Don't mess with the Mouse

"Mickey Mouse" has to come to mean wimpy, soft, weak.  It wasn't always so.  My first acquaintance with the Mouse was in a little compact book entitled "Mickey Mouse, the Mail Pilot."  Published back when private pilots often flew the U.S. Mail, Mickey ran into a gang of bad guys -- very bad guys -- holed up in a dirigible.  Things looked bad for Mickey for a while, but he kicked their butt.

Now Mickey is locked in combat with a smoother villain -- one with degrees from Yale and Harvard, a governor who wants to turn America into a larger version of what he's doing to Florida.  While America begins to turn away from Donald Trump, this fellow hopes to win national office by out-Trumping Trump.  A Trump who speaks in complete sentences.  An ingratiating Mussolini.

I'm not sure how attacking the world of Disney fits into his plans.  I suspect it doesn't.  But like his Trump mentor, this guy has a thin skin, and he can't stand losing.  Rather than lose a fight he himself gratuitously started, he'll kill the goose that lays Florida's golden eggs, and his own goose as well.

Because beneath Mickey's easy-going facade, the Mouse is a fighter.  A happy warrior.  And a winner. 

As the Mail Pilot book concluded:

"Ya know, Minnie," said Mickey, as they walked happily homeward, "flyin' the mail has taught me a lesson I'll never forget!"

"What's that, Mickey?" asked Minnie.

"Whenever you have a job, no matter how hard it is," he replied, "or how much you hate to do it, just buckle down an' remember, the mail must go through!  Before ya know it, th' job's done -- an' ya feel just swell!"

Hey, I'll lay my money on the Mouse over the Yalie.  Go Mickey! 

Traveling mindfully

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

--Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

A typical April walk in Seattle.  Flowers flowering, and buds budding.  A bit colder than the usual April afternoon.  A light breeze against my face.  Dark clouds, threatening rain that never arrived, at least until hours after I arrived home.  

I was half enjoying the sights, and half letting my mind wander -- planning future travels, doing financial planning (not unrelated to those same travels), mulling my own mortality ...

Whoops!  Where did that come from?  An unwelcome intrusion of thoughts, maybe, but it led to some rewarding contemplations.

I breathed in deeply the crisp air, directed my focus to the springtime beauties of the neighborhoods through which I was walking, and realized that a time would inevitably come -- not tomorrow, but sooner that it would have seemed five years ago -- when walks such as this would be only memories.  I might well find my life narrowed and -- at best -- confined to an assisted care facility.

I thought of my mother who lived in such a facility -- a very nice one -- for about three years before her death.  Like me, she had been something of a walker, at least, certaintly, around our home town.  But her walking was now restricted to the quiet, beige halls of her facility -- beige and maybe intentionally bland and non-threatening.  And certainly non-stimulating.  Nature was whatever she could see outside her window.  We took her for a drive one day, and parked overlooking the Columbia river.  "It's beautiful," she exclaimed.  As it was, but not so beautiful that we had ever thought much about it.

Which, I realized, is how I was reacting to the amazingly varied and attractive sights I was striding past today.  Beautiful, sure, but so what?  It's always beautiful, even in the dead of winter.  And I do appreciate that beauty, but I should appreciate it more intently.

"Mindfulness" in today's jargon.  Paying attention to what you see and experience.  Before it's too late.

In three weeks, I'm traveling alone to Italy.  Mainly to the Cinque Terre, with some additional time in Rome and Florence.  And, yes, I plan to return to my practice of keeping a travel journal.  Such a  journal has two purposes: first, to preserve memories for future enjoyment, and second, to encourage yourself to really see what you are looking act, to feel what you are experiencing, to appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of people whom you meet.

A travel journal is not a new concept for me.  I've kept journals during many travels, beginning with scribbled summaries of the day's activities as an undergraduate, and progressing to lengthier reflections on my recorded  activities as I grew older.  I later typed up a number of those travel journals, which I've  never ceased to enjoy re-reading over the years.  

My only regret is that I didn't record my impressions and feelings about every one of the many trips and hikes I've taken.  The journeys that I did journal seem random -- some, not surprisingly, were trips when I was traveling alone, and had more incentive and opportunity to write.  Nothing makes me more at ease when dining alone  than scribbling away in a notebook between courses.  I recently re-read a journal I kept in 1999 of a trip to Central Europe; my entries written during meals in Prague and near Budapest vividly reminded me not only of the surroundings I was observing, but also of my pleasure in writing about it while writing about it  and -- to be truthful -- in being observed writing.  

But I also have written fairly detailed journals on trips where I was traveling with a large number of friends and/or relatives, such as family trips to Italy and canoeing in France.  When I felt like writing, I could always find time, although those journals tended to be more often summaries of what had occurred over the past day or so, lacking the immediacy of thoughts about my surroundings even as they were observed.  While sitting in a Czech café, for example, or while sitting on a boulder staring down at a bubbling creek near Dresden.

In any event, I'll be alone in Italy, with only my hiking shoes and my journal to keep me company.  I hope to be "mindful," hope not to be one of those who have "eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear..."  And, even more, I hope to be reflective.

It's my hope that, once my journal is written, and self-edited, and finally typed up, I'll discover -- as the ancient Chinese poet suggested -- that those two weeks in Italy have, like magic, been lived twice.

Springtime drudgery

So.  We're more than three weeks past the vernal equinox.  The Easter Bunny has come and gone.  Passover is past.  As is the Ramadan fast.  But, however you mark the beginning of summer, summer's still a long ways off.

So what comes next?  Ah, yes.  As the earth stirs, and new life springs up, we hear on the horizon the buzzing of the wily lawn mower.  Time for the first mowing of 2023.

