Out Damned Winter! Begone!

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

Just when residents of Humptulips County most fervently wish it to end, Winter keeps punching back and refusing to quit the ring. Contrary to our usual wish to cheer on someone whose luck, time or energy is running out but who still endeavors to fight the good fight against long odds, we are not cheering for Winter. We want it to lose, and lose quickly. We want it to give up the ghost and leave us alone – until, of course, later in the year when it will once again suit us anew.

But, it still keeps on punching despite our desires.

By way of example, Helen called me at work early yesterday afternoon to tell me that thick snow was falling at the house and sticking on the tarmac. Since this information was consistent with the previous evening’s weather forecast which indicated as much as 3 inches of snow could fall in our area, I wasn’t surprised or particularly concerned but did decide to go home to avoid the unnecessarily lengthy commute that usually happens out our way in snowfalls of such magnitude. And at a distance of some 15 miles from the office, I did, indeed, come to heavily falling snow which continued for the remainder of my 30 mile commute. Then, some two hours after I arrived home, the snow suddenly quit, the sun came out, and we enjoyed a few hours of sunshine. The snow storm apparently got tired of using the punching bag and simply lay down to rest.

But its fight was not gone and in the pre-dawn hour of my departure from the house this morning it was again snowing heavily. While it appeared to be of the kind of snowfall that would not stick around much later than sunrise, it was persistent nonetheless and I drove through snow flurries for most of my morning commute.

This morning’s snow flakes no longer seemed as beautiful and moving as those first flakes of last December. This is undoubtedly due to my exhaustion with Winter and my impatience for Spring’s arrival, an impatience fueled by a brief Spring-like blast of warmth over the weekend which incited bursts of outdoor activity by many Humptulips County residents seen in their gardens, even though the temperature it achieved would seem wintry in May.

A more important ingredient than warm air also fuels my impatience: the appearance of the year’s first buds and flowers. The crocuses that reside under the trees in our small orchard are up and braving the snow’s curse. The weathered green Winter grass of our field is now sprinkled with a panoply of colors. Helen long ago planted assorted crocus bulbs throughout the grass in the orchard and the plants then spread further on their own. The result is a completely undisciplined, disordered, uncontrolled riot of color shot through Winter’s canvas of sickly green. While I could not actually see the crocuses in this morning’s moonless dark, I could – and I did – imagine them peeking shyly through the thin blanket of remaining snow, sighing at the sight of new snow fall and sharing my sense of impatience by flouting their colors in the face of Winter in that certain mischievous way that only a crocus or a snowdrop can effect.

And across from our kitchen window is a pink rhododendron trying to bud. It has been in a state of constant, incipient tumescence for nearly an entire week. Helen advises that this particular rhododendron tries mightily to flower early every year, but often fails when its buds succumb to a final hard Winter freeze. It may well suffer the same fate this year, but over the weekend its buds flirted formally with us by offering a wholesome suggestion of color to come, yielding a pleasure similar to that engendered by the merest glimpse of a shapely ankle from underneath a long Victorian skirt.

Between the crocuses, the rhododendron and the as-yet-unseen snowdrops that are no doubt up but lurking carefully within their usual nooks and crannies, it is apparent that Spring is rising slowly from Winter’s miasma and that Winter has very little fight left. But Winter fights on, even though the victor is no longer in doubt and even though we humans wish it to depart, proving, once again, that our power over nature is severely limited.

Meanwhile, we who wait impatiently play the “What will we have today” game of weather roulette. The weatherman seems as confused as we are, for at this time of year Winter and Spring can seemingly change places numerous times in the course of a single day. It is most frustrating for those of us awaiting longer, sunny days and more color – those of us weary of Winter’s perennial half-light and muted tones.

If there were sufficient flowers to spare at this moment, I would pull off the petals of a daisy wondering whether “Spring loves me” or “Spring loves me not”. To do so in this seasonal between, however, would be an act of criminal insensitivity, since such nascent color as can be seen serves primarily as a memorial to Winter’s death throes rather than as a herald to Spring.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Out Damned Winter! Begone!

Welcome to March

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

Yesterday it snowed at our farm. While the snow didn’t stick and was no longer in evidence by evening, the fact of its occurrence served as a reminder that Winter is still with us, officially and otherwise.

I take issue with T. S. Eliot. I am of the opinion that February, not April, is the cruelest month. So, I was joyous when I awoke this morning, the first day following February’s demise, the first day of March. For February is the year’s most plodding month: a month in which we endure each day as it comes with resignation and a sigh, taking solace in the knowledge that when that day ends we are just that much closer to March. February is a month measured in inches, not miles. February is a month in which we are fully conscious of Zeno’s Paradox, through constant contemplation of how many hours and minutes must pass before we finally achieve half of the remaining distance to month’s end.

