A shining city

"Exceptionalism."

In a syndicated column today, Kathleen Parker notes that Obama's State of the Union address omitted "the word" -- the word that, as Parker sees it, will be a rallying call for the Republicans in 2012.

"The word conservatives long to hear."

Parker feels that Obama does believe that America is "exceptional" -- parts of his speech make it clear that he does -- but she wonders why he shies away from pronouncing the actual word. She says that Americans want their president to share their values, and 36 percent fear that Obama does not believe that America is "exceptional." If Obama doesn't like the word as it's now being used, she contends, he had better "take possession of the word," make clear to voters what the word does mean to him in a way that resonates with those voters -- and then make use of it often.

Her advice may be good politics. But I think I understand what President Obama meant when he once said, speaking overseas:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Great answer, I felt, and still feel. Horrible answer, politically, says Parker. Too "Harvard." Too (I gather) tone-deaf, too lacking in patriotic resonance.

Like most of us, I grew up being educated out of text books that were virtual Bibles of exceptionalism. All of world history was but prelude to the settlement of North America, the American Revolution, Manifest Destiny, our triumph in world wars, our bestowing the benefits of capitalism and democracy upon a benighted world, and, ultimately and incidentally, America's deserved and benign world domination. Just as generations of British kids were educated by reading Macaulay, absorbing his optimistic Whig exceptionalism -- the sense that history was the story of the British people's inevitable progress from medieval darkness to their attainment in the nineteenth century (when Britain was deemed close to perfection) of personal freedoms, scientific enlightenment, parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy.

Like Obama, I have no doubt that we have developed certain habits and abilities in this country that are advantageous to us, some of which may be worthy of emulation by others. These traits, together with our enormous historical advantages of isolation from the rest of the world during our formative years and abundance of natural resources and empty land, helped us reach our economic position today. Inheritance of British political and legal traditions and good fortune in the intelligence and wisdom of our nation's founding fathers gave us our political advantages.

These are economic and political advantages that our ancestors fortuitously received, and that we today have fortuitously inherited. They are not grounds for self-congratulations, and they are not signs of our own wisdom, merit or favor with God, as extravagant claims of "exceptionalism" so often suggest.

We have been blessed by God with good fortune (as have other nations), but it's more than presumptious to believe that God has chosen the United States of America as a unique vessel to reveal his plans to the world. We are not a New Israel. We are not a holy nation, a chosen people set apart. And if we are, or ever become, a "shining city on a hill," it will be because we have made some hard decisions and accepted some serious sacrifices in order to be a nation worthy of that descripton. It will not be because that was our Divine Destiny.

And even if attained, being a "shining city on a hill" will never be a permanent status. Nations come and nations go. Empires rise and empires fall. (Ask the British about it.) We are not exempt from the natural flows of history.

In preparation for my trip to Iran, I've been reading books that attempt to explain the mindset of the Iranian people. These books remind us that -- although people everywhere have much in common -- every people does have its own characteristics, its own values, its own hopes and desires. Not every people shares our own aspirations, at least to the same degree that we imagine it does or should do.

We don't always know what's best for ourselves, let alone for others. "Exceptionalism," as it's being bandied about today, assumes that we do. That assumption, in itself, is enough reason to distrust and avoid the word.

The United States has had many advantages, both in its material prosperity and in its history and ideals. We can be satisfied with that, as can many other countries with respect to their own advantages and history. We don't need to insist that we are unique and that our uniqueness somehow lifts us above others or gives us a basis to tell others how to live. As Kathleen Parker notes, in her penultimate paragraph:

We mustn't brag, after all. Great nations don't have to remind others of their greatness. They merely have to be great.

Wise words. I would add only that great nations also don't have to remind themselves repeatedly of their own greatness.

Auguries of global warming

More snow in the Northeast corridor. A half foot last night, even as far south as Kentucky. Eight to 12 inches forecast for tonight in New York City. Massive flight cancellations yet again.

I strolled across campus here in Seattle today. Green shoots are popping up through the ground. Buds have appeared on all the flowering trees, some about to burst out at any moment into pink and white blossoms. A high of 57 degrees was expected today; tomorrow's high is expected to reach 60°.

Seattleites, New Yorkers:

Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to endless night.

Last week's New Yorker devoted its "Shouts & Murmurs" humor column to a roast of Mayor Bloomberg, deriding the New York mayor's aristocratic bemusement and detachment in the face of citizen outrage over his inept handling of snow accumulations in the city streets.

December 28th [his "diary" indicates]. The criticism mounts. Someplace called the Bronks (sp?) remains snowbound. Am I missing something? Yes, there is a lot of snow. Yes, we haven't plowed it. Yes, the subways and buses aren't really running so well. So why don't people simply use their helicopters? ... What is a snowstorm but an airborne snowing event? The American mystery deepens. Like a snowdrift. It's late and we are out of wine and my pajamas are itchy ...

In a snowless Seattle -- where a Seattle Times headline reads "Winter on Seattle's waterfront offers uncrowded fun (plus fish and chips)" -- our own ditzy mayor, free of weather concerns, can ponder idly the advisability of ending drunken street rowdiness at 2 a.m., when the bars close, by the simple expedient of eliminating the mandatory 2 a.m. closing hour. Presumably we'll find drunks more tolerable at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m.

