Merry Christmas!

The Northwest Corner's recently lackadaisical proprietor is on his way out the door.

No, no -- I don't mean he's quitting, however desirable that might be!  He's headed for another family Christmas in Sonoma, hopping by prop planes from Seattle, to Portland, to the magnificence of Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa.  The airport that's too exclusive to permit jet landings.  Or something like that.

Hope my readers enjoy Happy Holidays, whatever their religious persuasion (if any).  This entire publishing operation will creak back into motion next weekend.  Or if not then, at least after the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.

Feliz Navidad!  And Joyeaux Noël!

Couging it

Coug it

Refers to the Washington State University (Cougars) football team:
1. To snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
2. To lose when there is no possible way to do so, and to do it in a particularly spectacular manner

It looked like WSU was going to win the game, but they decided to coug it.

--Urban Dictionary

 

The Northwest Corner has many interests, and covers many aspects of life.  Not generally sports reporting, however.

But when a sports term, from my own state, reaches Urban Dictionary -- my window on the "real world" in which I putatively exist -- it seems worthy of comment.  In fact, it seems worthy of memorialization in this chronicle of all things Northwestern.  Where future generations can ponder the phenomenon, and shake their collective head.

As you might guess, the term "coug it" is based on a consistent level of performance, not on any single episode of incompetence.  Yesterday's performance by WSU, however, may have been definitive.  As one on-line comment noted -- from this point forward, when internet dictionaries define "coug it," they will necessarily include a clip from the 2013 New Mexico Bowl.

The New Mexico Bowl was not high on my list of football priorities for the year, but I turned on the TV when the game had less than three minutes to go.  The Cougars had an eight point lead -- Colorado State had just scored.  Not an impressive lead, but WSU had possession of the ball and their CSU opponents had used up all their time outs.  Then the unthinkable happened.  The Cougars fumbled -- they're couging it! -- but no, they were saved! -- the replay showed that the runner's knee was down before the ball came loose.  Whew!  The Cougs had made a first down.  Less than two minutes to play.

At this point, the obvious strategy was based on simple mathematics.  Three knees to the turf, 45 seconds between plays, plus the time taken by each play.  Possibly time for a punt.  The clock runs out.  The game's over.

But we're talking about the hapless Cougars.  The coach inexplicably -- and he has a lot of explaining to do -- runs a play.  The ball's fumbled, this time for real.   Colorado State scores eight points with just 33 seconds left to play.  Wow!  What a recovery for the Rams!  We're going into overtime.

Ooops!  No, we're not.  The receiver for the Mighty Cougs fumbles the kickoff reception deep in their own territory.  Cougs lose by a field goal.

They've couged it again!

But hold up your heads, Cougars.  Be proud.  Not many college football teams can say that their name has become a verb, defined in one of the most popular dictionaries of our time.  Yesterday, you made the term "coug it" immortal.

Going out with gusto

Merrill Newman, age 85, signed up for a tourist trip to North Korea.  Right away, you know this story's going to have a bad ending, right?

As we all know, of course, it almost did have a bad ending.  They grabbed Mr. Newman as he was about to return home and charged him with all those odd offenses that countries like North Korea charge folks with.  After all, the dude fought against them in 1953, the scoundrel.  Luckily, cooler heads eventually prevailed -- I suppose that's what happened -- and a stilted and bogus apology later, Newman is relaxing in Santa Cruz with stories no doubt to tell.

While Newman was being held by the Democratic People's Republic, on-line comments here at home to reports of his capture and detention, while fairly sympathetic, were also laced with strong strains of sarcasm and exasperation.  Why would anyone travel to North Korea, they groused, and especially why would an 85-year-old do so? 

Why indeed?  Well, sixty years is a long time for grudges to be held; Vietnam veterans return routinely to the scenes of their battles in Vietnam.  And Newman, a retired financial officer, has always had a more adventuresome streak than his occupation might suggest.  He and his wife have spent a lifetime traveling around the world -- and that doesn't mean to resort areas.

One of the trekking companies I've used frequently has offered "adventure" travel to North Korea for several years.  While I wouldn't have anticipated an "adventure" such as that granted to Merrill Newman, I did seriously consider such a trip.  I suppose I wouldn't have been much of a target for North Korean paranoia.  Any aggression toward North Korea in the past could only have been in a game or two of Risk. 

I don't rule out such a trip in the future, if the itinerary appears sufficiently interesting.

What would be the downside?  No one was threatening Newman with execution -- the primary risk to his life came from his lack of medication -- but I suppose ten years of hard labor would be an unpleasant way to spend your waning years.  (As the New York Times points out, Kenneth Bae is serving 15 years of hard labor in North Korea because of his alleged Christian proselytizing -- he was a missionary.)

But when I'm 85, if I have to die I'd love knowing that ninety percent of Americans thought I had my death coming for being such a foolishly foolhardy old codger -- for not staying prudently and safely at home practicing origami at the senior center. And it would cheer me onward on my existential voyage to have the other ten percent saying -- aloud or to themselves -- "Right on, dude! If you gotta go, that's the way to go!" 

If given only the two choices, in other words, I'd choose a fall off a mountain or facing a DPRK firing squad to spending my final six months going quietly psychotic while hooked up to machines in an intensive care ward in Seattle.

Caffeinating my telomeres

Whenever I see a teenager downing a cup of coffee, I recall that I was 23 before lack of sleep -- and perhaps a desire for the semblance of adulthood -- forced me to step up to a fast food stand in Menlo Park, California, and order my first cup of coffee.  Until that day, I had found the taste strangely nauseating, preferring to take my caffeine in tablet form.

