pharoahs' rule of Egypt lasted just under a century, and was ended by invading Assyrians.  But the Kushite kings maintained their Nubian rule -- a prosperous and civilized rule -- from their capital Meroë, about 125 miles northeast of present-day Khartoum.   Their power didn't fade away until the Fourth Century A.D., declining probably because of climate change and area-wide drought, together with competition from a nearby rival civilization.

But their influence lives on.  Today's Seattle Times published an article (from the Washington Post) discussing Black supporters of President Trump's re-election -- including one Candace Owens.  In the later Kush kingdom, a series of powerful women reigned as queens -- each called a Kandake.  The Greek historian Strabo (and the writers of the Old Testament) mistook the title for a name; they called one particularly militaristic queen "Kandake."  Which was Latinized to "Candace."

I'm not sure how powerful Candace Owens turns out to be -- not very, I hope -- but she does have her name going for her.

I've never come close to visiting Sudan, although I once considered a trip to its more frequented neighbor, Ethiopia.  If Covid-19 ever ends, and if I ever get the chance, I'd love to visit the fascinating ruins and antiquities bequeathed the world by the Kingdom of Kush.

Kittens coming

One of kittens -- seven weeks

You can't have too many cat stories.

So reads the conventional wisdom on the social media.  God knows, if I'm desperate -- desperate like Trump-desperate -- for attention and "likes," all I have to do is post a cat picture on Facebook.

"Oh, isn't he just adorable!?"  Which I read as "Aren't you, who posted this photo, just adorable?"

But "Confused Ideas" is a work of literature, not out for cheap squeals of appreciation.  Nevertheless, the last time I adopted new cats was in 2004, back when "Confused Ideas" wasn't even a spark in the synapses of my churning brain.  And it's exciting to look forward to new members of my household, members of whom  -- past experience teaches -- I will quickly become obsessively fond.

So the two kittens are still up in Winthrop, Washington, with their third brother and their mother.  All three brothers had their eight-week birthday on Thursday.  Yesterday, to their dismay, they were taken to the veterinarian, received various shots, and -- horrible to relate -- lost their manhood. But they're too young to miss it, and their recovery will be swift. They were never planning to sing baritone, in any event.

The mother and her favorite son will be adopted by someone in Winthrop.  But my two kittens will have their nine-week birthday here in Seattle (no public celebration planned).

Yes, on Tuesday morning, I will drive to Newhalem, near the western entrance to the North Cascades National Park.  From Winthrop, the sister of my friend Jim B. -- the sister who enticed me into this new human-feline relationship -- will also drive to Newhalem from the east.  And in Newhalem, the transfer of custody will occur.  As Jim B. commented, it sounds a bit like a spy thriller where a prisoner is covertly released in exchange for certain secret documents.

It's about a 2¼ hour drive to Newhalem from my home.  I expect the transaction to be swiftly concluded, all human participants wearing masks.  I will carry my own lunch, a water bottle, and a thermos of coffee, returning home with as little interaction with the local populace as possible.  Yes, the fear of Covid-19 still looms large.

But by late afternoon, they will be in Seattle, studying the features of their new home.  Between now and Tuesday, I will secure all easily destroyed items of importance in my house.  I know kittens.

I may report later on their progress.  I'll try not to keep whipping photos out of my wallet to show you.  I'll try not to write tedious reports bragging about their report cards and high SAT scores.  But I'm only human. 

And admit it -- everyone loves a cat story.

Reviewing books

“Unfortunately, missing the author’s point, or not understanding the book, is not enough to prevent one from reviewing and/or rating it.”

--Mokokoma Mokhonoana

As you've noticed, part of my performance of my duties as a blogger is the writing of book reviews.  At least, I call them book reviews.  They bear little resemblance to the analytical essays I was required to write in freshman English, and they bear even less resemblance to the book reviews appearing in the New York Times Book Review.  They are rather just my little post-reading reactions to what I've read, sometimes not much more than amazed summaries.

But -- as I say -- I call them "book reviews." 

As I've mentioned frequently in earlier posts, after publishing book reviews for your delectation, I copy and paste them onto the Goodreads website, with an introductory disclaimer, "(FROM MY BLOG)."  I hope this explanatory introduction will excuse me from failing to write the sort of reviews that others write -- some of which are well-written, informed evaluations of subject matter as well as analyses of writing style; many more of which are mere elaborations on the theme of "Cool book, I really really liked it."

