"Medical student's disease"

As may be apparent from my posts, I virtually live to walk.  Around my house, out in the country,  or in a foreign country --  I spend vast amounts of time walking.

So when I suddenly began experiencing mild pain, weakness, and stiffness in my legs, I was concerned.  Possibly, it was a sign of old age, I thought, laughing at the concept of "old."  Or maybe it was from an overly enthusiastic attempt to strengthen legs by standing and sitting with my legs crossed.  That effort had, in fact, pulled an upper thigh muscle, which bothered me for several days -- maybe it also caused a generalized pain throughout my legs.

Of course, I could check with my doctor, but that's like asking for directions when you're driving through an unfamiliar town.  For us guys, it's only a last resort, after all attempts of self-help have failed.

No, far better that I do a fast check of my symptoms on Wikipedia.  Wikipedia always has an answer for everything, and it had a number of possible answers for me:

Stroke

Congestive heart failure

Spinal cord damage

Pinched nerve exiting spinal cord

Muscular dystrophy

Viral nerve damage

Cancerous and non-cancerous growths in brain, spinal cord, or peripheral nerves

Long time exposure to alcohol

Diabetes

Drugs, like statins and steroids

Slipped disk

Idiopathic inflammateory myopathy

Beriberi from Vitamin B1 deficiency 

Lou Gehrig's Disease

Cauda equina syndrome

I hardly got past the "congestive heart failure." My legs were forgotten, as, with beating -- nay, racing -- heart, I read all the indications of heart failure. Yes. I exclaimed to myself! I meet the diagnosis. Just like my dad, my heart's giving out on me.

By the following morning, common sense prevailed. Whatever my problems, I definitely do not have congestive heart failure. The leg pain, meanwhile, had paled into insignificance.

Saturday, I walked about eight miles; today about seven. My legs are still a little stiff each day as I begin my walk, but the stiffness quickly wears off.

I'll survive -- both my legs and my heart will survive -- to hike another hike.

Winter walking

It was near noon.  I was sitting in a dark room -- dark at mid day  -- staring out the window at a light but steady rain.  With a cat on my lap. 

The Rule of of Feline Ownership is, of course, that -- barring a threat of imminent injury (to the cat, not to the human) --one does not move until the cat himself chooses to move.  For amusement, I had at hand my Kindle and I had my iPhone.  I grew weary of reading, so I took the photo.

Well, I can't sit here all day, I remarked to my immobile cat.  Time for a walk.  In the rain.  To clear my mind and quicken my heartbeat.  My cat rolled his eyes.

I have two basic walking routes, each of which has a few minor variations.  By some odd coincidence, the half way point on both routes happens to be a Starbucks.  I order ahead while en route, and am often greeted by name when I arrive.  But not today.  Today, I decided to reactivate a route I used to follow frequently, back in the early days of the pandemic when half the challenge of my hike was anticipating and avoiding coming within six feet of other walkers.  

But it's  good route.  A little shorter than my others, but since I hadn't done it for a while, it seemed longer.  Up onto Capitol Hill, as far south as Roy Street, back to Volunteer Park, a loop around the south and west portions of the Park, down past Seattle Prep, and then through the length of long, skinny Interlaken Park. back to my own neighborhood.  About four miles total.

It had stopped raining.  But it was still drippy under the trees.  And I'm a Northwesterner.  I love sunshine, sure.  But I experience a certain exhilaration walking in the rain.  Unless the rain's actually a downpour being driven by a strong wind into my face.  It's still mid-February, but plants were in the early stages of their spring growth.  Some early-budding trees had buds.  A few flowers were popping out -- even a few early-blooming rhododendrons.  Birds were in full activity, busy about their business.  

I approve of nature, and nature, in turn, always obligingly cheers me up.

My route took me through neighborhoods filled with large, old houses, many dating back to the early days of Seattle.  Houses with odd shapes, large bay windows, towers, impressive balconies, three or four stories in height.  Square feet sufficient to room several families,  but that don't.  

I've read protests in the local paper about Home Sections that feature architecturally interesting houses, the kind of houses I saw while walking today, houses that are obviously far beyond my ability to ever purchase.  Readers protest that reading these features, looking at their size and their beautiful architectural details -- and at scenes of apparently happy, upper middle class families enjoying their good fortune -- just infuriates them, makes them angry and depressed.  I infer that they would love to drag these happy families out onto the street, and force them to live in cheap rentals like everyone else.

Not me.  I like reading about huge old houses, and studying them as I walk by.  I enjoy them for the same reason that I love visiting (or just reading about) castles and chateaux in Europe.  It's fun to walk past Buckingham Palace in London.  I'm not enraged that the Royal Family lives inside; if anything, I fantasize about living there myself.  

I never felt the urge to drag the Queen out and make her cook her own meals like everyone else.

But these are all topics for another day.  Today, let me just say that walking -- even walking in the rain -- maybe even especially walking in a light rain -- raises my spirits.  It helps me think clearly.  My daydreams while walking give me ideas for future travel.

Walking in a light drizzle even gives me the gumption to come home and remind the cats who's boss.  Oh.  Well, now I'm exaggerating.

Confirmation

As I completed my weekly thirty minute walk and approached the church last night, I caught sight of a crowd of young people milling about the door.  Uh oh, I now recalled.  I'd forgotten that we'd been given full warning last week that a group of young people were being confirmed this evening, in case we chose to attend a different service.

