Getting high in Delphi

As I review travel journals from my past, I often whine about how -- unlike us at their age -- kids nowadays don't do anything but sit at home and play with their electronic toys.  I was happy to learn, however, that a friend's 20-year-old twin grandchildren are spending their one week spring break on a whirlwind trip to Amsterdam.  No, not part of a tour group, or a study program, or a group of Dutch food enthusiasts.  They're doing what we used to do at their age -- just showing up someplace foreign, and seeing what  happens.

In commemoration -- despite my recent sneering at my occasional posts copied from old travel journals -- I offer the following extract from the journal I kept during a six-week backpacking trip through Europe.  The year was 1970, the year that the press discovered and remarked on the hordes of American kids traveling on the cheap.

I had traveled by bus for five hours (including repair of a flat tire) from Athens up to Delphi on the lower slope of Mount Parnassus.  I had barely emerged from the bus when the proprietor of a hostel grabbed me and bid me enter.  Decent hostel.  Bed in a room shared with three others for 18 drachmas -- just 60 cents in American money.  Yes!  This is what travel in Europe by young people was all about that year!  I met a couple of English lads who shared the room with me, along with a Swiss guy, and we made plans for the next day.

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Friday --31 July [1970]

My two Lancashire friends and I got up early Monday and started the long hike up the slopes of Mt. Parnassus.  We were quite lucky in that the sun was often behind a cloud and so we could escape some of the heat.  Even so, it was slow going, and we lost a lot more water than we had along to replace it.  But the views were fantastic.  We climbed to what I believe are called the Shining Rocks, on either side of the Oracle and Apollo's temple.  To get from one to the other required a long walk back into the hills and up the slopes until the canyon became shallow enough to cross.  Had some good conversation during this, and discovered and photographed a land tortoise. 

Then we made the mistake of trying to descend the cliffs on the right side of the oracle.  There was quite a tricky bit of rock climbing, which became steeper and steeper as I descended -- in the process of which I got separated from my companions.  Finally, I succeeded in thoroughly scaring myself, and carefully retraced my steps back up the cliff and tried to work my way back to where we had crossed the canyon.  My legs were bare and were getting semi-burned (not very bad -- but I didn't know that) and scratched with the prickly gorse I was climbing through.  I made at least one false start down the canyon and had to retrace.  I was having panicky worries of being trapped without water, and I was feeling quite dehydrated.

But all ended well, and I made my way back down, returned to the youth hostel, stuck my mouth under the water tap, and took a cold shower.  The other two didn't get back for an hour, and I was afraid they might be stranded, but they had found a way down the cliff after being thoroughly scared.  It was all in all a memorable hike.  The beauty and wildness and loneliness of the area will, I hope, come out in my slides.

Being recovered, I went over to the ruins and, using their guide book, did a careful study of them.  Saved the museum for the next day, it being close to sunset.  I had dinner alone in the youth hostel's restaurant, and was joined for a beer afterward by my mates, who were preparing their own meals.  A wild bunch of English started a party going, record-playing, dancing, singing and all, and we watched with amusement, nursing our beers.

I seem to have an interesting affinity for the British --seem to be accepted by them as English with an unexplainable U.S. passport.  They were alarmed because an American had replaced the Swiss [in our four-person room] this night, and [the American] wanted me to change places with his friend so they could be together (nothing came of this -- guess they changed their minds).  They said I couldn't do it, they would be overwhelmed with Americanism.  "You're not anti-American, are you?"  "Well, yes, of course!  And these are archetypical Americans!"  Turned out to be a Beach Boy type from Berkeley.

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Not great literature, but my journal captures some of the excitement of the time.  Reminding me not only of the iconic places I visited, but also of some of the people I met.  I hope my friend's twin grandchildren have as much fun in the Netherlands.

Only as old as you feel

"If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Today's my birthday.  At some point in your life, you reach your last year of feeling able to greet birthdays gleefully.  I think I reached that point the year I turned 16 and could get a driver's license.  Turning 21, and being able to drink legally, is pretty anti-climactic for a college student -- it's not as though he's never tasted alcohol until then.

But, today, I accept one more year fairly complacently, even if I'm well past the stage of being gleeful.  So I'm a bit surprised to read the irate reactions of Ursula K. Le Guin to birthday well-wishers, back when she was only a year older than I am now.  The reaction of Ursula -- a formidable writer of science fiction/fantasy --was essentially, "I'm old, old, old, and don't try to sweet talk me into thinking otherwise!"

A lot of younger people, seeing the reality of old age as entirely negative, see acceptance of age as negative.  Wanting to deal with old people in a positive spirit, they're led to deny old people their reality.

With all good intentions, people say to me, "Oh, you're not old!"

And the pope isn't Catholic.   ...

"My uncle's ninety and he walks eight miles a day."

Lucky Unk.  I hope he never meets that old bully Arthur Ritis or his mean wife Sciatica.  ...

Old age isn't a state of mind.  It's an existential situation.

Would you say to a person paralyzed from the waist down, "Oh you aren't a cripple!  You're only as paralyzed as you think you are!  My cousin broke her back once but she got right over it and now she's in training for the marathon."¹

She segues into some rather painfully true statements about ageism in America, all the while insisting on her status as old.  Really old.  Not the kind of "old" who you see laughing and playing tennis in ads for "Golden Years Active Living Housing." Or for Margaritaville, for that matter.

But then, both Ursula and her husband suffered from crippling sciatica that made walking more than a block or two impossible.  Maybe we all end up there eventually.  But I haven't yet, thank you very much.  Meanwhile, feel free to wish me a happy birthday, and feel no guilt whatsoever at assuring me with a straight face that I don't look a day over 35!

Don't offer to buy me a drink -- I"ll buy you one!

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¹ Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare, "The Diminished Thing" (2017)

Slurs and humility

I took piano lessons for six years as a child.  During my final three years, I would practice one and a half hours each day, usually before school.  I enjoyed it, but -- like many kids -- once I was 15, I decided that enough was enough.  I quit.