Since that first cup, my consumption has increased exponentially.  I can down a pot of coffee a day without blinking my eyes.  It's hot, it's liquid, it perks me up -- in fact, frequent coffee consumption may be all that keeps my heart beating.

From the beginning, I've been nervous about the effect of all that stimulant on my health.  But, in recent years, I've been cheered and reassured by studies that have indicated that the oxidants and other ingredients in coffee actually improve one's health and prolong one's life.  The ultimate American dream -- a vice that's good for you!  I've embraced the dark brown brew wholeheartedly.

It was too good to last, of course.  Now, studies reveal that caffeine shortens the telomeres on one's DNA.

Telomeres are a fashionable topic right now, if you haven't noticed.  They are the caps on the strands of DNA within your body, protecting the DNA -- as the article analogizes -- like the plastic tips on your shoe laces.  Every time your DNA divides, however, the telomeres shorten.  Ultimately, they shorten to nothing, nada, zip, and the cell dies.  Soon, many cells die.  When you run out of critical cells, you -- how to put this gently?  --  you then cash in your chips.

Experiments on the DNA of a yeast (one cultivated to bear certain genetic properties similar to those of humans) have shown that ethanol (the good stuff in beer) lengthens telomeres, but that caffeine shortens them.  In other words, I've spent my life since age 23 in a fool's paradise.  I should have been drinking beer.

Next time I pass a gentleman whose state of intoxication is obviously chronic rather than merely acute sprawled on the sidewalk, I expect him to leer drunkenly at me.  "Dude!" he'll shout!  "Look at me!  See my nice long telomeres?  Hahaha!  I'll soon be dancing on your grave -- me and my bottle, we will! 

"But have a nice day, and go have yourself another nice cuppa Java!" 

And I'll grind my teeth, muttering to myself: "He's right!"  That first cup in Menlo Park started me down the long slippery path of telomere shrinkage.  What a fool I was!

Until I read next month's study refuting today's revelation.
----------------------------------
(12-5-23) Three years after I wrote the above, a study showed that while caffeine itelf shortens telomeres, coffee as a whole substance lengthens telomeres.

The present study, which investigated the relationships between caffeine and coffee intakes and telomere length, shows that as intake of caffeine -- as an isolated substance -- increases, telomeres tend to be shorter in U.S. adults. On the other hand, this investigation indicates that as coffee intake increases, telomeres tend to be longer. Because telomere length is a biomarker of the senescence of cells, the present findings suggest that cell aging may be accelerated in U.S. adults as caffeine intake increases, but may be decelerated as coffee consumption increases. Given the magnitude and importance of these relationships, additional research is warranted.

Drink coffee, avoid No-Doz!

Tucker, L.A. Caffeine consumption and telomere length in men and women of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Nutr Metab (Lond) 14, 10 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12986-017-0162-x

Easter for Neanderthals

Neanderthal burial ceremony
(portrayal)

Reading science fiction will do it to you -- lure you into thinking outside whatever comfortable box you habitually curl up in.  I'm nearing the conclusion of Children of the Mind, the fourth volume in a series by Orson Scott Card, the series that began with Ender's Game.  Mr. Card's interests are extremely broad, and his series delves into -- among many other topics -- microbiology and comparative religion.

But my sci fi reading merely predisposed me to worry about the topic I want to discuss.  The actual trigger was today's MSNBC article discussing gene sequencing performed on the oldest DNA so far discovered -- DNA from well-preserved bones believed to be 400,000 years old.  Analysis of the DNA showed that the bones, discovered in northern Spain in an area well-frequented at one time by Neanderthal populations, were actually more closely related to a pre-human population whose fossil remains were recently uncovered in Siberia.  The MSNBC article discusses the possible implications for the ancestral relationship between "modern" humans, Neanderthals, and other species or subspecies that roamed about Europe and Asia during the past 600,000 years or so.

The discussion was interesting, but what it triggered in my own mind were the theological implications.  Neanderthals themselves were not stupid, and presumably the populations with DNA more closely related to our own were also, like the Neanderthals, tool-makers, artists, users of oral language, and (probably) practitioners of primitive religious rites. Modern man (e.g., Cro Magnon) may or may not have interbred with Neanderthals -- no conclusive evidence is yet available.  What -- to put it bluntly -- is the Christian position on the Neanderthal question?  Did they have souls?  Were they subject to divine judgment?  Will Cro Magnons and Neanderthals, and the early hominids related to them, consort together with us in Heaven?

Putting my trust in Yahoo, whose mighty search engine never fails me, I did a quick search.  I was fairly sure that none of the major churches had developed any definitive doctrine on the subject, but I wanted to test the winds of serious theological discussion.  I was sorely disappointed.  I found a lot of message boards that discussed the issue as a joke, or declared with dogmatic certainty that Neanderthals, if they had even ever existed, existed before Adam and Eve were created, and so were just another form of chimpanzee.

And there are Catholic forums, where you might expect to find some theological analysis, but these forums merely raised the question, allowing equally unqualified laymen to speculate with answers.  The typical response:  Wow, that's a good question!

Likewise, this post proposes no solution to the question, because no one appears to have given it serious consideration.  Or, perhaps wisely, serious theological discussion may have been deferred until we have more scientific data to work with.  For a Christian, the fate of Neanderthal souls is irrelevant to his own life and salvation, I suppose.  But, like the fate of those millions of fully human individuals who lived before Christ's birth, it does perhaps affect how he views the nature of God and his religion. (Or, perhaps, conversely.)

For a Calvinist, I doubt that the question poses much of a problem.  Humanity is such a mess that it's wonderful that God predestined a few of us (Calvinists) for Heaven, just to show that he's a good guy at heart, leaving the rest of us to the horrors that we so richly deserve.  On the other hand, for those Christians who believe that Christ's sacrifice redeemed all of mankind, including those born too early to accept explicitly his redemption, the answer is easier: If, in fact, Neanderthals had souls capable of choosing between right and wrong, the possibility of redemption was provided to them retroactively, and will depend on the nature of their lives and their willingness to worship God in whatever form he appeared to their level of civilization.