My lawn, like my hair, had been getting increasingly shaggy the past couple of weeks.  But I always had a good excuse for not mowing.  Yet.  You simply don't mow while it's raining, and it's been raining or drizzling off and on almost every day since said equinox.

And when it hasn't been raining, the lawn has been drenched and boggy and unsuitable for mowing.  

But yesterday it was sunny.  Not real warm, but sunny.  And today it was a bit warmer, and still no rain.  But my little iPhone weather app predicted rain tomorrow, and off and on for the next week.  Good growing weather for grass.  Once before I kept telling myself that conditions weren't ideal for a first mow.  Let's wait until the grass was thoroughly dry, and until the air was comfortable for outdoorsy activities.  

I finally had to borrow a friend's weed-eater to cut down what had become a virtual hay field, before fine tuning the job with a mower.  Never again, I vowed.

And so, this afternoon -- as the sky remained mostly clear and the lawn dried off,  I did it.  Donned shorts and old tennis shoes.  Warmed up the old gas mower.  And tackled the lawn.  It was still a bit damp and clumpy, but mowing it was hardly a Herculean task.  One of those things you needlessly dread and put off, but find easy once undertaken.  And then kid yourself that this had indeed been a major accomplishment.

Grass lawns are odd.  They are pretty in the spring.  In the summer, around these parts, most of us let them turn dry and brown.  And in the fall, they regain their greenness after the first good rain, but look tired and bedraggled until the following spring.  In most of the country, they are a shameful waste of water, although that's rarely a problem around Seattle.  

But why do we plant a crop that grows rapidly, and then regularly hack it down to its roots?  I at least leave the cuttings to enrich the soil, but most of my neighbors dump their harvest into one of their several recycling bins to be hauled away by the city.

I would love to allow my small allotment of land to grow wild.  Trees and shrubs, growing without plan or discipline, with narrow paths leading into small clearings where I could go and ponder the clouds and nature's abundance and great philosophical issues on a warm summer day (yes, we have such in Seattle, but we don't like to talk about them to non-residents).  Let the blackberries return, offering up their abundant crops.  Make friends with the wandering deer and occasional bear.  (Well, racoons, maybe -- my lot is only 40 feet wide.)

Waldon Pond is my ideal landscape.  Not Versailles. 

Guilt-tipping

On numerous occasions, I've sung the praises of my favorite hamburger et al. franchise in Seattle.  I'll call it "BigBurger," but you locals all know who I mean.  BigBurger's a local chain, but I'm only familiar with the one nearest my house.  Unlike others in the chain, my local outlet isn't a drive-in.  It's a sit-down establishment, although you can also order at the counter, pick your order up at the counter, and take it elsewhere to eat.

Until the pandemic arrived in Seattle in 2020, I was a daily BigBurger customer, showing up each day for either my breakfast or my lunch. Beginning in March 2020, I went through 350 days of torture, fully documented herein, during which I was barred, or barred myself, from eating out.  Not until the 14th day after receiving my second Pfizer immunization did I triumphantly return to BigBurger, and order my favorite breakfast.  That breakfast was immortalized in a blog post in March 2021.

At BigBurger, the food was decent, the prices were reasonable, and I felt comfortable reading at my table while eating.  No one ever tipped.  In fact, before the pandemic, I overheard a manager explaining to an employee that tipping was not encouraged, and that to compensate, the business paid above average wages.

It was too good to last.

During those halcyon days, the person at the register took your order, tapped or swiped your credit card, and the order was complete.  More recently, however, the register began generating a paper receipt that you were required to scrawl your signature on -- contrary to the trend elsewhere of eliminating paper receipts.  These receipts ominously had a line where you could add a tip.

I scrawled a version of my signature, ignored the tip line, exchanged greetings with the employee, and walked to my table.  As did -- so far as I could tell -- most customers.

Then, a week or so ago, the nightmare began.  BigBurger installed iPads, facing the customer, connected to a pad where the customer taps his own card.  Tapping your own card arguably makes the transaction faster.  But the iPad?

The iPad is a large screen, with large buttons identifying the percentage of tip you "choose" to leave.  The lowest figure on such a button is ten percent.  I think the highest percentage on a button is 25 percent, but I've been too stunned by the entire concept to look closely.  There is another button with which you can "customize" the size of your tip.  And a tiny button with tiny letters spelling out "No Tip."

These infernal machines have been in place now for a week or two.  Until today, I've relied on good hand-eye coordination to hit the tiny button.  Today, I gave in -- promising myself this was an exceptional day -- and hit the ten percent.  But I was not happy.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm a decent, although not extravagant, tipper.  When I attend a full service, sit-down restaurant, I routinely leave a twenty percent tip -- whether the service has been good or mediocre.  I refuse to use tipping to somehow offer a performance evaluation of the restaurant's staff.  That's their management's job.  I tip because I know that the wages of not only the server but of many of the unseen persons in the kitchen have been scaled down, to take into account the tips they anticipate from their customers.

Tipping is a terrible way to compensate staff, and I hate it.  When eating out in Europe, I happily pay the same amount as a mandatory service charge, although even there I wonder why the restaurant doesn't just up the prices, say 15 percent, rather than tacking on a 15 percent service charge.  Probably because the competition does not do it, and they assume that prospective customers pick their restaurants based on menu price, and are, moreover, unaware that a service charge will also be forthcoming.  A questionable assumption.

Minimum wage in Seattle is $18.69/hour (or $16.50/hour, if tips are sufficient to raise the total above $18.69)..  At least historically, BigBurger has paid above minimum wage.  I'd be happy to see their employees make more money.  I'd be happy -- well, accepting -- of higher menu prices to pay for those higher wages.  

