Our own private Idaho

Yeah, I know.  You thought your favorite correspondent, essayist, blogger, whatever, had died.  Or, should I say, passed away.

But no.  It's just been a continuation of my post-pandemic inability to sit down and focus on any writing of any length longer than a Facebook entry.  Not because of any kind of Covid brain fog, but just because the isolation enforced by the pandemic is no longer present to encourage such concentration.

Actually, I have just recently recovered from my first and only bout of Covid.  Symptoms for five weeks, approximately. No worse than a bad cold, and in fact I spent my two weeks travel in Italy under its curse without realizing the reason that I was coughing so much and napping so often in the afternoons.  I'm grateful that masks and great care kept me from contracting the problem for the first year, and super grateful for  the shots and boosters that make a potentially deadly disease now no worse for me than a "bad cold."

But I no longer have Covid as an excuse for my mental laziness.  And you'll have to wait one more week to see if my writing bug starts biting again.  I leave tomorrow for the depths of Darkest Idaho, for a family gathering.  A world where political views are revolting, but the people are personally warm and friendly.

My family is a liberal anomaly existing uneasily within that environment.

As you know from earlier posts, my sister lives near Challis Idaho, which lies between Stanley and Salmon, if that helps you non-Idahoans.  The primary reason for this week's gathering is that my nephew Denny, who has been teaching for several years in Chiang Mai, Thailand, will be vacationing back in the States with his wife Jessie and his daughter Maury.  Maury has just completed the equivalent of American eighth grade, and starts high school in Chiang Mai in the fall.  She is American born and mainly reared, but -- I'm told -- by now speaks Thai as fluently as she does English.

My brother and his wife are driving up from Los Angeles, and there will be others present, but I don't recall exactly who. 

Challis is always fun to visit, winter or summer.  My sister has horses to ride -- I think she now has seven -- and a big house on fifty acres of woodland and pasture, with a just-completed one-room cabin hide-away, where company can lounge about and live off her family's hospitality.  We are bonding -- as if we needed it -- over a group rafting trip on Saturday.  I return to Seattle on Sunday.

So, here is my second blog entry for June 2023.  It doesn't really count as an essay, and probably is of no interest to anyone but my future self when I try to reconstruct the year 2023!  While you await something more meaty, more substantive, from me -- have a nice summer, y'all!

Return from Cinque Terre

Past life regression: A method that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations.

--Wikipedia

I had a birthday celebration planned, for May of 2020.  Thirty persons joining me.  In the small town of Levanto on Italy's Ligurian coast, immediately to the north of the Cinque Terre National Park.  But the Covid virus had other plans, and by March 2020, we were all confined to quarters. 

Three years later, and we're all traveling again -- statistics show we're traveling with a vengeance.  Someone called it "revenge travel."  And that missing birthday blast kept preying on my mind.  How much did I miss out on?

No way I could round up thirty friends and relatives for another go at Levanto, but that needn't stop me from exploring Levanto -- and the Cinque Terre -- for myself.

And so, on May 10 -- three years almost to the day after the Birthday Celebration of 2020 that did not occur -- I boarded a plane in Seattle and set off for Rome.  

One of the major attractions of the Cinque Terre that we  had advertised in 2020 was its hiking opportunities.  Hiking in May, when the weather would be at its best -- sunny, warm, but not hot.  Unfortunately, as I left Seattle, the forecast was for cool temperatures, with a better than fifty percent chance of rain virtually every day I was in Levanto.  Not promising, but I promised myself that I'd be flexible, that I'd adjust to whatever weather the Gods of Irony should throw at me.

Also, I flew off with a bad cold and a hacking cough.  In fact, I had, after three years of evading Covid-19, finally been tackled as I left the country.  But I didn't know that until I returned to the States and tested myself, surprised at the longevity of my pesky "cold," and at my odd need to nap for an hour or two every afternoon.

But I digress.  I arrived in Rome on Thursday, May 11, and spent two nights in the Eternal City, visiting favorite haunts about town while waiting for my body to adjust to a new time zone.  On Saturday, I departed by train to Levanto on one of Italy's excellent high speed trains.  As planned, I then spent the next six nights in Levanto, which served as my base for exploring the Cinque Terre (which the Italians sometimes call the "5-T').

Levanto is a pleasant small beach town, stretched out between two headlands along the Ligurian coast.  I stayed in an excellent B&B -- free plug: Villa La Marguerita -- located some distance from the center of town where most other hotels can be found.  But distances are small in Levanto, and the B&B was within easy walking distance of both the train station and the beach/"downtown" area.  Only eleven units, nice garden, quirky architecture, friendly staff, and good breakfasts.