Years later, near the end of my legal career, I resumed piano lessons from a teacher in Seattle, dropped out again, and returned to the same teacher several years later.  She was an excellent teacher, far more accomplished than my childhood teacher, having studied at the Leningrad Conservatory as a young woman.  She seemed pleased to have me as a student.

She asked me to perform at a couple of student recitals -- which I did, feeling somewhat awkward among a flock of child and teenaged performers.  I recall performing the second movement to Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata.  To a limited degree, I'm a perfectionist, and I wasn't too happy with my playing. But my teacher told me that it had gone very well, and I took her word for it.

I suppose that compared with her sixth graders, I was a delight to teach.  If I learned all the notes to a piece, followed all the printed notations in the score, and in addition brought some sense of emotional feeling to the piece, she professed herself very happy.  "Good sense of musicality," she would say.

What brings all this to mind is my current reading of Every Good Boy Does Fine, by Jeremy Denk.  I hope to review this excellent book once I finish it, but what I've read so far impresses me with how little I knew about any of the classical pieces I played, with whose playing my teacher had professed herself satisfied.  Denk is not only an outstanding pianist, but an excellent teacher, and his book -- published this week -- is a memoir of his life (written at age 51), intertwined with discussions of the difficulties he had mastering the pieces he was taught.  These discussions are, the reader quickly realizes, a vehicle for teaching the reader an appreciation of musical theory.

For me, it's also been a vehicle for teaching me humility -- although, insofar as my musical training was concerned, attaining humility has been hardly an accomplishment.  I learned to play entire pages, listening to the melody where there was a discernable melody, juicing it up with a bit of emotion, and otherwise just playing the notes.  Denk will spend a number of paragraphs discussing the profound musical effect of omitting just one note in a flight up a scale.  His discussions are a revelation, and what they reveal is that no one ever perfects the playing of a classical piece, because there are always new subtleties to be discovered in a good composition -- subtleties that augment the pianist's understanding of the composer's vision, and that can be incorporated in his performance.

A few minutes ago, I looked over my copy of the score to the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique, and noted the composer's copious use of "slurs" -- those curving lines above or below the flow of notes.  They indicate phrases, notes that should be considered together, like words in a sentence.  I always ignored them, because the phrasing seemed obvious without them.

Denk, as a college student, tended to ignore them as well.  His teacher demanded otherwise, making him sing nonsense lyrics while playing.

The point of the lyrics was that they would force me to observe the slurs written on the page, taking breaths with the words.  Painstakingly, I played , while Bill made me sing along ....  We practiced until I could do all the slurs exactly as written, which seemed fussy and prissy ....

But Denk appreciated the teaching, once he got the hang of it.  But then a later teacher called the slurs simply "sloppy notation" by Beethoven, notation that should be ignored.

Sometimes, learning from two teachers with opposing views can be valuable.  Denk appeciated the opinions of the second teacher, but ended up siding with the more exacting demands of the first.

These days, I find the slurs almost more beautiful than the notes.  They tell you about the play of the music against the beat, the visible against the invisible. ... Slurs look like an arc, and imply a journey.

I don't offer these quotations because I have any feeling, one way or the other, about slurs.  But Denk's discussions remind us that highly trained musicians can argue over matters that are far above the notice or understanding of a novice pianist -- even one who has been praised for his "musicality" by his well-meaning (and probably long-suffering) teacher. 

Denk's entire book -- in the guise of a well-written, humorous, self-deprecating memoir -- is an encouragement to everyone, whether music novices or experts, to avoid complacency, and to realize that no matter how well you think you know a piece of music, there's always something more to discover. 

Usually, a lot more.

Erich Korngold

Briefly, I should mention that I attended a concert by the Seattle Symphony on Saturday, featuring a stirring performance of the well-known Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5.  Perhaps to offset the Russian flavor of this offering, the night's performance was dedicated to the "brave people of Ukraine," and the yellow and blue colors of the Ukraine flag were projected on the stage's surrounding walls.

The performance was guest conducted by Joshua Weilerstein, the youthful artistic director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, who introduced each piece with a brief talk.  His short lectures were well-presented, and helpful.  His leadership of the orchestra was unusually dynamic, even acrobatic, and the orchestra seemed to respond with vigor.

In response to enthusiastic applause, the orchestra ended the evening with a short musical encore by a Ukrainian composer.

More exciting than the Tchaikovsky, perhaps, was a performance of Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major, immediately before intermission.  The violinist was James Ehnes, who has performed as a guest violinist to great acclaim with orchestras worldwide, and is especially well known in Seattle as artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

Korngold composed a ballet at age eleven that took Europe by storm (Der Schneemann), and followed up with a piano sonata at the age of 13, a sonata that was played across Europe by Artur Schnabel..  He is one of history's great child prodigies, but his classical career in Vienna was cut short in 1934 by the rise of Nazism.  Because he was Jewish, Korngold immigrated to America, and accepted an offer to write screen music for Hollywood.  He wrote the scores for 16 Hollywood films, but vowed to compose no more classical works until Hitler was driven from power.

His violin concerto, composed in 1945, was Korngold's attempt to return to classical music after the fall of Germany.  It is a fairly short work, 24 minutes in Saturday's performance, arranged in the traditional three movements.  The music is stirring, and displays themes from a number of the Hollywood scores he had composed earlier.    

According to the program notes, Korngold's attempt to return to classical compositions was not successful with the critics, and for many years his reputation remained that of a Hollywood composer of film scores.  Since 1970, however, again according to the program notes, and after his death in 1957, his compositions have received increased critical appreciation.

The Korngold concerto received an enormous standing ovation from Saturday night's audience, but the applause was probably directed more toward Ehnes's impressive violin technique and musicality, than to the composition itself. 

Ehnes responded to the applause with a short solo encore by Paganini.

Florence's "film"

Stepping out of Villa San Paolo, through the gate, and on to the winding street, via della Piazzola, I experienced a sensation perhaps new to me, but one felt often by first-time visitors to Italy.