March, however, is a new beginning. While March always starts in Winter, it inevitably ends in Spring. March is the fulcrum from which Winter’s spare bleakness is converted to the joyful riot of Spring. March is the month when icy melt waters from formerly pristine blankets of snow complete a metamorphoses into the warming stuff of life, converting mud and dirt to blossom and color along the way.

And when the first day of March finally arrives, as it did this morning, it always brings hope – even though today’s cold, rainy weather resembles nothing so much as that which occurred yesterday, the last day of February. For our hope lies in the date, not in the sky.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on Welcome to March

Little Worlds

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

“But from here to the garden gate Where the sweet wild roses wait It’s a little world.” Gretchen Peters, Little World, from the album Hello Cruel World

“The little world of Don Camillo is to be found somewhere in the valley of the Po River. It is almost any village on that stretch of plain in Northern Italy. There, between the Po and the Apennines, the climate is always the same. The landscape never changes and, in a country like this, you can stop along any road for a moment and look at a farmhouse sitting in the midst of maize and hemp – and immediately a story is born.

Why do I tell you this instead of getting on with my story? Because I want you to understand that in the Little World, between the river and the mountains, many things can happen that cannot happen anywhere else. Here, the deep, eternal breathing of the river freshens the air, for both the living and the dead, and even the dogs, have souls.”

Giovanni Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo

I have been long fascinated by the power of well written fiction to transport me to some place I have never been. In analyzing this emotive power, I realize that not only do the words have to captivate, but so does the story. Too many words or too poorly written text combined with a great storyline do not suffice to trigger the effect; sparely written, fine texts combined with a crummy story line don’t either. Both are needed and, even when they coalesce, the resulting fiction must appeal to the particular idiosyncrasies of the individual reader for the reader to be transported.

 For me, Giovanni Guareschi is a storyteller who combines good writing with a charming story line. His books about Don Camillo, a Roman Catholic priest, and Peppone, the communist mayor of his village, are not only funny and charming, but replete with wisdom and a sense of basic human decency and morality. While reading these books I am forced to think through my laughter to contemplate the meaning of the basic nub of humanity that is the charming essence of any particular story.

Alas, the Don Camillo books – and there were several published in the decades of the Fifties and the Sixties – are out of print. They reappear periodically in paperback, but are no longer fashionable. There was a brief reappearance on the heels of a regrettable television series portraying the Little World, but if you go to find them now you will be hard pressed to do so. I suggest used book stores where they might be found if only one exercises the necessary sort of patience that arises from the love of well-crafted things. Fortunately, my library contains a complete run of first editions of all of Mr. Guareschi’s books and all I have to do is go upstairs, find the right shelf, and hunt down the right book, as I did last night while thinking about writing this piece.

Another charming author who has suffered the same fate as Mr. Guareschi is Robert Nathan – not Robert Stuart Nathan, the author of several insufferable thrillers, but Robert Nathan, the Harvard educated author of some 90 novels who, when he died, was married to the actress Anna Lee, the movie Bronwyn of How Green Was My Valley. Mr. Nathan specialized in morality tales. I have seen websites that categorize his work as speculative fiction, a form of fantasy. To so categorize him is to do him a serious injustice, especially as much of the writing in this genre is so unbelievably poor. Most of Mr. Nathan’s works are literary morality plays with a few angels or ghosts tossed in to cause the reader to arrive at the desired point of understanding.

Like any of the stories in the various canons of The Little World of Don Camillo, each of Nathan’s novels can be read in a single sitting. They are candy for the eye, reading quickly and smoothly because of the spare prose and a succinct tale – the kind of story that was written and edited many times prior to publication to achieve the perfection of simplicity. Well satisfied when finished reading, I put each one down at the end of a long day, sigh softly, and turn over in my bed to find sleep. Upon rising the next morning, I inevitably ask myself some combination of “what did he say?” or “how did he get to that conclusion?” and reach again for the book to find a particular well-turned phrase I remember or to revisit the quirk in the story line that led to an unexpected moral. I often re-read whole chapters and, occasionally the entire book, in doing so. Finally, I have to shake my head over the realization that Mr. Nathan, once again, made me think past the charm and the simple pleasantness of his tale to contemplate much deeper matters involving love, death, morality, wonder, and human nature.

The principal difference between Mr. Guareschi and Mr. Nathan is the kind of charm each brings to his work. Mr. Guareschi is darkly humorous, laughing equally at his own foibles or those of others. His work can always bring about a grin and, on occasion, a belly laugh. Mr. Nathan is replete with gentle, charming characters not wholly centered in mundane worldliness; nondescript, solemnly eccentric folks who exist in uniquely weird and offbeat worlds unknown and upsetting to their fictional neighbors, but which enchant the reader. I always wonder whether Nathan’s seemingly oddball characters aren’t really the ones who see the world correctly; they certainly have far more fun than the rest of us.

