Endings

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”
― Woody Allen

Youth enjoys a certain blindness.

If you had asked me at the end of tenth grade where I planned to go to college and what I planned to study, I would have squirmed and looked at you with panic.  Those are such typical grown-up questions, I'd think -- to ask me about what I planned to do so far in advance.  "Maybe Stanford or Georgetown," I would have replied politely.  "Maybe become a teacher or a diplomat."  Yeah, right.  I could have said, just as easily and truthfully, that I planned to go to Ole Miss and become a professional stamp collector.

Two full years until I'd be heading for college.  Two years now is a blink of the eye.  But at the time, college felt like something that would happen in a far-distant mythical future.  Even my senior year of high school seemed remote.

As the time to head off for college drew nearer, college of course played a more prominent role in my mind.  College board exams to take, applications to fill out, letters of recommendation to obtain.  But by the summer following high school graduation, even with college acceptance in hand and deposit paid, "going to college" was a future event that my mind still couldn't grasp.  As I wrote in a book review in this blog in 2007:

As I looked ahead, my summer seemed destined, unlike earlier summers, to end abruptly in a massive wall of dense fog. On the other side of the wall, I knew, would be a move to California, palm trees, the university, dorm life, roommates, a future existence unlike anything I could imagine.

When I look back on that final summer before college, it seems to have lasted as long and as lazily and as uneventfully as any other childhood summer.  My younger brother and I did take off on a two-week bike and camping trip (to the horror of my mother).  And I did go north with my family for a short visit to Vancouver.  Otherwise, the memories of that summer are vague. 

What was critical was my awareness that an enormous change in my life would occur in late September.  What is odd is that this awareness had so little effect on my daily summer existence.  Even a week before freshman orientation began, I was still living the life of an obedient child, minding (for the most part) his parents.  And then, suddenly, I was standing with my dad at the train station, waiting for the southbound train that would whisk me off to California -- separated from home and family far more completely than today's digitally-connected kids can grasp -- until Christmas.

It was exciting and I was eager for the experience.  But it also represented a small death.  My 15-year-old brother reminded me, with awe in his voice, "This is the end of your childhood."  The death of childhood, of dependence on parents, of the life with which I had been familiar for 18 years.

And now, of course, many years later, I have to contemplate a greater death at some point in the future.  Unlike with college, I don't know the scheduled starting date.  I know I'm in remarkably good health for my age.  That suggests that my lifespan will be longer than average -- but I don't know for certain.  I could have a heart attack tomorrow.  (For that matter, like all of us, I could be run over by a bus tomorrow!)  At any rate, whenever it occurs, my death -- sooner now rather than later -- is certain.  Only the exact timing remains to be determined.

The entire summer before college, I "knew" my old life as a child was nearly over.  And yet I "felt" that it would go on forever.  I couldn't visualize life after September, and every instinct told me I should therefore not think that much about it.  I'm surprised how similarly I react now to the approach of death.  I feel a similar sense of denial.  Even if I knew I had only a month to live, I probably would spend most of that month doing the same trivial daily tasks, indulging in the same random daydreams, that I do now -- just as I spent my last summer as a child, unable to imagine and therefore react to the momentous event that lay in store for me.

That final summer before college was an enjoyable summer.  Nothing would have been gained by keeping myself on pins and needles, worrying daily about my future.  My lack of imagination -- that "certain blindness" -- protected me from panic.  It seems to do the same trick now, keeping me focused on those things amenable to my focus -- not pondering excessively the imponderable.  

Chinese sun over Iran

Iran's future
Boys walking to school (2011)

In 2011, I had the opportunity to visit Iran for two weeks as part of a group organized by my university alumni association.   We traveled all over the country, from Tehran in the west to Mashad in the east, driving from Kerman in the southern desert, westward through Yazd, continuing to Shiraz, and then north to Esfahan. 

The focus of the visit was on historic, religious, and cultural sites, but much discussion of contemporary politics obviously arose as well.

The people we met were uniformly friendly, talkative, humorous, and good-natured.

Having visited other countries in the region, I was strongly impressed by how modern and efficient Iran appeared.  Its freeways are as good as our own.  Its cities are clean.  There was little obvious poverty, aside from refugees from Afghanistan.  It was one of the few countries outside the West where we had no hesitation in drinking the tap water.

Iran has had, and still has, many economic and political problems. Relative to its neighbors in the Middle East, however, it is a wealthy country -- wealthy not in the sense that it is ruled by a few fabulously wealthy sheikhs, but in terms of the average population.  It has a well educated middle class, although one that is under increasing economic stress.  Iran obviously is -- if one overlooks religious and political differences with its neighbors -- a natural leader for the region.

It's a natural leader, and it would seem to be a country we would do everything possible to befriend, despite the obvious difficulties in dealing with its confusing leadership structure, in confronting its nuclear program, and in overcoming a history of enmity.   But we aren't.  Instead, President Trump has gone out of his way to demonize Iran and to praise Iran's enemies, countries of far less long-term value to the United States.

It makes no sense.  But little that we are now doing in foreign affairs makes sense.  America, at present, essentially has no foreign policy.  All we have are bursts of enmity or of self-deceptive fondness that explode from the psyche of Mr. Trump -- often dependent on the amount of personal adoration other nation's leaders bestow upon him.  We have a Secretary of State who is reportedly on the verge of quitting in despair, a State Department that is demoralized and understaffed, and an incredible number of nations around the world in which there is no permanent American ambassador.

In the New York Times this morning, an article discussed the extensive help that China is giving Iran in developing and updating its railroad system, help that not only increases China's influence throughout the region, but that makes Iran increasingly reliant on China, economically and psychologically.  With a bold foreign policy, and with some empathy for Iran's problems, we could have been in the ascendant position that China is in today. 

Foreign policy is not simply how a nation handles its affairs on a day by day basis.  Properly conducted, foreign policy considers our goals with respect to other countries thirty or forty years from now, and how best to achieve those goals.  As it is, who Mr. Trump will consider our friends -- even six months in the future -- is anyone's guess.

