Curiosity

I was not yet born when “one giant leap for mankind” catapulted the moon and NASA into the fervor of the American consciousness. Until last night, the biggest space-related event from NASA was the retirement of the space shuttles and the looming privatizationĀ of space. Amidst arguments that NASA is rendered largely irrelevant, at roughly 10:31PM Pacific time, the pundits are proven wrong with one word: Curiosity.

Granted, we’ve had Mars landers before. Viking in 1976; Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997; the Mars Polar Lander of 1999, which was never heard from after landing and was presumed destroyed; the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004; and the Phoenix Lander, headed for the polar regions, in 2007. Curiosity is another link in the chain, another opportunity for the exploration of a planet much like our own which we can use as the basis for scientific research and discovery.1

Why is Curiosity different from all the others? One needed only to tune into the NASA livestream of the control room last night to find the answer: the agency made one of the best decisions it could have made and let the scenes in the control room tell the tale of Curiosity and its success. From the preparations for landing to the “seven minutes of terror” to the first jubilant shout as landing was confirmed and the first pictures returned, the story of the Curiosity rover so far has not been about the rover at all; it has been about the human resolve, about the want and the drive to explore other places, other destinations, no matter how remote and inhospitable. We’re a stubborn species; we cannot settle only for what we know. We refuse to accept that this world is the only thing we can ever access.

I found myself renewed with a sense of accomplishment after the landing; going to bed, I fully expected that this would be front page news in the morning. Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened my daily news digest from the New York Times this morning and found nothing – absolutely no mention, no inkling of the accomplishments of the night before, no pithy summary of why this had to be a turning point in the funding and support for both manned and unmanned space exploration. The NY Times did, in fact, cover it – although you would be hard-pressed to find the headline2 on the front page of the site – but for whatever reason, it was not deemed worthy of inclusion in the daily briefs.

CNN issued a breaking news alert last night on landing. The Seattle Times at least nodded to it in its daily digest, albeit as a local interest story3. It wasn’t that long ago (from my perspective) when this sort of event made front page news, either above or below the fold. Have we come to consider space exploration as rote, every accomplishment only worthy of articles in the science section instead of screaming to the world “Look at what we have achieved! See what sorts of wonders we can find if we try!”?

Is the inspiration of the next generation left to the geeks and nerds that care enough to publicize and proselytize these events as a crux of human existence? Is the demotion of NASA to second-class status behind private interests really for the public good? When did we decide, as a nation, that space travel should not be something undertaken by the public for the public, that the agency principally responsible for putting a man on the moon no longer deserves the glory it once held?

For every person who has ever looked up at the stars and wondered about the meaning of life and whether we are alone in the universe, Curiosity is a great achievement, and it will stand to reveal many things that are as of yet unknown to us about the Red Planet. But it is also something of a warning – endeavors of this sort can only be undertaken provided a sufficient amount of financial and cultural support. The choice is ours: do we forge boldly forth to and beyond Mars and accept it as part of our culture and our heritage of exploration, or do we close the chapter, and allow the private interests to take all the glory, robbing the nation of a sense of shared accomplishment?

~ C. (Gaius) Charles


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_landing
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/science/space/curiosity-rover-lands-safely-on-mars.html
[3] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018857293_mars06m.html

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Civics, Media and Mayhem, Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 1 Comment

The Promises of a Blue Moon

Just once… in a very blue moon
And I feel one comin’ on soon

Nanci Griffith, Just Once in a Very Blue Moon

This August is a month of the blue moon – a month which will have two full moons, one on August 1st and one on August 31st. Given the prospect of a blue moon, the time of year, and Humptulips County’s prevailing weather patterns, this should prove to be an excellent month for watching night skies at the farm and pondering the promises they contain.

Our farm is sufficiently far from anything even remotely urban that we are wholly unaffected by light pollution. Accordingly, from the vantage point of the turn-around in front of our house the night sky is strewn with distant stars tinged with the constellations of ancient human creation and dominated by the near-by moon. Ours is a night sky upon which the primordial past has inscribed inscrutable illuminated runes suggestive of gods, eternities, and infinities lurking within the starless interstices; ours is a night sky replete with possibilities limited only by the narrow vision of human imagination. For on a clear night, ours is a patently visible, unobscured night sky: no more and no less a sky than that which you enjoy, but one wide open to perception and wonder without the necessity of instrumental assistance.

When I left the house this morning, the first of August’s new moons held sway. The light from a full moon is strong and intense, turning night-time into perpetual twilight. On many of my pre-dawn excursions, our normally familiar country lane quickens to life and promises wondrously exotic and adventuresome quests to destinations lying well beyond my daily ken, but only if I can first learn the secret phrase which will allow access to the hidden turnings lying just within the marsh at our property’s edge, at the cusp of the leftward curve at the top of our neighbor’s hill, or elsewhere along its meandering path. I search valiantly for these turnings when I feel their lure, but they always hover enticingly, yet indistinctly, beyond the reach of my headlights. I look more diligently for these turnings while under the spell of a full moon, for I am as certain as I can be that my destined turning unto the mysteries that await us all will only appear then.

On such mornings, Alice’s rabbit hole and Bilbo’s road lie unseen before me, but I pass them by without recognition in favor of more mundane destinations. Many things are semi-visible in our open fields in the half-light, even as shadows hold sway and give cover within the forests and grown-over areas. The twilight is magical. When small animals run from my passage by scampering from moonlight to shadow, they leave me with mere glimpses of beings that might be any sort of life, faerie or real. I am almost certain I saw a bobcat last week during the run-up to the full moon, but it scampered so quickly from the verge into the heavily grass-covered, undeveloped property across from ours that I cannot be certain. It might just as well have been Pan scampering for a better location from which to play his pipes.