Goethe had felt a vague sense of bewildered incredulity ... when, as a starry-eyed northerner, he finally arrived in Rome.  As he writes on November 1, 1786, "I was still afraid I might be dreaming; it was not till I had passed through the Porta del Popolo that I was certain it was true, that I really was in Rome."  A few lines later, he adds: "All the dreams of my youth have come to life; the first engravings I remember -- my father hung views of Rome in the hall -- I now see in reality, and everything I have known for so long -- is now assembled before me.  Wherever I walk, I come upon familiar objects in an unfamiliar world."

I was part of a group of forty university students, beginning a six-month stay on an overseas branch campus.  It had been a long flight from San Francisco to Milan in a chartered DC-6, with refueling stops in Montreal and Shannon, Ireland.  We had arrived at Milan in the dark, and immediately transferred to a bus, riding in the dark to Florence.  We arrived at our new campus at about 2 a.m. on Easter morning.  Our eyes were pressed against the bus windows as we lumbered through the twisting streets of the Florentine outskirts, but could make out little in the dark.

It was my first trip to Italy -- my first trip out of North America.  Like Goethe, I had long been strongly attracted to Italy, but it was all from second hand experiences:  My grandmother's painting in her home of the Rialto Bridge in Venice.  Evocative illustrations of an imagined classical Rome in my high school Latin book.  Stories set in post-war Italy in the neo-Realism Italian films then popular in college towns.

But it wasn't until dawn, when about half our student group emerged tentatively from the villa on our way around the block to attend Easter mass at a local church, that I had my Goethe moment.  A woman, dressed all in black, was standing on her front step, sweeping dust into the narrow street with an ancient broom, a collection of twigs, actually.  I found myself walking through a Vittorio de Sica film set.  I was really in Florence, really in Italy, really in a world unlike anything I'd known.

Events of the next few days only accentuated this feeling.  Visiting the little tabaccheria a block or so from the villa to buy toothpaste ("col-GAH-tay") and hand soap ("pal-mo-LEE-vay").  We had taken a six-credit course in intensive Italian the prior quarter -- now we had to put it to use.  Because no one with whom we had to deal spoke English.  Not even workers whose job involved tourists.

Taking the bus that Easter afternoon from the school to the center of town -- back then, you boarded through the back of the bus and gave your 30 lire fare to a little man sitting at a desk by the door.  He gave you a flimsy paper ticket that no one ever looked at again.  Stopping at a café near the city center and ordering a liter of wine for our group of four or five.  Did we dare, I asked myself?  Half our group was under 21.  No one cared!  No one asked for an ID.  No one even raised a skeptical eyebrow, revealing that he was going along with our little scheme against his better judgment.  Almost as astounding as being served as minors was being allowed to drink at a table on the sidewalk.  Outdoors!  In full view of the public, including small children.!

I was only partially naïve.  I had seen enough movies to have some idea of how life was lived in Italy.  But seeing it all in a movie at a Palo Alto theater was far different from living it.

At the time, during those six months, I felt sorry for the "older generation," most of whom seemed to visit Europe -- if they did at all -- in American Express tour buses.  And, although more tolerant of differences among people now, I still do.  Life isn't the same from a bus window, or while being passively herded about by a tour guide.  As André Aciman, who also wrote the quotation above, has noted in the same recent essay:¹

Visiting a place is not necessarily the experience of it  The real experience is the resonance, the "pre-image," the afterimage, the interpretation of experience, the distortion of experience, the struggle to experience the experience.  What we do when we think about experience, even when we don't exactly know what to make of it, is itself already experience.  It's the radiance we project onto things and that things radiate back to us that constitutes experience.

As Aciman has explained elsewhere, "my Florence" isn't just observing an impressive collection of architecture and paintings, or even drinking wine in a sidewalk café.  My experiences -- both as a child, hearing about Florence, and as a student struggling to find my way about Florence, asking for train tickets in broken Italian, understanding how to cash a check in an Italian bank -- and again, as an adult reflecting back on those student experiences and testing them against my observations during subsequent visits -- all combine to produce "my Florence."  A Florence that is unique to me, but that has enough in common with that of others as to make conversations with them about student travel a study in nostalgia.

Aciman explains this process as the creation of a "film."  Our own experiences with a place, or that we bring to a place, create a "film" about the place, a film that makes that place our own.  Without that film, a city is just bunch of buildings and streets.  We modify the physical reality of a city by the film in which we encase it, a film that then draws us to that city, and makes it a place in which we feel both comfortable and alive. 

Those are thoughts whose truth we all sensed, from the first day we were there -- although truths we would have expressed less fervently and eloquently, perhaps.  As one of our group remarked near the end of our six months, "You know, we will all probably come back here again in the future, but it will never be the same.  We'll be tourists, not Florentine residents."  Her comment suggested a little overseas campus snobbery, one that we all felt, but of course she was right. Even if Florence objectively were to be unchanged, "my Florence" would be different.  "My Florence" is never a completed structure -- it evolves with every new visit, or every book I read about the city, or every news story that originates there.

Four of us spent our last week in Europe, before flying back home, in Paris.  After arrival by train, we took the Metro to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where the school had booked us hotel rooms.  I walked out of the subway, onto the Boulevard, and once again felt like I was on a movie set.  An American in Paris.  I almost danced down the sidewalk, hearing Gershwin in my head.  My friends laughed, and told me to calm down.  But I was already constructing "my Paris," spreading my own "film" about it.

Italy, my Italy, is magnificent, but in this way not unique. 

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¹André Aciman, Homo Irrealis, "In Freud's Shadow, Part 1" (2021)

Quindecennial

It's frightening to consider that a wee innocent babe who arrived on Earth on the day that I posted my first post on this blog would today be a high school student.  And celebrating his 15th birthday.  

A birthday also celebrated by this blog.