Iran is an excellent example of everything that's wrong with American foreign policy under the current administration.  But it is only one example.  Less obvious examples can be found throughout the world.  By the time 2020 arrives, we will have thrown away much of the good will and political capital that we have accumulated since World War II.  Mr. Trump could not be more harmful to American interests if he were being paid by those who wish us that harm.

Olallie Lake

My friend Pat M. and I took on a popular local area hike yesterday -- easy but not too easy, and a hike with a scenic destination.  Pat is just recovering from a sprained ankle, so we didn't try anything more ambitious.  The weather was great, the weekend crowds were back at the office earning a living, and the hike felt just right.

The approach to the trailhead is on a Forest Service road, exiting one mile west of the Denny Creek exit on I-90.  The road, soon turning to gravel, is about five miles long.  The trailhead is just outside the Alpine Lakes National Wilderness Area.  Both lakes are within the Wilderness, and hikers should register at the trailhead.  ("Should," but we didn't notice the registration box until after we had completed the hike.) 

The trail leads past Talapus Lake at 2 miles -- in itself a beautiful and obvious destination.  Our own objective, however, was Olallie Lake, one mile farther up a trail that after Talapus becomes somewhat steeper.  We had lunch at lakeside -- only a couple of other couples, and a large, energetic white dog, inhabited the lengthy lakeshore -- and then returned the same way we came.

The trail is forested and sheltered from the sun its entire length.  The Forest Service is apparently doing trail work, and at times the trail seems to branch off into several alternative and equally plausible routes.  The proper route is marked with red ribbons, however, and if you keep your eye on the ribbons you won't go astray.  The trail passes at some height above Talapus, but a number of short side trails lead down to picnic spots along the lake.

The trail is well maintained, soft under foot, generally free of rocks, and a pleasure to stroll along.  An excellent hike for novices, and an enjoyable short hike -- 6 miles round trip, 1,300-foot elevation gain -- for hikers of any degree of experience.
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NOTE -- This Olallie Lake is in King County, near Snoqualmie Pass. Not to be confused with lakes of the same name in Skamania County, and in Oregon.

North Rim

The American Southwest is in the throes of a blazing hot summer.  It was 102 degrees in Las Vegas when I arrived about noon on Wednesday.  I was impressed enough to notify my Facebook audience of that fact -- but  it got worse. 

At one point yesterday, as I kept an eye on the thermometer on my rental car's dashboard, I saw it reach 119 degrees.  That's hot for us folks in the Northwest Corner, where a temperature of 85 degrees results in newspaper editorials.

Lucky, then, that my destination was the North Rim of the Grand Canyon -- some 8,000 feet in elevation, where the temperature never got much above 85.

As one can calculate from my musings last year, following a visit to the South Rim, this is my blog's ninth discussion of my varied experiences at the Grand Canyon.  Perhaps the subject has been exhausted.  On the other hand, this is only my second visit to the North Rim, my earlier visit having been back in August 2013. 

Supai Tunnel

The highlight of that earlier visit was a descent some 4.1 miles (as the hiker walks) and three thousand feet (as the rock drops) to Roaring Springs.  The temperatures were hotter this time, my toes were still a bit sore after being abused both in England and on a recent climb of Mt. Si, and -- although I hesitate to mention it -- I'm a bit older.  Whatever the cause, I decided to limit my descent to the Supai Tunnel -- a short tunnel (duh!) blasted out of rock that permits the trail to continue downward.  The hike was just 1.7 miles each way, with a descent of about 1,100 feet.  Although the distance hiked seems insignificant, it is perhaps the steepest part of the North Kaibab Trail, which leads from the North Rim to the Colorado River. 

It was a pleasant walk down, and a hot walk up.

As I've already mentioned to my Facebook audience, while on my way to the  tunnel, I met a woman hiking with two pre-teen granddaughters, all three of them carrying very small packs.  No sleeping bags or tents -- just insulation pads.  They were doing the rim-to-rim hike, and would be camping for four nights.  Two of those nights were to be in the campground adjacent to Phantom Ranch on the river, and they had made reservations to take all their meals at the ranch while there.  This foresight  allowed them to leave a lot of food out of their packs.  Even so, it's an ambitious hike, especially with such young kids.  The grandmother had completed an identical hike, on her own, last September.  

I felt chagrined, of course, to admit the failure of nerve that kept me from hiking farther than 1.7 miles down into the canyon.  Grandma and those young kids would be covering 24 miles, with temperatures only getting hotter as they descended.  Temperatures at the river were being reported as some 115 degrees. 

Wotan's Throne from Cape Royal

My own wussier visit, of course, offered its own consolations.  I drove out to Cape Royal, which I had missed seeing in 2013.  Cape Royal is a narrow, 15-mile promontory that protrudes from the north rim southward into the canyon.  The drive is interesting, and ends at a parking lot from which you hike another mile on a paved trail to the look-out.  Certain features of the canyon that you can identify in the distance  from the South Rim -- such as the happily named Wotan's Throne and Vishnu's Temple -- loom right in front of you from Cape Royal.  The short walk is well worth the effort.

And, of course, for those moments when you feel overcome by the heat and the exercise, sitting on the lodge's terrace overlooking the canyon -- a Grand Canyon IPA in hand -- watching not only nature's work of eons, but your fellow tourists, has restorative value.

North Kaibab Trail

I drove back to my flight in Vegas by way of Zion National Park -- a route that takes you from the eastern end of the park to the Visitor's Center at the southern end.  I was overwhelmed by the spectacular views from my driver's seat -- but I would suggest another time of year to tour Zion.  The temperature was 108 degrees (Zion's elevation is 4,000 feet, half that of the North Rim), the traffic was ungodly, and when I reached the Visitor's Center I discovered that there was no available parking.  I would have to drive out of the Park to the adjacent town of Springdale, find parking there, and wait for a shuttle to take me back into the park.

I preferred to save further exploration of the Park for a March or October visit.

The North Rim offers moderate temperatures in July, and beautiful surroundings forested in pine.  It does lack the variety of trails that can be found at the lower (and hotter) South Rim, but for the intrepid hiker, the hike to the river down the North Kaibab Trail offers all the hiking one can handle.