My first full day, as predicted, it rained.  Hiking guides I read in advance had warned against hiking into the hills when the ground was wet, because of the danger of slipping on the smooth wet rocks.  I exercised at least adequate caution, and decided to make an "urban" visit to the first Cinque Terre town south of Levanto -- Monterossa.  Monterossa is a fairly long town, squeezed between the sea and the hills, and divided by a headland into a "new town" and an "old town."  I hiked around the headland, visited the old town, and returned over the top of the headland.  This hiking/walking was all rather tame, but interesting.  It rained lightly most of the day, but I had a light rain jacket, and I'm from a state where hiking in the rain is not considered bizarre.  The town had an interesting history, and, in good weather, good beaches -- but was not particularly scenic.

The next day dawned bright and sunny, and I was eager to hike.  I chose the trail from Levanto itself back to Monterossa, climbing up and over a large headland separating the two.  The hike took about three hours, and was rated as moderately difficult by the guidebook I was using.  It was quite steep climbing to the top of the headland, and steep descending into Monterossa, but was hardly a difficult walk for anyone used to hiking.

The third day, rain was threatened but never arrived.  More critically, there were major disruptions to the train service.  I chose to visit Vernazza, the next town south after Monterossa.  A small town, with brightly painted buildings clustered around a boat harbor.  Highly scenic, a great place to have lunch and interesting narrow streets to explore.  But after eating, walking, and people-watching, not much to occupy me except wait for the next train.

The fourth day, I had hoped to visit both Manarola and Corniglia, but the train problems didn't allow enough service to reach both towns.  But Manarola met all my expectations of what a Cinque Terre town should be like.  The town is built around a main avenue that winds from the train station down to the harbor.  You learn that this main avenue is actually a concrete cover over the creek that has formed the deep valley in which the town is located, a creek that was open and crossed by small bridges until after World War II.  Many good restaurants, at one of which, at the harbor, I had lunch.  The sides of the canyon are very steep, and the houses appear stacked one on top of another.  From below, or from the opposite canyon side which I climbed, these houses appear to be a solid mass of construction.  It's not until you investigate on foot that you discover that the wall of homes is honeycombed by small, cobblestone streets, often barely wide enough to walk through single file.  

I prowled around, and happened on the Church of San Lorenzo near the upper end of the canyon, with its tall, adjacent bell tower.  

The fifth day was another beautiful day, and the most enjoyable of my days in the Cinque Terre.  The trains were back on schedule -- running about every half hour -- and I took the train from Levanto to Corniglia.  The train arrives at a station at sea level, of course, but the town itself is perched 275 feet above, and is reached by a long series of stairs and switchbacks.  Once I reached the town, my plan was to hike back into the hills, ending up back at Manarola.  This hike was slightly more challenging than the earlier one, with a certain amount of exposure to heights in places as it wound its way through terraced grape fields.  The trail continues north, working its way back into the hills until it reaches the town of Volastra.  From Volastra, the route is mostly paved -- steep, but easily negotiated until you find yourself at the outskirts of Manarola.

The views from the Corniglia-Manarola trail are magnificent, and it's impressive to look down at both small towns, far down beside the sea, almost as though one were flying overhead.

My five days in the Cinque Terre were completed, although only four of the five "lands" had been visited -- I had to save Riomaggiore for a later trip.  The next day, I took the train to Florence, where I had a spacious  room in another small hotel, this one in the San Lorenzo area, not far from the Duomo.  Florence has a special place in my heart.  It was my first experience with Europe when, as a college junior, I spent six months studying (and traveling) at my school's overseas campus.  I know the town quite well, but I never grow tired of wandering its streets.

Then a return for a final night in Rome, before flying back to Seattle.

It was the Cinque Terre that was the focus of this trip, of course.  Although traveling solo, I wanted to get some idea of what I had missed three years earlier -- I anticipated a form, I suppose, of "past life regression."  The weather this time was atypically cool and wet, and I suffered throughout (but not badly) from my "cold."  I don't overlook the irony that I tried to duplicate a visit that had been doomed by Covid, but did so while for the first time unknowingly suffering myself from a mild Covid infection.

I'm sure that the 2020 gathering would have been successful, if held, just because of the kind of people who would have been there, and the chatting and catching up we all would have enjoyed.  Many, perhaps most, of the participants would have been hikers, and we would have found many enjoyable hikes to pursue.  But a large minority were not hikers, and after my visit I'm not sure there would have been enough of interest to absorb those people for an entire week.  I note that many or most guides suggest a visit of two or three days to the area.  The towns are dazzlingly scenic -- especially Vernazza and Manarola -- but, as noted above, once you've seen them, and had a leisurely meal, there might not be much else for the non-hiking visitors to "do."

But I may be pessimistic.  Being bored shows a lack of imagination, and I think most of our guests were sufficiently imaginative to keep themselves amused, and were mature enough not to require being force-fed "fun" as on a cruise or at Disneyland.