I hadn't been present at a confirmation service since my own confirmation as a 20-year-old.  Everyone being confirmed along with me was a college student, so the ambience was a bit different from last night's.  Twenty-four children, together with their parents and sponsors, filled the front half of the church.  The rear half, where I settled in, was uncommonly sparsely filled.  The ages of the "confirmands" appeared to range from about eleven to fifteen -- typically, middle school age.  Most were neatly dressed, most of the boys in white shirts and red bow ties, the girls in attractive dresses.

The celebrants processed down the central aisle, the various readers and two altar boys  followed by our two parish priests.  The entire ensemble was followed by an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese -- wearing a miter (tall headdress) and carrying a shepherd's staff, just like in the movies.  After the homily, or sermon, the young people were called to the front by name, one by one, where the bishop laid his hands on the head and applied a smear of fragrant "chrism" (oil).

Theologically, baptism of the children, usually received as babies, was thus confirmed and the child's baptismal graces were brought to completion; the Holy Spirit was called down to enter and aid each of them, analogous to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles at Pentecost.  (The children were warned that they might not feel different afterwards, but they were different.)  Socially, confirmation, which follows a series of lessons and instructions, resembles a Jewish bar or bat mitzvah (without the parties and gifts!), marking the spiritual adulthood of the young person and bringing him into full membership in the congregation.  

Each child had been asked to write a short statement for the weekly church bulletin, explaining why they sought confirmation, the name of their adopted patron saint and the reason for the choice, and something personal about their own life.  The paragraphs were often touching, occasionally a bit rote, with some hoping to love and aid the marginalized more fully (St. Theresa of Calcutta, St. Francis), some hoping to be strong when persecuted (St. Sebastian, St. Joan of Arc), and one boy expressing his  love of science and astronomy (St. Dominic as patron saint of science).

As for the "something personal," we had a group of young athletes, both boys and girls, devoted to a wide variety of athletics.  Other passions were a love of music and musical instruments, and, for two kids, playing card games.  

It was a lengthier ceremony than I'd anticipated when leaving my house last night, but the church was full of happy people, young and old.  In a nation and world full of hatred and cynicism, it was a relief to spend a couple of hours watching young people optimistically sharing their hopes for their own lives and for their world.

I walked home with a lighter step than at my arrival.

By train through the desert

Déjà vu all over again.  A year ago this coming Thursday I snuggled into a comfortable Amtrak roomette and began a cross country rail trip from San Francisco to Chicago.  I called it "A Train Trip to Nowhere," because I had no earthly reason to visit Chicago while it was caught up in the icy embrace of February.

And now, three weeks from tomorrow, I repeat that trip.  But leaving from Los Angeles, not San Francisco.  On the Southwest Chief, not the California Zephyr.  

But the idea is the same.  A long train trip, cozy in my roomette, watching the changing scenery whiz by outside my window.  Occasionally -- never as much as I anticipate -- reading.  Meals in the diner (two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, all included in the fare).  Two restful nights sleeping, after my seats have been converted to a bed.  (Not everyone agrees that sleep on a train is restful, but this is my trip, not theirs!)

I initially expected the trip from Los Angeles to be even longer than the trip from the Bay Area, but such is not the case.  More miles, undoubtedly.  But from San Francisco, the train passes slowly over first the Sierras and then the Rockies.  Once past Denver, the miles speed by surprisingly quickly.

But from Los Angeles, the train does a southern end run around both mountain ranges, moving from California, across northern Arizona, through New Mexico, entering Colorado east of the Rockies, and speeding through Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and into Illinois to Chicago.

Both the Chief and the Zephyr are scheduled to arrive at about the same time in Chicago.  But the Zephyr leaves Emeryville (across the Bay from San Francisco) at 9:10 a.m. while the Chief doesn't leave L.A. until 5:55 p.m.  That makes the latter approximately a nine hour shorter trip -- nine hours that I'll miss experiencing.  But to compensate I'll be seeing parts of the country I've never seen before.

So I'll fly from Seattle to LAX at 9:10 a.m. on Monday, March 6.  I'll take the "Fly Away" shuttle from the airport to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, with about five hours to kill until my train leaves.  Fortunately, Union Station has a lounge for sleeper passengers (although I gather far less impressive than Amtrak's lounge in Chicago, not to mention airport lounges provided by airlines for their qualifying passengers.)  But I can check my small item of baggage in the lounge, and either kill time in the lounge or wander around downtown.

Although I'll have time to kill in Los Angeles, life may be a bit more hectic on arrival in Chicago. I'm scheduled to arrive at 2:50 p.m. on Wednesday, March 8, but trains are often a bit late.  Sometimes a lot late.  I was lucky last year when my Zephyr arrived about 45 minutes ahead of schedule, but one can't predict.  My flight out of O'Hare, returning to Seattle, is scheduled to leave at 6:55 p.m.  If Amtrak is within an hour (or hour and a half) of being on schedule, I'll have plenty of time to walk a couple of blocks south of the train station to the Clinton Street CTA station, and take the rapid transit to O'Hare -- about an hour's trip.

If the train appears seriously late, as we enter Illinois from Iowa, I'll reschedule my flight out of O'Hare by phone and, if necessary, also book a room at some conveniently located hotel.  One way or the other, I expect to be flying home roughly on time, barring massive snowstorms or nuclear attack.

Some people say I spend too much time considering what might go wrong.  It's a professional disability of anyone who has spent his career trying cases  in court!  The habit eventually becomes sort of fun.