Whatever.  

Goodreads advises me that, to date, I've published 134 book reviews on their site, the great majority of which you, my readers, have had the opportunity to read here first.  Does anyone pay attention to my little masterpieces?  Apparently.

I received an email yesterday from the publisher Little, Brown & Co., reminding me that I had written a favorable review of Ayad Akhtar's novel, American Dervish, back in 2013, and advising me that they would, with my consent, send me a free advance copy of Akhtar's new novel Homeland Elegies.  No obligation on my part was required, but obviously they hope that I will both read this new novel and write something favorable about it, something that will encourage sales among Goodreads readers.

Of course, I said yes.  I danced around the house, imagining myself as one of those famous literary critics writing for the New Yorker or the New York Review of Books.  Or even the Seattle Times, I suppose.  After the metaphorical champagne wore off, I realized that I had not really joined a small, exclusive club.  I recalled the many Goodreads reviews I'd read that contained the disclaimer that the reviewer had been provided an advance free copy of the book they were reviewing, as though to escape the suspicion that a favorable review might have been the quid pro quo for receipt of a $24.99 book.  

Well, I probably could be bribed.  But I do have some integrity. At least for only $24.99.

Sooner or later, you probably will read my review of Homeland Elegies in this blog.  I'll remind you that I got a free book out of the deal, and assure you that I was not thereby influenced, just because that's what we reviewers on Goodreads like to do.  

Not cool

It's been a cool summer in Seattle.  Not a damp summer.  But our temperatures have run just a bit below normal.  Finally, this past week, we had several days in a row with highs above 80.

Then yesterday!  Pow!  98 degrees (36.7° C.)!

Yeah, I know.  Death Valley had an all time record of 130 yesterday.  Who lives in Death Valley?  And if they do, they live in air-conditioned splendor.

But in Seattle, 98 is unusual.   Not a record.  We had 103 degrees in 2009.  And 100 in 1992.  Three 99s since 1960.

One hundred three degrees -- eleven years ago -- is not sufficient to acclimate our bodies and minds to 98 yesterday.

If you page back through this blog a year, you'll find that on August 16, 2019, I had just returned from an over-heated visit to Italy.  The temperature every day I was in Rome reached about 98.  So yesterday in Seattle was just a little reminder of that trip.  And a taunt that in 2020 I can't visit Italy -- in over-heated August or any other month -- because of our unpleasant little virus.

My house is pretty well insulated, but not air-conditioned (unlike my hotel in Rome).  (Not many people bother with air-conditioning in a part of the world where nature's clouds and rain generally handle that task for us.)  The indoor, main floor temperature was a livable 70s most of the day, creeping up to 80 by evening.

But stepping outside -- wow!  It reminded me of my summers working in an air-conditioned aluminum plant laboratory, when I occasionally had to walk out to the pot rooms -- huge rooms full of electrical furnaces where the aluminum ore was being smelted.  Vivid memories of pitying the poor workers who were clearly earning their union scale wages.  The muggy heat slapped me in the face.

And if the main floor in my house retained a moderate temperature, not so for the upstairs where my bedroom is unluckily located.  I kept the windows closed until nearly 10 p.m., because the air outside remained even hotter than that in my bedroom.  When I finally opened them it really didn't make any difference.  Not much air movement from outside, and the insulation works both ways:  it keeps the heat out at first, but once in, it keeps the heat from leaving. 

I just lay on top of the covers and sweated throughout the night.

By morning, it had cooled off outdoors to 66 degrees.  I did my daily walk early, prudently.  But the temperature shouldn't exceed 86 today, with a gradual cooling trend all week.

Thank god our one-day summer is finally over.  We can now gradually segue into autumn.

Kamala Harris for Vice President

I have to admit that, until this week, I really hadn't paid much attention to Kamala Harris. 

She dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president in December, citing lack of funds.  That was when I was just beginning to pay closer attention to the race for the nomination.  And once Biden became the obvious Democratic nominee, I didn't pay as close attention to the contending candidates for the vice presidential nomination as I might have in prior years.  They all seemed pretty much acceptable to me.