Yes, it was on March 20, 2007, that I put pen to paper -- or fingers to keyboard -- and posted my first blog post.  It was a display of brilliance that gave great promise for the future.  In its entirety:

Ok, my friend. Now that you've spent too much time deciding how this blog page should appear esthetically, and even more time deciding how best to present to the indifferent world an idealized description of your ever-important Self, you really might want to decide what it is you're going to write about. Don't you think?

Gosh and golly ... I stare off into space ... and await inspiration.

 

Fortunately, inspiration did arrive, and I thought of a few more things to say in later posts, of which, to date, there have been 1,464.  Readers who were around last year, recall my bragging that I had published a record 148 posts in calendar year 2020.

Nemesis follows hubris, as the Greeks liked to say.  This past year -- as I began complaining as early as October in "Autumnal Melancholy" -- has been a year of writer's block.  I've kept hoping I'd bounce back, but so far it's getting worse.

I did post a moderately acceptable 100 times in calendar year 2021 -- not yet the dread "Nemesis" -- but that number was padded, perhaps, by an unusually high number of reprints from travel journals and other writings from my younger years.  Embarrassingly, those reprints often received the highest amount of reader interest, as measured from recorded hits.

But I'm a fighter, not a quitter.  I will struggle back to new levels of both quality and quantity.

So, as is my annual tradition, let's take a look at both quantity and quality during this past year.  By far, the highest number of hits landed on my summary of my September visit to Lake Como.  Following, by number of hits, were a reminiscence of a troublesome college roommate; a review of Mark Richards's Father, Son, and the Pennine Way; and a tribute to (and obituary for) my closest childhood friend.

As usual, it's easier to list the most popular posts than it is to decide which were the "best."  In my eyes, which were "best" often merely means the ones I feel happiest reading over again now.  Rather than rank them, I think I'll do what I did two years ago -- simply list my nine favorite in order of date of publication.  

1.  "Charley" -- remembering a memorable sophomore roommate.

2.  A description of my first pandemic trip out of state -- by train to Oxnard, California.   "Trains in the Time of Covid".

3.  A review of Mark Richards's Father, Son, and the Pennine Way.  

4.  A review of Catherine Gilbert Murdock's YA novel, DaVinci's Cat.

5.  A salute to the drinking of milk.   Drink Your Milk.

6.  An appreciation of my sister's rural home in central Idaho.  "Nature's Art".

7.  A summary of my stay for a week in a rental on the shore of Lake Como, Italy.  "Happy Days at Lake Como".

8.  A tribute to (and obituary for) a close childhood friend, "Lee Quarnstrom, 1939-2021"

9.  A celebration of November rain in Seattle.  "November Rain".

I've modestly omitted all of my various travel journal reprints, reprints that proved surprisingly popular.  My list is meant to be a list of accomplishments during the past year, not of my writings as a wild-eyed youth.

I look forward to my sixteenth year of blogging.  Hopefully, I'll find ways to shake off  the somewhat puzzling lethargy of 2021.

Back to Bar Harbor

I arouse myself from my blogomatic slumbers, like a great, sleepy bear coming out of hibernation, and I shake my head.  This hasn't been a good week -- a good month -- not just for my blog, but for the world in general.  Several sources agree:  Putin has become the "New Stalin," dragging his nation back into the  isolated, backward morass of the USSR in the 1950s.  

Of course, Stalin was cautious and conservative in his foreign policy, as, generally, were all leaders of the Soviet Union.  In his attack on Ukraine, Putin is more like Mussolini or Hitler, fanatical, aggressive, and emotional.  But domestically, yes.  Putin, like Stalin, has gradually worked himself into the position of an absolute dictator.  A Tsarist ruler.  And like Stalin, he has -- in the past week or so -- completed the elimination of every source of information for his people, other than information that he chooses to release through his own propaganda outlets.  No more internet, no more Facebook or Twitter, no more non-Putin newspapers or television stations.  

To an extent to which our very own Mr. Trump could only dream, Putin has established that -- for Russians -- the truth shall be whatever he finds useful for them to believe.  

And, as this week's Economist notes, in a leader entitled "The Stalinisation of Russia":

And, as Stalin did, Mr. Putin is destroying the bourgeoisie, the great motor of Russia's modernization.  Instead of being sent to the gulag, they are fleeing to cities like Istanbul, in Turkey, and Yerevan, in Armenia.  Those who choose to stay are being muzzled by restrictions on free speech and free association.

Congratulations on your Great Leap Forward into the past, Russia.

But, no, I didn't intend this to be another foreign policy diatribe.

Nope.  As I said at the beginning, I'm like a bear coming out of hibernation.  I see all about me signs of spring.  Ukraine is far away; much closer are the flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la).  And like that awakening bear, I have a great hunger.  Not for food.  Not for honey.  But for travel.

And so, while the people of Ukraine have been suffering incredible losses of property, lives, and families, I have been indulgently planning myself a little trip.   Making bookings.  Flashing my Visa card.

You may recall that I broke my pandemic travel fast last May by traveling to Maine, to Bar Harbor?  I'm doing it again this year, May 16-20.  Like last year, I'll fly into Portland, Maine, spend the night in that pleasant city, and then drive to Bar Harbor.  I'll be away a day longer this year than last.  And -- since I once more will depend on United Airlines for my connecting flight from Newark to Portland -- I will this time hold my baggage close to my chest.  Not checked.  After last year, I have lost all confidence in that airline's ability to forward my checked possessions to the correct city.

Bar Harbor is beautiful in the spring.  I loved it last year.  I love Acadia National Park, which it adjoins.  And I love the Maine coast, which I hope to examine more extensively this year.

I'll have more to say about it in weeks to come.  Meanwhile, I look about, see what the world's become, shake my great furry head, and decide I'd best avoid further hibernation. 

Brain fog

I sit at my desk and write this in the waning hours of February 2022.  What am I writing about, and why?  To be honest, I'm writing because I've posted only five essays this month.  This travesty will be my sixth.

I wrote six essays last month, too.  I suppose February's short 28-day length would excuse me for writing fewer this month.  Right?  