Fun is the other element that brings these two authors together in my mind. There are few other authors who can allow me to laugh and feel warm and fuzzy while simultaneously causing me to think deeper thoughts, thoughts about the meaning of morality and its philosophical underpinnings.

Little worlds also exist in song. The best songwriters create them seemingly effortlessly. In her song Five Minutes from her album Hello Cruel World, Gretchen Peters manages to create a complete, comprehensible world of a single mother who has lived by compulsion rather than reason and never really understood love. The pathos of her existence is created in 6 stanzas, and charmingly so despite the bleak message conveyed by the content of the material. The 5 minutes of the title are spent smoking a cigarette behind the diner where the narrator works as a waitress, and the entire tableau of a life emerges in the lyrics of a song that lasts exactly as long as its title suggests.

“Between the workin’ and the livin’ and the ghosts that haunt my dreams I’ve got five minutes and I’m gonna smoke this cigarette”

For those of you unfamiliar with the American Northwest, you won’t find Humptulips County on any map other than my own internal, mental map. Humptulips County exists because of my fascination with these – and countless other – little worlds. Authors like Guareschi and Nathan and composers like Peters are among the headwaters of inspiration for my vision of Humptulips County. Other sources of inspiration include:

  • E. B. White’s canny, witty and sensitive observations of life on his Maine farm and human activity in general.
  • The quirky, slightly off-true, whimsical humor of James Thurber.
  •  The convoluted, heavy-going brilliance of William Faulkner which is worth all of the effort reading his material for comprehension entails, since his imagery is fantastic.
  •  The America of John Steinbeck, with his particular focus on things Californian.
  •  The seemingly never-ending cornucopia of tales created and sung by singer-composers of the likes of Richard Thompson, Rodney Crowell, or John Prine.
  •  The wondrous and poetic mysticism of songwriters such as Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen.
  •  The inspirational evocations of regional blessings and attributes by writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Walter van Tilburg Clark or Wallace Stegner.
  •  The constant investigation of literary form undertaken by John Barth.
  • The woodblock art of Barry Moser which has served to illustrate many classics such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Dracula, The Wizard of Oz, A River Runs Through It, and Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books.
  • The inspirational poetry of Dylan Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot and others of a generation of poets who consistently spoke of things bigger than miniscule human events.

And the list could go on for many more pages. How could it have omitted the likes of Mark Twain or Ray Bradbury? But I must quit here for now. Rest assured that I still enjoy the privilege of working through the body of work of those listed above as well as that of countless others, known and as yet unknown, and that I will be at this, my true life’s work, for as long as I am able.

These Humptulips County pieces may not match the charm of the work of those on this list and may lack their ability to achieve seeming simple, but otherwise multilayered, tales through sparely refined language and the charm of a fine story line, but Humptulips County is my little world. It is a place where I can live my fantasy to be a writer, and you are welcome to visit this little world, or not, as you may choose. I won’t be offended which you choose as you pause at this garden gate and consider coming inside.

From here to the garden gate
It’s just a world that we create
Just a little world
Just a little world.*

*Gretchen Peters, Little World

Posted in Humptulips County, Words and Music | Comments Off on Little Worlds

Albert and Me

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

I confess that I am a bibliophile: I collect books. All kinds of books. And I collect them in a fashion that drives many rare book dealers crazy because I buy what I want to read, thereby providing many of them with no discernible pattern against which they can market their wares since what I want to read often depends upon the moment and my mood. A few dealers – the ones with whom I deal most regularly – have figured out some of my preferences, but they are in the minority.

To be specific, I collect first editions of modern English and American fiction, but this is about as fine a point as I am willing to put upon my interests. My collection spans the gamut of literary types, from fine literature to science fiction and fantasy. If I have a personal favorite, it is probably a good mystery written by a classic mystery writer: Dashiell Hammett; Dorothy Sayers; Wilkie Collins; Raymond Chandler; Rex Stout; Margery Allingham; Agatha Christie; or Ross Macdonald. I have an almost complete Ross Macdonald collection and am still working to find the few I do not own.

The true joy of book collecting is in the hunt, not in the possession of the books themselves. There is nothing more enjoyable than stumbling, in some fashion, across a fine copy of a book that you have mentally tagged as interesting and worthy of collection. This is best done in a used or rare book store, the kind with thousands of volumes that call to me upon entry. Once I have gained entry, I will spend the next hour or so puttering around the shelves that contain fiction of one variety or another to see what there is to be found. It doesn’t really matter if I find anything, and often I don’t. Having a considerable number of books already in my home, I really don’t need any more since my present To Read List already may have more volumes than I have minutes left for reading, so not finding a book in such a store is almost as good as finding one.