In Washington, President Obama struggles by motorcade from the airport to the White House. The weather had grounded Marine One, the presidential helicopter. Here in the Northwest, on the other hand, spring began yesterday for fishing enthusiasts, as the first spring chinook of the season was caught in the Columbia. Nearly 200,000 of the salmon are expected to pass upstream to spawn, negotiating the hazards of rapids, fish ladders, and armies of avid fishermen.

Repeated stories about icy weather on the East Coast draw the same repetitious on-line comments: "You call this global warming?" "Wonder what Al Gore has to say about this?" The commentators ignore the second straight year of unseasonably mild winter in the Northwest, apparently uninterested in what this recent warmth might mean.

Meanwhile, the polar ice keeps melting, the polar bears grow more frantic, the mountain glaciers keep shrinking, and storms worldwide become ever greater and more vicious. Does no one understand that there's no incongruity between "global warming" and "local cold weather"?

Ah, I think to myself, to be a teenager once again. To wear shorts and t-shirts in January, oblivious to whatever future climatological horrors this odd weather may portend. But what the heck? Why should I care? Let's be glad we're not in New York. Walk in the warm air. Enjoy seeing flowers bloom in mid-winter. Why should only Californians live like Californians?

Let Mayor Bloomberg and the polar bears worry about where it's all leading.

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Art work by Isaac Littlejohn Eddy, reproduced in NY Times (1-26-11)

Bringing thread counts to Ladakh

My heart sinks as I open the New York Times travel section and spot the headline: "Bringing Luxury to a Rugged Himalayan Haven." Which area is doomed now, I wonder. Oh, fine, I should have known -- Ladakh!

Ladakh is a high-altitude Buddhist region, administratively incorporated within Indian Kashmir, an area so remote that the article describes it as:

a region formerly the exclusive province of trekkers and religious pilgrims willing to trade comfort for the hope of transcendence.

But no longer! The article describes its writer's travel with a tour company

that takes travelers used to high thread counts and high tea on treks through the Himalayas.

The tour, led by "an Eton-educated art history expert with a preference for ascots and roll-your-own cigarettes," takes its pampered guests to specially renovated rooms in local homes.

There were chef-prepared dinners, hot showers, and heavenly beds made with Shaki's own linens. Handmade soaps stood beside the copper bathroom basins.

Well, ain't that just ducky?

The article marvels that "places like Ladakh can still exist." How much longer does the writer believe that "places like Ladakh" will continue to exist, once truckloads of "handmade soaps" and "Shaki's own linens" begin arriving from the lowlands?

I trekked in Ladakh for a bit under three weeks in 2005. As the article says, the region is remote and, by Western standards, primitive. The landscapes are stunning. The people are poor -- again, by Western standards -- but spiritually rich. The region's capital, Leh, was already, in 2005, a trekking center with small, inexpensive hotels, pizza joints and cybercafés. Even we trekkers, by our very presence, were helping to change the lives and attitudes of the peoples among whom we trekked -- we perhaps blended in by our simple lives and meals, but not by our modern clothes and camping gear. But we at least trekked with a company that was dedicated both to minimizing our cultural impact and to spending our money on goods and services produced by local residents.

Travel in itself is homogenizing -- it changes both the travelers and the people they visit. Travel's impact is entirely favorable on the traveler; it can often be favorable on those visited. But the greater the disparity in appearances, including apparent wealth, between the two groups, the earlier the place visited will lose the unique qualities that made it worth visiting.

I understand that there is a selfish emotion involved here -- a desire to keep an area impoverished and primitive for the entertainment of the Western visitor. It's easy to call a people poor in assets but rich in spirituality, and to use that as an excuse for perpetuating poverty and hardship. But, on the other hand, comparison of societies before and after "Westernization" and influx of luxury tourist dollars leaves me unconvinced that the changes brought by tourism represent unalloyed improvement.

But Westernization will continue, everywhere, and will result in a more homogenized world. As tourists, however, we have some responsibility to ensure that our travel does not encourage the more undesirable aspects of this change, and, in so far as possible, encourages actual improvement in the lives of the people we visit.

I don't think that "bringing luxury" to permit more light-hearted travel for visitors to the Himalayas is the answer. Nor is it the answer, in the long run, to the interests of Western tourism. I'm reminded of the struggle to create the North Cascades National Park in my own state. Critics complained that park advocates wanted to "lock up" the wilderness, making it available only to "hardy hikers and mountaineers." (These phrases were repeated ad nauseum.) They wanted roads throughout the park, and trams to the more interesting summits. They seemed determined to overlook the fact that the attraction of the North Cascades consisted not merely in the scenery -- more easily viewed in picture books and movies -- but in the fact that the North Cascades was one of the few remaining true wilderness areas in America where humans could experience something of the solitude experienced by the pioneers, where a hiker could find himself forced to rely on his own preparations, skills and stamina to complete his hike.

I'm sorry to read of "luxury tours" to the Himalayas, just as I'm sorry to read of helicopter trips to Everest Base Camp and road building throughout the Andes. These changes may seem to promise, in the short run, greater opportunities to tourists and more money to local people; in the long run, they degrade the travel experience of those doing the visiting, and the lives and cultures of the persons being visited.

Medieval antecedents

The child is father to the man, so the saying goes. In the same way, the medieval world gave birth to the modern world of today. To understand why we act the way we do, both as individuals and as nations, we often need to look back to our childhoods.