But I'm not happy to be asked to make a voluntary, individual donation -- under a certain amount of psychological duress -- to achieve that goal, in effect subsidizing the meals of those sitting around me who refuse to do so.   

I'm irritated enough that I've found myself asking myself why I don't just stay home more often and make my own sandwiches. 

Carmina Burana

Many years ago, I attended -- in four consecutive nights -- Wagner's entire Ring Cycle.  Looking back, I admire my stamina -- practicing law by day, and watching lengthy operas each evening past my usual bedtime.  

I obviously enjoyed it, because the very next year I repeated the experience. 

The four operas contain beautiful arias and stirring orchestral music.  They also contain unusually long stretches of recitative, which is a sort of sung or chanted conversation.  I knew, of course, the basic plot of each opera, and had read portions of the lengthy librettos.  But even so, it was difficult to know exactly what the singer was singing during each aria, and impossible during the recitative.

My youthful period of attending operas regularly was short-lived, but I later realized that many opera houses had begun projecting the English translation of the libretto over the stage, analogous to the showing of subtitles during foreign movies.  My first experience with such "supertitles" was at a performance of Wagner's Tannhäuser by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2015.  It was a revelation.

A similar revelation was last Saturday's performance of Carmina Burana by the Seattle Symphony, joined by the Seattle Symphony Chorale and the Northwest Boychoir.  I was quite familiar with the music, having heard it frequently both on radio and from my own LP.  It was ok, I felt.  It did go on and on, although the music was interestingly different, at least on first hearing -- a twentieth century take on music discovered in manuscripts from the high middle ages.  I wasn't really excited about hearing it again -- but I had a season's ticket.  Rather than waste it, I went.

The choral singing -- in Latin, Old French, and Middle High German, according to the program notes -- was translated and displayed in superscripts.  And the superscripts made all the difference in the world.  The music made sense, once I understood what was being sung, and considered the context.  The performance is an hour in length, but it was never boring.  

Credit also to the excellent singing by the two choruses, and to the singing -- and acting ability -- of the three soloists.  After listening to the Swan's solo lament at being roasted and served at a banquet, I'm not sure whether I will ever feel comfortable eating turkey again at Thanksgiving!

Künstlers in Paradise

Julian is a nice 24-year-old college graduate from Brooklyn.  Intelligent, curious, and sensitive.  But, as we say, unfocused.  Like many of us, he has gone through one intense interest after another, abandoning each in turn.

Julian existed in an exciting, satisfying serial monogamy of intellectual pursuits.

And now, in quick succession, his roommate is leaving for law school, his girl friend has dumped him, and he has lost his job.  

His parents despair.  No, they tell him, nicely but firmly -- and to to Julian's astonishment and horror -- they won't allow him to return to the family home.  But then the phone rings, and his 93-year-old grandmother Mamie invites him to live with her and assist her at her home in Venice, California.  It solves two dilemmas for his parents -- what to do with their son, and what to do with the ageing Mamie.

Julian moves west, somewhat resignedly, and he and his grandmother gradually learn to enjoy each other's company.  And then the Covid pandemic hits, sweeping toward California from the east coast, and forcing Julian, Mamie, and her friend and "dogsbody" Agatha to huddle together in Mamie's small house and yard.  

Quarantine!

And so is set up something of a framing story for the rest of Cathleen Schine's novel, Künstlers in Paradise, a framing story within which, out of boredom and a sense of life's passing, Mamie begins telling Julian stories of her long life.  The stories begin in Vienna, where she lived as a child with her Jewish parents -- a highly respected composer and an actress -- and her own grandparents.  In 1939, after Austria has been annexed by the Third Reich, and when the Nazi hatred for Jews had become all too obvious, the family manages to slip out of Austria, leaving all their property behind.  Aided by a Jewish aid organization in Hollywood, Mamie's mother is offered a job as a Hollywood screenwriter, enabling the family to obtain American visas.

The saga of the family's move from Austria to America is told through the eyes of eleven-year-old Mamie.  To her, and to a large extent her parents as well,  America -- and especially Southern California -- was a paradise of vastness, openness, freedom.  The family moved into a small house on the Pacific coast.

The Künstlers discover that Los Angeles has become the new home for a vast number of Jewish intellectuals, writers, artists, and musicians, many from Vienna themselves, who had fled the Nazis.  Julian listens wide-eyed, to her stories, as he begins to appreciate first, the upheaval his family had suffered leaving Vienna and coming to an unknown country, and second, the famous cultural figures in the Los Angeles milieu to which Mamie had been exposed as a young girl.  He takes notes, with Mamie's approval, and writes them up in coherent form after each talk.  His current interest is in being a screen writer.

Julian, a young man inclined to feel that his life has been filled with inconvenience and misfortune, begins to realize the differences between his grandmother's years as a twelve-year-old and the coddled childhood which he himself had experienced.

When he was twelve, he was scared to tell anyone he watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in case they thought he was babyish.  He was depressed by having to get his braces tightened and distraught when his face broke out.

At the same age, Mamie was realizing that most of her family and friends, left behind in Vienna, were doomed and would never be seen again.

But Mamie had been an optimistic child, delighted by California more than hurt by loss of Austria.  She meets a strange woman on the beach, and again at a party with her parents, who has a puppy delivered to her home by limousine.  Named after a dog in a child's book that had also emigrated to America, "Prince Jan Saint Bernard."  A copy of the child's book accompanied the puppy, autographed with the donor's initials, "G.G."  Greta Garbo.  

She didn't tell Julian the rest of the story.

Years later, apparently while in high school, Mamie had spent three weeks alone with Ms. Garbo on an isolated island in a lake in the Sierras.

A victim? Mamie thought with a smile.  I think not. ...