But finding a book you want to read and keep is the highest joy. Many years ago, I found a signed, limited edition of Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley. When published during the author’s life time, limited editions are often signed by the author, as this one was. But it also contains a further handwritten dedication by Llewellyn, done in a flowing fountain pen script, to members of his publisher’s staff discussing his pleasure in their having introduced him to the Essex Street ham, tongue, cheese, brown bread and chocolate lunch. Imagine my joy: not only had I found one of only two hundred copies of this particular edition of the book, but I also received the gift of many hours of speculation over what the possible enticement of that particular combination of foods might be. I still have no good answer to this enigma and if I am ever in London (since that is where I suppose Essex Street to be) and can find an establishment serving such fare, I swear I will give it a try. Meanwhile, the book rests within my library and is often to hand, since I delight in reading the dedication to friends and fellow bibliophiles.

In this age, buying books on line is also more than possible. I suspect millions of books are for sale on line on any given day, and I further suspect that perhaps at least as many as one in every ten thousand on line sellers has some idea of what it takes to be a good book dealer. In other words, this is not a favorite venue of mine for seeking books, but it is not one I overlook, either. I have learned that the Internet is an acceptable place to purchase rare books if you know and trust a particular dealer, but not otherwise. It only took one cheat to convince me to reserve my on line efforts for those whom I know, and he (for it was a he) only cost me $10.00.

Even though I engage in on line buying, it isn’t as fun as holding a rare book in your hands and being able to observe and feel its qualities first hand. Several years ago, a favorite San Francisco rare book dealer once gave me the privilege of holding a first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a book I could not afford then and still cannot afford now. I cherish that moment in my memories fo book hunting, even though I am never likely to own a first edition this particular book without first winning a very large lottery.

Still, buying on line can be fun as well. For example, I recently purchased three books during a live, on line auction from PBA Galleries, a San Francisco book auction house whom I trust. All three editions were signed by their authors. One was a spur of the moment purchase that I couldn’t pass up when the book came up for sale and I realized that it was an obscure volume by George Bernard Shaw (The Political Madness in America and Nearer Home) dedicated to a collector in his own hand at Ayot Saint Lawrence, his home in England. The title and the fact of this being an election year means it is a “must read” before November. The anticipation of enjoying Shaw’s acerbic, pointed wit directed toward American politics during a Presidential election year was simply too much to pass up.

The other two were a volume of science fiction (Children of Dune, signed by its author Frank Herbert) and a volume of comics (Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo, signed by Walt Kelly). Now I am a genuine Dune fan and have several of the volumes in the series in first or signed editions, but, as big a fan as I am, nothing compares to my joy in Pogo and his friends. I do not yet have a complete run of the volumes published during Walt Kelly’s life (although I am so close), so every addition to my collection is a blessing. And this is where on line purchasing of rare books (yes, the Pogo books are considered rare by many, especially as most of them are cheaply made paperbacks and finding them in good condition is difficult) has an advantage – for I had to wait over a week to see and hold my purchase, and I received great joy coming home each evening wondering whether or not the books had yet arrived.

When this particular package did arrive, I opened the Shaw and the Herbert first, saving the Kelly – the largest of the three books by far – until last. When I opened the package, I was first struck by its condition (very good with a very good dust jacket with two small tears.), but it was when I opened the book to its facing page that I found true joy – for there, in Walt Kelly’s own hand, was a dedication to Jack (whomever he may be or have been) by Albert Alligator and Walt himself. Albert, of course, did not sign (no doubt due to not wanting to put down his ever-present cigar which I am positive he is holding out of my sight), but Walt had drawn a gorgeous profile of him, complete with bow tie.

If you are asking yourself “who is Albert Alligator or, for that matter, what’s a Pogo”, I have only envy for your ignorance. For you can easily cure your ignorance, and in that cure lie many hours of future, first-time joy. You can find copies of Walt Kelly’s creatures in books at your local used book stores and some new bookstores yet today, several years after Walt’s death. And if you are in a hurry to begin your cure, you can even find Walt’s creations on line. I strongly suspect that you are already aware of Walt’s best known quotation, which is: “We have met the enemy and he is us”, a line still quoted in many contexts and usually attributed to Pogo Possum himself, but I have even seen a strip where it was uttered by Albert.

So today my library is far more complete than it was, for then it lacked a portrait of Albert and now it has one. I am looking at Albert as I type, and I find that he brings a smile to my face and joy to my heart as I anticipate re-reading many of the strips in this volume. He is a reminder of so many happy hours spent in a long ago childhood reading the Pogo strips when they were first new and Walt was still alive, and having this original drawing is simply precious.

And this realization brings me to my final confession – sometimes the having is far more fun than the hunt.

Posted in Books and Stuff Like That | Comments Off on Albert and Me

A Winter Fairyland

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County was already snowbound when I woke this morning, yet the weather forecasters promise additional heavy snowfall throughout the day. Although it tries to go off at odd intervals, we have power at the farm and everything inside is warm and cozy. I am staying home from work due to not trusting other drivers to behave responsibly and having no interest at all in having to sleep in my office if I could not get home. When you have a thirty mile, one-way commute to your office and you are already snow bound, decisions of this kind are easily made.