Next time, I'd love to be that intrepid hiker.  (But not in July.)

The wretched strangers

How easy it is to move chess pieces about a board.  Sacrificing your own pieces, killing off your opponents.  The trick is to remember that life is not a chessboard, that in real life both pawns and kings have human feelings.

In this week's New Yorker, Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt discusses Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, looking at it -- and the play's treatment of Shylock -- from his own perspective as a secular Jew. 

Greenblatt's focus is neither a criticism of the treatment of Jews in Elizabethan society, nor a discussion of whether the teaching of the play is a "micro-aggression" in today's touchy academic world.  Instead, he marvels at Shakespeare's ability, almost against his better judgment as a playwright, to feel and express deep empathy for society's outcasts, indeed for the villains of his own plays. Greenblatt suggests, quietly, Shakespeare's relevance to events of our own time.

You'll recall that Shylock was a vindictive old man who wanted -- literally -- his pound of flesh.  In structure, the play is a comedy, with a happy ending, at least for the nominal heroes.  But Shakespeare portrays Shylock in such depth and with such understanding that the viewers feel sorry for him despite themselves, and despite the structure of the plot.  We all remember from high school the dramatic lines:

 I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

Shylock's eloquence wins him no sympathy from his adversaries within the play.  He is given a harsh choice -- convert to Christianity or suffer execution.  But his eloquence makes a significant impact on those of us who see or read the play -- those of us in both the sixteenth century and today.  Even while applauding Antonio's escape from Shylock's murderous conniving, we leave the theater feeling uneasy with the unfair societal burdens that have given Shylock his cruel bitterness.  As Greenblatt points out:

What Shakespeare bequeathed to us offers the possibility of an escape from the mental ghettos most of us inhabit.

In other words, he helps us to think outside the box of conventional thought.  Shakespeare does not offer solutions to our problems, but he reminds us that human beings are involved on all sides of every issue, that real life -- like Shakespearean plays -- is alive with "moral complexity."

Greenblatt quotes certain haunting lines from a play not included in the Shakespearean canon, but usually attributed to him.  A mob has demanded that Thomas More (Chancellor of England under Henry VIII) expel "foreigners"  from England.  The play has More reply:

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires ...
What had you got?  I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail.

You would have set a precedent, More continues, and eventually you yourselves would fall victim to that same precedent. 

Shakespeare offers us no plan for a generous and wise immigration policy in today's world, Greenblatt agrees.  But Shakespeare reminds us of those considerations that we can never ignore.  When expelling the huddled but unwanted masses from our nation, we are not simply killing a few pawns in a chess game.  We must see the realities on the other side as well, the human results of our "desires": "the wretched strangers,/Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,/Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation."

Our leader may never have read Shakespeare.  But we, the people, have.

Summer jobs

Few of us have forgotten the feeling of that last day of school in June.  Dashing out the school door, welcoming the world of seemingly endless summer.  Day after day of doing whatever we wanted, interrupted only occasionally, perhaps, by the need to mow the lawn or weed the flowers.

This annual three-month paradise continued through high school.  True, we occasionally talked ourselves into working in the strawberry fields for a few days, bringing in the harvest for a laughably small amount of compensation.  And one year, I worked in the circulation department of the local newspaper, bundling papers as they came off the press.  That job lasted all summer, but for only two hours a day.

It wasn't until after high school that the nightmare of adult employment dropped on my head.  I found my carefree summers replaced by a life of servitude.  I became an employee, a slave to the corporate world and -- less abstractly -- to the whims of a sarcastic foreman.  Before I realized what was happening, I had joined the laboring classes.

The first summer wasn't so bad, working as an assistant in a laboratory.  But the salary was low and the job non-union.  By the following summer, I needed to bring home more money for my college tuition.  My mother worked in the office of the local paper mill, which -- in those days -- almost guaranteed her son a job that paid union scale (albeit, at the bottom of the scale).  I forget the job "title" -- something like wood handler and clean-up.

Ever visited a large paper mill?  After a lifetime of bucolic summers, the mill struck me as a nightmare, a real-life actualization of Blake's "dark Satanic mills."  I remember looking about me one day and wondering if the builders had been instructed to make the facility as ugly as possible, in an effort to stamp out all higher aspirations in its workers.

My first day, I was taken out to the wood yard.  The mill purchased wood in cut pieces, each -- I would now guess -- about 30 pounds in weight.  They were piled haphazardly in enormous hills.  I was taken to a place at the base of a hill.  A metal wheeled carrier awaited me.  I was to stack pieces of wood neatly in the carrier.  When the carrier was full, it would be taken inside and the wood run through a grinder, on its way to becoming pulp.  I was to do that, carrier after carrier, for eight hours, with a twenty-minute break for lunch.

You who have not stacked wood have no idea how long eight hours can last.  I worked alone.  I wore gloves that wore out quickly, and before they wore out they were pierced by splinters.  I had a target number of carriers to fill, although I wasn't expected to hit that target the first day.  I had only one thought in mind that carried me through those first eight hours -- that this was a huge mistake, that I was an intellectual, that I was not meant for such work, and that I would submit my resignation at the end of the shift.

I explained this to my father later that evening.  He laughed mirthlessly. I worked all summer, changing shifts every seven work days -- "day shift," "swing," "graveyard."  Like the tolling of a bell, those names rang in my mind.

If there had ever been a thought in my head that I didn't need a college education -- actually, there never was, ever -- that summer would have wiped it clean.  The mill was filled with men whose entire lives revolved around those three words -- days, swing, graveyard.  Their faces seemed as gray as the mill in which we worked.

The older men were, in general, friendly to me as a "wet behind the ears" college kid.  Sometimes, perhaps, less friendly than others.  After some goof I'd committed, I do remember a foreman telling me that "well, son, you may be smart in school, but you sure don't have much common sense, do you?"  My face flushed, flushed all the more for my having secretly agreed with him. I'm told that this is a frequent comment made to college kids, any one of whom might one day be the foreman's supervisor.