And, now that I review her history, Kamala is perhaps more acceptable than most.  She is a lawyer, a graduate of Hastings law school in 1989.  She served as assistant district attorney for several years, and was elected San Francisco District Attorney in 2003.  In 2010, she was elected California Attorney General, and in 2016 elected to the U.S. Senate. 

She became a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, months before the Senate confirmation hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court.

She is well qualified by formal experience, and has shown herself an intelligent and aggressive prosecutor and interrogator in all of her positions.  These are all reasons enough for me to be happy with her nomination and to support her election.

And then, in addition, there's the "Trump Factor."

Trump has suggested and implied, without quite being specific, that he agrees with "birther" arguments that she is not qualified to be vice president.  Why?  Because her father was from India and her mother was from Jamaica, although both were naturalized American citizens.  The legal community agrees -- virtually unanimously -- that the argument has no merit.  She was born in Oakland, California, and is a "natural born citizen" under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trump calls her "nasty."  Now, Trump calls many, many people "nasty," and especially uppity women who don't show deference to men in general -- and to Trump in particular.  She was "extraordinarily nasty" in interrogating Kavanaugh during the Senate hearings -- nasty essentially because she questioned him as a competent attorney.  She was, alternatively, "nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing."  She was "probably nastier than Pocohontas" -- referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren, another highly capable (uppity) woman who is "nasty." 

She is "very weak on facts," this humorously stated by the president who has shown the least interest in, or even mild curiosity about, facts of any president in American history.

Most recently, Trump has accused Kamala Harris -- a poised, articulate, highly intelligent and forceful speaker -- of being a "Mad Woman."  Spoken by the man whose uncontrolled anger and derision and insults pour from the White House virtually daily, in undiluted streams.

Finally, like a chip off the old block, Donald Trump, Jr., at one point re-tweeted a post implying that Ms. Harris was not black enough to represent a black constituency as vice president, and stating as a fact that she had been suggesting in her campaign that she was descended from American slaves.  Trump Jr. accompanied the re-tweet with his own words, "Is this true?  Wow!"   The tweet had been quietly deleted by the end of the day.

I'd cheerfully support anyone on whom Trump spewed that much vitriol!

Kamala Harris is an excellent choice for the Democratic ticket.  Her credentials and background suggest she will handle the office well.  More importantly, if she were to become president during the next four years, because of the president's death or incapacity, I'm convinced she would make a strong and capable president.

If nothing else, she would make a refreshing change as vice president from the current incumbent.

Mimbreños

Mimbreños.
You buried your ancestors
in floors beneath your homes.
You slept on them,
you kept them with you always.
They grew through earthen floors
filling your lives
with dreams of passing worlds.

--Benjamin Alire Sáenz, "The Dead"

I had never heard of the "Mimbreños." 

They were a people in southwest New Mexico, part of a larger ethnic group, the Mogolon culture.  They are named after the Mimbres ("little willow") river, that runs through their region. 

The beginnings of their culture can be seen as far back as A.D. 200,  but their "classic" period was A.D. 1000-1130, by which time the Mimbreños had settled into towns and had become an agricultural people.

What do we know about them?  They originally lived in "pit houses"-- houses half dug into the ground, and covered with a roof.  In the larger communities, they build large, communal pit houses, called "kivas," which were probably used for community and religious ceremonies.     

But by the beginning of the classic period, they were moving out of pit houses and building large, above-ground pueblos -- some of which contained hundreds of rooms.  At the same time, they began a ceremonial destruction of their kivas, burning them to the ground in great fires.

The Mimbres culture is best known today for its characteristic black-on-white pottery.  The pottery became quite sophisticated, and was both geometric and figurative in the designs used.  Some were used as ceremonial burial masks, covering the faces of the dead, but most were produced for actual home use.

Near the end of the classic period, Mimbreños began abandoning their homes, and the culture disappeared within a few years.  The end of the Mimbres culture, in its characteristic features, is usually blamed on local drought.

The Mexican-American novelist Benjamin Alire Sáenz, who has written novels for adults and young adults, as well as books for children, began his writing career as a poet.  I learned of the Mimbres culture from two poems included in his collection Calendar of Dust (1991).  "The Dead" marks the coming of the Mimbres people, from the time of their ancestors' first crossing of the Bering Strait, through the millennia as they cared for themselves and honored their ancestors, to the full flowering of their culture, and until ultimately their people and its culture died from drought.