I love the magic of these nights and to have two new moons in August by which to ponder and imagine the reflected lessons and meanings of the stars is truly a blessing which comes our way but once, as it were, in a blue moon. Hopefully, this blue moon will not be a very blue moon of the sort Nanci Griffith sings about.

For I believe the starry runes will eventually provide the key to my own secret turning of the heart and that my resulting quest will lie somewhere among the mysterious dark places of our sky. So for now, I am content to ponder these mysteries from the safety of our turn-around or from within the known margins of our lane, because the prospect of adventure is often as satisfying as reality due to the firing of our imagination and our fears into a porphyry of equal parts anticipation, speculation, wonder, and delight.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 2 Comments

Pre-Dawn Contemplations of Ineffable Subjects

Itā€™s early morning here in my office in Humptulips County, and while the building is operational after a massive overnight internal power outage, the office systems are down and useless. I suspect that they will be up and running before too much longer, but in the meantime I have discovered that an office desktop computer without any access to the Internet or much of anything else is closer to that end of a sliding scale labeled ā€œboat anchorā€ than it is to another end labeled ā€œcomputer.ā€ As proof that my desktop computer isnā€™t completely ready for residence in Davy Jones Locker, I am writing this piece on it for subsequent publication.

I faced an interesting dilemma this morning as I prepared to come in for work. I and my fellow workers had been well warned about the possibility of no power in the building this morning after the failure of a master switch that controls the flow of electricity to our floors. Between my cell phone and my home phone, I must have received eight different calls last night warning me of the impending outage and the possibility that an outage might last until the commencement of normal business hours, and these were in addition to the three or four emails literally shouting the same warning. So upon arising this morning, I had to decide whether to hit the road or wait until I received a follow-up message that the office was up and running. Insofar as I could tell from the vantage point of the house, the outage was still in full swing.

I opted for leaving home at my usual time of departure, feeling compelled not to deviate from my usual routine but questioning what I might find upon arrival. I derived a back-up plan about what to do if I was unable to get through the electrically powered mesh screen that allows entry into the building garage after hours ā€“ I would park at the club where I play racquetball and go read newspapers until it was time for my morning game. Both the decision to go forward and the back-up plan were made during the course of my morning preparations and seemed to me then to have been carefully and thoughtfully determined.

Upon further reflection after finding myself in the office but without access to the firm’s network, I have decided that the compulsion I felt to make a trip into uncertainty combined with my alternative plan for my morning if the tripā€™s uncertainties were resolved unfavorably argue that my decision to come into work was more the result of my being of the human persuasion than of rational, intellectual thought. For I believe we are all creatures of habit and that habit is perfectly capable of over-riding an otherwise free will when the stakes arenā€™t too high. At moment of leaving my home there were good and valid arguments for me to stay there, but the urgent and strong pull of my routine simply overcame any real notion that I might have a cup of tea and read my book until I received email assurance that the office was open and functional.

I suppose that if there had been an earthquake in the city and the extent of the damage was unknown and unknowable, I might have stayed at home until conditions were made clearer, but my use of the verbs ā€œsupposeā€ and ā€œmightā€ in the various clauses of this sentence suggests to me that I would have had to argue myself into remaining safely at home even in the face of such a hypothetical catastrophe. When the nature and extent of potential obstacles to achievement of oneā€™s routine arenā€™t at the level of a true emergency, it is my belief that on any given day the compulsion to follow a personal routine will normally triumph over uncertainty as to whether the routine can be successfully achieved. In cases of true emergency, I also believe that routineā€™s pull is sufficiently strong as to create significant reluctance to its abandonment and sometimes lead one to poor decisions ā€“ such as has been the case on several snowy Winter days when I have departed from home into the teeth of a blizzard to face unknown and potentially unsafe road conditions.

The fact that I had a back-up plan this morning is merely further evidence of the strength of routineā€™s compulsive powers, for it was nothing more than an internal mental argument for why my routine should be followed in the face of knowledge that failure to achieve its usual goal might well be likely. Put another way, I rationalized my intent to follow my normal routine in the face of significant uncertainty by giving myself another means of achieving the bulk of its usual goal (the commute from my home into the city) by imagining the prospect an alternative venue in the city from which I could eventually achieve the ultimate goal (access to my office). You might well argue that I might have been better off playing hooky for the day and thereby proving myself a true free spirit, but I believe most of us suffering from the human condition would have been compelled to make a similar decision.

Given the strength of its compulsion, I must assume that personal routine plays some significant role in what it means to be ā€œhuman.ā€ Perhaps personal routines are evidence that humans are basically herd animals and that we follow our routines in order to not disappoint the expectations other members of our herd have of us. If this is the case, being a true free-thinker becomes all the more difficult. Breaking free of conventional wisdom and expressing yourself in a manner contrary to your particular herdā€™s conventional wisdom is difficult, but it is only when I consider that any person who has actually achieved free thought may yet feel strongly compelled to re-join daily the very herd which he or she has intellectually repudiated ā€“ thereby exponentially increasing his or her sense of cognitive dissonance and dissociation – that I am fully able to comprehend the strength of the force we denominate ā€œa personal routineā€ and to realize the strength of will it takes to become a truly free spirit unencumbered by conventional wisdom or herd affiliation.