Those represent two extremes, perhaps, on the "Neanderthal in Heaven" continuum.  Obviously, theological speculation on such a subject would be grossly speculative.  Nevertheless, it would be interesting to read serious discussion of the issue by theologians who are considered well-qualified by the branch or denomination of Christianity to which they belong.

If no theologians want to discuss the subject, I'm confident that Orson Scott Card would be willing to write science fiction taking it on.  He would suggest solutions that are intelligent, moving, satisfying -- but perhaps not wholly orthodox.

Storming the Bastille

When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.

--"The Gondoliers"

I hate elitism.

Except, of course, on those rare occasions when I happen to be a member of the elite.  As I believed myself to be, a couple of years ago, when Alaska Airlines first invited me to apply for "Pre-Check" status with TSA.  After a brief background check by the appropriate authorities, during which they apparently overlooked a couple of unexcused absences in junior high school, I was notified of my new status.

I had met the enemy, and he was me.  I was elite.  And, hypocritical liberal that I am, I loved it.

For two years, every time I flew anywhere I was reminded of my elite status.  The riff-raff stood in long, serpentine lines, waiting to go through security.  I walked up to the Pre-Check line -- but there was virtually no line, just a bored TSA attendant waiting for me -- showed my boarding pass and driver's license, put my carry-on bag on the conveyer, and walked through an old-fashioned metal detector.  At a time when the poor sucker waiting in the normal line had moved four feet forward, I had already settled into a bar and ordered a beer.

That was it!  No shoe removal.  No displaying of my under-three-ounce liquid containers.  No emptying of pockets and embarrassing unbuckling of belt.  No display of my x-rayed body to a crew of giggling, lascivious, flight attendants.  (Well, that last sentence was based only on suspicion, not observation.)

But this October, things changed.  I walked to the Pre-Check line and discovered -- horrors! -- a line.  A long line.  Full of passengers whom I can only, in all charity, describe as "riff-raff."  Sub-noble.  Un-elite.  And yet, all believing themselves my equal in the airline aristocracy.  At Thanksgiving, it was even worse.  The Pre-Check lines were longer than the regular lines.  What was going on?

As a story in today's New York Times relates, TSA has opened the floodgates.  No longer are only specially selected members of airlines' mileage programs permitted to apply.  TSA has set a goal of shoving 25 percent of the traveling public into Pre-Check status by the end of the year, a goal that the Times says has already been met.  The "unintended consequence" -- unintended but hardly unpredictable -- being a longer line at the sole Pre-Check check-in point than at the many "normal" check-ins.

As one flyer complained, “If we’re all going to be ‘special,’ we need more security lines devoted to our specialness.”

All I can say is that I enjoyed my two years of specialness.  If I had been the pauper in The Prince and the Pauper, the prince would never have pushed his way back into the palace.  But, like so much that is good in life -- well, enjoyable if not "good" -- my flirtation with elitism has come to an end.  As the Grand Inquisitor points out in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, once we're all noble, no one's noble. 

At least I still get to keep my shoes on as I wend my way through security.

An era's end, in Dallas

It was a chilly, overcast Friday in November.  Already a liberal arts graduate, I had decided to change direction radically, and earn a degree in physics from the University of Washington.  I was living in Lander Hall, a dormitory torn down this past year and rebuilt in a more modern vernacular for the more demanding students of today.

I noted vaguely that a lot of kids seemed to have their radios turned on as I left the dorm and headed out for my 11:30 chemistry class in Bagley Hall.  I became more alert out on the street where I saw other students holding transister radios up to their ears.  Finally, I asked someone what was going on.  The president had been shot, his condition unknown, was the reply.  Stunned, I continued to class, sat down in the large lecture hall, and waited for the professor.  A student walked up to the blackboard and wrote the incredible message that President Kennedy was dead.  Moments later, the professor walked in, saw the message, and asked the class if it was true. 

"I don't feel like talking about chemistry today," he said.  He walked out of the classroom.  Everyone filed silently out of the room.  As I turned north from Bagley, I saw the flagpole across from the Administration Building.  The flag was already at half-mast.

The next couple of days -- the swearing in of LBJ, the flight back to Washington, the unbelievable assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the funeral mass -- were spent in front of small black and white television sets, all over campus living groups and apartment houses.

Looking back, Kennedy now seems but one president in a group -- Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and even Nixon to a degree -- who reflected a general bipartisan consensus regarding foreign policy, and whose differences with respect to domestic policy were ones of degree and emphasis, not of basic principle.  As Milton Friedman said -- and as was later sometimes attributed to President Nixon -- "We are all Keynsians, now."

At the time, however -- for young people at least, with our shorter memories -- Kennedy represented a breath of fresh air after what seemed to us eight stuffy years of life in a musty neo-Victorian town house.  The Eisenhower era -- which in retrospect appears to represent the apogee of American success and affluence -- felt at the time intellectually stultifying, an era of enforced conformity, of McCarthy paranoia, of a fear of the unfettered intellect itself.  The "ticky-tack" houses of Levittown seemed to sum up the American dream.  The black and white morality of the TV Western represented the black and white certainties of the American myth.  To become a member of "middle management" for some corporation was a most praise-worthy ambition for an ambitious young man.