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PHOTO -- Manarola. Taken from high up on the opposite side of the harbor. 

"Sunny" Italy

My long awaited flight to Rome, and thence to the Cinque Terre, leaves Seattle on Wednesday at 6:18 a.m.  I had my packing list -- full of hiking gear, shorts, t-shirts, and other paraphernalia -- drawn up over a week ago. 

I'm now doing last minute packing list revisions.

I've been keeping my eye on the Italian weather, and unfortunately the country is in the midst of a long spell of wet weather.  The nine-day forecast shows rain, with occasional thunder showers, every day from the day I arrive until May 18 -- five days before I return home.  And I'm offered no reason to believe that those final five days won't be equally wet.

I spent the spring of my junior year of college in Florence.  It probably rained at one time or another, but my memories are of one warm, sunny day after another -- reading for classes in our little garden with a view of the Duomo in the distance.  Today's weather forecast leaves me feeling misled and betrayed.

The cliffside paths in the Cinque Terre -- which I read are brilliantly scenic, with views far below of the sea and of the small villages on the shore -- do come with a caveat.  They are, every one, steep at the start and at  their conclusion -- and they are built on rock which becomes very slippery when wet.  Hikers are advised to save their hiking for days when the paths are dry.

But when in my two weeks will they be dry?

I stay only six nights in the Cinque Terre -- the remainder of my time will be in Rome and Florence.  But those six days, my days of hiking, were my reason for traveling to Italy at this particular time.  My vacation has been built around those hikes.

One must be flexible.  Certainly in the big cities there are many things to do that don't require perfect weather.  But I'm not so sure about the Cinque Terre -- I'll just have to wait and see.

A fellow hiker who has hiked with me on other trips has little patience with my complaints.  She, essentially, tells me that I have high class problems.

Hmmm ... wine, cheese, pasta, espresso, gelato, tiramisù .. is there really a problem here?

She may have a point.

I'll try to survive the horrors of a wet Italian vacation on a rainy shore, and return to Seattle with a smile on my face.  Seattle -- a city that's anticipating an 88 degree Monday next week.  That's a little too sunny for this Pacific Northwest lad.  By contrast, I may find a gentle shower or two to be refreshing.

Examination of conscience

 I came alone and I go as a stranger.  The instant which has passed in power has left only sorrow behind it.  I have not been the guardian and protector of the Empire.  Life, so valuable, has been squandered in vain.  God was in my heart, but I could not see him.  Life is transient.  The past is gone and there is no hope for the future.  The whole imperial army is like me: bewildered, perturbed, separated from God quaking like quicksilver.  I fear my punishment.  Though I have a firm hope in God's grace, yet for my deeds anxiety ever remains with me.

So wrote Alamgir Aurangzeb (1618-1707) in a letter from his deathbed to his son.  Aurangzeb was the Muslim Emperor who presided over the Mughal Empire as it reached its greatest power and glory, stretching from what is now Afghanistan, over virtually the entire Indian sub-continent, and across Bangladesh.  

Unfortunately, for his peace of mind, he lived long enough to see the Empire be built begin to collapse.  The vast expenditures necessary to subdue southern India drove the Empire to near bankruptcy.

I had been reading once more William Dalrymple's City of Djinns -- one of four Dalrymple books that I have read and discussed on this blog -- when I decided to check and see what else he had written.  I discovered The Anarchy.  It's a highly ambitious work.  I already feel I've been instructed on the full history of the Mughal Empire. but I see on my Kindle that I'm only eleven percent of my way through the book.  What else lies ahead?  I'll find out, but it may take awhile.

I mention the book so prematurely now simply because I'm so impressed by Aurangzeb's deathbed confession.  A man who has finally conquered all  of the world worth conquering, at least from his point of view, views his life's work as probably a form of vanity -- an accomplishment not only threatened by ruin, but, considering its cost in human suffering, perhaps one that should never have been undertaken.

Life, so valuable, has been squandered in vain. ...  I fear my punishment.

My first reaction, perhaps, was to seek analogies in our time.  The Ukrainian war hasn't yet run its course, but regardless of outcome, will Putin someday wonder what he was seeking, and why, and questioning its cost in the human suffering he caused?   Will Trump wonder to himself what it was all about, whether whatever he thought he wanted was worth sacrificing the human joys of friends and family?   Well, probably not, but, as always, Trump is unique.

But then I thought about us common people, those of us with no interest in or pretensions of Imperial Glory.  Don't we nevertheless wonder along with the Mughal Emperor?  Have our precious lives also been "squandered in vain"?   Don't we respond viscerally to the Episcopalian prayer:  "I have left undone those things which I ought to have done; and I have done those things which I ought not to have done; and there is no good in me"?  If we are honest with ourselves, as we near the end of our lives, don't even the best of us feel some response to that pessimistic appraisal of our lives?