Mamie could still hear her heart pounding all these years later.  The blood still pumped and sounded in her ears.  Oh yes, now it would be sexual harassment or grooming or some such thing.  But then?  Oh, it was love.

Garbo gently told Mamie that it must end.  Mamie never saw or heard from her again.  She married Julian's grandfather not long afterwards.

Mamie's family was a musical family, but as a child, Mamie fought against learning piano.  She didn't understand why a piano allowed only certain notes to be played -- those on the white and black keys -- or why certain notes were said to harmonize and others not.  "Who said a scale had to have those notes?  And why?  Why, why, why?"  The book perhaps dives into too much musical theory for the average reader, but perhaps not.  

Her father introduced her to Arnold Schoenberg, who talked with her with tact and humor, discussing her aversion to the traditional musical scales.  At the time, she had no idea that Schoenberg was a pioneer in composing atonal music.  But instead of persuading her to study music, he taught her to play tennis.  And to play it exceedingly well.  To Schoenberg, music and tennis were related.  He taught: "Technique and tradition in order to transcend technique and tradition."

The game of tennis mattered to him not only as a test of skill or a competition (and he was famously competitive), but also as something complicated, elusive, and beautiful one could try to understand.  It was a lesson for life, she realized soon enough.

Mamie not only became an excellent tennis player, but eventually a violinist -- an instrument, unlike a piano, on which one could play an infinite number of notes, not just those sounded by a piano's white and black keys.

A year of quarantine passed.  A vaccine was developed, and Julian's parents came to visit Mamie and Julian.  They had sent him away, a sulky quasi-teenager.  A year later, he seemed a responsible and caring adult.  They will now welcome him back to New York, they tell him.  But he has become an Angeleno.  One with acquired tastes -- even a taste for atonal music!  He will gladly visit them, but for now, he will stay and help Mamie.

Künstlers in Paradise is obviously not a plot driven novel.  It is a picture of pre-war Vienna, from the retrospective viewpoint of highly educated Jews who fled to a new life in a New World.  It is a story of a bright but aimless boy -- young man -- of our own time who is finding himself by learning to empathize with the struggles and accomplishments of his own family members.  And it's a fascinating account of the community of Jewish intellectuals who had fled the Nazis in the 1930s and congregated in the Los Angeles area. 

Cinque Terre 2023

Now that I've struggled my way past another birthday -- no, I admit nothing, beyond agreeing that I'm over 30 -- the next major event in my life will be a trip in May to the Ligurian coast and the Cinque Terre.  Another try at the trip I had worked out in such careful detail for the same month of 2020, only to have it all fall to pieces because of the onset of the Covid pandemic.  

In 2020, I was to be joined by about thirty friends and relatives, in celebration of an important birthday (haha, yes, later than my 25th);  but now, three years later, I'll be traveling on my own.  But my activities, aside from the absence of huge gatherings at mealtimes, will be much the same.

I'll fly to Rome, where I'll spend two nights adjusting to the nine-hour time difference, and re-exploring old Roman haunts.  Then by train to Levanto, where I've booked a room in a small hotel for six nights.  Levanto is just north of the five villages of the Cinque Terre, all of which are connected by frequent trains.  My original plan was to spend each of the full five days I had at my disposal exploring one of those towns, taking them in order from north to south, and hiking to each day's town from the town I had visited the day before.

The first village, Monterossa, is connected to Levanto by a five mile trail, back from the sea, and passing through the hills behind the two villages.  I still plan to do that hike.  Beyond Monterossa, the five towns are connected by a path that follows the cliffs above the sea and the five coastal towns.

The trail from Monterossa to Vernazza, requires a steep climb, and then a careful following of the trail along the edge of the cliff until the descent into Vernazza.  The trail is about two and a half miles long.

Corniglia is the only one of the five Cinque Terre that has no beach.  It is set high on a headland, with sheer cliffs down to the sea on three sides.  The trail will be steep in places, and about two and a half miles long.

The traditional coastal route between Cornigia and Manarola unfortunately has been closed for several years because of landslides.  However, there is an upland route, about five miles in length, back into the hills through the hill village of Volastra, which I intend to follow.

The cliffside trail from Manarola to Riomaggiore, reputedly the most popular trail in the Cinque Terre, has also been closed by a landslide for some time.  It's scheduled to reopen in the summer of 2024, which won't help me.  But there is a parallel, upland route -- scenic, steep, but only a bit over a mile long which I'll attempt to follow.

Besides these popular coastal trails, there are a great many other trails from each of the five towns back into the hills behind them. Depending on my evaluation of the situation when I arrive, I may well plan to substiute one or more of these alternative hiking options for one or more of those I originally planned to follow.

After my six nights in Levanto, I'll take the train to Florence -- my first contact with Europe, at the tender age of 21 -- and spend three nights in the central area.  I'll definitely re-explore some of my favorite parts of Florence, and may well also visit a nearby Tuscan town or two.  Our university group made day visits to a number of Tuscan towns while I was studying at Florence, and, in later years, I've also stayed overnight with family members in Lucca and Siena.  There remain many others I'd like to visit, if possible, however, such as Prato and Pistoia.

After Florence, I'll return to Rome by train, spend one final night, soaking up the Italian ambiance, and then fly home the next morning.  

You'll be hearing more about my adventures or (?) mishaps!

If line 18 is larger than the difference between line 4 and line 34 ...

 

I just mailed in my 2022 tax return.  

To many of you, that sounds like announcing that I've just re-whitewashed the privy, or plucked the chicken for dinner tonight.  Do people still mail in tax returns?  In this day of on-line, electronic filing?  In this day of commercial services who do it all for you? 