Kennedy and his wife displayed for many of us a formerly unsuspected plane of American life -- aristocratic in taste and behavior, but with a concern, at least professed, for those at the bottom of the heap.  Although Kennedy had accomplished little yet to advance civil rights, we knew ending a century of segregation, formal or otherwise, was his administration's goal.  His plan for a "Peace Corps," proposed during the 1960 campaign, electrified young people -- a government program that advocated public service as a first step for college graduates, rather than jumping into a corporate management training program.

I remember learning that Robert Frost was speaking, and Pablo Casals was playing, at Kennedy's inauguration events.  Today, such participation by cultural icons would be unremarkable.  Then, it represented an unprecedented acceptance of talent previously ignored -- often contemptuously -- into the mainstream of American society and government.

As many writers are commenting, it wasn't so much what Kennedy did as president that made his death so devastating.  It was what we felt he had represented.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

His death signaled, we feared, the nipping in the bud of America's new-found spirit of adventure, courage, curiosity, and intellectual openness.

As one friend told me, a few years later, he felt that the world for which he'd been educated, and the world he understood, seemed to collapse in upon itself on November 22, 1963.  

Our fears weren't entirely unfounded, and my friend's reaction to Kennedy's death has proved prophetic.

Go swing from the trees

Seb Oliver / Getty Images/Cultura RF

USA Today

A childhood buddy and I permitted ourselves to bore our younger Facebook friends this morning, as we reminisced about a playground back in our home town where we'd spent many happy hours as kids. 

The playground had been equipped with unusually high slides, a "jungle gym" that was chronically crowded with young monkeys like myself, doing just about anything but swing from our tails, a "push-it-yourself" turntable or merry-go-round, teeter-totters, rows of trapezes, rings, and chin-up bars, and a number of other devices that encouraged kids to explore the limits of their courage and their muscular abilities.  The playground was enclosed by a perimeter fence, and was entered through a day building that offered vending machines, offices, and a large floor where daily folk dancing lured some kids inside for a short respite from the mayhem occurring outside.

The city provided some supervision -- the law of the jungle prevailed only in part.  My friend remembered adults attempting to keep boys from shooting down the slides on pieces of wax paper for the purpose of increasing the slickness of the surface.  I do vaguely recall such efforts, but if made they were largely ignored.  Parental supervision?  In the years I played there, I don't recall any parents having ever being present.  The "old people" sent their kids to the playground, on foot or by bicycle, and reminded them to be home in time for dinner.

The morning's nostalgic dialogue reminded me of an article I saw yesterday in USA Today, discussing two studies on the present state of child fitness.  An Australian study found that the time in which American children could run a set distance had declined six percent per decade since 1970. The average American child thirty years ago ran a mile about 1.5 minutes faster than his counterpart today. Think of that! Another study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that only half of American adolescents are physically active at least five days a week.

“What we found, and others too, is the average young person is sedentary, has very little physical activity, and low levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity,” says Bruce Simons-Morton [an investigator participating in the J.A.H. study].

I've been back to my hometown in recent years, and have checked out the old playground.  Virtually all the old equipment has been removed.  It's been replaced by "safe and sane" equipment -- low in height, carefully designed to avoid injury, heavy on soft plastic rather than hard metal.  It also would have been viewed as incredibly boring and "kid's stuff" by me and my friends when we were ages 8 to 12 or 13 or so, the years when our response to a suggestion that we head for the playground was met by hopping on bikes and taking off like a posse on horseback in a Western flick.

Why don't kids get similar exercise today.  Partly, as I've just suggested, because cities and insurers are scared to death of lawsuits against the city by any kid injured in the free-wheeling play that used to be considered a normal part of being a kid.  Partly, it's because of changes in the culture of young people themselves:  Kids today have less-strenuous ways to compete and find excitement, most of it involving a computer monitor.  The Australian study blamed "lack of green space, suburbanization, changes in school-based physical education programs, and too much screen time watching TV or playing video games."  

I should also add a pet concern of mine -- the change in culture of American parents themselves.  Parents were once happy to let their little Indians whoop it up in the hours between meals, once satisfied that any homework was done and their music practice was completed.  I suspect, without having personal knowledge, that my mother sighed a sigh of relief once she saw the dust from our bikes as we headed for the park, or even just took off for parts unknown around town.  Parents today have developed a high level of fear regarding the safety of their children.  Many or most middle class parents rarely let their children out of sight, unless the kids are safely involved in a structured activity.

(And don't get me started on the question of "play dates"!)

As one example, I live in a very peaceful and safe neighborhood.  I also happen to live on a designated bicycle route, with streams of bike riders passing in front of my house.  If I had lived in Seattle when I was young, I would have noted that most of those bikers were gangs of kids.  Today, however, I rarely see children on bikes, unless they're out riding with their parents.  This tight family bonding may or may not be a beneficial cultural change, but I doubt that it contributes to the amount of exercise that children and adolescents get on a daily basis. 

Even if increased parental involvement in children's lives contributes to their development in various other ways, I suspect parents would do their kids a favor, physically, if they frequently said, "Get out of the house and give me some peace and quiet.  Be back in time for dinner."  Sure, there are risks awaiting unsupervised kids in today's world.  But so what?  There certainly were similar risks when I was a child; they just weren't as well publicized.

And the increasingly sedentary life of kids today has its own proven risks.  As one of the Australian researchers commented:

Improving fitness also improves self-esteem, improves mood, reduces depression and even improves academic performance. It’s just a little investment that can lead to fantastic changes now and in adulthood.

So go climb a tree, gang.  Ride a bike.  Play pick-up games in the park, games without referees or uniforms or adult coaches.  Fall down, occasionally, and scrape your knees.  Don't let your childhood pass you by with your only physical trauma being development of arthritis in your thumbs from excessive texting.