And you can never anticipate every possibility of disaster.  Who knows, some people have unpreditably slipped, just emerging from a shower, and dislocated their shoulder.  But, we won't go there!
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Photo:  Southwest Chief barrels through New Mexico

Audiences of the future

I've been increasingly impressed by the number of young people who show up for regular season programs by the Seattle Symphony.  Most frequently, by "young people," I mean high school and college ages.  But last night, I was impressed by the number of pre-teens, on best behavior, accompanying their parents.

The young boy -- maybe ten or eleven -- sitting directly in front of me was dressed in a dark suit and tie.  With white sneakers, but even so he was dressed better than I was, or, for that matter, than 90 percent of the male audience.  He listened raptly to the concert, occasionally whispering a comment to his mother.

If the program had included numbers like Peter and the Wolf, the Nutcracker Suite, or the William Tell Overture, I might have understood the appeal.  But, with the exception of the ten-minute Finlandia by Sibelius, the program consisted of pieces unfamiliar to many in the audience (including me), their music often atonal and with no obvious sense (again, to me) of melody and harmony.¹

But the music was stirring and often dramatic -- and maybe something that youngsters, with no preconceptions about "classical" music, might respond to more readily than would we stodgy old codgers.

The next performance on my season's ticket comes in just two weeks, and features Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and a tone poem by Richard Strauss.  A couple of classical "hits" for us traditionalists.  It will be interesting to consider how the demographics of the audience for that performance differs, if at all, from last night's.

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¹Benjamin Britten, Violin Concerto

Dai Fujikura, Waverly World (world premiere)

Sibelius, Symphony No. 7

Stock photo

Month of mud and cabbage

And here we are.   The first day of February.  Once more we have survived the seemingly endless days of January (alleviated for me, this year, by my brief, mid-month jaunt to Maui).

In considering a blog topic, I recalled past posts about the origins of January -- two-faced Janus and all that.  And about March, named after the Roman God of War, the month when warfare again became practical in snowbound countries.  Practical for primitive reasons that are about to be re-discovered by the armies of both Russia and Ukraine.

But February was virgin blogging terrain.  Or so I thought until a scan of my own blog revealed an extensive history of the month in 2017, just six years ago.  How confused our memories become as the years go by!

As pointed out in 2017, February was named after the Februa, the Roman ritual of purification held half way through the month.  I noted, meaningfully, that sometimes entire nations require purification, as suggested by the recent election of, well, never mind.  He Who Must Not be Named.  In addition, the Church designated February 2 as the Feast of the Purification, but purification in a different sense -- a ritual ceremony under Jewish law that women underwent forty days after birth of a child.  Or, in this case, a Child.

Our nation is no less in need of purification now than it was six years ago.  But enough.  You are subjected to sufficient political angst on TV and in the newspapers.  

Not all nations have dwelled on ethereal concepts of purification, either Roman or Christian, in naming February. Many nations are more earthy. The Ukrainians call it лютий (lyutiy), meaning the month of ice or hard frost -- a name they must find especially poignant this year. Other Eastern and Central European countries have a number of outlandish names for February, most of them focusing on aspects of snow, ice, icicles, ice floating in partially frozen rivers ... well, you get the idea. Try to picture Lower Slobbovia as portrayed in one of the old Al Capp "Li'l Abner" comics.

No, let's just focus on the good, old Anglo-Saxon terms for February. Solmonath (mud month) and Kale-monath (cabbage month). They are both down-to-earth, and descriptive. It's where we of English descent descended from -- long cold, wet winters ending in mud and meals consisting of the last of the prior summer's cabbage, as our grandparents huddled shivering in their hovels.

At least they, like us, have March -- the month of War -- to look forward to. A little bloody excitement to bring us out of our long winter tedium. Things haven't changed much.

Losing focus

“If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything.”

--Tom Rath

While in graduate school in the late 1960s, I occasionally put down the books and began doing a bit of hiking, learning to enjoy the great wilderness that surrounded me in the Pacific Northwest.  At the same time, I saw commercial and industrial threats to that wilderness, and realized that there were people and organizations that were trying to combat those threats.

As a result, in 1967, I joined the Sierra Club.  Within a few years, I had converted my annual membership to a lifetime membership, and have tried to support it ever since, to varying degrees at different times.

As I recall, in 1967, the Club had a membership of about 74,000.  You required a "nomination" from an existing member -- easy to get! -- to support your application.  Today, according to an article in today's New York Times, the Club has about a million members.  It's a mass operation.  No nomination is required to join -- just send in your dues.

Over the years, beginning decades ago, the goals of the Club became more diffuse.  Originally, I read the monthly Bulletin avidly, finding it full of information about wilderness and not-quite-wilderness areas that were worth visiting and hiking, and warnings of the threats posed to those areas.  At times, the articles emphasized the beauty and remoteness of areas, primarily those without formal protection, recalling the Club's history as a hiking club.  Other times, the articles were calls to arms, urging lobbying and other action by members, ways of persuading government officials to take action to preserve those areas.

Construction of Glen Canyon Dam, strongly opposed by the Sierra Club, was completed in 1966, the year before I joined the Club.  The tragedy of the flooding of Glen Canyon was still strongly felt, and had an emotional effect on me.  