The other poem, "Resurrection," is a reflection on the passage of time, and the communion between the living and the dead.  Four stanzas -- First, the still-visible accomplishments of the ancient Inca civilization; second, the lifelong anguish of the poet's mother over the death of her brother, a brother whose photo she holds close;  and third, the poet's thoughts and memories as he looks at photos of his own dead relatives, relatives with whom he once walked, all hoping to cross the border, hopes that for all but him were unfulfilled. 

The communion of the living with the dead.  The communion of the present with the past.  The fourth stanza returns to the now extinct Mimbres people:

The Mimbres buried their dead beneath their homes.
At night, softly, the buried
rose, re-entered the rooms of the living
as blankets woven with the heavy threads of memory,
blankets on which the Mimbres rested,
on which they slept, and dreamed.

Sáenz's poetry is haunting and melancholic, as is his recollection of the slow rise and rapid collapse of Mimbres civilization. As are the lives of those of us still living. And as is the life of our own civilization.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." --William Faulkner

Nitrates

The explosion of a vast amount of ammonium nitrate in Beirut is a tragedy of immense proportions, both for the multitudes killed or injured, and for the damage to Beirut's infrastructure.  Strangely, and perversely, it brings back memories of an enjoyable childhood experience, if one fraught with danger.

I had a microscope set as a young teenager, which came with a number of stoppered test tubes.  Some were filled with interesting things -- a bee, for example, preserved in alcohol -- to examine microscopically.  Some contained various chemicals useful in preserving exhibits, or preparing them for placement on a slide, or for other uses that I don't now recall.

I especially don't recall why there was a tube full of potassium nitrate (saltpeter).  I can't imagine what use it had in the context of my microscope, but if I were better trained in that direction, its use might be obvious.  But it had a quite different use at my young hands.

10KNO₃ + 8C + 3S → 2K₂O₃ + 3 K₂SO₄ + 6CO₂ + 5N₂

This is the rough equation for the explosion of gunpowder.  It's a "rough" equation, because the constituents of gunpowder -- potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal -- react with each other in a number of complicated ways, depending partly on their proportions as combined by the chemist.  Or by the trembling hands of a young teenager.  A young teenager who was damn lucky it didn't blow up in his trembling hands and face.

Yes, I'm afraid all of my potassium nitrate was consumed for recreational purposes.  I packed the resulting gunpowder carefully into a small cardboard container, which I then wrapped tightly in duct tape.  My brother and I took it to a nearby park, lit the firecracker fuse we'd inserted, and ran for our dear lives.

The result was highly satisfactory.  Luckily, no arrests were made.

As every serial murderer knows, one killing only whets one's appetite for the next.  I had plenty of sulfur and charcoal.  What I needed was more potassium nitrate.  I wisely sent my younger brother to a local pharmacy to see how much he could hustle up.  The answer -- not one gram.  The pharmacist took a peculiar interest in what a 12-year-old kid was planning to do with potassium nitrate, and wisely decided not to sell him any.  (If he even had it in stock.)

Did he care nothing for our education?  As the Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling has said, as quoted by Oliver Sacks in his memoir Uncle Tungsten:

Just think of the differences today.  A young person gets interested in chemistry and is given a chemical set.  But it doesn't contain potassium cyanide.  It doesn't even contain copper sulfate or anything else interesting, because all the interesting chemicals are considered dangerous substances.  Therefore, these budding young chemists don't have a chance to do anything engrossing with their chemistry sets.  As I look back, I think it pretty remarkable that Mr. Ziegler, this friend of the family, would have so easily turned over one-third of an ounce of potassium cyanide to me, an eleven-year old boy.

More's the pity.  My career in explosives came to an early end, due to the excessive caution of a small town pharmacist.

But Beirut has shared my early experience on a grandiose scale.  The stored substance was ammonium nitrate ((NH₄NO₃), not potassium nitrate (KNO₃), but the chemical reactions would be essentially the same.  Just substitute the radical NH₄ for K in the equation given above.  In either case, huge amounts of expanding carbon dioxide and nitrogen gases are released, together with a substantial amount of heat.