Of course not!  Eleven essays, total, for January and February combined?  I posted eleven essays in January alone last year.

What's wrong with me?  I bragged last March that I had posted 148 essays during calendar year 2020.  That was, for me, by far a new record -- but then each year beginning with 2018 had set a new all-time record.

I won't be bragging about new records for 2021.

Yes, I realize that quality counts for far more than quantity.  But quality's a different, more subjective issue.  Quantity is mathematics, easily examined statistics.  And the statistics indicate that while the first three months of 2021 were up there in numbers -- eleven or twelve per month -- not one month after March 2021 has totaled more than nine posts -- and every month since July has come in at fewer than eight.

What's happened?  I can't give you a clear reason, let alone a justification.  Subjectively, I feel that not much interesting happened in 2021, or, for that matter, in the first two months of 2022.  But that's no excuse.  My talent, such as it is, has been to take uninteresting events and find reasons to make them interesting.  Of if not interesting, at least funny.  Interesting or funny, at least to me, which -- God knows -- is all I need as a reason for writing.

Maybe I suffer from mild depression?  Possibly.  But I still bounce out of bed in the morning; I still find daily ways to keep myself amused.  

Maybe the pandemic?  That has some plausibility.  The two years of the pandemic have kept me cooped up at home, although in 2021 it hasn't prevented me from traveling on occasion.  Being cooped has limited the number of things available to write about, and by the end of 2020, those topics may have been exhausted.  How many times can I write about long walks around my neighborhood?  Or the quality and/or quantity of Seattle rainfall? 

Of course the relationship to the pandemic that I don't care to consider is "brain fog."  Maybe, after being immunized, I unknowingly contracted a case of Covid, one that was asymptomatic, or accompanied by very minor symptoms -- but a case that eventually resulted in an inability to think critically, focus attention, be imaginative?  Brain fog?  No, let's not go there.

Let's just call it idiopathic writer's block.  That's a safe diagnosis, one that has a certain distinction by its association with many great writers.  A symptom that comes, but then -- usually -- goes.

Also, I should note that I lost a childhood friend in September -- a guy who himself was a professional writer and a retired newspaper editor.  He was one of the few known regular readers of this blog.  He generally emailed me some clever remarks about each essay as it was posted.  He rarely met the intended point I was trying to make in my essay, but instead remarked at great length and with savage humor on his reaction to some obscure reference contained in the essay -- often something that reminded him of some weird event in our mutual childhoods.

I never wrote consciously for his sole amusement -- who knew at what, in any given post, he would find reason to be amused?  But I suspect that my awareness that he would be reading each post with critical eye and bizarre sense of humor prompted more posts from me than might otherwise have come forth.

But maybe not.  I'm not sure his death had any real effect on my ability to find blog-worthy subjects.  But he would be the first to tell me, with a twinkle in his eye, "Yes, but isn't it pretty to think so."

War in Ukraine

Unless you're a fervent nationalist, most international disputes require careful, scholarly analysis.  An empathy for both sides.  A study of the pros and cons of war, from both nations' point of view.

The Ukraine War is different.  This is a war that was unprovoked -- not a retaliation against hostile acts by the other side.  It's an attack on a neighboring sovereign neighbor -- not a hotheaded response on the spur of the moment, but a war for which Russia has prepared for weeks, in plain view of the world.  "Premeditated," as we say in criminal law.

A war by a superpower against a small nation.  Unpleasant words come to mind.  "Thug."  "Bully."  

Unpleasant  historical analogies must also be recalled.  Mussolini's attack on primitive Abyssinia.  Germany's attack on Poland.  Wars fought not to right wrongs, from the viewpoint of the attacker, but simply to add some more square miles and human population to a would-be empire.  

After the Soviet Union ended in 1991, Russia had thirty years to develop a more democratic union, as it at first seemed anxious to do.  Russia had thirty years -- and enormous natural resources -- with which to develop a thriving economy, an economy that would give a good life, a decent living, not to just a privileged few, but to the entire Russian population.  

Russia frittered it all away.  It became increasingly autocratic.  We understand autocratic, since Trump is a pale avatar of Mr. Putin.  Russia developed large corporations, devoted largely to extraction and sale of the country's oil and minerals, and to very little else, corporations owned and managed by a small oligarchy, an oligarchy that loved Putin for what he was doing for them.

Russia's people asked for more.  They deserved more.  Russians are not, by nature and by historical experience, an impatient or demonstrative or disruptive people.  But they are an intelligent and well-educated people and -- surely -- were aware that their government did not have their interests at heart.  They watched as the Chinese, towards whom their government had long been condescending, rapidly outpaced them, leaving Russia as almost a client state of China. 

When you can't give your people what they want and deserve, change the subject by starting a war.  That's part of the explanation for Russia's actions this month.  Another explanation is extreme nationalism.  Patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels, as Samuel Johnson wrote, but Putin -- to give him his due, for what it's worth --  seems legitimately obsessed with nationalistic fervor, for the Glory of the Fatherland.  Many of our own people share this obsession, viewing national bodies as though they were individuals who were susceptible to insult and hurt feelings by other nations. I'm reminded of the line by a German boy in the trenches in All Quiet on the Western Front:

A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.

But Putin sees disrespect and insult from other nations as the equivalent to disrespect and insult to himself.

And, in anger, he threatens the world with the devastation of nuclear weapons.

I have no solution to this war.  No one does.  No one can end it but the man who has caused it, all by himself.  And he apparently is now entranced by war.  He seems not at all interested in "solutions" short of conquest.

The losers won't be merely the Ukrainian people.  Russians also will lose, as many of Russia's citizens have already acknowledged.  But it is the soldiers, of course, who have the most to lose.  As the German soldier in Remarque's novel noted:

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.

All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929-30 and, together with the film based on it, was an international sensation.  Young men from many countries, including Germany, vowed they would never fight another war like World War I.  

Ten years later, Germany invaded Poland.  I'm not optimistic that reason and sense of shared humanity will overcome the fervor of Russian nationalism.  