The view from our windows over the fields and into the pines is wondrous. It is as if the farm has become a fairyland. Even though I know every hollow and hillock on the land, all of its secrets now lie buried under several inches of snow, snow which has smoothed out the land’s details and reduced the geography to an inversely-colored silhouette. It’s shape causes me to imagine sledding on our hill, but I am long past the age where I would try it on my own. If only my grandchildren were here, I might be induced to try. Given our lack of children at home and the corresponding lack of sledding equipment, we would be using cardboard if they were here and this homemade aspect would make it all the more fun. Perhaps my son, Don, can tell the girls that we went sledding in our collective imaginations, for I can certainly see and hear them even if it isn’t really happening. I hope he remembers to remind them that we had hot chocolate afterward.

All of the trees are heavy with the snow, the pines being the most altered in appearance. Pine boughs are pulled strongly downward by the weight of the snow all along our drive, and when I walked to our mailbox yesterday afternoon I took my walking stick and knocked snow off as many of them as I could so that our drive would look more normal. When I started my walk, the drive more resembled a tunnel as many of the upright boughs from pines on either side had met in its middle courtesy of their snow-pack and gravity. When I first looked down the hill where the drive first goes, it was as if a Tolkienesque secret way had appeared where there had been none before. I would have left this mysterious tunnel alone for the sake of my imagination but for the practical necessity of getting our cars out for needed supplies.

Once I get to the bottom of our hill, the drive opens up as there are pines on only one side. There the sky was that curious color of grey that promises yet more snow but cannot be adequately described – at least by me. There is a heightened sense of grayness to the color, a lighter, more active gray if that is a concept that makes any sense when discussing color. All I know is that once you understand the color, it is self-evident upon appearance and you simply know that snow is forthcoming.

The birds who winter over are in full evidence. In the intervals between snowfalls, they swoop looking for seeds and during the falls they spend a good deal of time in the inner reaches of the pines where they are more protected from the weather. In the hush that the snow brings, their wing beats are more evident as they fly and you can hear them when they land to seek food. Their claw prints are everywhere when they are out and about, but are quickly covered when the snow falls anew.

The paw prints of other animals are seen erratically. I more often find those prints in the early morning as these creatures forage in the night or in the pre-dawn light. I am not an expert on paw prints, but I study them nonetheless while guessing at which animals might have originated them. While I have always known that we share our land with a good deal of other life, the bigger, non-avian life forms are typically shy about being seen and it is only these tracks that tell me where they have been and, to some extent, when they might have been there.

And everywhere there is a palpable hush. It is as physically present as the paw prints, the birds and the snow itself are. It can almost be touched, tasted or smelled as it affects more senses than just hearing. In that hush, I imagine this land as it once was before the roads, before the houses, before the people. In that hush, the land is once again primeval, even if only momentarily. In that hush, the land is alive with possibilities. In that hush are imaginary adventures limited only by my imagination. In that hush are trolls, hobbits, wizards, sled dogs, and Jack London’s To Light a Fire.

I am safe and warm inside my library this morning, shielded by my books from whatever walks abroad and from the outside cold – although many imaginary possibilities are rendered live by the many stories contained within these walls. I will read at least one of my books throughout the day between phone calls and email, and they will allow me to imagine other, non-snow bound worlds.

Insofar as winter fairylands go, I don’t have to imagine one – I just have to look out my window or walk to the mailbox and there it will be.

 

Posted in Humptulips County | Comments Off on A Winter Fairyland

New Year’s Omens and Resolutions

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

Once again, it is New Years Eve and the early morning sky in Humptulips County is a solid rose color. I have no idea whether or not this is an omen of some kind, but will accept it for the lovely morning it has produced. The rain is gone – at least for the moment – and the prospect is for a pleasant Winter day.

Yesterday, a good friend told us by email that she had received a cancer diagnosis. As always with news of this kind, my heart jolts once or twice as I consider my own mortality in stupefied reaction. I think everyone must first process information of this nature from their own peculiar vantage point, worrying about what it might mean to them. Such a reaction is, however, inherently useless, both because it doesn’t do anyone else any good and someone else’s diagnosis has no affect whatsoever upon your own mortality. It just reminds you of it.

Nevertheless, I think such an immediate reaction is universal. People differ only in how long they spend dwelling upon such thoughts. For me, the reaction is usually only a momentary one, primarily because I am usually ashamed of thinking such thoughts in the face of someone else’s bad dream having come true.

This realization of being selfish always propels me to my next reaction: wondering just exactly what such a diagnosis might actually mean. Not being a doctor and therefore lacking the wherewithal to understand the diagnosis in a manner specific to our friend’s situation, I could only educate myself better in hope of being more supportive as matters progress. In this case, our friend identified the type of cancer and suggested that we research the information on the Internet. That is what I did next, and was vastly relieved to see that the initial diagnosis was of a type of cancer that is usually treatable without chemotherapy and isn’t usually dire. In other words, while one doesn’t want to hear bad news, if bad news it’s to be, then let it be this bad news.