And for me as a kid, and for Beirut this week, the heat and explosive power of the gases released are far more impressive than the nature of the resulting chemical compounds.

Awaiting custody

Since Covid-19 took control, I've been ordering my groceries on-line, and picking them up at Safeway each Tuesday.

When I picked my groceries up today, the grocery boy hoisted something new -- and heavy -- into my trunk.

A large box of kitty litter. 

My two kittens will be six weeks old on Thursday.  Along with a third brother, they are still being cared for by their mother in Winthrop -- a town in Okanogan county, 187 miles (by road) northeast of Seattle.  They and their natural mother are in foster care with a very friendly and caring foster mother (human), who regularly texts me photos of the kittens' amazingly fast growth.  She has given them provisional names of Gustaf and Wallaby -- named after, allegedly, two foreign brands of licorice.  I'll quickly rename them after assessing their personalities.

I'll pick them up in another two or three weeks, after they're weaned from an increasingly impatient parent, and after they've received their various shots and have been neutered by a local veterinarian. 

The purchase of kitty litter is my promise to the kittens that I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival. 

Pets are in short supply during the epidemic.  People are lonely, and are looking for dogs and cats to keep them company.  That's true of me, as well, but after owning -- or being owned by -- five previous cats from kittenhood to death, something more than loneliness must be at work.

Although I've always considered The Owl to be my spirit animal, I suspect that, insofar as pets go,  I'm undoubtedly a Cat Person.  I'm not sure how I feel about that -- images of a smelly house, of furniture covered with cat fur, and of myself reading on a dark winter evening with cats twined about my body..

But, as our President would say, "It is what it is."

Back to the '50s

Families taking walks together; parents, not on their phones, paying attention to their children; children, not on their phones, paying attention to the world around them; people sitting in parks and reading; children outside playing, biking, skating, running around on the beach, swimming in the Puget Sound; families biking (or skating/paddleboarding) together; neighbors outside talking. 

--Seattle Times

I discussed some time ago the Ray Bradbury short story, broadcast as a radio drama when I was an impressionable youth, about an expedition to Mars where the crew stepped off the space ship and discovered the world of their youth -- long dead relatives living happily in Small Town, USA, honeysuckle and picket fences and all the trimmings -- their relatives welcoming them with love and kindness

The story didn't have a happy ending, of course, but that's not my point.  We all long to return to whatever era we grew up in, assuming we had a reasonably happy childhood.

As the reader of the Seattle Times wrote in the quotation above, the terrible Covid-19 does have a silver lining.  Ever since the orders to "Stay Home" were issued in March, we have been rediscovering some of the joys of life in the 1950s and 60s.

I noted in my Fourth of July essay that

in some ways, Seattle's Fourth was like Fourths you see in old movies, like Fourths of July as they were celebrated before I was born, before everyone had an automobile in which to high-tail it out of town.  When families did everything together, and neighbors were neighborly.

And this new atmosphere has become increasingly obvious in the weeks since.  Every evening, my neighborhood is full of people walking.  Not just the brusque exercisers, like myself, or the hand-holding lovers.  Those we've always had.  But entire families out strolling, with their little tykes walking, or pushing scooters, or riding trikes or bikes with training wheels.  

People are out sitting on porches in the twilight, porches whose existence hadn't even been obvious until now.  Neighbors stand six feet apart chatting over their property line or on the front sidewalk.  And what happened to all the helicopter parents?  I see kids, nine or ten, out riding their bikes -- alone or in groups -- with no parent keeping an eye on them.  Just like when I was a kid.  I suspect that after weeks and months of enforced togetherness, many parents have been quite happy to send the little dears out the door with an exhausted exhortation to "be careful."

In general, despite a large number of basketball hoops in my neighborhood, I had been unaware of how many families with children do live around me.  I guess that until last March, the kids had been whisked out of the house each day and chauffeured to soccer practice or oboe lessons or ballet classes, night after night.  Those diversions unavailable, they've suddenly appeared outside, like real children.

I could go on, but you get the point.  The pandemic has forced us to live as we did when we had more free time and less disposable income.  It's a quieter life, but not necessarily a less happy life.

Maybe, once life returns to "normal," folks will not only remember that cooking was fun, but that certain aspects of the lives of their parents and grandparents were actually pretty satisfying -- and perhaps worth reliving.