The dark rises

"The noise from the rookery was louder, even though the daylight was beginning to die.  They could see the dark birds thronging over the treetops, more agitated than before, flapping and turning to and fro."
--Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

Today marks the midpoint of November.  The sky's been dark all day.  Rain fell all morning.  The rains tapered off a bit after noon -- although the skies dimmed even darker -- and so I decided to go for a nice walk. 

The world often looks strange in mid-November -- the beauties of autumn still linger to some extent, but winter hovers over us, warnng us of what lies ahead.  As I look down the street, I see trees still clothed gracefully in yellow leaves.  About my house, however, the limbs are bare, stretched out to the sky like the arms and fingers of skeletal witches, hurling down curses.  The clouds overhead are dark and threatening.  And above it all shriek the cries of the crows, millions of crows, crows flying singly and in formation, crows circling above me, landing on trees, and on telephone wires, and on the very ground ahead of me -- singly and in unison, daring me to draw closer.

"Fool!" they seem to shout. "You'll be well sorry you didn't stay warm and dry in your cozy little house before this stroll is over."  Crows lie and they exaggerate wildly, of course; nothing untoward occurred.  But the crows, and the skeletal trees, and the churning black clouds above certainly darkened my mood.

Mid-November is still autumn, still lovely in places.  Rows of trees along the ship canal, dividing my neighborhood from the university, still bear foliage with blended colors resembling those of a ripe peach, transitioning from yellow to pale red.  The air grows ever colder, but not yet bitterly so.  The southwest wind blew gently, although it strengthened as I walked, promising to blow ever worse weather up from the distant ocean.  Pumpkins still grin from porches, although closer inspection reveals their grins to have been decaying, day by day.

Nature still shows signs of life.  But death, I know, and the crows don't hesitate to remind me, lies just around the bend.  The days will be growing shorter for five more weeks, before the sun finally turns reluctantly about, and begins inching north again.  But our weather will continue growing colder for at least another month past the solstice.

Surely the crows themselves must dread the coming storms, the bitter cold?  Evidently not.  They caw maliciously, spitefully, hurling their jeers at me as I pass.  Earth herself, who last spring seemed so gracious, so loving, so willing to offer beauty and joy -- Earth herself now seems to have turned upon mankind, daring us to survive the worst she has to offer us in the coming months.

I don't believe all this silly anthropomorphism, of course.  I'm just witnessing the onset of another normal Seattle winter.  But my Norse and Anglo-Saxon ancestors tug at me.  They call  within my soul from the haunted forests and marshes of primeval Europe, warning me that nature chooses her favorites, plays with our lives. Earth is not always a benevolent Mother, they warn me; she often appears as a she-wolf, a merciless predator who  leaps for our throats. 

My walk over, I slip back into my house, chased by the mocking laughter of the crows.  Only two and a half months until Groundhog Day!

Lessons learned

Walking across campus an hour or so ago, I stopped to get a cup of coffee and grabbed today's issue of the University of Washington Daily.  In it, I found a column that I liked well enough to read two or three times.  Arriving home, I'm delighted to find the Daily on-line, including said column.
 
As anxious readers will note, I haven't done much posting recently.  This has something to do with not having done much of anything recently, including thinking.  Nothing serious, just the occasional mental desert through which I sometimes find myself wandering.  But to make up to you, in some minimal way, for my lack of product, I've decided to present you with the Daily column.
 
Is it an excellent example of the essay form, or of a newspaper column?  Beats me.  I love to write essays, but I don't pretend to know what constitutes excellence.  But, as in so many areas of life, I know what I like, and I like this.  Although the student writer's life appears infinitely less boring than my own, I still sense a kindred seeking soul within. 
 
So, through the wonders of my computer's "copy and paste" function, without permission from either writer or newspaper, but with -- hey, it's something -- full attribution, I present in full Mr. Taylor's column:

Lessons learned outside of class: You can learn a lot wandering through the halls at night

 

By Holden Taylor

 

I’ve learned how to make small talk, though it’s something with which I still struggle. I’ve learned how to wean the coke out of my whiskey and coke, and I’ve learned which pack of cigarettes to buy, and I’ve learned which pens I like — Pilot G-2 1.0 mm. I’ve learned what kind of mattress I prefer — firm — and how to wash my own sheets. I’ve learned how to clip my toenails and how to order the haircut that I want. I’ve learned how to slice an onion and when to add the greens to a stir-fry. I’ve learned that cooking for others is always better than cooking for yourself, and I’ve learned how to properly roll a joint.

I’ve learned to live without television and that I like to run long distances late at night while listening to podcasts. I’ve learned that though big headphones are nice, the unpredictable soundtrack God plays us tends to be more captivating. I’ve learned that hard work is rarely replaceable, and I’ve learned that I can write other people’s essays for easy money.

 

I’ve learned that cherry blossoms in full bloom are never not beautiful and that fall leaves are better when dry. I’ve learned that pho cures most ailments and that five stars at one Thai place isn’t five stars at another. I’ve learned that I like to wear my favorite shirt many times a week and that socks should only be worn once, maybe twice, before washing. I’ve learned that a good mustache, like raising a child or growing a plant, takes both love and time, and I’ve learned that sometimes the library is the best place to be on game day.

 

I’ve learned that cuddling is good for the soul and that a lonely bed is tough to bear at night but worth it in the morning. I’ve learned how to fall in love and out of love, and I’ve learned how to appreciate
a drunken make-out session in the basement of a fraternity or on the dance floor of a crowded bar.

I’ve learned that every home needs candles and that toilet paper is nothing to skimp on. I’ve learned that a clean home is a sane home and that one dirty dish begets another. I’ve learned that everyone has their own issues and that nobody’s perfect, although we all try to be on Instagram.