At that time, the North Cascades was a vast undeveloped and roadless area in Washington state.  Congress debated creating a national park in some or all of the undeveloped area of the Cascades.  The issue was highly controversial.  I recall arguments that the area should be developed like the Swiss Alps, with highways, tourist lodges, and cable lifts carrying tourists high up the exposed rock peaks.  Supporters of a wilderness park were accused of wanting to "lock up" the wilderness for the exclusive use of "sturdy mountain hikers."  The public was invited to testify at Congressional hearings in Seattle; I volunteered and had the interesting experience of being grilled hostilely by the (Democratic) Chairman of what was then called the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee.  

My point is that the Sierra Club had at that time a strong focus on protecting not only wilderness, but public lands in general -- preserving them for the general public and for future generations.  Going into the 1970s, however, I noted increasing numbers of articles in the Bulletin discussing more general questions of Environmentalism.  I appreciated the importance of these issues -- for example, toxic waste disposal, air pollution, damage to ocean life.  But these issues were already the subject of concern by other groups, and they weren't the issues that had drawn me to the Club.  I skimmed the monthly Bulletin increasingly casually, and looked more to smaller organizations such as the Wilderness Society for information about threatened lands.  

Now, reading the New York Times article referenced above, I read that the Sierra Club is consumed with controversy over racial issues.  Some of these issues seem appropriately raised -- those dealing with equity in its treatment of Black and other minority employees, and with concerns raised about "bullying behavior by senior employees."  These are issues that all organizations must confront.

More controversial, at least to my eyes, are concerns about the Club's alleged intrinsic racism, and its interactions with racism in society at large.  Claims have been made that the Club's revered founder, John Muir, was a racist.  Muir is said to have "characterized Black Americans and Native Americans as dirty and lazy," and that some of the Club's early members had been white supremacists.  A recent executive director of the Club, who has since left the Club, "disavowed" Muir, and said that the Club  must examine its "substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy."

The new executive director, Ben Jealous, himself a Black American, has taken a more moderate position.

When I look at John Muir, I see a man in the late 19th century, who talked a lot like men in the late 19th century.  The way that I grew up was really valuing him as somebody who helped preserve the most beautiful places that were the landscape of my childhood.

I agree.

But even aside from the Muir controversy and the claims of institutional racism,  Jealous agrees that the Club's mission has expanded far beyond wilderness preservation into concerns with industrial pollution, climate change, wind and solar energy, promotion of voting rights, and an attack on world poverty.  In fact, the Sierra Club's informal mission statement now appears similar to the Democratic Party platform (which I also support).

My concern is that in promoting all worthy causes, the Club loses its focus -- for its leaders, for its members, and for the general public.  There are many organizations, public and private, attempting to deal with world poverty.  There are organizations dedicated to voting rights and to combatting climate change.  I suspect that I'm not the only person who sees no particular point (or at least feels no great enthusiasm) in supporting an organization that is alarmed by everything that I'm alarmed about personally.  

That's what political parties are for.

In other words, I'd like to see the Club return to its original focus on lobbying for parks and for wilderness protection, dealing with extraneous issues only insofar as they may be obstacles to achieving those original goals in specific cases.  I can develop great enthusiasm for saving land for recreational use or for wilderness protection.  Saving the Amazon forests by eliminating South American poverty is too complicated, too problematic a goal -- maybe the forests can be saved even in the face of poverty; maybe eliminating poverty will actually increase pressure on the forests.  Both are admirable goals, but there may be conflicts between those goals that must be worked out by institutions with greater authority than that of the Sierra Club.

I remain a member of the Sierra Club.  I'm proud of its history and its accomplishments.  I'm proud of its membership.  I'm just concerned about the directions it's been choosing.

Hic sunt dracones

In high school, we learn to think of history as endless lists of dates.  Of presidential terms and royal reigns.  Of endless battles.  Of the rise and fall of one empire after another.

If, at the university, we venture further into historical studies, of course, we learn about social and economic history, of the history of science and technology.  Even  history as viewed from the perspective of agricultural development.

All of these approaches to history present as attempts to understand the lives and thoughts of peoples who lived in places and centuries other than our own.

Last night, Professor Robin Stacey gave the first of five weekly lectures, sponsored by the University of Washington Alumni Association, asking a packed auditorium to consider the world of medieval Europe as revealed by the myths, legends, folklore, and fairy tales that evolved during those centuries.  She also showed how many of the fictional persons and creatures from the medieval period have continued to speak to our own time and civilization, although often modified in ways that meet our own emotional or political needs.

Professor Stacey has presented public lectures on medieval-related subjects in the past.  I blogged on a lecture series discussing the writings of J.R.R Tolkien in 2008, and the "Medieval Antecedents of the Modern World" in 2011.  Both were interesting and well-presented series.

Last night, her topic was dragons, creatures whose Anglo-Saxon antecedents go back to the early eighth century A.D., back to the "dragon" that the hero killed (and was killed by) at the end of the poem Beowulf.  

Many other civilizations have even earlier stories and traditions about dragons.  In China, they are considered symbols of power and bringers of good luck.  (I myself was born in a Year of the Dragon, and under the sign of Aries -- for those of us so fortunate, our faults, if any, dear Reader, lie not in our stars but in ourselves.)  

In the Old Testament, dragons were used as symbols for the enemies of God, and in the New Testament, in Revelations, were specifically identified with Satan.  In Christian culture, pre-Christian stories seem to have been merged with Christian beliefs, resulting in stories such as St. George and the Dragon.  The Christian dragon has none of the favorable attributes of his Chinese cousins.  