Poor kitty

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ... it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

--Charles Dickens

Tuesday was one of those days.  Throughout last week's train trip, I had an itchy nose and sneezing fits that made me wonder if the Omicron variant had sneaked up on me.  Those symptoms had subsided by the time I got home, but on Saturday and Sunday I found myself sleeping ten hours at night, napping during the day, and feeling generally exhausted.  In normal times?  Hey, I'd say, coming down with a cold, or maybe just not enough sleep while traveling.

But these aren't normal times.

So I trotted off to the University campus for a free Seattle/UW PCR test on Monday.  Tuesday morning, the result came back: NEGATIVE!

But by the time I discovered that I had no Covid-19 worries, I was beset with new worries.  My feline companion Castor, after spending half the night on my bed (in itself unusual -- it's usually his brother), was discovered downstairs at 3 a.m., curled up in his kitty litter box.  Hours later, when I got up, he was still there -- awake, conscious, but not chipper.  

I mulled over how serious this might or might not be, seeking wisdom and knowledge from the Internet.  But then I discovered him trying mightily, to no avail, to urinate in his litter.  That did it.  I'd had a cat years ago -- Theseus by name -- who didn't sleep in his litter, but who strained mightily to pee in the bathtub drain.  It was serious, and resulted in surgery to remove the constricting portion of his urethra. 

I called my vet.  They were booked solid and couldn't see him.  They did send me a list of Urgent Care veterinarians who might have openings.  The first one I called was not too far from my house, and they suggested I bring him in for evaluation.

I did so.  Yup, he had a blocked urinary tract.  Contrary to my former veterinarian's response to Theseus, they didn't like to try surgery as a first resort.  They recommended that he be immediately catheterized, allowing the blocking crystals to escape, and that we then discuss possible changes in his diet.

And so we did.  I nearly required medical care myself when given an estimate for the treatment.  I joked that I'd have to talk to my banker about a second mortgage.  I once more find that receptionists don't always have lively senses of humor.

So that was Tuesday morning.  It's now Thursday, and I've been receiving semi-daily updates on his condition.  Which is improving rapidly, alleviating concern about long-term damage to the poor guy's kidneys.  They intended to remove the catheter about an hour ago, and test his blood to determine his kidney function.  If all seems normal, they will then call me at about dinner time about picking him up.  

His brother Pollux, at first very casual about Castor's absence -- Castor does wander off for hours or more at at time -- has been showing signs of stress this morning.  "What did you do with him?" I read in his eyes, accusingly.  "Patience, grasshopper," I advise him.  "All will soon become clear."

If all goes as expected, by bedtime tonight I'll be able to consider today yet another "best of times."  Even though both cats will be out the door, deserting me to make their nightly rounds.  And even though I'll be left financially devastated.  

Now I have to worry whether Brother Pollux will also have a genetic tendency to develop such an expensive malady.

Crossing the Rockies

One of the marvels of travel is the time dilation effect.   I left my home last Tuesday about 1 p.m., and returned Friday night around midnight.  Staying at home, those few days would have passed in the blink of an eye.  Returning, however, I was almost surprised that the seasons hadn't changed during my absence.  

I speak, of course, of my first-ever ride on the California Zephyr.  I flew to San Francisco on Tuesday, and stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport, a hotel selected largely because of its furnishing a free airport shuttle.  Up early Wednesday morning, back to the airport by shuttle, and caught a BART train from a station located inside the International Terminal.  For those keeping score, the fare was $9.65 plus another $3 for a rechargeable Clipper card (like Seattle's Orca) -- BART apparently doesn't sell individual paper tickets.

I got off downtown at the Montgomery Street station, and walked a couple of blocks to Amtrak's unimpressive bus stop, in front of a Chase Bank at 555 Mission Street.  I arrived over a half hour early, because of my extreme caution, and after having mentally gone over every detail in this series of moves to avoid any miscalculation.  Some folks would have simply taken a cab from the hotel, but they miss out on the sense of adventure.

The bus left promptly at 8 a.m., and carried me and fewer than ten other passengers across the Bay Bridge to the Amtrak station at Emeryville.  The day was beautiful, as was every day on the ensuing trip.  The view of San Francisco from the bridge was fit for a travel poster, glittering in the morning sun.

The train that awaited me was not long -- three sleeper cars, two coaches, a dining car and a lounge/café.  The diner -- as we were often reminded in the days to come -- was exclusively for sleeping car passengers.  The café provided take-out food and drinks for both classes.

I had a roomette, the same accommodation I've had on the Coast Starlight and the Empire Builder.  All of Amtrak's sleepers west of Chicago are identical in design.  I sleep very comfortably in roomettes, and always enjoy the experience.

The train left promptly at 9:10 a.m., with surprisingly few passengers.  We picked up considerably more, however, at various California stations, especially Sacramento.  Shortly past Sacramento, we began crossing the Sierras.  I had been looking forward to the views of the Rockies in Colorado, but had overlooked how impressive the Sierras might be from the train.  It began getting dark not long after leaving Reno, and was light again by the time we reached Helper, Utah.  

Amtrak's meal service has improved considerably, as I discovered at Christmas heading to Southern California.  The dinners especially -- the menu offers a choice of four Appetizers, four Main Courses, and three desserts.  Choice of drinks includes complimentary wine, beer, or limited mixed drinks.  The food is apparently cooked in the kitchen, below the dining area.  I ordered steak the second night, medium rare, and it was cooked to perfection.

Amtrak has abandoned its temporary pandemic practice of not mixing groups at tables.  But because of a rather small number of passengers on this run, I found myself with only one other person each meal.  Everyone I talked to at these meals expressed displeasure with the plans of the former Amtrak CEO to eliminate diners, and serve sleeper passengers only in their rooms.  We all agreed that the people you meet at meals is one of the more memorable parts of the trip.  Nevertheless, I have to admit that a surprisingly large number of sleeper passengers on this trip opted for room service, rather than come to the diner.  