I’ve learned that getting older is scary and that hangovers are getting worse and injuries are too. I’ve learned that questions like “So, what do you want to do?” and “What do you want to be?” never get easier to answer. I’ve learned that youthful idealism is something for which we all strive, and I’ve learned that Drake is the best rapper of our generation.

I’ve learned that grocery shopping while you’re hungry is a fool’s folly and that grocery shopping while you’re stoned is a magical adventure wherein the aisles of your local Safeway become the halls of Hogwarts. I’ve learned that raves are scary places and that the Mormons on campus will always be there to talk if you need them. I’ve learned that religious groups give out the best freebies and that ultimate Frisbee is the world’s best sport.

I’ve learned to eat when my stomach grumbles, to sleep when my eyes droop, and to stop writing when an article is over.

And a child shall lead them ...

This is sci-fi with a brain, and a heart.
--Soren Andersen (Seattle Times)

A couple of months ago, I read for the first time Orson Scott Card's 1985 classic, Ender's Game.  I posted a short essay -- not a book review -- remarking on my initial reaction to the story.  Last Saturday I saw the movie, which is now showing in theaters.  I'm ignoring dismissive reviews I've read, offered by perhaps half of the film critics. 

I found it to be a stirring and moving film.  It forced me to read the book again for the second time in three months, an exercise that was well worth the time.  It also forced me to bore Facebook friends with my praises.  

The book was too well known and too frequently reviewed for me to add my own unoriginal thoughts to the clamor in the form of a formal review.  So also with the film.

Let me just suggest that readers see the movie with an open mind, preferably after reading the book.  The film illustrates dramatically on the screen the events and themes presented by the book, but the significance of those events and the importance of those themes really need the fuller exposition that the book provides.  For example, much of the "action" in the book is devoted to the "games" that Ender and his fellow students play as preparation for what is anticipated to be an apocalyptic war with an alien race.  The book shows how the games -- and the manipulations by those staging the games -- lead to Ender's growth.  The movie can only compress the games into one or two episodes -- albeit, episodes that make vivid the mental pictures arising from the book's descriptions.

The movie has to to omit, in a two hour film, one of the book's major subplots -- the machinations of Ender's older brother and sister -- as intelligent as Ender, but for differing reasons unsuitable for Ender's military role -- who use the internet (a use for computers largely unknown by the general public when the book was published) to obtain vast worldwide political influence, anonymously, while still a couple of preadolescents.

An important theme of the book is how the military authorities deliberately deprived Ender of a childhood and with calculation forced him to live in loneliness and in psychological isolation from his classmates in order to focus his attention solely on the war games he was playing.  The book shows the reasoning behind this deliberate cruelty, and the effect it had on Ender's mental state.  The movie doesn't have the time to fully explain these policies, or to show the anguished private discussions among the officers who decide upon them.  The movie, on the other hand, shows vividly their effect on the young genius who was already both sensitive and shy by nature -- but who also is coldly rational to the point of inflicting death on a bullying classmate as a calculated example to other potential bullies in the school.

In the book, Ender is six years old when recruited by the military, and eleven years old when he becomes supreme commander of Earth's interstellar military forces.  It would be difficult to find an actor or actors in those age ranges capable of fulfilling the demands of the role.  In the movie, Ender is recruited at age twelve, and his training is compressed into a much shorter period of time.  Ender is played by a young-appearing fifteen year old actor, Asa Butterfield, who proves fully capable of displaying the enthusiasm, the physical agility, the sense of loneliness, the sensitivity, and the conflicted emotions that the part demands.

As for me, I'm hooked.  I've downloaded the next book in the series, Speaker for the Dead, which I'm advised is a totally different sort of story.  No matter.  I'm willing to bet some more time on this author. 

Boo!

Tonight is All Hallows' Eve.  The vigil of All Saints Day (tomorrow) (honoring the saints in heaven), and All Souls Day (the following day) (praying for those dead wandering about and still on their way).  Just in case you forget what it's all about this evening, while you're out howling at the moon.

Halloween may indeed have originated as the aforementioned religious vigil, or the vigil may have adopted, opportunistically, the customs of earlier Celtic festivals.

In any event, Halloween -- as any kid knows -- is definitely more than just another harvest festival.  The aroma of the grave hangs over the night.  The dead, the walking dead, the undead, the ghoul, the banshee, the witch, the warlock, and the just plain, old, vanilla-flavored ghost -- they all play a major part in tonight's revels.

The pumpkin?  Or more precisely, the "jack-o'-lantern"?  According to Irish legend, Jack was a guy who made a bargain with the devil that he would never be accepted into Hell.  Unfortunately, he wasn't admitted to Heaven either, and he forever roams the earth with a hollowed-out turnip -- yes, turnip -- lit up by an ember from Hell that Satan hurled at him in disgust.  We do things bigger in America, hence the replacement of turnips with pumpkins.

Halloween used to be -- at least in my provincial home town -- a day for children's parties (bobbing for apples, wearing cute costumes, and drinking unfermented cidar) -- and, of course, for trick or treating by candy-crazed urchins, kids often accompanied by their resigned parents.  In our more enlightened era, Halloween has become also an excuse for adults to join in covertly or overtly pagan celebrations, roaming the streets, usually inebriated and usually dressed far less innocently than were the skeletons, witches and princesses of our youth. 

No harm, I guess.  It's all in fun, for the most part.  And it's only one night a year.  But, if he had his druthers, this curmudgeon would happily hand the holiday back to the kids.

Under the Bosporus

The first time I saw Istanbul, I had arrived by bus from Beirut, through Syria, and across the long, flat reaches of Anatolia.  The bus came to its final stop at what was announced as "Istanbul-Asia."  In front of us was the Bosporus.  To go farther, to reach the more tourist-oriented "Istanbul-Europe," required a ride on a ferry.