Can one become herd-free? I am uncertain that this is possible, for whenever we dream the unconventional we seek to find others who will validate our new beliefs ā€“ and those others are invariably the members of our new herd. I suspect is was far easier to be a truly free soul in the days when communication was harder and people were more isolated, than it is today when a Facebook posting frequently finds a significant number of adherents to what a large majority of us would believe to be non-conventional, or even asinine, conclusions. Even those at the extreme edges of sanity, such as Anders Behring Brevik of Norway or James Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, are likely to find someone of kindred spirit on the Internet if they are willing to look hard enough. And, at least in Brevik’s case, if he cannot find them in real-time, he is perfectly willing to imagine them. Who knows what Holmes’ thinking may be at this stage of events, but I am willing to bet that when we find out it will involve adherence to outlandish, perhaps evil, views he will attempt to justify by arguing that they will be good for the achievement of whatever warped vision he has come to believe is essential for the sake of his idealized herd.

If one cannot become truly herd-free, there may well be those who will argue that once free thought has been achieved one ought to simply change herds, as it were. But I donā€™t think that second decision comes very easily and in most cases I donā€™t believe it comes at all. I suspect that lethargy, the uncertainty of alternatives, and the compulsiveness of routine serves to prevent most people from ever-changing the original herd to which they were assigned by Fate. Take the case of my tenure at my first law firm. I realized quite early in my tenure that the normal means of operation within the group were, from my viewpoint, faulty, counter-productive and, frankly, stupid, but I stayed for over sixteen years despite this realization. Why? Because I felt compelled to fight hard to change the herdā€™s direction and thought and convinced myself I was being successful in my efforts despite the strain of trying to maintain change, until I returned from a hard-earned, three-month sabbatical to find that, in my absence, the herdā€™s traditional habits had snapped back to their former true as if they were a rubber band.

I have concluded that those of strong disposition will work long and hard to achieve change rather than quickly determining to abandon their resident herd. If this conclusion is correct, it is yet another piece of evidence that humans are, first and foremost, herd animals, for once we arrive at new beliefs inconsistent with the conventional wisdom of the herd, our desire to better our resident herd when viewed against the measuring stick of our new beliefs is far stronger than our desire to strike out on our own. It was at the end of my tenure with my initial law firm when I finally arrived at the realization that I ā€“ and not ā€œtheyā€ ā€“ was the square peg trying to fit into the proverbial round hole. It was only then that I was able to find the strength to abandon my original herd for a more congenial one resident in the so-greener pastures fertilized by the formerly antithetical, but newly conventional, beliefs which had compelled my departure in the first place. (Ah, the joys of the mixed metaphor!) My decision to do so was quite emotionally difficult and taken only after extensive internal debate, yet it quickly proved to be so blazingly correct that I have subsequently come to marvel over my inability, while original herd-bound, to recognize its remorseless clarity. It took Helenā€™s urging that I simply quit even though I had no other job prospects to motivate me to leave and begin what proved to be the not-so-very-difficult task of finding an intellectually congenial replacement herd.

So here I am at work in the early pre-dawn darkness of a day on which I could well have stayed home without blame, wondering whether or not man is a herd animal, contemplating the consequences of such a conclusion, and realizing that my characterization of my second law firm as any sort of “herd” will undoubtedly profoundly annoy my mentor (and former second-herd partner) Bob Weiss. Do I need more proof? Or do I just need a cup of coffee so I can quit my half-baked philosophizing about things ineffable? It’s up to you to decide.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 3 Comments

A Personal Voting Manifesto

In Washington state, the election season is upon us. Our primary election is just a few weeks away and political advertisements, robotic phone calls, mailers, rallies, and all of the other accoutrements of modern political life are in full shout and display. Social media are replete with commentary of one kind or another, both pro-this and anti-that, where ā€œthisā€ and ā€œthatā€ can variously be people, issues, events, or any combination thereof.

In short, we are in the middle of the pre-election silly season.

Pelted as I am with constant pre-election hysteria, I have come to the conclusion that I need to articulate a set of personal political precepts to guide my voting habits now and in the future. I am greatly upset by the nature of the politics that grips the Other Washington (Washington DC) and worry that its gridlock may find its way into our local government which has, so far, largely avoided the rabid partisanship that is the Other Washingtonā€™s hallmark. I am convinced that reform starts with each individual voter, and that if each of us adheres to certain shared precepts of good voting, we, as a voting electorate and regardless of personal affiliation or belief, will be much more likely to elect responsible local, state and federal officials with the ability to govern rather than naysayers who cannot.

Given this preamble, I have created my personal voting manifesto to govern the exercise of my constitutionally guaranteed, and constitutionally and critically important, right to vote. I invite each of you to create your own manifesto and to comment as vigorously as you wish on mine – but always with civility, thoughtfulness and rationalized, articulate reasoning. Manifestos of any sort may seem silly to some, but if American voters wish to have viable, working governments rather than ones frozen by politicized, gridlocked negativity, we must share some basic precepts about how each of us exercises our vote.

So, without further preamble, here is my personal voting manifesto, with the precepts listed in order of importance:

1. Always Vote in Every Election – Voting is not a privilege; it is an obligation of an informed electorate. To fail to vote is to allow irrationality to prevail among our elected officials. I will vote in every election.