The University of Washington Alumni Association's annual history lecture series this year is entitled "Medieval Origins of the Modern Western World," delivered by Prof. Robert Stacey. As a one-time medieval history major myself, I showed up for the sold-out series last night expecting a rather superficial summation of the more exciting events of the period, a number of anecdotes that might appeal to the average guy who's been out of school for a while.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The series contains just four lectures. I regret having missed the first one, entitled "The Oddity of the Modern West," while I was in California. This week's lecture discussed the origins of one such "oddity": "The Separation of Religion from Politics." Dr. Stacey's lecture was one of the best I've heard in the years I've attended these lectures at the UW. It was well delivered, highly organized, and crammed with information. The lecture managed to cover 1,700 years of history without our ever losing sight of the primary point that Dr. Stacey intended to make: that events and conflicts during the middle ages led ultimately to a sharp break with the past in the way Western man viewed the state -- how he understood the basis for the legitimacy of government and the objectives for which he believed government to exist. This break was centuries in development, but culminated in the aftermath of the religious wars of the 17th century.

In just under two hours of lecture time, Dr. Stacey discussed the fusion of worship and secular life in the Roman household and imperial government; St. Augustine's City of God, and the misunderstanding of his concept of the "two cities" by subsequent religious and political thinkers; the virtual fusion of priestly and secular functions in the Carolingian monarchy; the Investiture Controversy between the papacy and lay rulers of the 11th and 12th centuries, leading finally to a line drawn between lay and religious government; the Reformation conflicts and the theocracy of Calvinist Geneva; the Edict of Nantes; the Thirty Years War in the 17th century, emphasizing the religious rather than secular conflicts played out in that war; and the ultimate evolution of the state, in the wake of the moral exhaustion bred by the religious wars, into an entity that commanded allegiance and offered its benefits apart from the religious beliefs of either its ruler or its citizens.

As an undergraduate, I took a very good course in political theory, a course that covered these same topics; Dr. Stacey's single lecture pretty much summed up all the understanding (and more) that I took away from that undergrad class after the finals were over.

So props to the Alumni Association and to Dr. Stacey. I look forward eagerly to the two remaining lectures, "Limited Government" and "Love and Marriage."

Sitting up straight

My long-suffering piano teacher showed me a book this morning, a book written for grade school children. The book shows beginning pianists how to relax their arms while playing, so that they use their fingers, not their shoulders, to exert pressure on the keys. "One thing you never learned as a child, apparently," she sighed. "One of many things," I agreed.

I began thinking of the many things I never learned as a child. To what extent are our adult talents and abilities shaped and limited by what we learned or failed to learn when we were kids? Is it, ultimately, all Mom's fault?

If you've been awake this past week, you know about the Chinese-American author Amy Chua and her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Woman. She describes the draconian tactics to which she resorted in pushing her daughters to be the brilliant adults that they clearly are today. And competent musicians. One daughter performed at Carnegie Hall, but only after a childhood of forced four-hour practice sessions at the piano, and maternal threats to burn her stuffed animals if she failed to play a composition perfectly. (No, I haven't read the book, nor do I intend to read it. Life's too short. I'm relying on a story in the New York Times.)

Thoughtful readers of my posts may assume that Amy has my whole-hearted approval, but she doesn't. She has only my half-hearted approval. Her parenting techniques, as she describes them, fall at one barely acceptable extreme of the parenting continuum; the parent who sits before the TV every night and considers his or her child's education to be the function of the local school district would be at the other end. Somewhere in between lies the ideal approach, and I suspect that ideal balance varies from child to child. Unfortunately, the optimum balance is easier to locate in retrospect, after the kid's already grown up, than it was at the time the knowledge was needed.

The reader comments to the NY Times article, and to a follow-up column in the Times, vary widely in how they view Ms. Chua -- from admiration to suspicion of child abuse. The comments are all interesting and thoughtful, and the experiences each reader has had with his/her own children show the wide variety of child rearing approaches that can lead to the development of successful adult lives. Or, for that matter, to failures.

My own parents, like most in the milieu in which I grew up, took a rather laissez faire approach to bringing up their kids. More so than average, perhaps, even for our place and time. They wanted good grades from us, and college educations, but they pretty much left it up to us to figure out how best to achieve those results. That approach gave me an enormous amount of room as a kid for exploration and experimentation, for following my own sense of curiosity. It also gave me a lot of room to develop rather lazy habits of thought and poor self-discipline.

If I had my childhood to live over again, I'd hope for a bit more pressure from my parents, a setting of the bar of acceptable achievement a bit higher, rather than their relying entirely on my own sense of self-pride and ambition. On the other hand, I have to admit I'm glad they didn't refuse me access to the bathroom until I'd finished perfecting, to their satisfaction, the piano piece I was playing. As Ms. Chua cheerfully admits to doing.

I've known plenty of people whose parents tended toward either extreme. In general, those with the stricter parents have developed certain enviable talents -- like playing an instrument well -- more frequently than the others. But I can't really say that either approach by the parents has led consistently to adult lives that were either happier or more productive. Different kids respond differently to different parenting approaches. Parenting remains an art rather than a science.

This week's debate among readers of the Times articles is a microcosm of a national debate that will grow increasingly sharp in the years just ahead -- between those who feel that today's form of American education best develops the creativity and social skills that are needed for both personal and national success, and those who feel that the Chinese/Indian/Jewish model of hard work and, at times, rote learning in childhood teaches the self-discipline and analytical skills that Americans are increasingly failing to develop, especially compared to kids in the developing Asian nations that will be our competitors in the next decades.