Thursday was devoted to crossing Colorado, and climbing over the Rockies.  I got some spectacular photos, even though they were taken from a moving train with an older model iPhone.  We had a half hour stop in Denver, where I walked around the impressive station, a station that was hosting some sort of black tie reception while we were there.  (No, we weren't invited.)

I can't tell you much about Nebraska.  I woke up very briefly in Lincoln, and totally slept through a longer stop in Omaha.  By the time it was light, we had passed into Iowa.  As I wrote on Facebook, Iowa reminded me of parts of Western Washington -- the farm areas, not forests -- except for the fact that every pond, lake, stream, or river was solidly frozen over.  An impressively strange sight for a West Coast guy.

Finally, we streaked across northern Illinois, arriving in Chicago at 2:07 p.m. -- 43 minutes ahead of schedule.  Don't believe the claim that Amtrak is always late.

My flight home didn't leave O'Hare until 8:35 p.m., so I checked my bags -- free of charge to sleeper passengers -- and walked out into the Big City.  It was 25 degrees out, accentuated by a strong, chilling, Chicago wind.  I first walked a couple of blocks south to the nearest CTA station, at Clinton, to make sure I knew where to go when the time came.  I then walked across the Chicago River and down Adams Street --  a straight shot from Union Station to Chicago's art museum, the Art Institute of Chicago.  I stopped for a snack and a bit of warmth on my way, but was quite cold by the time I reached the museum.  Admission was $25, and I decided I didn't have enough time or energy to make it worthwhile.  But no fee was required to wander around the museum gift shop, which was almost a mini-museum in itself.  Last time I was there, in 2008, I bought a souvenir t-shirt, one that I still wear.  This time, I just looked.

Back to Union Station, picked up my bags, and caught the CTA to O'Hare at Clinton station (fare just $3 -- N.B. BART!).  Chicago's rapid transit is far older, obviously, than Seattle's light rail, but very serviceable.  It was gratifying to watch ourselves shoot past the stalled rush hour traffic on parallel I-90.

Plane left and arrived on time, and the great California Zephyr adventure is history.  A fairly inexpensive adventure, although I did lose my Kindle somewhere along the way.  It needed replacing, anyway.

Will I ever do a similar trip on another long-distance Amtrak route?  Need you even ask?
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Photo -- Rocky Mountains from train window.

Walking the walk

So there I was.  Out on a beautiful mid-February day.  Plants were sprouting, a few flowers were blooming, the smell of an early Spring was in the air.  And I was happy, walking through Seattle's Madrona neighborhood, mid-way through a 5.5-mile walk.

And then a voice boomed out:

Voice: "Hey, another guy who walks just like me!"

I turned my head and saw a guy standing beside his house.  He looked like he was nearing ninety, his wrinkled face grinning at me like a demented jack-o'-lantern.

Me:  "Hahaha."

Voice:  "Well, at least we're both still alive!"

Me:  "Yup."

Well, that brilliant conversational exchange ruined my walk.  My day.  Why, you perhaps ask?  The guy was some kind of nut, right?

The problem was that I'd already been worried about my walk, worried as recently as the first few minutes of today's walk.  My feet, clad in hiking shoes, kept slapping the sidewalk, making loud, embarrassing noises as I walked along.  I'd noticed that more and more recently.

But it hadn't occurred to me that it made me look like an old man.  Old to the extent that my walk caused this guy, himself well into advanced codgerdom, to embrace me as a brother.

When I got home, I turned to the internet for advice.  Advice on how to avoid attracting attention as I pounded the pavement.  I found all kinds of articles describing why people tend to "walk old" as they advance in years.  Often, the blame was placed on pathological sources -- for example, the well-known "Parkinson's walk," where the fellow walks bent over with his arms held stiffly at his side.  More frequently, the blame falls on poor muscle tone in the legs and abdomen.

I suppose the muscle tone in my legs isn't what it was at age 25, but it can't be bad.  I walk briskly five or sometimes six miles every day, part of the time climbing up fairly steep hills.  But, setting aside conflicting advice as to the cause of  "walking old," one result is a tendency to take shorter and shorter strides, and to take them more slowly.  These shorter strides seem to make the feet come down more flatly on the sidewalk, rather than striking heel first and then pushing off from the toe.

After dark, away from the prying and astonished eyes of my neighbors, I decided to experiment with my stride.  I was immediately aware that my stride did indeed seem to have gradually become shorter, which may explain why I was no longer passing as many fellow pedestrians as I had in the past.  So I consciously lengthened my stride.  I noticed that my steps seemed smoother, and that I was avoiding that embarrassing slapping noise.  I walked a mile, using my longer stride.  I felt more comfortable, and -- almost automatically -- I found myself walking faster.

Obviously, it's a mistake to adopt too long a stride -- you'll look clownish and grotesque.  But I felt comfortable with the longer stride I tried tonight, and I plan to consciously use it over the next few days and see how I feel.  I hope I'll look (and sound) better.  And a longer stride may have the added benefit of giving my muscles more exercise per mile walked.

Sibelius and more

The featured work at last night's Seattle Symphony was the Sibelius Symphony No. 1.  A well-known concert standard, but I don't think I'd ever heard it before, at least in a live performance rather than as simply background music on the radio.  

The work was composed in 1899, and -- to my ears, at least -- felt like a bridge between the late Nineteenth Century romantic work of composers like Brahms, Mahler, and Bruckner, and the far less obviously structured pieces of the Twentieth.  The symphony begins, strikingly, with a haunting clarinet solo, and large stretches of the piece are highly melodic.  Other parts, while not atonal, impressed me as loud and dramatic, with rapidly changing dynamics.  Pointing toward later works like those of Stravinsky.

The concert began with a contemporary work -- the composer was present, and took a bow at the conclusion -- entitled, in all caps, "TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY."  The composition was inspired by the composer's emotions during the pandemic lockdown.  It was more melodic and less anarchic than you might expect.  But its fifteen minutes felt -- again, to me -- much longer.  As with the pandemic, one longed for the end.