At this juncture, it became clear that while there is excellent reason to assume, based upon the literature, a full recovery, I am not privy to exact information about our friend’s condition and can do no more than have faith in modern medical treatments and in the beneficence of God. It also became clear that while this was my reaction, it must also be, in a far more personal way, our friend’s reaction. For her, it must be a reaction writ truly large. At this moment, no one – neither doctor, patient, family nor friends – can see clearly through the fog of the future to know with absolute certainty how this will turn out; we can only know that the odds of a good result are strongly in her favor.

For the doctors, this diagnosis turns into hands-on assessment and treatment. Using their experience and training, they will analyze which tools must be brought into play and how best to use them, and will carry their treatment plan to completion. This is their vocation and they will begin to find their way through the fog by immediate action, treating the cancer and reacting as needed to the additional information they will acquire in doing so in the ways they believe will best suit our friend’s health.

Our friend has a hands-on job as well – keeping positive and staying as stress free as she can, notwithstanding the fact that such a diagnosis is inherently stressful. Over the years I have learned from watching others face health emergencies, that those who succeed the best at overcoming them are those with a naturally positive attitude and a strong sense of humor. Fortunately, our friend possesses both in abundance, and we know that she will bring these attributes to bear and use her mental faculties to the fullest in her personal portion of the coming fight.

And our job is to support our friend and her family in every possible way that isn’t intrusive or disrespectful of the effort required of them to stay focused upon her return to good health. This we will do the best way we know how: with lots of love and caring, with plenty of laughter and humor, and with whatever physical assistance may be requested of us. This is our New Year’s resolution.

Upon reflection, now that the day has brightened and the color has finally faded from the sky, I realize the earlier rose-colored sky was, indeed, an omen: an omen ensuring a good fight by all concerned and promising that our friend will enjoy a successful return to full health.

On such a morning as this, I have complete faith that this will prove to be true.

 

 

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on New Year’s Omens and Resolutions

Anticipations of the Season

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

It is that portion of the holiday season that I like best – the time of anticipation of getting together with family and friends and spending time with one another. For in anticipation there is only promise, and promise makes the prospects of such gatherings sparkle with the glitter of the season.

Christmas is three days away and my son, Peter, arrives tomorrow morning by plane from his current home in Eastern Washington. I will be at work awaiting his arrival by means of the airport train that will drop him off literally underneath my building. He will email me just prior to entering the downtown shuttle and I will wait for him in our building lobby, watching various doors and guessing which one he will eventually come through. The simple act of standing and waiting to see his smile and slightly disheveled hat will be one of the highlights of my season, for when he comes our ongoing, life-long conversation will resume the moment we share a welcoming hug.

On Christmas morning, I always arise first from force of habit rooted firmly in the eagerness of childhood Christmases. I strongly suspect that I will arise prior to the time that Don, Sarah, Chloe and Emma get out of their beds in Boston. However, I can no longer be absolutely certain of that since, at ages 6 and 3, Chloe and Emma have a lot of energy and excitement stored up, but I can virtually promise at least a tie. While waiting for Helen and Peter to get out of bed (which will eventually happen after a few hints from me), I will spend the early hours of the morning thinking about what Don and Sarah’s household is up to, enjoying my image of Chloe’s and Emma’s excitement at what Santa may have brought them and awaiting that time of morning when I can call them to see if my imagination is close to the mark.

While those early Christmas morning hours will include remembrances of past family gatherings, they will be dominated by my musings about how friends and family are celebrating the holiday. In some cases I will have a firm hold on what they will likely do, but in others my contemplation will be sheer guesswork. Anticipation plays a role here, too, since I will begin calling many of these folks after our own presents have finally been opened to share in their joy of the season. I look forward to these calls because they expand our personal celebration beyond the walls of our home so that our living room eventually encompasses all of Humptulips County with its far-flung, elastic borders.

New Year’s day promises further anticipation, primarily because it is our anniversary. Football games hold no real anticipation for me (except in those years when an alma mater may be playing on New Year’s day), but the day itself always holds the prospects of another year and my personal ruminations upon the past and the future. In our portion of Humptulips County, New Year’s day often begins under an overcast sky adorned with blue and rose tinted clouds, and somehow these pastel infusions into an otherwise gray sky always seem to hold mysterious promises for us and our marriage.

This New Year’s day we are having brunch with our good friends Tom and Carrie as guests in their home. I am looking forward to the art of gentle conversation that often results when residents of Humptulips County find themselves blessed by living under the sort of skies most often found only in wintry landscapes by Claude Monet, conversations which will most likely range forward and backward in time in keeping with the day’s theme.