Professor Stacey pointed out that there is a theme that runs through many stories of dragons -- portraying them as hoarders of great wealth.  The Norse story of the dragon Fafnir and his hoard of wealth, who was killed by the hero Sigurd, is told in many versions, and was incorporated by Wagner into his Siegfried opera.  When we watch Siegfried kill the dragon to stirring music, we are watching a character that has appeared in many forms, dating back far beyond Beowulf.

The Norse Fafnir also shows up under the name of Smaug in Tolkien's The Hobbit, where he is described as the greatest dragon of his day, a malevolent creature who has seized an enormous treasure from the dwarves which he hoards deep inside a mountain, a site from which he has driven the dwarves.

Stacey described vividly, and often with appropriate humor, these manifestations of the "dragon" idea in many civilizations over several millennia.  I would have enjoyed hearing in more detail how each of these occurrences of dragons in a civilization's mythology or folklore corresponded to the peculiar character of each civilization's culture.  But she covered a great amount of material in an hour's lecture.  She has written several books on medieval topics, books that might well be worth looking into.

Future lectures will discuss King Arthur, "Tales of the Greenwood," the Templars, and Joan of Arc. 

Professor Stacey concluded by joking that she had always dreamed of working the old cartographical inscription "Here be dragons" into a talk.  In her lecture today, she succeeded.

Hiking the Waihe'e Ridge Trail

I arrived home late Sunday night, following my four-night stay on Maui (plus a final night in Honolulu).  The weather was excellent, the accommodations were great, and the company was highly enjoyable.

As I mentioned in my last post, the occasion was the eightieth birthdays of two friends, Barton and Clinton (twin brothers), from undergraduate days, one of whom had later married my sister.  The celebration was organized by Barton's daughter, and was attended by Barton's two adult sons and adult daughter, as well as spouses and one of his granddaughters.  Clinton and my sister were there, but their son and granddaughter live in Thailand, and were unable to escape from school duties to make the trip.

This celebration came just four months after a week at Lake Como, Italy, with my closest graduate school friend, Jim, together with his brother and sister and their spouses, and with his own son.

Both gatherings gave me the opportunity to become acquainted -- with some, for the first time -- with the closest family members of my two closest friends from university days.  

Barton and Jim were and are quite different in many respects -- in personality and interests -- although both are now retired university professors.  Barton is more academic, and Jim is more "outdoorsy" and athletic.  I was impressed and a bit surprised, however, with the fact that both sets of family members all enjoyed -- with varying degrees of experience -- the act of hiking while on vacation.  

In Italy, we had many opportunities for hikes, both long and short, along the lake and in the neighboring hills.  On Maui, Barton's offspring decided to hike the Waihe'e Ridge Trail on the leeward side of the island, its trailhead lying somewhat north of Wailuku.  I enthusiastically joined the hike, of course.

The hike was quite steep in places, with an elevation gain of just under 1,700 feet.  After a short, initial, steep concrete-paved climb, the trail is generally broad and is surfaced with hard-packed earth.  I've read warnings that the dirt trail can become quite muddy and slippery during and after rains, but we met excellent weather -- sunny and cloudless, with little evidence of recent precipitation.

We completed the round trip to the summit in about four hours.  Some of us found the hike a bit more difficult than others, but everyone agreed that it was fairly strenuous, and everyone succeeded in reaching the top.  The scenery of the Pacific coast to the east and of the jungle-covered mountain ranges to the west were inspiring and made our labors fully worthwhile.  The scenery also provided excuses for frequent "photo stops" while we restabilized our breathing.

Hiking offers many pleasures and has many benefits.  One of those benefits is the ease with which conversations take place, overcoming any shyness that strangers or near-strangers might otherwise feel.  None of us, on either hike, were actual "strangers," but we learned more about each other's interests and personalities and coping skills than we could have in a week of sitting on the beach sipping Mai Tais.  (No disrespect intended toward that latter occupation, of course, which we also found entertaining!)

I loved Lake Como, and I've always loved Maui.  At both locations, I also enjoyed the opportunity to develop closer friendships with people whom I had known only casually in the past.

Travel is broadening.  So is hiking.  They make an excellent combination.

Eightieth birthdays on Maui

Thirty years ago, my family celebrated the eightieth birthday of my mother and her twin sister.  We encamped for a week in a low-rise hotel on Maui's Napili Bay, looking across the ocean waters at Moloka'i and Lanai islands.  And we gathered one night for the celebratory birthday dinner at the Ritz Carlton in nearby Kapalua. 

We had a great time. 

Next week, we gather again on Napili Bay to celebrate the eightieth birthday of another set of twins -- two guys who became close friends of mine as university undergraduates, and whose relationship to me and my family was cemented by the marriage of one young man to my sister.  

We will again celebrate this Big Eight-O with a dinner at the same hotel in Kapalua.

Thirty years ago, we younger folks did a day hike in Haleakala crater while the guests of honor relaxed on their deck overlooking the ocean.  They may have been thinking long thoughts about age and youth and the speedy flight of time.  If so, we young Indians (as we still viewed ourselves) were unaware, as we strode across the black sand trails of the crater.  This year?  The young Indians have all become wise and perhaps somewhat more sedentary elders.  Some of us still hike, but I've heard no suggestions that hiking is on the agenda.  Even the "kids," those invitees a generation behind us, seem more attracted to contemplation -- assisted by occasional gin and tonics -- than to strenuous trekking.