Yeah, that's me.  I know what I like, and I like what I know.

The wildest applause came for perhaps the most familiar piece, Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini," and for the pianist Garrick Ohlsson.  Rachmaninov always demands a lot from the pianist, and Ohlsson delivered.  After concluding the pyrotechnics of the Rachmaninov, he wooed his audience with a gentle encore, Chopin's "Nocturne in E flat."  

Intermission and the Sibelius symphony followed the Rachmaninov, but as I left Benaroya Hall and walked to the light rail station, it was the basic Paganini theme that kept running through my head, and that I had trouble not humming out loud.

Large enthusiastic audience.  Once again, I was surprised at the number of young people in attendance -- singles, couples, and larger groups of high school and college aged attendees.  Also, a surprising number of younger children -- middle school and younger, accompanied by their parents.  An encouraging sign in the Seattle world of 2022.

By rail to Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.

In this blog's near-infancy -- on July 15, 2008, in a post entitled "Riding the Rails" -- I described a forthcoming railroad adventure. With a wedding on Mohegan Island, Maine, as my ultimate destination, I would be riding Amtrak for three days, from Seattle to Boston. 

Today,  I can announce that in a couple of weeks, I'll be riding Amtrak on a shorter, but to me novel, route -- from San Francisco to Chicago.

Why am I going to Chicago?  I'm afraid this is another one of my "train trips to nowhere" experiences.  Where I take a ride on a train just for the sake of riding on the train, not as a way to reach a destination.  The curious kind of jaunt that I've discussed several times on this blog, each of them on the Coast Starlight, traveling up and down the Pacific coast.

I've traveled twice to Chicago by train -- once as a teenager, on Great Northern's "Empire Builder," and then, on that Boston trip in 2008, on what was by then Amtrak's "Empire Builder."  Same route, both times, through Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and into Illinois.  I also returned from Chicago to Portland, after my teenaged visit with a friend, on Union Pacific's "City of Portland."  Through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.  The UP route also clipped, barely, the northeast corner of Colorado, for decades my only justification for including Colorado in my list of visited states.

But this year's trip will be a new route, on the "California Zephyr."  From California, through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois.  Actually, the latter part of the route appears to follow the same tracks as those I traveled on the "City of Portland," especially between Omaha and Chicago.  Between those cities, the "City of Portland" traveled on tracks owned by the Chicago and Northwestern (C&NW) railroad.  

My exposure to Colorado will be considerably more substantial this time, a highlight of the trip.  We'll cross the middle of the state, over the Rockies, with a stop in Denver.

I plan to fly to San  Francisco the afternoon of February 15 and stay at an airport hotel.  I'll take BART the next morning to downtown, meeting an Amtrak-chartered bus that takes passengers across the Bay to Emeryville where the train awaits.  The "California Zephyr" is scheduled to arrive at Chicago's Union Station around 3 p.m., on February 18, from where I'll take the CTA to O'Hare airport   My plane home to Seattle departs at 8:30 p.m.

That last connection will be a little iffy.  Amtrak often is totally on time.  Sometimes, however, their trains -- especially long distance trains -- can be hours late for no apparent (to passengers) reason.  If it appears that I'm going to miss my flight, I'll have to make some quick changes in my schedule.  Fortunately, with an iPhone I can do that while still hours from Chicago, hopefully lining up a hotel room as well as a change in flight.

I'm looking forward to the whole trip -- the majesty of the Rockies, the emptiness  of the Plains, the excitement of arrival in what Carl Sandburg flatteringly called "Hog Butcher for the World."  Well, it has gentrified a bit since those days.  

I'll give a report of my journey's high and low points after my return.

Iranian trip canceled

Thinking well is wise; planning well, wiser; but doing well is the wisest and best of all.

--Persian saying

I thought well; I planned well; ... but, through no fault of my own, I end up doing nothing at all.

I speak, of course, of my two-week trip to Iran, a trip long-planned for May.  I've published two blog articles in which I spoke glowingly of my earlier Iranian trip in 2011, and in which I looked forward eagerly to a repeat visit in May 2022.  The trip was originally planned for last October.  As I noted last summer, because of both my trip to Lake Como with relatives and the disruptions caused by the Covid virus, I decided to postpone my departure until October 2022.

But I was impatient.  I checked with the organizers in November, and decided to move the date up to May, even though at that time there was only one other person signed up for that date.  The trip required a minimum of six participants.

That was the still the status of the trip this week.  Just me and some unknown kindred soul, looking forward wistfully to travel in May.

And then today -- I receive the Notice of Cancellation.  My deposit will be refunded.  Fortunately, I had taken the company's advice and refrained from making air bookings until they were confident that the trip would run.  Now, barely three months before departure, they gave up hope.

I hope that Covid-19 was responsible for the lack of interest.  Not fear of the Iranian government, or a feeling that Iran is a backward and uninteresting nation.  Based on my visit in 2011, I can attest that the country is beautiful and crammed with historical interest.  The people -- at least the many people my group encountered -- are friendly, relaxed, and possessed of great senses of humor.  

The people seemed more "American" in personality than those in most of Europe. 

The government?  Immigration control was careful and meticulous, but if you've gone through British immigration you won't be critical.  Once inside the country, we were no more troubled by officialdom than we would have been inside most other countries.  The government did require that we be accompanied during group activities by an Iranian guide.  Our guide was well educated, relaxed, and funny.  We learned far more from him than we did from our American guide.  While he wasn't anti-governmental in his stated opinions , he rolled his eyes as instinctively as we do in America when confronted by seemingly irrational governmental policies or regulations.

My 2011 trip was an amazing experience.  I've been looking forward to repeating it, repeating it in many respects but as part of a much smaller group than the 35 college alumni I traveled with at that time.  Unfortunately, a group of two was much too much smaller.

I look forward to giving the trip another try in the not too distant future.  Persia/Iran has been around for millennia.  It isn't going away anytime soon.  

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Photo:  Kidding around with local Iranians in Isfahan.