Yes, a few of us still do.  And the government humors us by making all the forms and instructions available on-line, where they can be consulted and printed.  What the government will not do anymore is mail out a package to each taxpayer in January with all the necessary forms and instructions included.  You have to hunt them out on-line, and have a workable printer attached to your computer.

The feds are willing to humor me, but not do anything that might encourage me in my folly.

I should assure you that I'm not really a luddite.  I pay bills on-line.  I bank on-line.  I carry event tickets and boarding passes on my iPhone.  I even blog, for god's sake.

But I've always enjoyed preparing my own tax returns.  It offers me an opportunity once a year to review my gains and losses in some detail, and to evaluate my present financial status.  It also offers me an opportunity to prove to myself, annually, that I can still work my way through the ever-increasing complexity of the IRS's instructions and forms -- to prove to  myself that, despite what family members may suspect, I'm not yet a prey to Alzheimer's, or even common dementia.  

Unless a desire to fill out your own tax returns is itself prima facie proof of dementia.

One innovation I do like is the ability to fill in the forms on my computer, and thus compile a neat, highly readable return.  Archival research reveals that my first computer-typed return, as opposed to hand-scrawled, was 2010.  I certainly wasn't the first to adopt this innovation, but hardly the last.  That fact has to count in my favor to some extent, I argue.

I pull two copies of each form off my computer, once it's filled in.  One gets filed, and the other goes into my financial records.  The IRS recommends, I believe, that the taxpayer keep a copy of his return for seven years.  More is better, I say.  I have every return back to 1972.  Not out of fear that an audit of a return I submitted when I was still wet behind my ears will reveal errors, I hasten to assure you.  Just because it's fun to collect them.  Yes, as a boy I was a stamp collector.  There's some relationship between the two compulsions. 

Well, that's all.  I make no attempt to persuade all you good, modern folks to emulate my filing by mail of your tax returns.  It's a personal quirk, one of which I'm neither proud nor ashamed.  I just thought I'd come clean, and let you all know the facts.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to spend some quality time running my fingers through all 52 years of paper tax returns -- admiring my increasing income over the decades, even though it resulted primarily from inflation -- before moving on to other subjects for another year. 

Sexdecennial

Yes, the earth has made another loop around the sun, and today is the sixteenth anniversary  of the founding of this blog.  

But I post this observance more in shame than in celebration: In calendar year 2022, only 59 essays were posted.  This was the smallest number in the history of "Confused Ideas from the Northwest Corner."  Fewer essays even than those posted in 2007, the year of the blog's founding, when the blog was open for business during only ten months and a eleven days.

I made similar sheepish confessions last March 20, with far less justification.  I can't explain the downward trend.  I can only express hope that I'll do better in the year to come.

But enough of self-flagellation.  Let get right down to the nuts and bolts of the year's review -- the quantity and quality of those essays that were posted.  

The essay most viewed during this past year was a June tribute to my sister's return from Chiang Mai, where she had spent over two months visiting with her son and granddaughter.  A close second was my January summary of a Maui celebration of the eightieth birthday of twins -- "boys" I met when we were undergraduates, and who have become virtual members of my family.  And third was my October  summary of a two-week stay on the shores of Lake Como, Italy.  These popularity awards are almost certainly skewed, however, by the fact that they were travel-related, and I had sent sent their links to a number of relatives and other persons with personal interest in reading them.

With the more general public, by far the most popular essay -- for reasons that escape me --was a discussion in June of my attendance at a Seattle Symphony production of Verdi's Requiem.  Was it an unexpected outpouring of interest in classical music?  Was my essay title --Day of Wrath -- sensationalistic enough to draw the mass market's attention?  I'll never know.

Second was another June essay, commenting on my attendance at a Mariners' home game.  Followed by a three-place tie between a March review of a musician's memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine; a June story of my adventures catching a mouse humanely and returning him to the wild; and an ironic June editorial encouraging those in Texas who wish to take their state out of the Union to do so quickly.

So much for quantity, an easily determined matter of presenting the statistics.  Quality is more difficult, and certainly more subjective.  As in the past, I present the nine essays that, in retrospect, please me the most.  Rather than rank them -- impossible-- I present them in chronological order.

1.  A review of pianist Jeremy Denk's memoir of his life and musical education.  Slurs and Humility. 

2.  A review of Still Life, a moving and funny novel of post-War II life in Florence and London.  Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On.

3.  Basking on my back deck in the sun, appreciating the sight and smells of a flowering plant.  Mock-orange.

4.  A review of an Ishiguro novel of a future time when our friends are A.I.  And what about the A.I.'s need for friends?  Klara and the Sun.  

5.  A dislocated shoulder in Milan.  Dislocation. 

6.  A summary of my week hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland.  West Highland Way -- 2022 Version.

7.  Summary of two idyllic weeks in Italy.  Two Weeks at Lake Como.

8.  An appreciation of the proper protocol for eating the soft-boiled egg.  The Egg and I.

9.  Hiking with friends in the hills of eastern Maui.  Hiking the Waihe'e Ridge.

I've arbitrarily limited myself to nine posts, because that was the number I've used in past years.  I had to pass over some good ones.  And others not all that good.  Go back and read them all, and arrive at your own judgments.

I look forward to a more productive year in 2023-24.  But I've said that before!

Forward into battle

Onward, Christian soldiers,

marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
going on before!
Christ, the royal Master,
leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
see his banner go!

Yesterday and today have been the first days of 2023 in Seattle during which we could believe that winter would end and spring was springing.  The temperature was in the low 60s today, and the sun was beaming down on us weary mortals.  And there I was, sleeves rolled back with a smile on my face, walking some seven miles, including a three mile loop around Green Lake.  The park was full of walkers of all ages, everyone delighted with the sunshine.