2. Do Not Sanction Zealotry in Any Guise ā€“ Fanatical devotion to any issue at the expense of common sense and civility is not a sign of rational thought. No issue is so easy of resolution that there can only be one right answer for which an adherent is willing to fight to the death or brand someone with opposing ideas as a traitor or an idiot. A matter would not be an ā€œissue” if it were so easily capable of solution. I will not vote for a zealot of any stripe or sanction ballot measures that embody any form of zealotry.

3. Character Matters More Than Party or Other Affiliation ā€“ A candidateā€™s character is critically important to civil discourse. I shall only vote for candidates who:

  • are civil to others;
  • are thoughtful in their responses to criticism;
  • understand that there is more than one side to an issue and that by politely, carefully and thoughtfully listening to the rationale and arguments of the opposition they might learn something of value even if initially doubtful this will prove to be true;
  • are full of common sense, possess a systemic urge to get things done, and demonstrate an understanding that compromise is not a sell-out of an ideal but a rational realization that there is more than one side to any issue;
  • understand that offering solutions to problems is a requirement of rational debate and colloquy when differing with another’s approach, and acknowledge that simply saying “no” to every differing opinion is never an appropriate means of finding resolution to a matter under discussion;
  • are able to speak articulately, rationally and effectively about things that matter to them, and to give good reasons to support their beliefs.

Given a choice between a candidate of the party to which I normally adhere who does not meet these criteria and one of the other party who does, I will vote for the candidate of the other party.

4. Civility is an Especially Important Marker of Good Character ā€“ I will only vote for those who demonstrate the ability to be civil to others. At a minimum, civility in a candidate requires that he or she:

  • usually and regularly treats everyone, regardless of status, with the same good manners as he or she would treat a friend or a visitor to his or her home;
  • is moderate in speech (but not in the passion for his or her ideals or beliefs), whether that speech is intended to be partisan, political or statesmanlike;
  • recognizes that opponents are people who simply disagree as to principles and who are not demons, monsters, traitors to any cause, or un-American;
  • never engages in the demonization of entire portions of the populace and never falls prey to believing that ā€œtheyā€ are always acting deliberately in a manner that is evil, bad or un-American;
  • understands the concept of ā€œa worthy opponentā€ and possesses a strong and measured sense of fair play and sportsmanship.

However, civility does not require that a candidate accept rudeness from others, and he or she may fight rudeness with strong or blunt words as long as those words are leavened with humor, honor, and integrity.

5. Vote With My Heart and For My Beliefs ā€“ Because I have opinions and beliefs that have been crafted over a lifetime which I belief to be fundamentally important, I will only vote for those candidates and ballot measures that (a) share or demonstrate similar opinions and beliefs to mine, and (b) who meet the requirements of the precepts listed above, for my opinions and beliefs include an urgent sense that the above precepts are critically important to a robust society, the principles of good governance, and the success of our political institutions and our society.

 

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Transmogrification and My Trip Home

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 6

I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song (of which we may, now and then, catch an echo); and that these trails must reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African savannah, where the First Man opening his mouth in defiance of the terrors that surrounded him, shouted the opening stanza of the World Song, “I am!”

Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

Living many miles from my office I “enjoy” a lengthy commute. Much of my commute is along Humptulips County’s freeways. Freeways are a practical means of travel, relatively quickly traversed during the early morning off-hours of my commute, and usually bloated with speed resistant traffic during the evening trip home so that my reverse commute is 30 to 45 minutes longer than my inbound one. As a means of everyday travel, freeways don’t possess much meaningful aesthetic, for we commuters use them as if they are little more than hand tools. It is only when I am off on an adventuresome lark with Helen to some eagerly anticipated destination that I find freeways to possess any aesthetic whatsoever, for then, and only then, they are shining pathways of anticipation regardless of prevailing weather conditions or traffic flow.

On my morning drive into work, the freeway’s straight lines and familiar curves are perfect for list-making in anticipation of the day’s chores. While I cannot ignore the road or the other drivers with whom I share the freeway during the pre-dawn hours in which I travel, the relative paucity of traffic usually allows for a commute without significant driving problems to be solved, thereby presenting the perfect time to prepare a plan for dealing with whatever challenges each particular work day presents. And once the daily duties are listed, ordered and folded into an acceptable management plan, the morning becomes a perfect time for listening to NPR and engaging in amazed contemplation of man’s myriad and mysterious vainglories.

The evening commute is quite a different affair. I long ago discovered that dwelling on the day’s activities on the way home is not a path I wish to walk. If my morning’s plan of attack was successful, there is usually not much merit in reconsidering the day’s business affairs; if my confidently prepared plan of attack failed miserably, further contemplation during the commute of the agonies of self-flagellation I have already endured at work does nothing other than to sour my mood even more than the failures themselves did. So, I have learned to use the trip home as a time to flip my Priorities Switch from “work” to “home” and to forget as much as I can the events of the work day.

I am reasonably successful at flipping this switch and the length of my commute assists significantly. I listen to music on the way home. In my humble opinion, whoever invented the 6 CD car player should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for he or she has done more to settle stress and help commuters avoid road rage than any other single thing I can imagine. Imagine the battalions of lives saved as a consequence! I can listen to most of a CD during a typical evening commute, and if the artistry is excellent and the music fine, I am mostly soothed by the time I arrive home. Helen has good reason not to object to the piles of CDs I seem to order each month, since they, in combination with the road, hold the power of reverse-transmogrification (see Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbs for graphic examples of transmogrification (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01P8ofUf-Zk) – and then simply use your imagination as to how it might work on me in reverse – or, better yet, ask Calvin).