The following summer, I had a wondrous reprieve.  I was enrolled in a six-month overseas study program in Florence, Italy.  Quite a contrast between Florence and a paper mill.  But the summer after that, I was back at the mill.  That second summer of millwork, however, I worked in what was called the "dry end" -- where the rolls of paper emerged from the papermaking process.  The work was done indoors.  It was lighter work.  I worked with dry paper, not damp splintery wood.  And, maybe most importantly, I worked alongside and together with other workers my age -- both summer help and permanent employees.  It was still a long summer, but not as nightmarish as that first summer had been.

In this week's Economist, the columnist "Lexington" laments the disappearing summer job in America.  He notes that the jobs simply aren't there anymore, for employees of any age.  He also notes that today's teenagers (supported by their parents) prefer to do more career-relevant work as interns or as volunteers in foreign countries.  He laments the loss of opportunity for college students to get their hands dirty and their muscles exhausted.

An elite education counts for little without self-discipline and resilience.  Drudgery can teach humility; when hauling boxes, a brain full of algebra matters less than a teen's muscles.  At best, it can breach the social barriers that harm democracy.  Summer jobs are called all-American for a reason.

After that first day of stacking wood, I would have found myself totally unreceptive to such a high-minded lecture.

From a distance of decades, however, I agree with "Lexington."  Looking back, two summers of millwork made me a better person, in the long run.  Besides, I secretly tell myself, casting narrowed eyes at today's millennials, I had to spend two summers as a young man suffering daily in a paper mill.  Why shouldn't they?

Norse myths

I'm Norwegian.  Well, I'm one-fourth Norwegian, but that one-fourth supplies all the ethnic flavoring to my vanilla background of British ancestry.

What do I know about my cultural background, as an arguable son of Norway?  I'm talking ancient history of the race -- not Ibsen's plays or Grieg's compositions.  I'm talking about gods and heroes, triumphs and defeats, the way a Greek might talk of Theseus and Agamemnon.

Well, let's see:

In college, under duress, I read Njal's Saga (in English translation).  Icelandic, not Norwegian, but closely related. 

For two consecutive years, I attended the entire Ring Cycle.  Four Wagner operas on four weeknights, while also attempting to practice law.  German, not Norwegian, but dealing with the same gods and heroes, sometimes under somewhat different names.

I know the gods after whom four of our weekdays are named.  Old English, by way of Anglo-Saxon, not Norwegian.  But, again, the same gods.

So, let's face it.  Like most Americans (and Europeans) I know Greek mythology far better than I know the Norse mythology of my Norwegian forebears.  (I'm ignoring modern graphic stories using Norse gods as superheroes -- these may or may not (I suspect not) convey a feeling for the world created in the ancient myths.)

And then, a few days ago, I ran into Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman.  Some of you may know of Mr. Gaiman.  As Wikipedia puts it, he is "an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films."  He is the author of a popular fantasy novel, American Gods, whose central premise, again relying on Wikipedia, seems to be that gods and other mythological creatures exist so long as people believe in them.  He has won numerous prizes, including both the Newberry and Carnegie Medals for his children's novel, The Graveyard Book.

Norse myths, like Icelandic sagas, can be a bit off-putting, because they tend to be written and translated in -- what seems to modern readers -- formal, stylized, and difficult language.  Gaiman sweeps all that aside.  He has re-written some of the most important of the Norse stories in modern English.  Not just in modern English, but in modern popular English.  He is a friend of British comic fantasy writer Terry Pratchett (the Discworld series), and his language and sense of humor show the affinity.

Gaiman's fifteen stories begin with the Creation of the Universe:

Before the beginning there was nothing -- no earth, no heavens, no stars, no sky: only the mist world, formless and shapeless, and the fire world, always burning.  ...  [Between the mist world and the fire world] was a void, an empty place of nothingness, without form.  The rivers of the mist world flowed into the void, which was called Ginnungagap, the "yawning gap."

Then begin the stories of the great Norse gods -- Odin, Thor, Tyr -- and the half god, half giant Loki the trickster.  There were giants in those days, and elves and dwarfs.  In an empty spot, in the middle of this universe, a place called Midgard, the gods made humans.  And here we are today.

The stories are written dramatically, with much breaking of skulls and random killings of people or giants or gods who happen to get in the way.  Yes, killings of gods, too, because the gods too can suffer violent death, although they don't age.  The gods aren't particularly inspiring in any modern sense, and they have no interest in being so.  They eat, they drink, they brawl, they bed goddesses, giants, dwarfs, and anyone else who happens to be handy.  They betray each other.  To die bravely in battle is the goal of life, permitting entrance to Valhalla.

Loki, especially, is without scruple.  Clever, yes.  Beautiful, yes.  Friendly and sociable, often.  But dangerous and without scruple.

The book ends, appropriately, with the end of time -- Ragnarok, or what the Germans call Götterdämmerung and which we translate as the Twilight of the Gods.  An apocalyptic battle, whose concept might seem familiar to us as we consider our own world.  Everybody's killed.  Everything will be consumed by fire, and the sea will flood over the ashes.

Some may feel that they are reading literature that is merely a verbalization of those comic books that Gaiman also loves and creates.  But Gaiman notes in his Introduction that, in preparing this work, he had pored over the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda -- the primary sources of Norse legend.  The eddas -- like Greek mythology -- often contain conflicting accounts of the same stories.  Gaiman has picked and chosen and pieced together the versions that he liked best and that would make the best stories for his readers -- just as the ancient tellers of tales no doubt did themselves while whispering around a fire to spellbound villagers.

I hope I've told these stories honestly, but there was still joy and creation in the telling.

For me, the stories were a pleasure to read.  I want to read more Norse mythology.  I may also want to read other works by Neil Gaiman.

Dignity and grace

The President of the United States sits alone in his White House office, still awake in the wee hours of the morning.  Only the Oval Office is lit.  He must be laboring over secret dispatches from our embassies overseas?  Or tweaking the details of his proposed tax reform bill?  Right?