My mind wanders as I walk, and it wandered today through disturbing channels.  I recalled pictures of pre-war Ukraine, full of happy people very like ourselves, enjoying themselves in their own parks.  And then I thought of Putin.  What is wrong with that man?  

I try to put myself into Putin's mind.  I'm the president of a vast nation, larger geographically than any other nation in the world, rich in natural resources, with an educated population.  It's a country with a disturbing past of authoritarian, even tyrannical rule, it is true, a past which has sapped the initiative of its people even today.  But it's a country with every hope of rapid development economically and socially, with rapid improvement of the daily life of its citizens.

Look at China, a nation with an equally troubled history of authoritarian rule, but a nation that has made gigantic strides in economic improvement of its people.

But Putin doesn't seem interested in the welfare of his people, except insofar as it may lead to improved military strength.  His similarity with Donald Trump in this respect is interesting.  Neither seems interested in building a happy, healthy nation; they are interested only in the uses of power.  In Trump's case, for the greater glory of himself.  In Putin's case, for the greater glory of Mother Russia.

Putin shows every sign of continuing his war against Ukraine, despite the enormous economic harm the war has already caused his own people, not to mention the disaster he has imposed on his neighboring Ukrainians.

I could develop these thoughts much further in this blog, but that's not where my thoughts went while out walking.  I began thinking how in all of us there is some degree of desire to seek the Greater Glory of an entity, any entity, of which we're a part, even where that Greater Glory adds absolutely nothing to our material welfare.  We sit in front of our TVs for hours on end, watching the college basketball championships, or the World Series.  Or the Olympic Games.  I read in a novel recently that thousands of men fall into despair in Alabama whenever the Alabama football team loses its annual game with its arch-rival Auburn.  

It's totally irrational, but seemingly wired into our brains, into our personality structures.

Then I thought of Christianity, with its founding command that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, and that "our neighbor" is not limited by nation or ethnic group.  The story of the Good Samaritan illustrates that the duty of kindness exists even between citizens of intensely rival nations, the kind of hostility that existed between the people of Samaria and the people of Judea and Galilee in biblical times, a rivalry that may well have been historically greater than that today between Russia and Ukraine.

Surely, the force of Christianity forcefully opposes the glorification of military conquest at the expense of one's own people, not to mention the expense to the people who are attacked.  And yet, history shows that Christian fervor has been used repeatedly by secular leaders to support military conquest.

Then, the words of a favorite hymn, taught to millions of Sunday School students, and sung in thousands of churches, came to mind:  Onward Christian Soldiers.  A stirring hymn, sung to a martial-sounding tune written for it by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) in the late nineteenth century.  The lyrics can be read as urging spiritual fervor merely by analogy with military warfare, as has been argued.  But as a child I felt a satisfying upsurge of self-righteousness as we sang in loud treble voices of "marching as to war."  Whether the war was against Satan, or against the unbelieving heathens, or against our irritating neighbors, or against the enemies of America was all mixed up in my mind.  As a jingle much less beautiful than Sullivan's hymn put it:

One door and only one

And yet the sides are two.

I'm on the right side,

Which side are you?   

Not a lot of room for ambiguity there, is there?  Nor in Onward Christian Soldiers, to my young mind and heart..  I was just happy that I was on the "right side."  I understand that both the Episcopal and Methodist churches tried to remove Onward Christian Soldiers from their hymnals in the 1980s, because of its militaristic language.  Popular outrage forced its restoration, until 1990 when it was finally dropped.  The Presbyterian church omitted it from its hymnals in 2013.  Some churches have continued using the music, with somewhat less militaristic lyrics.

Fighting for a cause is worthwhile.  But even Christianity, however perfect in theory, faces frequent imperfections when fallible men with our oddly-wired brains apply it to the real world.  The answer is not to avoid such application, but to be always aware and wary of unexpected and undesirable consequences that may result when the application is attempted.

The medieval Crusades to regain control of the Holy Land were seen as a righteous and worthy cause in their time.  Looking back, we question not only the cost of achieving that goal by military means, but even the propriety of the goal itself.

Be cautious when going "forward into battle."  Make sure your feet are marching into springtime, and not back into winter.

By Southwest Chief to Chicago

It was a short trip.  Just like last year's train trip on the California Zephyr, only more so.  I walked out my front door at 6 a.m. Monday, and returned by Uber from the airport at about midnight Wednesday.  And in that short interval, I had traveled to Los Angeles, by train to Chicago, and returned to Seattle.

It's like those dreams we sometimes have, where we find ourselves having complex adventures that require a great deal of effort to complete, and then wake up to discover, to our surprise, that we'd been asleep for less than an hour.  Will we wake up someday, and discover that our 80 or 90 years of life on earth had been a dream that occupied but an instant in some different system of time measurement?  

How did the Southwest Chief compare with the California Zephyr?  As I've noted in past posts, the trip from the West Coast to Chicago is nine hours shorter on the Chief.  And the scenery is fascinating, but less breath-taking than the mountain ranges you pass over on the Zephyr.  The short answer to my question is that, if you've taken neither train, you will probably enjoy the Zephyr more.

But what the Chief lacks in mountains, it offers instead in scenic deserts.  Or if not always scenic, at least impressively untouched by signs of human civilization, except when one encounters an occasional interstate highway, a highway whose traffic is almost 90 percent commercial trucks.

Travel in February or March has certain advantages, including the lower Amtrak fares, but winter's primary disadvantage is the far fewer hours of daylight than you will have for sightseeing than you'd have in summer.  We left Los Angeles just before darkness fell, and thereby slept through virtually the entire state of Arizona.  We entered New Mexico just as I was getting dressed and ready for breakfast.  But most of New Mexico was delightfully empty, aside from a stop for a half hour in Albuquerque at about noon.