As expected, I think both sides are right, and that what we need is a proper blend of the two approaches. But then, my own lackadaisical education taught me to be just that way -- non-judgmental to the point of sounding wishy-washy.

And the music still doesn't flow to my finger tips -- through relaxed arms -- as I strike the keys on the piano!

Beyond the horizon

What do we really know about the universe in which we live? More importantly, perhaps, what can we know?

Brian Greene, a Columbia University physics professor, discusses today, in a New York Times feature article, the consequences of the fact that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate -- not, as one would expect, at a slower rate. This accelerating expansion suggests that some force -- in addition to the original force of the Big Bang -- is more than counteracting the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter in the universe. Dr. Greene describes this force as Einstein's posited "repulsive gravitation" or, in modern terms, "dark energy" -- something that is inherent in the nature of space itself.

Regardless of the mysterious nature of dark energy, its observed effect is that the universe is expanding, and expanding faster and faster. Eventually, this expansion will result in remote galaxies distancing themselves from each other at a speed faster than light.¹ At that point, such galaxies will become permanently invisible to each other. In perhaps 100 billion years from now, our descendents on earth, gazing at the sky through telescopes, will see nothing but the stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Dr. Greene notes, somewhat whimsically, that such future astonomers, if confronted with ancient documents from earlier times describing galaxies as numerous as the stars themselves in our own galaxy, will have to decide whether to believe their own observations or the accounts from those documentary relics from the past. Accounts of a sky full of galaxies will seem as dubious to them as stories of the Greek or Hindu gods do to us today.

The moral is clear: we can never learn everything, or even very much, about the nature of reality. What critical information is already unknowable to us today because of analogous shielding of past events? Dr. Greene notes:

We've grown accustomed to the idea that with sufficient hard work and dedication, there's no barrier to how fully we can both grasp reality and confirm our own understanding. ... [But] sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.

When considering how we "know" our world on the human scale, I'm always amazed at how our bodies perceive a narrow band of electromagnetic radiation ("light"), some neurological reactions to pressure on the skin ("feel"), and waves of compression in the atmosphere ("sound") -- and how our brains build a mental image of what lies around us out of this limited data, and how we then confidently believe that we have "observed" reality. How different would the "reality" of life on earth look if we perceived only ultraviolet light? Or x-rays?

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
--Matthew Arnold

Dr. Greene's article makes it clear that we not only are limited in our perception of reality by the limitations of our sensory perceptions and our brain's ability to process all those perceptions that it does receive -- we are limited by the very nature of the universe itself.

We should feel a certain humility when we assert claims of absolute certainty about anything. But of course we don't. And won't.

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¹As Dr. Greene explains it, this expectation does not contradict relativistic limitations. Relativity applies to the motions of objects, relative to each other, within space. "Dark energy" is not causing objects to fly apart within space; it is causing space itself to rapidly expand.

Fanaticism

Today's New York Times carries an article discussing the growth of Islamic fanaticism in Pakistan. A Pakistani political analyst notes that the country has been drifting for some time into religious extremism.

This conservatism is fueled by an element of class divide, between the more secular and wealthy upper classes and the more religious middle and lower classes.
--New York Times, quoting Najam Sethi, a former Pakistani newspaper editor

The article discusses the recent assassination of the Punjab's governor by one of his own bodyguard, and the fact that younger and more religious members of the legal profession now consider the killer a hero. Lawyers showered the defendant with rose petals when he appeared in court to face charges. The growing religious fervor is reinforced by a strong strain of populism.

"Salman had an easygoing, witty, irreverent, high-life style,” he [Sethi] said, “so the anger of class inequality mixed with religious passion gives a heady, dangerous brew."

Moderate Pakistanis blame the religious parties and fundamentalist clerics for inciting such attacks. They also blame the press: “Democracy has brought us a media that is extremely right-wing, conservative,” according to Sethi.

While Pakistan is a far different country from the United States, Pakistan being a country that is actually on the verge of becoming a failed state, certain dynamics in both countries are uncomfortably similar. Here we have fundamentalist Christianity rather than fundamentalist Islam. This similarity should not be exaggerated; most Christian fundamentalists abhor violence and focus on individual rather than national salvation. We have certainly seen an uglier and more politicized side to that fundamentalism among some national religious figures, however.

This fundamentalism is reinforced by a growing populism -- not just in the benign sense of sticking up for the common man, but in an uglier sense of detesting all forms of authority -- government, business, unions, universities, academic experts, science, experts of any kind. This is a throwback to the populism of Andrew Jackson, but is a dangerous development today, appearing in a highly technological, non-frontier society.

We also have Fox News and certain of its commentators, media figures who have discovered that inciting hatred brings in far more readers and money than does dispassionate discussion of political issues. To Fox, both religious fundamentalism and anti-intellectual populism are trends to be cultivated, whether to advance its owners' actual political beliefs or simply to maximize profits. Beyond Fox, even, we have a plethora of blogs and message boards that are truly scary to read.

The assassinations in Tucson this week may well be the result of the killer's serious mental illness. Jared Loughner's political views, such as they are, don't really match those of any one extremist party or cult. But the hatred filling the media over the past decade -- the loathing of "liberals," the belief that the Constitution has been hijacked, the hatred of government in general, the bewildering (at least, to a liberal) fury at health reform legislation -- may well have given focus to Loughner's paranoia and emotional turmoil, leading him to target a Democratic member of Congress serving in a state not particularly receptive to Democratic party principles.