As soon as it is feasible to do so on my way home, I exit the freeway and take the most rural back road available to me at that location. Depending upon my chosen commuting route (North and then East, or East and then Northeast), the back roads are either mostly suburban or truly rural. In either event, these back roads serve my transformational needs far better than the stress induced by the inevitable freeway lane-changer seeking to gain his or her average three car-length advantage achieved over the duration and length of my commute. This is not to say that there aren’t crazies driving the back roads, but their nuttiness is much more bearable when the roads are lined with trees, meadows, and farms rather than break-down lanes, stalled vehicles, and trash.

My favorite route home goes through a conservation zone graciously donated to the County by a local family. This is a truly rural experience, heightened by the presence of cows, second-growth timber, and meadows for a distance of approximately three miles. It even includes a trail head with parking. On sunny days such as we currently enjoy, those portions of the passage that lie through forest bring to life the poetical phrase “sun-dappled”, as selected leaves and pine needles are dramatically highlighted by such of the sunlight that finds its way to road level through the obscuring forest crown. On windy summer days, the leaves of deciduous trees flip upward to reveal their shy, summer-silver undersides. Depending upon whether I am passing through forested or meadowed portions of the dell, in rainy weather the condition of the road varies from thoroughly wetted pavement on which my tires hiss in time to the rainfall’s percussion, to crazy-quilted, wet-and-dry stretches with variable designs dependent for form and content upon the intensity of the rainfall and the relative density of the immediate overhead cover.

Driving through the conservation zone is as much a passage through time as through place. While there, I can imagine myself in any guise or period. I can just as easily be Robin Hood as Daniel Boone, a passenger in a covered wagon as one in a Model T or a Lexus, or a traveler in first growth, eastern forests in company with Chingachgook and his son Uncas as a hiker starting his or her day hike from the dell’s trailhead. For the dell is a place of transformational power, one of those sacred places gracing the planet where sky and earth meet in such a way as to produce magical properties capable of freeing and firing the human imagination. These are wide spots in the rivers of mysticism so brilliantly described by Bruce Chatwin in The Songlines.

There is another such magical place immediately north of our farm which I love to drive through on weekends, a place that transforms the immensities of a Northwest forest into the cloistered comfort of a tree-lined New England country lane. Unfortunately, this stretch of road does not lie on my usual route home from work, although there is a completely out-of-the-way detour that will bring me to it on those days when its call is utterly irresistible; a detour that has some plausibility as an excuse offering to Helen in the event of lateness home in the face of exceptionally bad traffic or significant road construction. I use it at least twice a year for commuting, but manage to go through it far more often on weekend adventures with Helen. She is as fond of this stretch of road as I am and I believe she understands its magical properties as well as I do.

It seems to me that there is something transformational in every road, and I have concluded that the amount of magic each road possesses is inversely proportional to the amount of money and energy spent by man to create it. A freeway may be a marvel of engineering, but it is possessed of the barest minimum of magic necessary to allow us to call it a road. A humble path through deep forest worn into existence by nothing more than the repeated passages of man and other animals over eons contains far more magic than the machine-formed freeway ever will. Graveled country roads are my true mƩtier, for they possess just enough form to evidence their man-made aspect yet are simple enough to wield considerable magic as they wend through otherwise undeveloped land to their inevitable destination.

The magic of a road lies both in the mysteries of the land it serves and the destination it implies. No road is complete without both. The myriad possible combinations of land and destination make every road unique, even if its particular uniqueness is but a variation on a theme. Every road is worth traveling, for it offers the promise of discovery and discovery is what transforms us. And as many times as I have traveled our own particular country graveled road leading to the farm, the discoveries it has promised are not yet complete. For who knows what news, good or ill, I may find upon arriving home on any given evening or whether flocks of starlings or solitary robins will grace that day’s passage.

I love roads because they offer us the power of choice, but once we have chosen (and as long as we do not stray) a road defines our destination because all roads lead to, and end at, some particular place. And for this often weary commuter, home is a pretty damned fine destination – one for which the road prepares me afresh during each passage.

 

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Shadows On The Grass

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.

Emily Dickinson, Presentiment Is That Long Shadow On The Lawn

It is finally Summer at the farm. Ā The rains have fallen away as they do this time each year and the outside temperature has risen to a sustainably summerish level. Ā The weather predictions indicate that this pattern will hold for the foreseeable future.

Ours is a funny sort of farm. Ā It holds many animals, but none that we feed or nurture (except those that live indoors with us) for they are wild. Ā They tolerate us just as we tolerate them, for we share this land. Ā While humanity has granted me title to this farm, our presence is as transitory as theirs and none of us is truly the land’s master. Ā We interact in funny ways: the rabbits shy away from my headlights when I leave for work in the early morning hours, running frantically to and fro to avoid something that has no intention of seeking them out; the swallows dip and soar for insects in front of the tractor as I mow; the deer eat Helen’s roses whenever they can, with one eye firmly fixed on our front door for her inevitable exit foray to chase them away; the occasional coyote looks longingly toward the house from a football field length, knowing that there are tasty cats inside.