By coincidence, I read today my 2020 discussion in this blog of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's historical novel The Leopard (1958), the story of the life of a nineteenth century Sicilian aristocrat.  At the end, as the priest approaches to administer the last rites, he muses about what to confess:

Not that he felt himself innocent; but his whole life was blameworthy, not this or that single act in it; and now he no longer had time to say so.

He tries to recall all the happy times of his life.

I'm seventy-three years old, and all in all I may have lived, really lived a total of two ... three at the most.

I draw no conclusions.  I don't insist that everyone ends his life disappointed at his life's futility.  I don't know that I believe so myself.

But certainly for some people -- people whom we may all envy for their accomplishments -- experiencing such disappointment does seem unavoidable.  Maybe a tendency toward severe self-criticism is genetic?  Maybe some people, outwardly successful, have actual reason to judge themselves harshly?  Aurangzeb himself murdered and executed freely, and ruled his Hindu subjects oppressively.

But at least, he ended his life with humility.

How to change a flat tire

I guess it's just one of those things that happens to everyone now and then.  Yesterday, I hopped in the car with the idea of taking a dirty blanket to the cleaner's -- about five blocks away.  The car made strange noises, and kept pulling to the left.  

On the highway, I would have immediately diagnosed a flat tire.  But the tire hadn't been flat the night before, and I was puzzled.  After getting my blanket checked in, I took a look at the car.  The right front tire was so flat that I'd been driving on the rim.  I slowly drove back to my house, parked in the driveway, and resolved to think about it the next day.    

Yes, rather than immediately tackle the problem, I procrastinated.  And having no car, I walked 45 minutes to reach breakfast this morning. 

If it's not one thing, these days, it's another. Right?  

Although I've had my little Toyota Corolla for twenty years, I'd never had to change a flat tire.  I knew there was a jack and a lug wrench in the trunk.  And under the flimsy floor of the trunk, I discovered the spare tire, sitting in about three inches of water.  Don't ask.  

I rolled up my sleeves, metaphorically, and loosened the lug nuts.  Before jacking the wheel off the ground, I suspected it would be a good idea to first remove the spare from the trunk.  The tire, as is typical, was secured on a center pole, and pinned down in place by a wing nut.  I twisted the wing nut  Ol' Brer Nut, he don't move, he don't say nuthin'.   I tried pounding the wings with various blunt instruments.  No luck.

I had no tool that would move the immobile wing nut.  I reviewed the twenty steps of "How to Change a Flat Tire"¹,  an excellent and exhaustive on-line, step by step manual tackling the title question.  None of the steps addresses the critical issue of how to remove the spare tire from the trunk when the wing nut is stuck in place.

I had seemingly reached an impasse.

At the back of my mind were tragic memories of the day, as a 16-year-old, that I received my drivers license.  To celebrate, I took my younger brother for a spin through the countryside surrounding our home town.  In our dad's Buick.  I quickly, of course, blew out a tire.  While my brother watched with narrowed eyes, I breathed deeply and tried to be calm and competent.  I removed the jack, placed it under the body of the car near the affected wheel, and jacked 'er up.  The jack indeed rose, but the wheel remained, fixed solidly to the ground.  I noticed that I had placed the jack under the soft metal of the fender, which was folding up like an accordion.  

But wait, there's more.  While I was removing the spare from the trunk, I had laid the car keys inside the trunk for safe keeping.  After the jack fiasco, I slammed the trunk in frustration.  

The tire was flat, the keys were in the trunk.   In those days, there was no clever little lever under the seat for opening the trunk.  It was quite a walk to the nearest pay phone to summon parental assistance.  It was not a comfortable conversation.  My brother listened, hanging on every word.  There were no spare keys.  The car had to be towed to a dealer, awaiting for several days arrival of the appropriate key.  

My brother's thirteenth birthday arrived a day or two after the flat tire fiasco.  Unfortunately, our folks had -- for reasons I don't recall -- placed most of his presents in the trunk for safe-keeping.  They weren't available after his birthday dinner, when the cake and ice cream were served.

He gazed at me again, with hooded eyes.

That emotional trauma has always left me uncomfortable contemplating the possibility of flat tires and their consequences.  As I was today.  

But tell us, you plead -- how did you get the spare tire out of the trunk?

I telephoned a professional, of course.  For a mere $169, he was on the scene within an hour, and within minutes had the tire changed, a feat that I suspect most drivers could accomplish themselves with their eyes closed.  By that time -- to me, at least -- it was worth the cost.

Luckily my brother wasn't there to watch.

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¹https://www.bridgestonetire.com/learn/maintenance/how-to-change-a-flat-tire/

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.