Regardless of any connection or lack of connection between Loughner and the radical right, the shooting should at least call our attention to dangerous currents within our society, and a growing decrease in our ability as concerned citizens to reason out political solutions using logic rather than falling back on abstract dogma, name-calling, and mutual loathing.

We still have a long way to go before we reach the plight in which Pakistan now finds itself. But let's not go any further.

Frontier talk

A fair-to-middlin' American writer named Ernest Hemingway once observed, famously, that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. …All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Good old Hem's opinion hasn't prevented repeated attempts to ban the novel from American high schools. The reasons advanced have varied over the years. In earlier times, the problem was primarily with Huck's character and with the plot. Huck, the hero, is rebellious. He repeatedly gets the "nice boy," Tom Sawyer, into trouble -- and does so with the author's apparent full approval and enjoyment. He runs away from home and floats down the Mississippi with a runaway adult slave for his friend. (A prominent literary critic argued in the 1950's that Twain was suggesting an interracial, pedophile relationship!) He encounters a number of American frontier types, none of whom is in any way admirable or edifying.

At the end of the book, after returning to Aunt Sally and the world of respectability, Huck confides to his readers, in one of the more memorable final paragraphs of any novel, that he plans to run off again:

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Not the sort of lesson that many adults wanted impressionable young students to learn.

Later, the concern seemed more with the texture of the novel. Mark Twain excelled in casting dialogue in the dialect appropriate for each of his fictional characters. Huck's language is full of grammatical solecisms. "Ain't" is used regularly and consistently. Jim, the slave, speaks in the black dialect of the time. Even the earliest critics of the novel complained of the "coarseness" of the language. It was, well, too realistic.

Many of these earlier complaints have continued up to the present, but the issue is now primarily "racism." Use of nineteenth century black dialect by black characters, such as Jim, connotes ignorance, it is claimed. Particularly when the novel is used in the classroom, it hurts the feelings of African-American students and suggests inherent black inferiority to the others. Why not have all the characters speak standard English, even if none of them would have done so in real life? Why, for that matter, I suppose, should Charles Dickens have differentiated between various classes and regions of England by writing each character's dialogue in an appropriate dialect?

All these arguments tend to be summed up in the horror often expressed with respect to the frequent use (219 times, according to someone's count) of the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn. (Note: I actually said "nigger" (there, I did it again!), unlike almost all recent journalistic reports on the subject. I didn't say "n-----" or "the n-word" or any other euphemism. I'm daring that way. I even italicized it for you.)

"Nigger," of course, began as a sloppy pronunciation of "Negro," which in turn is the Spanish word for "Black." Like most offensive words, there's nothing offensive in the word itself, but in the use that has historically been made of it. Dictionaries advise that the word was used in a derogatory fashion from the very beginning, but has become markedly more offensive in recent years. Fashions come and go in many words; once offensive words become accepted and once accepted words become offensive.

In pre-Civil War days, when the novel takes place, the word was widely used, even in "polite" society. It was derogatory even then, but it was -- after all -- applied to persons who were treated by the law as the chattel property of their owners. African Americans -- being mostly slaves -- were not highly esteemed in law, by society, or by the great majority of the population. As a result, there was not much concern over the nicety of the terms used to describe them. I suspect that "nigger" in those days was considered considerably less offensive than we would consider "spic" or "kike" to be today.

In any event, the word was in daily use.

My present concern stems from the well-publicized recent publication of an expurgated version of Huckleberry Finn, where the expurgator (Alan Gribben, an Auburn professor) has converted every use of the word "nigger" into the word "slave," in an apparent belief that it's better to be called a slave than a nigger. The book is intended primarily for use in the schools, where young ears and young ears' parents might be offended.

Should we give in and go along with it? Don't be silly. Huckleberry Finn is considered a classic for many reasons, all of which remain valid right up to the year 2011. You don't tidy up classics to meet changing tastes, any more than do sane people put plaster fig leaves on nude Renaissance statues. And modifying 219 appearances of one word won't satisfy the novel's vocal critics.

Today's issue of the Seattle Times contains a letter from a reader, responding to a news story about Gribben's "masterpiece." The letter concludes:

Our shared humanity is now beyond debate, and we have outgrown Huck and Jim. There are more modern books that accept the premise of "Huckleberry Finn" as given, and address the more subtle questions of race that still exist. Those books should be read and discussed in schools, and "Huckleberry Finn" should be honorably retired.

This well written and non-inflammatory letter seems to miss the entire point of teaching English literature. Mark Twain's novel is a story of the American frontier and of the conflicts confronted by an intelligent and perceptive, but uneducated, adolescent. It's not a sociological tract. Would the writer suggest that we now have a better understanding of religious and sexual values, and that therefore Hawthorne's rather disturbing novel, The Scarlet Letter, should be retired from the curriculum in favor of a book about a modern pastor who provides wise counseling to unmarried couples who are expecting a child?

Teachers, teach the classics; don't tamper with the text; and do discuss the books with your students. The kids aren't oblivious, but if there's any doubt in your mind as a teacher, go ahead and explain that "nigger" is not acceptable language today, and that it was insulting even in Twain's day. Also explain that "ain't" is dialect, not standard English, and that "sivilize" is just plain bad spelling. Get all that out of the way. Then talk about the lessons Twain was teaching in the novel. Tell the students how times, values and conventions were different from those they are familiar with today. And make sure they discover for themselves how -- all didactic intent aside -- the book is just an exciting, funny and entertaining read.