Our treks this year will probably be limited to a quarter mile morning hike to breakfast at The Gazebo (known to us, because of its profile, as The Witch's Hat) at Napili Point, on the southern end of the beach.  But, hiking aside, I anticipate a highly satisfying, if altogether too brief, vacation.  Why brief?  Because of a late start, I was able to reserve a room for only four nights -- keep in mind, you future visitors, that winter is High Season in Hawaii.  In past years, while my mother was alive, even a week felt much too brief -- I recall annoying others by my complaints: "Three days gone, only four more to go!"  

But sometimes a short visit has certain benefits.  Every moment is precious, and all the wonderful experiences feel condensed and heightened in intensity.  And so I hope it will be next week.

What can I tell you about this year's twins, this year's guests of honor?  Both were somewhat artistic when I first met them, and both seemed to flourish among the typical required courses of the undergrad liberal arts curriculum.  But one eventually became a radiology professor at Stanford's medical school, and the other became a much loved primary care physician and active member of the community in Sonoma, California.  We all stayed in touch, and skied together at Lake Tahoe for many years, until the Sonoma GP (then a resident of Berkeley) startled me by marrying my sister.

They were both pretty cool guys and good friends when I met them as undergraduates.  Their success in their careers and with their lives has been no surprise.  And now, 62 years later, we can celebrate the good times of the past, and look forward to the future, a future that is unpredictable but that we trust holds the possibility of many new satisfactions.

As the hopeful birthday wish goes, "And many more to come!" 

The egg and I (soft-boiled)

Three or four times a week, I jump out of bed, get dressed, and drive to a near-by diner where I have what the help -- who know me all too well -- call "your usual."  Two eggs over easy, with ham, potatoes, toast and coffee.  

It's enjoyable, although I have health-related doubts about the ham.  But it's not what I really crave.

And what do I really crave?  Two soft-boiled eggs, boiled precisely four minutes, served in egg cups, and accompanied by a tiny, well-designed egg spoon.

I've just finished reading, for the nth time, an essay by Ursula K. Le Gwin entitled "Without Egg," in her collection of essays No Time to Spare -- an essay that is a virtual hymn to a properly prepared and served soft-boiled egg.  She emphasizes, as would I were I to have written the essay, the importance of attention to detail.  And the use of the proper implements, especially the dedicated cup and spoon.  

You can't really ruin a soft-boiled egg, especially if you also like hard-boiled eggs.  But Americans, in general, miss the entire point.  Sure, you can scrape the innards out into a dish, salt and pepper them, and eat them with a normal spoon or fork.  It will taste the same as a properly consumed egg.  But as she points out, you thus miss the entire point:

... it tastes the same but isn't the same.  It's too easy.  It's dull.  It might as well have been poached.  The point of a soft-boiled egg is the difficulty of eating it, the attention it requires, the ceremony.

She discusses the egg cup, its appropriate use, and which end of the egg should be up (this last point an apparent matter of some controversy among soft-boiled egg aficianados).   Should one saw off the exposed end of the shell?  Or whack it off?  Le Gwin is an agnostic on this refinement.  As am I.  Both have their pros and cons.

But then the proper spoon.  Americans -- including myself, because often having no choice -- are apt to grab the nearest spoon handy and have at it.  They make a mess, and decide that next time they'll dump their eggs into their empty cereal bowl and eat it from there.  Le Gwin points out that the egg spoon is made tiny, because it must fit into the small opening you have made in the end of the shell -- the egg spoon is more a surgical instrument than a shovel.  Or, as she more delicately puts it, the egg spoon

does one thing only, but does it perfectly and nothing else can do it.  Trying to eat an egg from the shell with a normal spoon is like mending a wristwatch with a hammer.

She doesn't point this out, but I find that I can down two fried eggs in a few bites and still be hungry.  By the time I've worked my way through two soft-boiled eggs, however, I not only have been forced to eat slowly enough that I enjoy every nuance of flavor, but I find that my appetite is quite satisfied.  Although there's always room for a croissant or two.

But maybe Le Gwin understands this also.  She calls her essay a blow against double-tasking.  The concentration required to properly prepare and eat the egg from a shell precludes unnecessary talking, reading, or daydreaming until the immediate task has been completed.  Which is the best way to enjoy any food worth enjoying.  She relies on the exhortation in Ecclesiastes that whatever you set out to do (presumably, even eating eggs) you should do with

all thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.

Ursula Le Gwin adds "Nor is there any breakfast there.  The grave is without egg."  I say she thus has taken a morbid, if amusing turn.  I'll just say that if it's worth eating, it's worth eating properly.  And my soft-boiled eggs consumed in Europe, with proper spoon and cup, are far tastier than those gobbled down at home.  

Having written all that, I find I'm hungry enough to fly to Paris for breakfast.  But instead, I'm off in the morning to Santa Rosa for Christmas.  

Merry Christmas to all.  And eat egg.

Music at Christmas

Once in royal David's city
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her Baby

In a manger for His bed.

The audience sat hushed as the ethereal, solo voice of a boy soprano reverberated throughout the austere interior of Seattle's St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, joined in the second verse by the full choir as it filed down the aisles in two parallel lines from the rear to the front of the church.  The Northwest Boychoir, in its 44th season, presented yet another annual Christmas "Festival of Lessons & Carols." 