And so it is that this moment which precedes the actual principal celebrations of the season represents one of my favorite times of the season – and the year. All of these events have yet to occur, yet reside factually pristine within my imagination. I trust that they will unfold in keeping with my imaginings, imaginings which cannot be too far wrong since they are fueled by so many memories of past holiday seasons and swaddled in the comfort of family and friends.

Posted in Humptulips County, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on Anticipations of the Season

Smelling the Roses

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

Off A Side Road Near Staunton

Some nothing afternoon, no one anywhere,
an early autumn stillness in the air,
the kind of empty day you fill by taking in
the full size of the valley and its layers leading
slowly to the Blue Ridge, the quality of country,
if you stand here long enough, you could stay
for, step into, the way a landscape, even on a wall,
pulls you in, one field at a time, pasture and fall
meadow, high above the harvest, perfect to the tree line, then spirit clouds and intermittent
sunlit smoky rain riding the tops of the mountains,
though you could walk until it’s dark and not reach those rains—
you could walk the rest of the day into the picture
and not know why, at any given moment, you’re there.

Stanley Plumly

We live in the Information Age. There is so much information readily available today that mankind’s principal task of the moment is not to ingest that information, but rather to learn how to manage, massage and maintain it.

Much of this information is not new, just newly available in much more accessible formats than previously – witness the recent on-line postings of digital copies of Issac Newton’s notebooks by Cambridge University, postings which allow ordinary mortals instant access to material long hidden away in restricted library archives due to its fragility and importance.

Some of this information is no more than supposition of the possible, such as is the case with the current search for the Higgs Boson, the so-called “God Particle”. The mathematics that led to the search, the facts of the search, and information about the means of the search (the Large Hadron Collider) are real and knowable; the existence of the particle itself remains a mysteriously entrancing mathematical hypothesis. But the fact that the hypothesis exists is important information, since it is a cornerstone of our current assumptions about the physical laws underlying the existence of our universe.

Perhaps it is better to say that we are adrift in the Information Age and wallowing in a possible information overload. Having said this, I am not overly concerned about this state of affairs, for we are still at the start of the Information Age and a great deal of creativity is being exerted about how to wrestle this information monster to the ground and tame it. Human creativity being what it is, I am fully confident that the information beast will be tamed, both because that’s what humanity does when first faced with any new challenge and because it was human creativity that created the beast in the first place.

What I am concerned about is something quite different. I am concerned whether those who must exercise the necessary creativity to tame the information beast will be well enough grounded in matters of basic importance as they conduct their work. The information beast is an extremely complex animal and, as with all things complex, it will be easy for someone working with it to become so involved with detail that he or she forgets the simpler rules that should provide the necessary basic guidance needed to arrive at ecologically friendly solutions.

In other words, I am concerned whether those who are wrestling with the beast will, from time to time, take enough reflective breaks in their work to consider the voices of nature, the voices of their fellow human beings and the beauty of the world we share.

There are many ways to tame a beast, and often the most direct solution yields the greatest immediate impact while being the least efficacious solution for the needs of the long run. Consequently, I am convinced that adherence to simple goals is the only wise way to solve complex issues. At the heart of all matters of complexity lie a few simpler strands of data that twist and combine in the myriad ways of complexity. If one will only take the time to find a way through to see and comprehend these central, simpler strands of data, effective, enduring solutions are more likely to be found.

As an aside, I am convinced that many use the concept of complexity as cover for a propensity to engage in rapacious acts. After all, the more complicated one can make something, the more likely one can find an argument that will justify some action that would otherwise be seen as a wholly self-serving.

I believe that in order to be able to identify these simpler constituent elements, you must be well-grounded in the real world and must take time for adequate reflection in order to see them clearly. We live in a world that gives the concept of “reflection” very short shrift. We operate in our world at full speed, and speed is the basic enemy of reflection. Speed makes us hit the send button before re-reading our text; speed urges us make snap decisions without the benefit of personal reflection or peer review.

The antidote to speed is reflection. Reflection is made possible by a basic grounding in the world in which we live and an appreciation for its beauty and fragility. Such grounding can be found in various ways: from time simply spent on an outdoor walk to an enduring appreciation for the arts which, themselves, are reflective efforts seeking to extol some aspect of this fragile beauty. I leave it to each person to find their own form of grounding. What I do know from experience is that a lack of such grounding is the greatest cause of most failures.

In short, go and smell the roses. There are simple reasons roses are a cliche: they are beautiful; they smell wonderful; and the manner of their evolution is mystifying. Take the time to think about why roses have excited so many for so long. Then, with the roses firmly in mind, reflect upon the precepts you wish to hold dear and how you are going to adhere to those precepts in a world that constantly operates at speed. Then think of those precepts as the roses which must grace any world in which you chose to live.