Oh -- and by the way -- Gribben also converts every use of the word "injun" to "Indian." (I guess Injun Joe now becomes Indian Joe.) Don't even get me started -- at least he doesn't call them "cardinals."

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(1-9-11) Leonard Pitts, a syndicated, liberal, African-American columnist, in a well-reasoned column opposing Gribben's "modifications" to Huckleberry Finn that appears in today's Seattle Times, concludes:

Huck Finn is a funny, subversive story about a runaway white boy who comes to locate the humanity in a runaway black man and, in the process, vindicates his own. It has always, until now, been regarded as a timeless tale.

But that was before America became an intellectual backwater that would deem it necessary to censor its most celebrated author.

The one consolation is that somewhere, Mark Twain is laughing his head off.

One more year

"I am committed to earning my degree in architectural design from Stanford University and am on track to accomplish this at the completion of the spring quarter of 2012."
--Andrew Luck

Thus did the consensus first pick for the 2011 NFL draft give up an immediate guarantee estimated at up to $60 million today, choosing instead to stay in college, get his degree, and play one more year of college football.

The message boards have been blazing all afternoon. A few commentators congratulated Luck on his decision. Many found his decision incomprehensible -- "you go to college to gain a skill so you can make money, and you're risking a fortune. If you really love architecture, why not grab the money and go back to school later?" "Doesn't Stanford teach you basic economics?"

And a large number of even more rabid commentators foamed at the mouth over a matter that had virtually no impact on their own lives. They appeared outraged by a decision that they sensed questioned their most hallowed belief -- that making a pile of bucks was the essence of life itself. They attacked Luck's intelligence, his father's wisdom, his coach's advice. One messsage board writer even said he hoped Luck would sustain an injury next year, to prove the foolishness of today's decision.

Luck had promised to carefully consider all the pros and cons of his choice. The money involved, the uncertainty over the future of the NFL's compensation system, and his probable draft by the Carolina Panthers -- each undoubtedly played a part in his decision-making. But his father, himself a university athletic director and former NFL quarterback, undoubtedly had the best insight into Andrew Luck's final decision:

Luck’s father, Oliver, said his son wanted to complete his degree in architectural design, a rigorous major in the college of engineering. Luck also felt, his father said, the tug of finishing his career with the players whom he entered school with.

“He wants to finish with those guys,” Oliver Luck said in a phone interview. “It’s a great group of players. That was by far the most important factor.”

Oliver Luck was listening to radio hosts criticize the decision on the radio Thursday and recalled the psychological test in which people perceive different things in inkblots.

“It’s a Rorschach test for people’s values system,” he said of the decision.
--New York Times (Pete Thamel)

No one would have criticized Luck if he had turned pro. But his critics are evaluating his decision as a business decision by a business. Instead, it was a life decision by a young man setting out in life. The choice he finally made reflects credit on himself, on his family, on his team and teammates, and on his school.

New Year's toast

As I begin this post, we are a short 8½ hours until the dawn of 2011. Therefore, a special New Year's posting seems in order.

A couple of months ago, I had a Facebook exchange with a younger relative regarding "Tom and Jerries." To her, the term meant nothing but a couple of cartoon mice. She had no idea that it was a drink -- not only "a drink," but, in fact, "the drink" for this time of year, "the drink" with which to celebrate New Year's Eve and/or Day.

For those of you who don't know a Tom and Jerry from a Batman and Robin, here's the recipe:

Tom and Jerry
Ingredients
12 egg(s)
1 cup sugar
1 bottle brandy
Pinch of ground allspice
Pinch of ground cinnamon
Pinch of ground cloves
1 bottle dark rum
milk
nutmeg

Glass Type: Mug

Instructions
Separate the eggs. Beat the whites until they form a stiff froth, and the yolks -- to which you have added the sugar -- "until they are as thin as water," as the professor advises, gradually adding 4 ounces brandy (spiceaholics will also add a pinch each of ground allspice, cinnamon, and cloves). Fold the whites into the yolks. When ready to serve, give it another stir and then put 1 tablespoon of this batter in a small mug or tumbler. Now add 1 ounce brandy (although some die-hard Southernors may prefer bourbon) and 1 ounce Jamaican rum, stirring constantly to avoid curdling. Fill to the top with hot milk and stir until you get foam. Sprinkle a little grated nutmeg on top.

By cutting and pasting a recipe onto my blog, I have not only provided you with a source of happiness and contentment while watching the Rose Bowl tomorrow, but -- with minimal effort on my part, and with no imagination -- I've brought the number of my posts in 2010 up to a nice round 92!

True believers

In a conspiracy unrivaled in the annals of American politics, "President" Obama has pulled the wool over almost everyone's eyes, and has passed himself off -- successfully, so far -- as an American Christian. But -- in reality -- he is a citizen of Kenya and a Muslim.

Thus the cry of the "birthers" -- stating a firmly held belief impervious to certification from the State of Hawaii that Obama was born in Honolulu. Impervious to birth announcements within days of his birth in the Honolulu newspapers. And, it appears, impervious to the statements of the present governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, that he was a personal friend of Obama's parents, knew them at the time of Obama's birth, and has a firm recollection of Obama's parents' bringing him to parties within days of his birth. These "proofs" are merely confirmation to the birthers of the complexity, deviousness, and audacity of the conspiracy.