The meals were quite good, although, subjectively, I felt they had been somewhat better prepared on the Zephyr.  But maybe I'd simply been less jaded on that earlier trip.  Interesting seat companions, including three meals with Amish tourists, many of whom seemed to occupy sleeper accommodations on this train.  I'd never seen anyone before who I identified as Amish, let alone talked to one.  I guess I thought they all traveled using horse and buggies!  The groups I talked with were well-traveled, especially fond of train travel, and sophisticated.  They were excellent dinner companions.

The train leaves New Mexico in the northeast corner of the state when it passes through the Sangre de Cristo mountains, following the old Santa Fe Trail, over Raton Pass (7,834 feet), and into Colorado.  Coming down to the plains once again, the train continues to follow the Santa Fe Trail as darkness once more encroached.  While sleeping peacefully in my roomette, the train hurdled across Kansas, and I didn't awake until we were approaching Kansas City, Missouri.  Kansas City still seemed a long distance from Chicago, but as with the Zephyr last year after leaving Denver, the mountains were all behind us, and the train hurdled across the prairie at maximum speed to Chicago.  

We headed northwest from Kansas City, crossed the Missouri river, and cut across a tiny corner of Iowa, stopping at Fort Madison on the Mississippi at about 10:45 a.m.  We then crossed into Illinois, and spent the last three hours crossing that state to the skyscrapers of Chicago.

By the time I awoke in eastern Kansas, approaching Missouri, we had definitely left the dry plains behind, and were in the world of agriculture -- wheat, corn -- for the remainder of the trip.  Less wildly spectacular scenery, but more interesting human scenery, studying the small towns and residences as we passed by.  At some point in Illinois, the municipalities became less small towns centered on agriculture, and more outer suburbs, often officially named "Villages."  And then, while still admiring the Chicago skyline -- much changed from when I'd visited as a teenager, when the Board of Trade Building had dominated the skies -- we found ourselves plunging into a tunnel leading into Union Station.

And yes, we arrived exactly on time.  In fact, by my watch, two minutes early at 2:48 p.m.

I'd been concerned that I might miss my 6:55 flight back to Seattle; the weather of the past week or so had caused many Southwest Chiefs to arrive late at their destination.  But I had plenty of time to walk two blocks south to the Clinton Street CTA station, take the hour-long transit train ride to O'Hare, and still find myself sitting around for some time waiting for my Alaska Airlines flight to take off.

In science fiction, we often read of people traveling in space ships near the speed of light, and returning a year later only to find all their family and friends to be 20 years older.  Relativity, and all that.  A trip on Amtrak is just the opposite.  I arrived home after what had seemed a long and eventful trip, and found my cats hardly aware that I'd even been gone.

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PHOTO -- Entering the hill country of northeast New Mexico  

What could go wrong?

My "Train Trip to Nowhere" begins tomorrow.  I fly from Seattle to Los Angeles at 9:10 a.m., and depart LA's Union Station on the Southwest Chief at 5:55 p.m.  I'm scheduled to arrive in Chicago two days later, on Wednesday at 2:50 p.m.  (Refer back to my February 12 post.)

I emphasize "scheduled" because the Chief has been arriving late in Chicago almost uniformly the past few weeks, during the time I've kept my eye on it.  It arrives anywhere from a negligible 20 minutes late, to -- on one occasion -- almost 24 hours late.  The cause has been primarily the unusual weather most of the nation has experienced this winter, but also the difficulty many of Amtrak's passenger trains always have in competing with freight trains for passage on tracks owned by the freight railways.

I was perhaps too trusting when I booked a flight back to Seattle from Chicago's O'Hare Airport at 6:55 p.m. -- a mere four hours after my train's scheduled arrival.  The CTA ride from Chicago's Union Station to O'Hare will itself take an hour, plus time devoted to walking to the transit station and waiting for the next train.  I calculate that I can make my flight if the Southwest Chief arrives in Chicago no more than 90 minutes late.

Most arrivals have fit within that tolerance, but many have not.

I refuse to worry.  I've tipped off my cat care lady that she may need to add another day of cat care if I miss my connection.  I've booked an inexpensive but convenient hotel near the airport for Wednesday night.  Beyond those precautions, I refuse to worry.

Except to notice that the airlines charge quite a premium on bookings made less than 24 hours before departure.   Oh well.  Some unimaginative members of my reading audience might argue that even ten bucks is too much to pay for a "Train Trip to Nowhere."

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PHOTO -- Stock photo, Amtrak train arriving in Chicago's Union Station

Let monkeys be monkeys

 

One of the post-war wonders for kids in my home town was a municipal playground built in a large park surrounding a lake.  It had the usual swings; and the line of rings for swinging along like a monkey; and bars on which you could chin yourself or, for the more proficient, perform acrobatics.  These were all of minimal interest to me and to most of my peer group.

But there were three modalities that drew our attention:

Slides.  Very tall slides, especially when looking down from the top, as well as shorter slides for younger kids.  Slides that were straight, and slides with wave-like ramps.  You could climb ladders to the top, or -- if you were crazy -- you could shimmy up the supporting poles.

Merry-go-round.  Not the carnival ride with horses, but a circular platform, like on a phonograph, that the kids could make spin by pushing it faster and faster, and then jumping on board.  There was always the danger of spinning off, from centrifugal force, and the danger of  becoming so dizzy that you vomited the entire nickel coke you had just bought from the convenient coke machine and downed in one gulp.

Jungle gym.  This was the paramount attraction of the park.  Rather than try to describe it, I show a photograph above of one that in some ways resembled it.  Note the size relative to the kids playing on it.  Note the complexity of the intersections of horizontal and vertical bars.  I recall ours as being larger in horizonal area, but maybe we were just smaller back then.