Advent is traditionally a season of penance, and I decided to walk in the dark from my house to the cathedral.  The distance was only 1.5 miles, but the temperature was near freezing and the sidewalks were icy -- I came close to slipping to the ground as I started up one steep and treacherous stretch.  But the air was clear, and many of the houses I passed were brightly illuminated with holiday lights.

My timing was good, and I arrived forty minutes after setting out -- cold but bright-eyed, wide awake, and clear-headed.  Ready for the hour and a half service that each year transforms me into Christmas mode.

I like the fact that the format is always the same, based on the Christmas service of the choir of King's College, Cambridge, England.  It always commences with the solo first verse of "Once in Royal David's City."  After a couple of introductory carols, nine members of the choir -- beginning with younger and ending with older -- always offer the same nine readings from the books of Genesis, Isaiah, Micah, Luke, Matthew, and John.  Each reading is always followed by a carol sung by the choir, followed then by a familiar popular carol in which the audience joins in.

The choir consisted of 29 young members of Northwest Boychoir proper, 33 teenage boys from the associated group Vocalpoint Seattle, and 18 teenage female singers, also from Vocalpoint.  All singers were masked as a precaution against Covid and the flu.  This year, the proportion of teenage boy singers seemed higher than in the past; at least to my ears the tenor and bass voices, when all singers were singing together, seemed more predominant.  (At King's, there are equal numbers of each age group.)

My opinion is purely subjective, obviously, but -- even though the singers were still masked -- the singing impressed me as being sharper and more clear than it was last year.  And the excellent piano accompaniment sounded appropriately supportive, rather than dominating.

I was again moved and impressed by the entire performance.  After a final carol -- "O Holy Night" -- the audience burst into an extended applause, an applause appropriately delayed until the end out of respect for the religious context -- and another round of applause after the choir had filed out singing "Joy to the World."

Poised youngsters, still dressed in their choir gowns, greeted us as we left the cathedral, thanking us for our attendance.  My mind was full of musical phrases as I embraced the freezing air outside, and began my walk home.

Christmas cards

Two weeks from Christmas Eve.  Christmas music on the stereo, cat on the sofa, and me.  Bent over the dining room table, filling out Christmas cards.

Yes, I know. Part of my annual tradition has become posting on this blog a short essay anguishing over whether I should still be sending cards, forcing myself to hang on to a dying tradition.  Or should I just shout out on Twitter, "Yo, dudes, merry whatever and eat lots of turkey."

But no.  This year I had no doubts.  I would send cards.

Then came the problem -- where will I get those cards?  I usually drop by the University of Washington Bookstore, and peruse tables covered with stacks of cards -- a tradition I began decades ago as a college freshman, perusing similar Christmas card displays at the Stanford Bookstore.  But what did I discover this year?  One-half of a table with a scant selection of uninspiring -- even somewhat ugly -- cards.  I recoiled, and returned home to my computer.  Surely Amazon would have oodles of cards on offer.

Well, it was better than the U Bookstore, but most of Amazon's cards didn't seem very attractive. I finally hit on one design that seemed somewhat acceptable, and ordered them.  They arrived today.  They look fine, but I've certainly had better ones in past years.  I'm certain that wonderful cards are out there, somewhere, still.  I just didn't look in the right places, or maybe I waited until too long after Thanksgiving?

But it's the thought that counts.  I have passed beyond the point of feeling awkward sending cards to people who don't reciprocate, although I do take their past instances of non-reciprocation into account in drawing up my address list.  I mean, if I don't get a card from them, I don't take it as a personal affront.  Quite possibly, they don't now and never have sent Christmas cards.  Or maybe it's been a bad year, and they just don't feel in the spirit. 

On the other hand, I've never encountered anyone who was offended by receiving a card, and it will hopefully make their Scrooge-like December a bit more cheerful.  And they hopefully will not brood, as I myself might do, at the fact that they didn't send me one -- or force themselves to send one to me next year!

As full-fledged adults, we're apt to worry too much about things, aren't we?  Things that don't call for concern.  I'll try to recall my youthful enthusiasm to simply wish everyone a wonderful Christmas, without worrying about what it all means, or how my wishes might be received.  Let's keep it simple.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  

Family Christmas in Sonoma

Just over two weeks until Christmas.  

For us as kids, Christmas was ritually a very stable holiday.  My mother made sure that certain rituals were repeated each year, rituals that she had more or less devised herself, but which to us kids seemed to represent  the true way that all non-pathological Americans celebrated Christmas. 

We were a small family in terms of non-resident relatives -- parents, aunts and uncles, cousins -- and so the rituals of Christmas almost always were observed in our small house: my parents, my brother and sister, my mother's twin sister and her husband, and my grandmother on my father's side.

The period of time during which these stable rituals occurred was little more than a decade, but a decade to a child (or even a teenager) is a lifetime.

Life is more chaotic as an adult.  Relatives insist on living all across the country, sometimes around the world.  And even relatives who are geographically near often prefer to act out their own family rituals, rather than merge into a gathering of the clan.

But this year, we will have such a gathering -- either at Christmas itself or, for some of us, during the week following.

Readers will recall that we had a similar family reunion in April, when my nephew Denny returned from Thailand to his California hometown, Sonoma, for the first time since the start of the Covid pandemic.  I concluded my essay describing our get-together with a plea for more frequent family reunions -- and my plea seems to have been answered.

We gather again in Sonoma.  Denny will return once more from Chiang Mai, Thailand, together with his wife Jessie, his now-teenaged daughter, and his dad.  My sister and her youngest son will arrive from Challis, Idaho.  My brother and his wife, together with their daughter, her spouse, and their eleven-year-old daughter will arrive from Southern California.  