Gov. Abercrombie has had enough. He wants to end the debate by obtaining an exemption to Hawaii's privacy rules, allowing release of hospital records of the birth and of the original form of the birth certificate (a form that's not ordinarily produced as proof of birth).

Gov. Abercrombie means well, but such a release of documents will accomplish nothing. It will merely confirm in the birthers' minds that the conspiracy is even more far-reaching and diabolical than they first believed.

Erif Hoffer wrote a book called The True Believer, back in 1951. He pointed out that mass movements are not based on the truth or falsity of their beliefs, but on their adherents' psychological need to escape their own flawed personalities and unite in a collective whole.

He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the idea of martyrdom... All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth or certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

Hoffer was interested primarily in mass movements that embody a complete philosophy of life or, at least, political life -- fascism, communism, nationalism, and certain religious movements. But his observations regarding unwavering adherence to a belief apply as well to a belief coalescing around a single alleged fact -- such as the existence of UFO's and alien abductions -- when belief in that fact similarly satisfies the believer's need to escape himself and merge into a collective movement.

If Gov. Abercrombie is able to obtain release of further documentation regarding the president's birth, that will be useful, and perhaps reassuring to any conservatives who are tempted by the birthers' position, but are open to persuasion by factual data. But the governor should have no illusion that anything he or anyone else can do or say will affect the belief of the hard core of true believers.

Obama's a foreigner, and that's that.

Enforced rarity

Remember the periodic table of elements? I first saw it as a child in the end papers of a science book. If you took chemistry in either high school or college, it probably was displayed on one of the larger walls of the room. It made interesting viewing when the lectures got boring.

Some tables were full-sized, with every element in its proper place, based on the configuration of its electrons -- a configuration, as you recall, that determines the chemical properties of the element. Many charts, however, including the one in that book that impressed me as a youngster, had to be presented in a condensed form in order to fit into the space available.

One box on the table would thus be identified as the lanthanide series -- elements 57-71. Those fifteen elements were lined up, off the chart, at the bottom of the page. They were safely ignored. They were elements a kid had never heard of and that seemed to have no practical use: lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, etc., ending up with lutetium, No. 71. Hardly in the same class as hydrogen, oxygen, iron, gold, chlorine, and many of the other commonly known elements. In fact, the lanthanides were called "rare earths." The name sounded appropriate, and that's all I knew about them.

But the "rare earths" -- now generally defined to include scandium and yttrium, in addition to the lanthanide series, since those two elements commonly accompany ore containing the lanthanides -- are crucial in many areas of modern technology. And have actually been increasingly crucial for decades, ever since the development of semiconductors, which require "doping" with trace amounts of those elements . Although the rare earths are plentiful in the earth's crust, they are sufficiently concentrated to make commercial mining practical only in certain areas, and are commercially mined at present in very few areas.

Primarily, China.

China at present has a virtual monopoly on production of rare earths, and produces 96 percent of the most critical rare earths. And China has been increasingly tightening up on export controls, recently announcing a 35 percent decrease in export quotas from last year, and increases in export taxes. China claims it wishes only to assure enough of a supply for domestic use, but mutterings of darker motives are being heard. China allegedly shut off exports to Japan for a couple of months earlier this year, in silent retaliaton for a dispute between the nations regarding ownership over islands in the South China Sea.

Fortunately, deposits of rare earths also exist in the U.S. and in Australia, Brazil, Canada and South Africa. In fact, not long ago, most of the world's production came from these sources. But production was shut down worldwide when China vastly increased mining and undercut market prices in about 1990. Now, because of the time required to restart production, experts estimate that it will take 15 years to again satisfy Western needs from Western sources. Mining of rare earth metals also raises environmental concerns that need to be addressed.

Business and government leaders have been getting nervous. Maybe China's restrictions on rare earth exports are wholly benign. But it never hurts to develop backup supplies to any critical resource. Rare earths will be scarce enough in the coming years without having to worry about China's aggravating that scarcity in order to further its own foreign policy.

Student housing

New construction starts in Seattle screeched to a stop, as they did in the rest of the country, once the recession began in 2008. One exception has been Paul Allen's continuing development of the South Lake Union area -- his financial situation is such that he doesn't need to twist bankers' arms to borrow money. The other is residence hall construction at the University of Washington.

I rarely mosey over into the West Campus area, a large, slightly grungy area of land adjacent to the western border of the bucolic main campus. The West Campus is not so much a "campus" as it is simply property that's owned by the university. It consists of entire city blocks, or portions thereof, located on the Seattle street grid. Two large dormitories were built on the West Campus in the 1950's, and the law school moved into a highly unpopular new building facing those dorms in 1974 (and has since moved on to a larger and more elegant new building, located back on the main campus). Besides these three structures, the West Campus area for generations has consisted mainly of shabby residential homes converted to university offices, a few old apartment houses adapted for student housing, and -- most significantly -- numerous large university parking lots.

During the past year, however, several large dormitories -- "residence halls," I guess we now call them -- have been under construction. I decided to wander around on foot and check them out. At least three buildings are nearing the finishing stage of construction. They are huge! They are so large, and of such bulk, that they make the area virtually unrecognizable to someone who hasn't been there for a couple of years. Furthermore, demolition and clearing is nearing completion near-by for at least two more buildings of equal size.