The jungle gym came to mind because of a short article in this month's Smithsonian magazine.  The article notes that the first patent for a jungle gym was awarded in 1923.  Its creator gave it the name that stuck because it was fashioned like

a kind of forest top through which a troop of children may play in a manner somewhat similar to that of a troop of monkeys.

And we acted like a troop of moneys: climbing, swinging, perched at the top chattering at each other.

I remember it as a great individual and social experience.  Fun.  And scary.  It was a long way down.

A couple of decades later, I walked by the park to relive my memories of those days of preadolescent

danger and adventure.  I was dismayed to see that all three of my favorite devices had been either eliminated or shrunk, all metal surfaces being replaced by plastic, leaving a collection of brightly colored devices that would be attractive to six- and seven-year-olds -- but not to the older kids who had enjoyed the park in my day.  

Just now, looking for an illustrative photo -- which I found finally, and posted at the top of this page -- my search for photos of "jungle gyms" resulted almost entirely in such plastic travesties.  The few photos from the 1950s were invariably titled as "dangerous" jungle gyms from the distant past.

The Smithsonian article admits the potential dangers of the older, original jungle gyms, but contends:

Young primates have always invited serious injury by play-climbing and falling.  Primatologists view these behaviors as a critical means of fine-tuning fundamental motor skills.  And ... many developmental psychologists contend that risky play is essential for healthy growth and development in children, perhaps because risk-taking helps kids regulate their fears, providing a kind of blueprint for responding effectively to real-life danger.

Yeah!  I couldn't have said it better myself!

Mr. Mole 1; Cats 0

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.  ...  It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on  the floor, said, "Bother!" and "O blow!" and also "Hang spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.  Something  up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air.  So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and the he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, "Up we go!  Up we go!" till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

"This is fine!" he said to himself.  "This is better than whitewashing!"

--Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows 

I woke up last night with a start.  Loud thumping downstairs.  Years of experience taught me what to expect -- the game was afoot, and the cats were in hot pursuit.  Whatever it is, I prayed, just dispatch it quickly and keep it downstairs. 

But the pursuit lasted all night, and most of it was conducted in my bedroom.  I got up on a number of occasions and turned on the light.  Some poor prey was hidden back in the bookcases, and the cats -- doing their upmost, lying on their sides with front legs extended behind the books as far as they could go -- were not able to bring their quarry to the ground.  

I slept in snatches.  All in all, I was probably reduced to four hours of sleep, maximum.

The cats continued following the mouse from one hidden area to another, never getting their claws on him so far as I could see. I went to lunch about 11 a.m., and returned, not sure what I would find.   Please at leaast let the corpse be intact, I prayed -- not beheaded with quantities of rodent blood flowing across a carpet.

I wasn't prepared for what confronted me in the kitchen.  A small mouse, quite alive, daintily licking water from the cats' water bowl.  Pollux was asleep on the couch.  Castor was nowhere to be seen.  The mouse totally ignored me, even as I stood inches away from him.  

The mouse?  Well, it was the size of a mouse.  But with a very short tail, and odd looking forelegs.  Even its mouth was peculiar.  Could it be a mole, I wondered?  A very tiny infant mole?  It could, and I'm sure now it was.

If it had been a fast-moving mouse or rat, I could never have captured it.  But I approached it with a bath towel, and easily scooped the sluggish little devil off the floor.  It took three tries -- he was more wiggly and resistant, once in the towel, than he had seemed at first sight, but I evacuated him to a secluded part of the backyard.  Both cats still on vacation, fortunately.

The baby mole immediately began burrowing through the grass, and eventually under the grass.  Pollux chose this time to make a dramatic appearance, like the U.S. Cavalry, and my attention was diverted by the need to grab my wily and determined cat, take him kicking and screaming back inside, and close off his cat door.  Back outside, Castor then wandered onto the scene, but he was unaware of the drama happening within feet of himself.  Sure, let's go inside and check out breakfast, he suggested.

Finally returning to the backyard, I discovered that Baby Mole had dug a little tunnel, just barely underground, and I could still locate him by watching the disturbance as he inched his way across the yard.  He was headed for the hedge area, which was probably a good idea, as the soil there is looser and easier digging.  The last time I checked the area, there was no sign of my little friend.  

The cats -- "Our work is done!" -- slept all day, and I let them back outside at dusk.

No, it never occurred to me to flush Mr. Mole down the toilet.  Yes, I realize that adult moles play havoc on carefully tended lawns, but my lawn's not that carefully tended.  And unlike some conquerors, I don't kill my enemy's children, because some day they would otherwise grow up into adult enemy soldiers.  

I'm told that, while dogs often kill moles, domesticated, well-fed cats are more likely to play with them as toys than to actually kill and eat them.  So maybe his danger was less than I feared.  But I'm glad I didn't rely on that advice.

Moles eat prodigiously, and they continue eating and surviving underground in winter.  This little fellow was uninjured, so far as I could tell, despite his war with the cats.  And he was drinking water from a bowl, suggesting that he was weaned and able to find food on his own.  

I hope he builds himself a cozy mole-cave, beneath my yard or that of a neighbor.  And I hope that the trauma of this childhood experience will not discourage him from following the example of Kenneth Grahame's Mr. Mole.  I hope that some day soon, when the air is warm, the sun is bright, and the world is fragrant with flowers and grasses and opportunities for adventure, he will screw up his courage and venture to the surface.  And that he will look around happily at the world of nature and exclaim: 

"This is fine!  This is better than whitewashing!"

Ash Wednesday 2023

 
...it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

― John Knowles,  A Separate Peace