I couldn't have been more excited.  A ferry from one continent to another!  A ride that, at least in my mind, left the Middle East behind and re-connected me to the more familiar world of European civilization.  But a ride that also displayed the stunning skyline -- domes and minarets -- of traditional Istanbul.  The skyline of a world neither Arab nor Christian, but, sui generis, Turkish Muslim.

The next time I visited Istanbul, the Bosporus was spanned by two graceful suspension bridges.  The so-called First Bridge was visible from the old city and, eventually, has come to seem an integral part of the Istanbul skyline.

And now, this week, Asian and European Istanbul are being knit together by an 8.5-mile rail tunnel under the Bosporus.  At first, the tunnel will serve commuter traffic, but eventually will also carry high-speed inter-city trains, integrating the European and Turkish rail systems.

For those living in and about Istanbul, construction of the tunnel, like the earlier construction of the bridges, represents nothing but progress.  For traveling romanticists -- like myself -- feelings are more mixed.  Would a high speed rail journey from Beirut that ended at Sirceki station on the European side of the Bosporus seem as glamorous to a young traveler as did my own arrival?  Would the journey still be remembered as intensely years later?

Hard to tell.  Maybe walking off the train into the heart of Sultanahmet -- the "old town" -- would be every bit as dazzling to the first-timer as the ferry ride from the Asian side was to me.  I always remind myself that many contemporary French denounced construction of the Eiffel Tower as a monstrosity that would ruin Paris.  Change isn't always bad.

And yet -- as convenient as is today's just-over-two-hour train ride through the Chunnel from London to Paris, it certainly lacks the excitement and sense of adventure of transferring to a ferry at Dover for the crossing to Calais.  And closer to home, I remember the excitement of the train ride to San Francisco, where we caught the ferry from the Oakland terminal to the Ferry Building across the Bay.  (Yes, the Bay Bridge was there -- the ferry crossed under it -- but the Southern Pacific for many years continued to use their own ferry, before eventually crossing the bridge by bus.)

I need to remember that for a young traveler, the first time he views a new place is always exciting.  And I also need to remember that, as we age, we always resent changes from a world we found exciting in younger days.  I loved my first visit to England, when you could reach virtually every small village by rail.  But nineteenth century writers lamented the loss of an earlier, pastoral and seemingly larger England, an England not yet knit together by rapid trains. 

Woody Allen got it right in his movie, Midnight in Paris: Every generation has its romanticists who envy those who lived in earlier generations.

But, even making every attempt at objectivity, I still feel that the world loses something as it becomes ever easier to reach the most remote areas, as every major city becomes less distinct from others, when arrival in Istanbul (or Singapore, or Hong Kong, or Tehran) becomes little different from arrival in Los Angeles or New York.

But that's the way it is.  No one, including ourselves, is willing to resist changes that will make his life easier and more pleasant -- certainly not for the sole purpose of preserving his unique exoticism for the appreciation of jaded foreign tourists!

Ooops!

I visit strange foreign lands, and I hike at high altitudes in remote wildernesses.  I must be a total daredevil, an insatiable thrill seeker.  Right?

Ha!

I'm terrified of amusement park rides.  Not just those new coasters that twist and loop and spin you upside down, all in an apparent effort to turn your body inside out.  I'm talking about Ferris wheels.  I'm talking about carnie rides like octopuses and tilt-a-whirls.  I'm talking about anything that takes me up high, or that spins me around in a manner that could potentially hurl me some distance into thin air.  I'm especially talking about rides that remind me, while on them, that my life depends on some unknown carnival employee's engineering and/or mechanical skills. 

I've even wondered -- looking above me while riding -- what would happen if the cotter pin holding a carousel pole in place snapped.  Would I ride my horse off into space, Pegasus-like, on a death ride to oblivion?

But, yes, surprisingly enough -- I have in fact paid my money and forced myself onto roller coasters.  The old-fashioned kind, I hasten to add.  The kind that just goes up and down and around hairpin turns.  Not the kind that in any way forces you to travel upside down.  I've maintained my sanity during these occasional experiences because the ride is so fast and over so quickly that I don't have time to analyze the enormous variety of things that could go wrong -- at least, once the agonizing climb, dragged by a chain up the initial hill ("why am I doing this?  what was I thinking of?"), is over.

All this is prefatory to today's story about the roller coaster incident in Orlando, Florida.  The ride where the car stalled at the top of a vertical hill, suspended seventeen stories in the air.  The front of the car apparently reached the top of the hill in a roughly horizontal orientation; the seats toward the back, on the other hand, were hanging straight down vertically.  Those unlucky rear riders found themselves facing uphill, staring at the sky, but one look over their shoulder gave them a nice view of Earth from a height of 140 feet.  They were trapped for two hours before amusement park employees found some way to extricate them from the car and bring them safely down to earth.

Even worse for me than the ride, and the untimely stop, would have been the extrication.  How it was accomplished wasn't explained.  How it was done, I don't even want to contemplate.

Only one person was hospitalized, with neck and back pain.  I would have been hospitalized in the mental health care unit, foaming at the mouth and babbling nonsensically.

My steps in Central Asia*

With some trepidation, I approached the departure gate at Istanbul's airport on the evening of September 8, after two relaxing and interesting days puttering around the city. I was bound for Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and hardly knew what to expect. With relief, I spotted Maeve, a fellow trekker from an earlier trip, who greeted me with a hug and an incredible account of how her passport and visa had reached her at San Francisco airport only hours before departure.