The U-Dub has had a housing shortage for a number of years. The school has been shoehorning three roommates into rooms designed for two, and has converted common rooms and lounges into temporary housing. I haven't personally visited one of these sardine-packed dorms, but newspaper descriptions bring to mind emergency army housing in World War II. Or life aboard a submarine as shown in WWII movies.

The new dorms will provide housing for about 2,400 more students. This will, at least temporarily, alleviate increased demand that has resulted from the increasing size of the university (now about 43,000), an increased number of out-of-state and foreign students, the increased cost of private housing, and a renewed desire by students to live on-campus in a community setting with other students.

While most of the older residence halls -- those located on the main campus -- tend to be focused inward toward the campus, the University hopes that the new dorms now under construction will have a more outward focus, a focus that encourages students to be engaged with their urban setting as well as with college life. Certain architectural features have been designed with that goal specifically in mind. I suppose that one could look at NYU as an example of what the administration has in mind: NYU's academic and residential buildings are all located on the Greenwich Village street grid, not set apart on an enclosed campus. When I visit the Village, I can rarely tell whether any given building is part of the "campus."

How this approach will work at the UW remains to be seen. The hope is obviously to combine the traditional appeal of private, off-campus housing with the security and engagement in student communal life offered by campus residential housing. But however it works out, the effort is certainly changing -- and changing for the better -- a formerly somewhat shabby and under-utilized portion of Seattle's University District.

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Somehow, I sense your question: And this post is interesting why? And I can't answer it, except to say that I myself am fascinated by (1) the UW campus; (2) building construction; and (3) student life. I'm not satisfied that I've written a post that creates or satisfies similar interests in my readers. All I can say is: "Merry Christmas!"

Lunar moment

A monumental event occurred early this morning. I slept through it. I'm referring to the eclipse of the moon, of course, an eclipse that was total in Seattle and that was visible in Seattle -- believe it or not -- because of the lack of cloud cover.

And not just any old eclipse. This was the first time that an eclipse of the moon occurred on the winter solstice since 1638. How's that for a dark occurrence? Black on black. Ain't seen the like since King Charles I was ruling in England, waiting for an ax to bring about his own personal eclipse.

And yet, I forgot all about it, went to bed without looking outside to see its commencement, and slept right through its reaching totality after midnight. Have to wait now until 2094 for such a momentous event to occur again. Some question as to whether I'll be around at that time.

The event was as rare and wondrous as some baseball landmarks. "First time in World Series play that a shortstop has re-tied his left shoelace more than once during extra innings." See what I mean? I'd probably shut off the TV early and miss that critical benchmark as well.

Down and out

To prepare for my April visit to Iran, discussed in an earlier post, I've been reading a small book about Islamic history, written by the gentleman who will be our guide. Our ambassador to Pakistan under President Clinton, he prepared this book based on a series of lectures that he delivered at Stanford about ten years ago.

I try to keep up on world events, and I actually took courses in Middle Eastern history as a student. But, like most of us, my mind gets caught up in the urgency of current events and our emotional responses to acts of terrorism. Too often, I find myself agreeing with internet comments suggesting that Muslims -- or, at best, radical Muslim terrorists -- are uniquely evil, and that terrorism is a movement that has emerged from something peculiarly violent about Islam itself.

In his book, our guide puts today's events in historical context. An academic specialist in both Islamic and Eastern European civilizations (he also has served as ambassador to Poland), he draws parallels between today's Islamic terrorism and the terrorism -- anarchist, socialist, Marxist -- that threatened governments throughout eastern Europe, and especially Russia, just one century earlier.

Both Russia in the late 19th century and the Middle East in the late 20th century saw economic changes that caused massive migrations from rural areas to large cities. A rapid decrease in infant mortality also led to enormous population growth and to a consequent demographic bulge of young people. Educational improvements, in combination with demographics, produced a far larger class of educated young people than their backward societies could absorb and use productively. As a result, large cities contained -- and in the Middle East still contain -- a large under-class of bitter, well-educated, unemployed young people, youth who see no hopes for their future.

In both Russia and the Middle East, pre-existing utopian idealogies embraced by intellectuals had the potential to threaten existing repressive and inept governments -- anarchism, socialism, Marxism threatened the czarist government in Russia; restoration of Islamic purity as it existed in its Arabian origins threatened "Arab socialist" governments in the more advanced areas of the Middle East. These utopian ideals appealed strongly to impoverished urban youth; they provided young people with intellectual vehicles for their opposition to forces they saw as oppressive, forces they believed were denying them their dreams for the future.

In both Russia and the Middle East, the tinder was in place for the explosions that actually occurred.

The writer asks us to remember the protagonist in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment -- the impoverished, bitter, student intellectual who contemplates and finally commits a shocking and violent crime, the ax-murder of an old woman in order to use her money for idealistic purposes. How different from the student Raskolnikov, really, in their underlying psychology, were those young men and women who blew themselves up in Iraq, and who caused the 9-11 tragedy? To what extent is Islam the cause of today's terrorism, and to what extent is it merely an intellectual or emotional justification for it? To what extent should we be fighting Islamic fundamentalism, and to what extent should we be fighting the social and economic conditions that make it so attractive?

Lots to think about, and several other strongly recommended books to read, before I leave for Tehran.