No.  Like a middle school kid up late at night making funny (?) YouTube submissions, the President is making a little cartoon-esque video showing himself as the hero of a battle against a wicked and unfair CNN.  He tackles CNN, forcing him to the ground.  He smiles to himself.  Oh yes!  This will show them!  He posts it to his Twitter account, and to the world. 

Somewhere in Moscow, an aide carries this latest word from America's president to V. Putin for his consideration.  In the chancelleries of European capitals, in India and China, in African nations, in the capitals of allies and enemies alike, political leaders try to read these latest tea leaves.

The President of the United States.  What would Eisenhower have said.  Or Hoover.  Or even Reagan -- himself a creature of the media.  Or even the Bushes, father and son.

A number of voters once said they voted for George W. Bush because "he was someone I'd enjoy having a beer with at the local tavern."  I suppose that some of today's voters will vote again for President Trump because "he's someone it would have been fun to play video games with when I was 13."

No wonder that British comedian Stephen Fry gently suggests, in an opinion piece in today's New York Times, that perhaps America needs a monarch, perhaps under a different name.  Perhaps "First American" or "Sovereign Citizen" or even "Uncle Sam."  Recalling stories of Winston Churchill's first stilted conversations with his new sovereign, the young Elizabeth II, and his bowing to her as custom decreed as he walked backward out of her presence, Fry asks,

Above all, put in your mind the picture of the current president being forced to bow himself backward out of Uncle Sam’s presence. Wouldn’t that just beat the band? And the fireworks, too.

Indeed.

Coffee revisited

Gregory (right) and an old friend

Coffee is a comfortable subject.  Especially comfortable for those of us who live in Seattle, artisan coffee capital of the world.  And maybe it is because coffee is such a comfort food (food?) that an essay I wrote back in January 2013, "Sharing Coffee," has been one of my more popular posts over the years.

The photo accompanying that essay -- two steaming cups of coffee on a table, presumably accompanied by relaxed conversation -- is enough to make our Northwest Corner brain waves slide into a happy Alpha rhythm.  It may have been that photo rather than my actual topic that attracted readers.

But "Sharing Coffee" sprang from a meeting over coffee I'd just had with Gregory, a college sophomore and former neighbor I'd known and chatted with occasionally since his early teens, but hadn't seen in person since he'd abandoned Seattle for a university in New York City.  I used our meeting as a vehicle to praise the virtues of inter-generational friendships.

Whatever happened to Gregory?  Funny you should ask.  I had coffee with him again yesterday, in the University of Washington student union.  He's now a college graduate -- not from his original university in New York, but from Columbia College in Chicago, a school specializing in the performing arts and related disciplines.  A devoted fan of comedy in all forms since childhood, Gregory received his B.A. in Television Writing and Producing.  He's spent the last couple of months with his family in Seattle before heading south next week for an internship with a Hollywood organization.

I bragged in my 2013 essay about my ability to talk with a college student without talking down to him from the great heights of experience afforded by my advanced years.  The difference now is that he now knows many things about many things that I don't -- our talk yesterday was at least as much a learning experience for me as for him.

Gregory has completed a pilot screenplay for a 30 minute television series, an example of his writing that he can show future employers.  At my behest, he texted me a copy after our meeting.  It was extremely well written, and wildly funny.  Reading it, and talking to Gregory, reminds me that occupational paths in which I've never shown any particular interest -- and for which I certainly have no talent -- can be fascinating for the right person.

I'm looking forward to following this guy in his future career.  It will obviously be a career with many twists and turns -- the career paths available in my own profession are generally plodding and unimaginative by comparison.  So, yeah.  I hope to keep my eye on him. 

And share another cup of coffee in the not too distant future.

St. John's Eve



San Juan cae en junio.
--Alejandro Casona, La Dama del Alba

Friday night was St. John's Eve. 

St. John's Eve is hardly an event of any significance in the Northwest Corner.  I'd never heard of it until my freshman year in college.  As part of the drudgery of studying Spanish, we were required to read a Spanish play called La Dama del Alba; the fourth act begins on St. John's Eve, with bonfires burning.  I still have the book, but remembered nothing of the story until I read, just now, the Wikipedia synopsis.

From a religious point of view, the celebration marks the vigil of the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, celebrated the following day on June 24.  But in Spain, and other Hispanic countries, St. John's Eve is a de facto celebration of the summer solstice -- the longest day of the year.  It is celebrated by the lighting of bonfires.

My only personal acquaintance with these fiery celebrations dates from a trek I was doing in Peru many years ago.  We were sitting around in the late evening twilight, following dinner, when we began to notice fires sprouting all over the hillsides around us.  We nervously asked our guide if we were in danger from wildfires, and he assured us that the locals were simply celebrating St. John's Eve.  I had a flashback, at the time, to my college-days reading of La Dama.

St. John's Eve isn't merely an Hispanic celebration.  In Ireland, it is called "Bonfire Night":

In some rural parts of Ireland, particularly in the north-west, Bonfire Night is held on St. John's Eve, when bonfires are lit on hilltops. Many towns and cities have "Midsummer Carnivals", with fairs, concerts and fireworks, around the same time. In County Cork in southwest Ireland the night is commonly referred to as bonfire night and is among the busiest nights of the year for the fire services.

Similar celebrations are held in Denmark, parts of England, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, France ("Fête de la Saint-Jean"), Italy, Quebec, and Poland. 

Bonfires are a common, central part of the celebration in all these countries.

As a celebration of the solstice, the celebration makes more sense the farther north one goes.  In Scandinavia, the days are impressively long at the summer solstice.  In Spain, not so much.  And in Peru, where I first observed St. John's bonfires, just south of the equator, the solstice is virtually meaningless.

The United States stands curiously apart from this widespread tradition -- just as it has, until recently, from worldwide soccer fanaticism -- with the odd exception of Louisiana, where the night marks a Voodoo celebration held on New Orleans's Bayou St. John.

When I was in northern England a couple of weeks ago, the sky was dark for less than five hours each night -- from about 11 p.m. to 3:30 a.m.  Here in Seattle, our nights are slightly longer, but we are the northern-most major city in the continental United States.  We have every reason to light bonfires, but we don't.