We don’t farm as such, but we do grow acres of grass that we lovingly tend. The grass shares the farm with the small forest on the back of our property and the even smaller marsh in the front corner. We have a small ecosystem of the type of life which is indigenous to Humptulips County: firs, pines and deciduous trees of several varieties; rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, frogs, opossums, snakes, deer, the occasional elk, and insects galore; honeysuckle, roses, rhododendrons, azaleas, snowdrops, trillium, crocuses, and annuals of every kind imported to the land by Helen; cats, love birds and two humans; and grass everywhere.

But still I think of our home as a farm. Ā We have had goats and a horse. Ā Our neighbors once raised alpaca in our pasture. Ā In the next few weeks another neighbor will use our barn and pasture to stable their horses while the construction crew lays a new gas pipeline through their pastures. Ā When I retire, I dream that might eventually raise chickens or goats. Ā The possibilities are endless in dreams, and only time will prove whether I have the grit, energy and inspiration to do so or not.

But whatever else we don’t do in the way of farming, we do raise and nurture our grass. Ā Our fields are our defining glory. Ā Some homes are graced with an extensive view, and some wit a domestic yard or garden. Ā We are graced with open fields, green most of the year and sere and dun in the late Summer to come. Ā Our fields give our home its presence and set it apart.

The fields are green now and recently closely mown. Ā And as we came back from dinner out last evening, I noticed my favorite annual tradition has returned: the ever-lengthening evening shadows with which we share the twilight hours.

These shadows are, of course, here year-round, but there is something promising in the Summer shadows that isn’t present at other times of the year. Ā Summer shadows are full of a promise of tomorrow while reminding us of the past, for they are sempiternally mystic as to meaning. Ā They hold much meaning, meaning of the kind that needs to be carefully considered from the vantage point of a wooden rocker on a covered porch, warm tea held carefully in your lap. Ā And the meaning they imparted to me last night may well not be the meaning they will impart tonight, for the only focus in this mix is a single wooden rocker nestled on our front porch, and all the shadows – and even the heavens – revolve around that rocker as the shadows offer their meanings through dream.

This is not to suggest that the rocker or, indeed, our farm is a pre-Copernican center of the known universe; it is simply to suggest that, for me, our farm is the source of dreams that possess substance and reality. From here, I can imagine and if I can imagine, I can act. And I dream best with the aid of shadows that lengthen in the twilight as they knit themselves into night.

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Along the Spume Line

We have been at the beach, walking the long, broad beaches near the delta of the Humptulips River. This is the heart of Humptulips County. The forest and sea are in a perpetual ecological standoff here, each one ending so that the other can begin; each one increasingly resplendent and dominant the farther from the other it gets.

The beaches are the demarcation zone, and the ever-shifting spume line the closest to an actual boundary one can find between these two vastly different worlds. When I am on a beach, I always walk the spume line to see what the ocean has tossed aside. I always walk the spume line with my father and we look for ambergris. When I was young and walking a beach with him in reality, he told me about ambergris and how he hoped to find it one day. For him it represented treasure, unexpected riches to be found along the shoreline and cast into his path by chance and the waves.

While I didnā€™t find any ambergris today, I did find my fatherā€™s spirit as I always seem to do during these now physically solitary treasure hunts. I will look again for ambergris tomorrow morning while Helen hunts for shells and rocks. I donā€™t really care whether I find any as long as I can continue to search for it occasionally, for it is along the spume line that my father is the closest he can be to me. The spume line is the line of demarcation between life and death: here is where the sea casts aside offerings of its dead so that shore birds may sustain life and here is where my fatherā€™s spirit is best able to nurture mine; here is where the wall between life and death is most nearly permeable.

In the commingled sounds of wind and surf I can hear my father sing his stories anew. It is not so much that I hear his stories verbatim as he once told them to me, but the sense of wonder and expectation they cast over a young child those many years ago is instantly rekindled near the surf – especially on these beaches near the location of my father’s and mother’s childhood. It was here I felt closest to him in life, and it is here I am nearest to him as he sleeps.

A portion of my morning’s walk was with Peter. I didnā€™t mention ambergris to him today, but I am certain I have done so in the past. I hope that he, too, spared a few moments searching for ambergris, but I didnā€™t ask. As we walked together, we did share recollections of playing pirates and of Star Wars reenactments along this same shore. Perhaps within those recollections was just the merest glimmer of ambergris.

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Nothing in Particular and Everything Good: The Art of Conversation

“Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.”

Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist

“After the exercises which the health of the body requires, and which have themselves a natural tendency to actuate and invigorate the mind, the most eligible amusement of a rational being seems to be that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation; where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.”

Samuel Johnson

The loss of two of my friends caused me to remember conversations with both of them over wide-ranging topics. Conversations with both men resembled pachinko games: the conversations could be said to have started and ended, but nothing in the middle could have been predicted nor could it have been adequately described after the fact. They began with the basics of greeting and “ended” somewhere amid a saturation of ideas and commentary due to lack of additional time to explore whatever subject may then have been uppermost.

In the blaze of classmate emails following my high school friend’s death, I was the recipient of an email blast from a woman I haven’t heard from in many years. In responding to her email, I found myself mentioning my conversations with our mutual friend and concluding that they were about nothing in particular and everything good. I am not certain where this phrase came from as it simply appeared on the screen as I ended my email. I know the source wasn’t Oscar Wilde even if the above quotation might suggest otherwise, for I hadn’t read the piece from which it is taken before this morning. Since the piece seems a particularly pedantic tirade about the place of criticism in art, I doubt I will ever read it in full. The quotation itself seems lost within the forest of pedantry and comes across almost as a throwaway line. Nevertheless, I find it startlingly accurate.