So we were off, on one of Turkish Airlines's twice weekly flights to Dushanbe, the Tajik capital. We landed at 3:45 a.m., were given a few hours to rest in a hotel, taken on a short tour of the limited sights of Dushanbe (an attractive, modern, Soviet-era city), and then driven into the Fann Mountains over perilous roads with breathtaking switchbacks. In less than 24 hours, I'd been transported from the urbane pleasures of Istanbul to a small tent in a huge, primitive, mountain wilderness.

I was one of twelve hikers -- all British except myself and Maeve. We were accompanied by a Welsh chief guide, a Tajik "translator" who also served as an assistant guide and jack of all trades, a couple of cooks, and a varying cast of "donkey boys," most of them teenagers, who handled our pack donkeys and pitched and struck our tents each night and morning.

Tajikistan, bordering Afghanistan to its south, is the poorest of the former Soviet republics. It's also the only one in Central Asia that speaks a form of Persian, rather than a Turkic language. Ethnic Tajiks represent an interbreeding of Iranian and Mongol peoples, but not all Tajik citizens are ethnic Tajiks -- there are plenty of ethnic Russians, Uzbeks, and other Central Asian peoples living in Tajikistan -- nor do all Tajiks live in Tajikistan. The ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan have always been dominated by ethnic Tajiks, and Tajikistan long pleaded with the Soviet government, unsuccessfully, to transfer those cities to the Tajik republic.

Central Asia, as we learned, is really a stew of various nationalities that once roamed willy-nilly about "Turkistan." It wasn't until Stalin's time that an effort was made to carve the Turkistan region into various republics, each dominated by a distinct ethnic group. The effort was only partially successful.

Tajikistan was, unsurprisingly, once part of various Persian empires. Like Persia, itself, it was largely Zoroastrian (together with local minor religions) until the Arab conquest forced Islam on the people in the seventh century A.D. Since then, it has been part of whatever empire was dominant in the region, ending up with the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Present-day Tajikistan, independent since 1991, has inherited a few modern cities from the Soviet era, along with reasonably good health and education systems. The vast majority of the land, however, is dominated by mountain ranges -- notably the mighty Pamirs in the southeast and the Fanns (actually an extension of the Pamirs) -- where we did our hiking -- in the west.

The Fanns, although perhaps small in size compared with the Pamirs proper (highest peak, Chimtarga, is 18,000 feet), to me appeared awesome in their jagged silhouettes and plunging valleys, in their sweep and vistas, and in their virtual emptiness. We hiked roughly six to seven hours a day, usually from a lower campsite over a pass and down into the next valley -- usual elevation gain between 2,000 to 2,500 feet. We camped every night, except for one night about half way through the trip when we reached a small village and stayed in a "gite," or primitive hotel, several hikers to a room, sleeping in our sleeping bags.   We met one other party of hikers -- an Israeli couple -- and a few shepherds tending flocks of goats and sheep.

After eleven days of hiking, we finally emerged on the opposite side of the mountain range, bid our local staff farewell with the usual presentation of tips and participation in orgiastic singing and dancing before a giant bonfire, and were hauled back to civilization in the morning by two vans that, happily, rendezvoused with us as planned. Our destination was Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, not far from our mountain point of egress, but ethnic disputes had closed the local border crossing. So we drove five hours north to Khujand (née Leninabad), a pleasant city, where we visited a market, checked into a tiny (but honest-to-goodness) hotel, and had much-needed showers!

We crossed the border the next day -- a fantasy of bureaucratic delights -- much filling of forms and stamping of documents. The crossing had been projected to take three hours, and we all felt oddly delighted and relieved that we were in fact able to cross the national border -- between two countries that used to be fellow states like Oregon and Washington -- in a mere two hours. We drove another five hours south to Samarkand through endless fields of cotton  (Uzbekistan is the world's second largest exporter of cotton, after only the United States.  The Soviet government, unfortunately, drove the fields to partial soil depletion by setting ever higher annual quotas, with no crop rotation permitted.)

I don't want to be harsh on Samarkand. Samarkand is a remarkable city with an amazing history. A history nearly as complex and power nearly as great -- during its heyday under Tamarlane -- as  Rome or Florence. The problem, from a tourist's perspective, is that -- unlike Rome or Florence -- its antiquities were reduced virtually to rubble by the passage of time, repeated earthquakes, and Soviet distrust of ethnic pride in local history. Once again, the Soviet government created a modern city -- a very attractive city -- but didn't do much, for many years, with the historical monuments.

But in recent years, Uzbekistan has done an amazing job of rebuilding the ancient mosques and madressas, with their characteristic blue barrel domes and complex ornamentation. Exhibits show the "before" state of the ruins, and explain how the buildings have been accurately rebuilt. Unfortunately, to me, reconstructed buildings in the midst of a modern city are beautiful and instructive, but they lack the feel and smell of history. I could never ignore the fact that most of the work to create what we were viewing had been done in the past twenty years.

In any event, we were given a very satisfactory tour of the city by a native of Samarkand, an ethnic Russian whose grasp of history and architecture seemed several notches above what one generally expects in such tours. After two nights at a pleasant small hotel, with meals in an open courtyard over which loomed the blue dome of a major mosque across the street, we took the train to the capital city of Tashkent, some 3½ hours to the north. A quick afternoon tour of Tashkent (about which I had the same complaints as I did about Samarkand), a final group dinner at a local restaurant, a fast night's sleep -- and we found ourselves saying goodbye to each other as we flew back to Istanbul, and thence to our respective homes.

Not only a wonderful hike, but an opportunity to get a quick introduction to a part of the world about which I knew very little indeed.  I have an urge to return -- if not to Tajikistan itself, at least to the general region of Central Asia.
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A selection of photos will be available for viewing for the next month on Facebook, regardless of whether the reader is a Facebook member. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151940762454602.1073741839.761679601&type=1&l=4bb84c1e1b

* Half-hearted apologies to Alexander Borodin.