But sitting out on my back deck at 10:30 p.m., observing the final dying illumination of twilight, I share the wonder of people elsewhere at the seasonal changes.  Maybe tonight I'll light a match, and hold it up, as one small, token, belated celebration of St. John's Eve.  And a reminder of those distant days when I could actually read, haltingly, a Spanish play.

The contemplative universe

NBC Mach

As you stumble your way across the room, do you ever stub your toe on a chair that you suspect moved into place just to cause you pain?  As though it were conscious?  Maybe it is, say some scientists, maybe it is.

Well, not exactly.  Your furniture doesn't have eyes and mouths; it doesn't sing along with you as in a Looney Tune.  But scientists and philosophers who subscribe to some form of panpsychism argue that the one constant in the universe is consciousness, and that consciousness is manifested in various ways -- depending on the panpsychic's particular theory.

I'd never heard the word "panpsychism" until a Facebook friend shared an article with me, from this week's NBC Mach, entitled "Is the Universe Conscious?" accompanied by an astronomer's photograph of a sprawling nebula.  Pretty interesting -- scary? -- but the title describes only one of the more extreme possible consequences of panpsychism -- that any complex system exhibits consciousness, and the universe is pretty complex.

In a lengthy article, Wikipedia describes panpsycism in less dramatic terms:

Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed to philosophers like Thales, Parmenides, Plato, Averroes, Spinoza, Leibniz and William James. Panpsychism can also be seen in ancient philosophies such as Stoicism, Taoism, Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism. During the 19th century, panpsychism was the default theory in philosophy of mind, but it saw a decline during the middle years of the 20th century with the rise of logical positivism. The recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness has revived interest in panpsychism.

The Mach article starts off with the mind-boggling idea of galactic consciousness, but quickly turns to the more complex issues presented by quantum theory.  The writer describes the discussion in 2006 by a German physicist, Bernard Haisch, who proposed that quantum fields, producing and transmitting consciousness, pervade all of empty space, and that the transmitted consciousness then flows into and is manifested by complex systems in the presence of energy.  The more complex the system, the more obvious and intense the consciousness.  The human brain is pretty complex.  That chair in your living room?  Less so.

The universe is also complex, but even most panpsychics seem to doubt that galaxies do much independent thinking.  Our sun, one notes, is far less complex a system than a single E. Coli bacterium, and we know how deeply bacteria contemplate.

Most scientist, subscribers to panpsychism or not, seem to agree that consciousness is somehow related to complexity.  For me, at least, the problem is the inability to define consciousness in objective terms, other than as something related to complexity.  We believe ourselves to be conscious, and dogs seem to mimic us in some ways.  Therefore, we assume dogs share to some degree our own consciousness.  But we can't prove that they aren't just parasitic little automatons that have evolved the ability to survive by imitating their human hosts.  In fact, we can't really begin to argue whether dogs are really conscious like us, because we don't understand what consciousness means even in ourselves. 

"I think, therefore I am," said Descartes.  Maybe the best we can say, or will ever be able to say, is, "I worry about whether I'm conscious, therefore I am conscious." Maybe your chair worries, too? No way to prove it doesn't.

A teacher in Siam

When I was a boy, world was better spot
What was so was so, what was not was not
Now, I am a man, world have changed a lot
Some things nearly so, others nearly not.

--Oscar Hammerstein II

I saw the movie of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, The King and I, as a teenager, and soon after acquired an LP with the songs from the Broadway production.  I liked the songs, of course, but I was also attracted by the supposed exoticism of far-off Siam.  The story of Anna, a British teacher, hired by the King of Siam to teach his children, a teacher who ended up teaching the king himself a thing or two, was perfectly designed to appeal to 1950s America -- a nation confident that it had a thing or two to teach the world.

The story was based loosely on actual events that occurred in the court of Siamese King Mongkut in the 1860s.  I'm not sure that I realized -- or that all American viewers realized -- that the story dealt with the distant past, rather than the recent past.  I knew enough to doubt that the King of Siam -- many  maps still called Thailand "Siam" -- actually strutted around manfully like Yul Brynner, but I had no doubt that the king, whenever he ruled, had been an absolute monarch, had a childlike fascination with the "advanced" culture of the West, spoke in fluent but pidgin English, and devoted much of his time to his many wives. 

That was the nature of foreign potentates.

Even the name "Siam" sounded wonderfully strange and exotic.  Some day, I perhaps dreamed, I might board a steamer in San Francisco and make a port of call at mysterious Bangkok.  A once in a lifetime visit that would be the wonder of the folks back home.

I never dreamed that by the time I had reached retirement age, my passports would bear any number of stamps from Thailand.  Or that "Thailand" is what everyone would be calling Siam.

Or -- and this is what really prompts this post -- that one of my very own nephews would have just moved to "Siam." Denny moved this past month to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city, where he will begin teaching sixth grade in the fall at the same international school attended by his third grade daughter.  This past week, he sent us "farangs" back home an email bursting with excitement about the colleagues and neighbors he's already met, the school at which he'll be teaching, and the house he's leasing.

Knowing Denny's excellent reputation as a teacher in California, I have no doubt that his sixth graders will be well taught in the coming years.  And Denny will learn as much about Thailand from his students as he will from reading the local papers and talking to his neighbors.  For as Anna herself told her pupils in The King and I:

It's a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you'll be taught.

Denny and I traveled together to Chiang Mai a decade ago.  It's a beautiful town, with exotic tropical vegetation and exciting outdoor markets.  It's certainly different from America.  It's not the mysterious Orient, however, that I would have expected from watching Yul Brynner cavorting about the stage.   It's a real world filled with real people -- people like everyone else in some ways, but uniquely Thai as well.  Denny will learn a lot, and --whenever he returns to America -- he will have a wonderful background in another culture.

And I intend to learn a lot from his adventure, as well.  For me, as well as for the King: "World has changed a lot."  And my passport has room for many more stamps.  Stamps from Thailand. 

Swallows and Amazons

Kids learn by playing.  By playing as children, we learn skills and practice adult roles.  The more imaginative the play, the better we prepare for an imaginative and creative life.