The best conversations can definitively be said to start and this may well be the only concrete thing about them that can be written down. Conversation starters are usually banal and not things of intelligence or wit. Good conversation starts with the sharing of some idea or recollection. The concepts involved need not be immense in scope, they just need to be sufficiently catalytic to prime the pump of imagination and allow a conversational thread to begin moving in some direction. And any direction at all will certainly do, since the best conversations are serpentine, meandering about like aged rivers through fertile valley soils.

What can be said of a good conversation beyond that it started and that it ended when the participants ran out of time to interact? If, in a fit of post-conversational reverie, I were to try to chart a satisfying conversation, the resulting diagram would likely seem pointless and absurd. For conversations aren’t about making a point; conversations are all about meaningful interaction. Conversation is one of the most difficult things for writers or playwrights to portray for precisely this reason, for their goal is to move a story from point A to point B and a good conversation is inherently non-linear.

It is easier to describe the attributes of a good conversation than to chart its course. Good conversations demand healthy doses of intelligence, wit, humor, laughter, thoughtful discourse, mutual respect, interesting subject matters, and willingly engaged partners. If any of the foregoing is lacking, conversation will suffer accordingly and lean, on the one hand, toward an egotistically delivered manifesto from on high or, on the other hand, toward desultory verbal farrago of little or no substance. Without intelligence, for example, the quicksilver links between disparate conversational subject matters cannot be achieved. For conversation to be anointed with the highest appellation of “sparkling”, both thoughtful discourse and humor and wit must be part of the mix: without thoughtful discourse mere silliness ensues and basic conversation is never achieved, and humor and wit are the clear water needed to rinse away the soap scum left behind after bouts of deep, thoughtful discourse have concluded.

In short, good conversation is akin to homemade soup: satisfying, but impossible to replicate with exactness from one lot to the next. Each may be similarly fine, yet each is unique in content and sequence. And when time runs out and the conversation must end, good ones are made known by the rueful sighs of regret exchanged by guests as they depart for home.

And with these reflections amid fine memories, I believe I can finally say goodbye.

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A Sense of Loss

This has been a bad week from the standpoint of losing friends. Two friends of roughly similar age have died from heart related illnesses, one from my high school years and one whom I met as a fully grown adult. Neither death is startling, since both men suffered from heart disease for significant periods of time. In fact, one of them had a pacemaker and was in the hospital dealing with the effect of the device’s failure when he died.

I can, through hindsight, recognize some inevitability in their early deaths. Perhaps I should have recognized that inevitability sooner, for it is the missed opportunities at the intersections of our lives that troubles me the most. Ten days ago the friend with the pacemaker left me a voice mail suggesting that we hadn’t spoken for a while and he would love to catch up. As I was in the middle of a project, I decided to wait to call him back until a more auspicious moment – a moment that now will never come.

As to my other friend, we became reacquainted when a mutual friend came to town a couple of years ago and we held a mini-reunion of six high school friends. He called me a few weeks later and suggested a one-on-one lunch at a neighborhood sort-of-dive which I pass each night on my way home. It was the first of too few, and in each we spoke of many topics of mutual interest wholly unrelated to our high school experiences. Until I learned of his death, I would often look for his truck in the dive’s parking lot to determine if he might be in residence as part of my nightly ritual. Of late, I had been thinking it was time to arrange another lunch date, a luncheon that will now remain forever aspirational.

Of course, there is nothing new to the notion that the living regret not having had one more chance to speak with someone recently dead, but I have to admit that the digital age has taken that regret to new levels. For I can still play the voice mail my pacemakered friend left me and listen to his voice suggesting it is time to catch up. For as long as I choose to keep that voice mail on my computer, I will be reminded of the stutter step that caused me to miss our final chance for a connection.

In truth, however, the real regret I feel about their deaths is not over missed opportunities for one last communication with one another. For if I had enjoyed a “last” communication with either, there would have been yet another potential conversation that wouldn’t have occurred, for the last possible chance in any sequence depends not upon my volition but upon the termination of the potentialities that allowed the sequence to happen.

My regret is deeper.

I have learned over the years that experiences, reading, and friends and acquaintances have added the most content to my life. Experience comes in many forms (travel, life-critical times, schooling, work related opportunities, birth and death, and the like) and is often shared, but in each instance it has been my personal interaction with the scope and depth of the experience that has defined its personal value and meaning. And reading is inherently solitary, even if it can take me far beyond my daily world to places not even of this universe.

Friends and acquaintances have added the most intimate and deepest dimensions to my life. They accomplished this through conversations held at all hours of the day or night and by means of shared dreams, and the loss of even one friend or acquaintance, however major or minor he or she might have been in the panoply of my friendships, means that my ability to converse and dream has been diminished in direct proportion to his or her involvement in my life. And each such loss, regardless of its seeming importance or relevance, is, quite simply, an impoverishment of the riches I previously enjoyed.

While I recognize the note of selfishness this last statement seemingly implies, I have to believe that I, in turn, added some measurable dimension to each of their lives. My faith in this belief lies in the continued existence of a certain down-at-heels neighborhood dive and a voice mail reaching out for one more chance to share recorded before the sequential possibilities had fully run their course.