We will also be joined by Suzanne, the daughter of my closest friend from college days, together with her husband -- visiting from San Diego.  She has stronger ties to my family than merely those resulting from my college friendship with her father, but those ties require more explanation than required at this time!  But they are family, too.   

And it will be a multi-family reunion, to some extent, as Jessie's family lives in the Sonoma area, and some of our gatherings will be together with them.

My  own somewhat solitary life in Washington state, in the Northwest Corner of the nation, at times feels like that of a tender of a lighthouse on a rocky outcropping from the shore.  Even though Washington is the ancestral home of my family, where my siblings and I spent our pre-college years, all but I have since fled our wintry rains like rats leaving a sinking ship.  So I look forward eagerly to these large gatherings, masses of people all related to me in one way or another, and wish they occurred more often.  It makes Christmas feel more like Christmas, even when celebrated in a distant land (i.e., California!).

I leave home on December 21, and will return on the 28th  My brother and his wife won't show up until the day after Christmas, which I regret.  But I spent a wonderful five days with them over Thanksgiving at their home in Palm Desert.

Now, my only problem will be explaining my absence to my two cats, trying to convince them that while the master's away, the cats can play.

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

Photo:  Earlier family reunion.  Big Bear (California) (2011)

Feuilletons

During the dark days and weeks since late October -- the period after my old computer crashed, but before I finally pulled myself together and secured a new one -- a computer that arrived only this week -- I had ample time to think about the nature of my blog.  

After nearly sixteen years, and over 1,500 posted essays, the time to think about it did seem ripe.

What exactly do I write?  Essays, but what kind?

Lots of book reviews and movie reviews. Lots of thoughts about politics.  Observations about nature, especially about Seattle's peculiarities of weather.  Holidays.  Travels, completed or anticipated.  Reprints of old travel  journals and newspaper articles.  Musical experiences.  As I look over the list of some 1,500 posts, there's a bit of everything.

I've even written a few feuilletons.  What's that, you ask?  And well you might.

I'm reading a biography of an author and journalist from the first part of the century, a Jew from what is now western Ukraine but that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  His name was Joseph Roth, and his novels were largely autobiographical -- which isn't unusual -- but so was his journalism -- which was more so.

He was a foreign correspondent for a Frankfurt, Germany, newspaper.  But he preferred to take a subjective approach toward his news dispatches, rather than the purely objective approach they taught me and my classmates in high school journalism.  This objective approach was, he felt, despicably and soullessly German and American.  

I will discuss Roth's biography -- Endless Flight by Keiron Pim -- in a later post.  But I mention it now because -- in addition to his news articles written as a foreign correspondent -- he also wrote numerous feuilletons for his Frankfurt newspaper.  While journalists -- meaning American journalists -- don't like to let their feelings intrude obviously into their formal news stories, they often do write feuilletons -- feature stories -- without, probably, even knowing the word feuilleton.  

These tend to be fairly short feature articles based on the writer's observations, and discussing -- explicitly or by inference -- his own feelings about what he has seen.  The observation serves as a jumping off platform for the subjective feeling or thought that he wishes to convey.

I suppose that the readers of the New York Times who send in short discussions of their observations or experiences as they go about the city, designed to arouse laughter or sadness in the reader of those observations -- observations that are published each Sunday under the heading of "Metropolitan Diary" -- are writing (or attempting to write) very brief feuilletons.

Without categorizing what I was doing, I've written a number of such feuilletons, with greater or lesser success.  For example, in August 2017, I described watching a sobbing homeless person being escorted off a light rail platform by a security officer, and forced to enter a train stopped at the station.  I was unable to determine exactly was going on, but I felt free to imagine for my readers the mental state of the upset passenger and the events that had brought him to this unfortunate event.  And I wondered -- far too late -- what I might have done to ease his pain, and why I had failed to do it.

The objective observation was the interaction between the crying man and the security guard.  The subjective component, which converted the observation into a feuilleton, was my attempt to empathize with the man's feelings and reconstruct his history.

I know nothing about the bearded guy's back story, although I tend to make up stories for people in my head. But I'd say he was a gentleman who had no further physical or emotional resources available, regardless of what "act" of his life he was contemplating. I suspect we are surrounded by people like him. Maybe they still have enough pride not to cry. In public. But they want to.

Joseph Roth had written in 1919, with far greater artistic sensitivity:

I saw children blowing soap bubbles.  Not in 1913 -- yesterday.  They were real soap bubbles.  A little bottle full of soapy water, a straw, four children and a quiet alleyway in the bright sunshine of a summer morning.  The soap bubbles were big, beautiful, rainbow-coloured globes and they swam lightly and gently through the blue air.  There was no doubt these were real soap bubbles.  Not the soap bubbles of patriotic phraseology risen up from the muddy puddles of war editorials, the nationalist party, or the press corps, but beautiful, rainbow coloured soap bubbles.

The children and the bubbles were a simple observation, but Roth adds his own comparison of the children's innocence with the slimy, dirty "soap bubbles" of right-wing propaganda, as well as a reminder to his readers of the simple urban joys they had enjoyed in pre-war days.

Feuilletons are deceptively simple in  appearance, but not easy to do well.  I may make a conscious effort to write more of them, now that I better understand the form.

And know what they're called.  Even if I can't pronounce the word.