My brother and I spent a number of years repeatedly devising and playing versions of a game that required use of the entire second floor of our house.  Army men and equipment, spacemen, cowboys and Indians -- even, during certain decadent stages, marbles -- were personnel in our game.  My brother loved military life and warfare; I loved politics and diplomacy.  We joined our interests in a complex and ever-evolving game that kept us fascinated until we were embarrassingly far into our teens.

While in England's Lake District this past month, I learned of a book about kids who were at least equally imaginative, but who operated on a far vaster scale than the second floor of a house.  The book was Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons (1930), which, as I now discover, was but the first of a twelve book series involving the same group of children.*  The story takes place on an idyllic lake in the Lakes (inspired by a combination of Lake Windermere and Coniston Water), where the Walkers spend their summer holidays.

The four Walker children -- John, Susan, Titty, and Roger -- are a cohesive group of siblings who spend every free moment alone together.  Roger, the youngest, is seven years old.  The others' ages aren't given, but I'd guess that John, the oldest is twelve to fourteen.   They are imaginative in the extreme, and fanatically knowledgeable about sailing (their father is a naval officer serving in the Far East).   The book begins with Roger, trying to run home as quickly as possible, finding it necessary to tack back and forth against the wind while running up the lawn.

The mother is wonderfully tolerant of her children's independence, and wonderfully whimsical by nature.  As the kids invent words in "native" languages, she willingly uses those words in her conversations with them.  The kids have been lobbying for permission to spend the last week or so of their holiday on an uninhabited island in the middle of the lake.  Their mother requires her husband's consent.  He responds -- himself obviously no stranger to whimsy -- with a telegram:  "Better Drowned than Duffers.  If not Duffers Won't Drown."  This telegram is accepted as a somewhat cryptic consent.

The plot is simple.  Kids sail alone to the island in a family boat, the "Swallow,"and set up camp.  They meet and engage in mock warfare with a couple of equally creative girls who call themselves the Amazons.  They have some simple adventures, a wonderful week, and leave with a parental promise that they will return the following summer.

The children reinterpret every observation in terms of their imaginary game -- they are explorers, the two girls are pirates, all other people on and around the lake are untrustworthy and possibly dangerous "natives."  The small island itself has been discovered only now by themselves.  Their mother -- sometimes Queen Elizabeth, sometimes"the female native" -- makes occasional visits in another boat to bring extra food and convince herself that her brood is still alive; she is welcomed as a benevolent member of a foreign tribe.

These are the kind of kids who, even before the story begins, have named a prominent hill near their house from which the lake can be viewed "Darien" -- because it was from Darien in Panama that Balboa first spotted the Pacific Ocean.

What's unique about the book is the kids' intricate knowledge of sailing, and the author's willingness to describe every action, every move, the young sailors take while sailing -- as well as the details of setting up camp, and of their wildlife observations while camping and exploring.  Much of this knowledge was taught to them by their father, much also is self-taught, inspired by their idolization and emulation of the distant Naval officer.  The author trusts us to be equally conversant.

"These little boats often do without stays at all.  Is there a cleat under the thwart where the mast is stepped?"

"Two," said John, feeling.  The mast fitted in a hole in the forward thwart, the seat near the bows of the boat.  It had a square foot, which rested in a slot cut to fit it in the kelson.

What's also unique is the author's confidence that his young readers will avidly follow all the nautical details that he offers them.  I certainly was impressed.  Call me ignorant, but I never knew that rowing a sailboat from the stern was called "sculling" -- a necessary maneuver with sails down in tight places or when the wind was still.  To the Walker kids, knowing how and when to scull was like my own knowing how, as a child, to patch a flat tire on a bike.

Children in any period are imaginative and creative.  In today's world, I suspect that most of this creativity is devoted to digital games.  There's something to be said, however, for a world where the same imagination and creativity are expressed in ways that bring children into the outdoors, teaching them to sail a boat under all weather conditions, to set up camp, to survive a storm, to cook over a fire, to explore rough terrain.  All without the constant supervision and guidance of adults, and all before the teen years really begin.

As the mother remarked good-naturedly at one point:

We are going home at the end of the week.  It would be a pity if two or three of you were to get drowned first.

Ransome may have idealized the Walker children, but Swallows and Amazons was written for kids who could easily imagine themselves in the Walkers' position if they only had a lake, a boat, and a little training at their disposal.  I'm not sure how a child would react to the book today.  Perhaps he'd be bored.

Not all changes in our world have been "Progress."
-----------------------------------------

*Two British films of the book have been released, in 1974 and 2016.  The BBC also produced a television series based on the book in 1963.

Cows may safely graze

England is laced with public right of ways.  As you amble through the countryside, you rarely encounter a fenced field that doesn't have a gate or stile through which you, a member of the public, have a right to enter the field, emerging at a similar exit on the other side.  For your part, you don't trample growing crops and you don't annoy the animals.

But what if the animals choose to annoy you?

This week, an elderly, retired professor from Magdalen College, Oxford, was out for a walk in Essex -- the sort of daily walk he probably has taken most of his life.  The sort of walk I took through Westmorland these past couple of weeks.

According to a British newspaper, there were cows grazing in the field.  The cows "became agitated and charged at him."  The professor was heard screaming for help.  He was trampled to death before help could arrive.

A tragic and puzzling story.  Agitated cows?  Charging?  I would hardly have believed it, but for my own experience the first day of my hike, while still in northern Westmorland.  Like the professor, I entered a large field, climbing over a stile.  Cows were scattered about in widely separated groups. My route took me within a hundred feet of one such group.

I've walked past many cows in my life.  Cows either stare at me blankly, or continue grazing, or move slightly away.  But these cows were curious.  They began slowly moving toward me.  I didn't stop to interact and, at this point, hardly noticed them.  I had located the stile on the far fence, and was aiming toward it.  But the cows were aiming at me.  They weren't running; they didn't appear "agitated."  But they were closing in on me. I thought it was a bit funny, in both senses of the word, but still wasn't concerned.