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Repartee, Badinage, Persiflage, Raillery and Guff

In the 1920s, Dorothy Parker was establishing a reputation as a witty woman with a sharp tongue (the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell called her, “My pretty, pretty cobra”). At the same time, Clare Booth Luce was becoming a respected journalist and well-known playwright. While both women were highly talented, their numerous political, philosophical, and personal differences resulted in a strained relationship. One day, Parker was about to step through a doorway when she came face-to-face with Luce. As the story goes, Mrs. Luce stepped aside, extended the palm of her hand, and said coyly, “Age before beauty.” Parker glided through the door, saying ever-so-sweetly: “Pearls before swine.”

Dr. Mardy.com

In my previous post I used the words “guff” and “sass” and was challenged over the use of the word “guff” by my friend, Bob Weiss. He took the position that I was not known for taking guff from anyone and wondered why I might have put up with it. He then suggested that a blog piece on the term “guff” might be in order.

Bob’s challenge made me consider the joy of words and their various usages. In my initial email response to Bob, I asserted a difference between “friendly” and “unfriendly” guff, but the more I thought about his question the more I realized that my response was, at best, rather weak. And so it was that I remembered that English is an extremely rich language and I had forgotten some other terms that might well have been more appropriate to describe the matters in my post. So this is an attempt to rise to Bob’s challenge.

In truth, I enjoy raillery with my racquetball comrades while at rest between matches, badinage in the club lounge following a game while drinking ice water, and repartee any time of the day. And if I engage in persiflage with my racquetball comrades and casual listeners fail to understand the respect and humor inherent in the exchange, can that be our fault or the fault of the eavesdropper?

Guff is defined alternatively as either nonsense or verbal abuse. It is one of those words that doesn’t possess much shaded meaning. By way of contrast to prove the point, these cousins of guff are defined as follows: persiflage is frivolous bantering talk; raillery is good natured ridicule; and badinage is playful repartee. All of these terms – including some types of guff – are forms of repartee, which, itself, is defined in this context as “a succession or interchange of clever retorts.” Of course, we could use the American term “joshing” to describe such an interchange, but, as is so often the case, the French carry the day when it comes to the musicality of terminology.

The use of any of these forms of verbal exchange demands that the speaker respect the recipient, if for no other reason than the wit involved requires mental acuity on the part of both. After all, there is no joy in trading a bon mot with a dunce, since the dunce will not understand and likely take offense. If repartee is being employed, a dunce will likely be incapable of comprehending the speaker’s cleverness and wit and there will likely not be any “exchange” at all, but rather a one-sided verbal harrying which, at a minimum, will prove the speaker boorish or, at the worst, render the speaker a verbal bully. If a speaker were to take pleasure in such a one-sided put down, that would not constitute repartee in the sense that I understand of the term.

And, while some commentary used in repartee might emphasize the recipient’s personal traits or characteristics as part of the exchange, in true repartee nothing is intended to be hurtful or harmful. Of course, any form of personalized repartee can inadvertently hurt another and the more successful practitioners of these conversational forms are sensitive to this possibility. A good practitioner of the form realizes immediately when he has overstepped typically unstated boundaries and immediately apologizes. For his intent is to amuse, not to harm. The amusement he seeks to purvey is for the mutual benefit of speaker and listener, and is not intended as savagery of another.

It is undoubtedly true that these forms of conversation are more masculine than feminine and are most often conducted in the heart of a male locker room. Of course, not being a denizen of female locker rooms, I cannot be absolutely positive that I am right about this, but the best evidence for my belief is found in the oft upturned eyebrows or wrinkled noses of female companions when males of the species begin the typical routines associated with repartee. While I have known some preeminent female practitioners of repartee, to the extent that repartee provokes images wrestling take-down holds or of Tarzan pounding his breast while engaging in a most non-Western style of yodeling, it will continue to be a predominantly male endeavor as it is inherently aggressive to some degree.

The key to pleasurable repartee is a profound respect for fellow participants in the exchange. It is this respect that separates repartee and sass, the other word I used in the previous post. I note that Bob did not challenge my use of the word “sass” in describing the roots of my dislike of the young lady at the nearby coffee shop. As I review the definition of that word, I find that it embodies a sense of impudence, impertinence and cheek. All of these words suggest that the purveyor of “sass” lacks respect for the person to whom his or her comments are directed. It is this inherent lack of respect that eliminates sass as a form of repartee.

And so my response to Bob should have been that there is, on the one hand, respectful “guff” in the form of repartee among friends, colleagues and good companions that is an expression of a kind of “can-you-top this” fun and there are, on the other, disrespectful put downs and sass offered by the mean-spirited to others for reasons that often say far more about the speaker than the recipient, and never the twain shall meet for there are radically divergent purposes for their employment. When the goal is to entertain oneself and others by offering the sort of intellectual challenge one is delighted to lose by means of a surpassing quip, there is pleasure for one and all; when the goal is to merely put someone else down in hope of proving one’s own superiority, there is no joy for either the speaker or the recipient, whether in Muddville or in Seattle.

There is, of course, as there is in all things a risk of failure when practicing any form of repartee. And, because the essence of successful repartee is respect, when I fail at the game I am often moved to apology as I contemplate the effects of my failure. When I inadvertently cross the line to the point of boorishness, it is usually harder upon me than the person I may have offended. There is nothing worse than expressing something other than respect when only respect was intended.

Bob and I have certainly shared our quota of repartee over the years to our mutual delight. So I must say to Bob that any guff I ever sent your way was simply failed, witless, ineffective repartee that was, nevertheless, well-intentioned. And I take it as a given that the reverse is also true, for you are correct in your assumption that I don’t take guff from anyone.

 

 

 

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