I think visually. So, when I am presented with a new set of conditions and asked for my professional assessment, I usually begin with my feet firmly placed upon my desk while contemplating what the parties are trying to accomplish, why they are trying to accomplish it, and why it all matters. I then try to imagine a commercial world that effectively deals with their underlying commercial concerns, a commercial world which, at a minimum, will coexist with my roses and which might even nurture them if constructed properly. For if my roses are allowed to exist and thrive in my resulting construct, then my artificial construct and the real world can coexist amicably and peacefully.

I do not believe that anyone can do this without seeing our world as it is, without traveling Stanley Plumly’s side road near Staunton. If you can’t take the time to find and travel that side road, you aren’t likely take the time to reflect upon the consequences of your proposals.

So, please, go and smell the roses – for my sake, if not for yours.

 

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Smelling the Roses

A Confluence of Birthdays

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

This is a time of year for family birthdays: my son Peter’s 29th birthday is today; my granddaughter Chloe’s 6th birthday was two days ago; and my wife Helen’s birthday is in ten days (and in deference to her, I will not specify which birthday it is). This confluence of birthdays is always a time for me to reflect upon the nature of life.

While I cannot be certain about the manner and means of life’s initial quickening, it seems to me that while life, from a distance, appears to be a large, meandering river, it is instead, when seen at any given time from a microscopic vantage point, a particular set of unique, living things which, in commingled aggregation, momentarily form the river’s body. The life span of each such living thing gives the river movement and flow, advancing its personal, minute segment of the river from the place it was born to the place it will come to rest.

Given the one-way nature of time, my long held view of the life force as a river must surely be faulty. Time’s nature suggests that the upstream portion of my riverbed should be dry; that the life force should more likely appear as a constantly revolving whorl of energy following a dry stream bed rather than a continuous, nurturing river. But when I look from here, I can clearly see a river, complete with downstream and upstream. It might well be that its upstream is nothing more than a figment of my imagination, but memory is powerful and, taken in conjunction with history and the genetic lore of species, memory provides a clearly defined upstream for as far as my eyes can see and my mind can dwell. It is memory that makes the river flow from its source to this place here in Humptulips County.

It is the progeny of living things that carries the river away from where they come to rest. While additional birthdays will assure that Helen and I will add yet more to the river’s length, our future contributions will be primarily to Peter’s and Chloe’s memories – to their upstream. Their fact of their birthdays helps assure a downstream. Their birthdays make them ingredients in the soup which will give the river the strength and flow required to round the bend beyond Humptulips County and to explore the unknown reaches of a riverbed which I cannot see from here due to time and distance.

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on A Confluence of Birthdays

Cusps Full of Rain

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

Grip (n): Stagehand. A member of the stage crew who moves and sets up pieces of scenery and props before a show and during scene changes.

I find myself somewhat melancholy this week, and suspect it is due to impending seasonal change. We have arrived at one of those times of the year when the “season” is neither fish nor fowl. Fall’s flamboyance has faded badly and winter’s crisp intricacy will not be in evidence for several days, if not weeks. For we are at a cusp: denouement of one season, while the orchestra is practicing the overture as warm-up to another.

I frequently wonder if the division of the calendar into four seasons is simply inadequate to deal with human interaction to the passage of time. Take Fall, for instance. Early and late Fall are wholly different sensory experiences, even if both deal with maturation and ultimate decay. A few short weeks ago, the color palette dominated everyone’s thoughts; today, notions of a warm house, a good book, and a quiet evening in are uppermost.

Seasonal cusps are always ill-defined and hard to recall from memory. It is safe to say that when we try to conjure them, we recall periods of generally unstable weather replete with nondescript tranches of wind and rain. While Shelley speaks of the wind, it is the rains of seasonal cusps that I recall best, even though they lack style and can be best remembered for what they aren’t. These are “not” rains: not the gentle, nurturing rains of Spring which shepherd life; not the breathtakingly abrupt cloudbursts of Summer which shock and delight; not the never-ending storms of Fall with their resultant, unavoidable soakings; not the thin rains of Winter with their dangerous icy aftermath. Instead, these are rains which combine awkwardly with variegated winds to produce uniformly awkward, fitful, spitting storms.

For seasonal cusps are periods of leavening, periods when the death of one season is simultaneously the yeast encouraging the growth of the next. And, perhaps, it is precisely this characterization which stamps seasonal cusps with a distinctive character of their own, as the grip conducting the change of scenery between star turns. So maybe there are really five seasons: the four we have named and loudly applaud, and one anonymous scene changer who periodically appears to clear the stage as the stars of the show perform their various exits and entrances.

This may also explain my melancholy of the moment. For Fall’s star turn was exceedingly fine this year, its execution faultless, colorful, memorable, and awe-inspiring. I regret its turn is at an end – even as I acknowledge the first, faint stirrings of anticipation for Winter’s delicate, but intricate, soliloquy.

 

 

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 2 Comments