Then I noticed cows farther afield.  They were beginning to move in paths that would intercept my own.  Not hastily.  But deliberately.  The cows behind were now close behind.  The cows afield were joining those behind.  I was walking faster.  So were the cows.  They were breathing just behind my ears.  The original five or six cows had swelled to a much larger number.

I felt like the Pied Piper of Westmorland.  But the "children" I was leading seemed less than innocent.

I reached the stile with hot cow breath on my neck.  I skipped up and over the ladder and looked back.  The cows had come as far as they could.  They were clustered around the stile, staring at me.  I took the photo above.  The photo doesn't do justice to the number of cows outside its frame.  The cows didn't look malicious.  Or murderous.  They didn't look much of anything.  They didn't really seem cow-like.

As Bucky Katt said in one of his incisive observations, the cows appeared to be staring at me, "thinking stupid cow thoughts."  No doubt the cows that trampled the Magdalen professor emeritus looked equally stupid and placid, thinking cow thoughts, while walking back and forth over his body. 

I wasn't scared.  My heart wasn't pounding, although maybe it should have been.  I just felt unnerved.  I felt relieved that I'd had no problem crossing the stile.   

Gazing upon Oxford's "dreaming spires"

And that sweet City with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening,
--Matthew Arnold

A life without regrets is a life not worth living.  No matter how "successful" the world may judge you, deep in your heart you know that you have failed to climb to what computer gamers would call "the next level."

For me, I suppose, that next level -- perhaps several levels above -- would have been a degree from Oxford.  I'm not sure when my infatuation with Oxford began, but it was certainly reinforced by reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and watching the TV series based on that novel.  But Waugh's Oxford was an atavistic experience of social connections, friendships, and traditions.  That picture, especially when accompanied by the series' theme music, was immensely attractive.

But I wanted to be an Oxford scholar.  I saw myself -- realistically -- as the young man who sat preparing for the next day's tutorial while others were out getting drunk.

Thus the appeal that's led me back to visit Oxford on several occasions -- always frustrated by the knowledge that I am seeing only a glimpse of the surface, while the reality of Oxford life is shared by only the elect few.  Nevertheless, last Thursday, my last full day in England, I took an early morning train to Oxford for one more brief visit. 

I wandered the hallowed streets -- somewhat less dreamy now, than when Matthew Arnold rhapsodized upon them -- and paid a few pounds for admission to two of the larger and more architecturally striking colleges -- Christ Church and Magdalen.  Christ Church has created a path marked by arrows for visitors to follow, and before you know it you're back out on the street.  Magdalen, however, is more generous.  Once past the turnstile, you're pretty much on your own.  You can go everywhere you want, except the rooms of students and dons, and the dining halls. 

Magdalen's a beautiful school, and I could see myself happily ensconced within -- the same emotion of being where I belonged that I acknowledged feeling, a few posts ago, while studying in the old law school facilities at the University of Washington. I gazed with envy at kids walking down the street, wearing the vest-like mini-gowns that told the world they were Oxford undergraduates.

But would I really have enjoyed it?  Back in Seattle, I perused message boards on the topic of admission to Oxford and the Oxford student experience.  Those writers posting were all current or past Oxford students.  Nearly all agreed that, regardless of whatever misgivings they may have originally felt about how they would fit in at Oxford, it had been a life-changing experience and one they wouldn't have missed.

The fact that they had all been brilliant enough to have been admitted, however, certainly skewed the results.  Admission of British students requires extremely high A-level exam scores following the sixth form -- what we would call the last two years of high school -- with an early concentration on one or two fields that the student intends to pursue at the university level.  Selection for interviews is based entirely on the A-levels, and the interviews themselves are an intensive investigation into the applicant's academic and personal suitability for Oxford studies.

For applicants from foreign countries, Oxford tries to accommodate the different preparatory programs those countries use.  Thus, with American high school students, the university looks to AP and IB scores (but not SATs) as the closest analogue to British A-levels.  But it's difficult, because the two testing systems aren't strictly equivalent.  As a result, although Oxford has a fairly large number of American graduate students, the proportion of American undergraduates is small.

That would have been disheartening to me -- especially having gone to high school in the Paleozoic era, before Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs had been invented.  And considering the lack of specialization in American high schools, in the absence of AP or IB classes, I would have been totally unprepared academically for consideration by Oxford.

Also, several former students observed that Oxford is a good choice for a certain type of personality -- students who enjoy thinking out loud and arguing their conclusions with some conviction.  Most teaching is done in tutorials -- individual or very small group settings with "tutors."  If a student hasn't kept up with his studies, it becomes all too apparent at the weekly tutorials.  Students who are equally intelligent but who excel more obviously in writing, some said, would do better at more conventional universities. 

I try to remember myself as an 18-year-old.  I was outspoken in high school classes, but that was no great accomplishment where I went to school.  I was shy socially, but not so shy academically.  At my university, all freshmen took a course called "History of Western Civilization."  All students attended a weekly lecture, and then, three times a week, attended small class groups of about twenty, each led by a professor who guided discussions based on extensive reading.  Grades were heavily dependent on participation in class discussions.

I enjoyed taking part in the discussions.  Maybe, then, I would have enjoyed Oxford's tutorial system.  On the other hand, I have no doubt that I've always performed better in writing than in speaking.  Even as a trial attorney, my oral presentations required careful preparation -- I didn't speak well  off the cuff, unless absorbed in a heated argument.

So, I don't know.  Reading the student comments did make the Oxford experience -- both the admissions process and the day to day academic life -- seem intimidating.  On the other hand, our minds and personalities are flexible when we're 18.  And stepping outside our comfort zone is an excellent path to growth.  Or, if too far out of our comfort zone, disaster!

But, as we say, it's all academic.  An Oxford education exists only in my fantasies -- and probably would have been nothing but fantasy under the best of circumstances.  And at my present age, even post-graduate education is out of the question.  All universities -- not just Oxford and Cambridge -- insist on investing their limited resources in students who possess a few more years life expectancy than I can offer.

Ah well.  I can still walk the streets of Oxford's "dreaming spires," and dream my own silent dreams.