New Roads and New Prospects

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

It’s Friday and our “Spring” has morphed into “Summer.” We have the same cold and rainy weather in Humptulips County that we’ve had all Spring, but now we call it “Summer” due to the rotation and tilt of the earth. This may well be a year with no Summer except in name only.

However, it is Friday and while the clouds are still roiling above, the prospect of the weekend looms and somehow the weather is more bearable. For we have a new driveway at the farm and I am looking forward to having the time to walk it. Well, not “new” in the sense of freshly situated and newly plowed for the first time, but “new” in the sense of re-graded and re-graveled. The old driveway location remains, but it has been resurfaced in a sparkling new coat of gravel fines all rolled in by professionals. And the rain – the dreadful, constant rain – has actually served to set the fines and firm their placement, thereby serving our purposes well.

As with any new road, my initial walk will be one of discovery. The discoveries to be made will certainly not be of grand scale since the driveway still leads, inevitably, to the mailbox and back to the house, but the new gravel and the new high and low places have given it a new character to be learned. By the simple means of driving to and from work, I already know that the driveway has a more urban quality that its former iteration. The gravel on the old driveway was larger and the roadway potholed from several year’s usage. This iteration is of finer, well-rolled gravel, which gives the roadway a more tailored aspect. The driveway’s new character is more that of high hat and tails than jeans and down-at-heel boots. I no longer have to do the left hand turn by the third pine on the right to avoid the biggest pothole. In fact, I don’t have to do anything but drive the middle of the driveway’s gentle curve for there are no potholes or proto-potholes to avoid.

At least, for the moment there aren’t. Potholes will come in time as they always do on roads well traveled. They will come and they will redefine my driveway from high hat and tails to rural funk – just as the driveway’s former version underwent the identical transformation. For I remember the prior version’s sparkling new state, just as I remember its spent old age.

The nice thing about driveways and other forms of roads, is that even when well travelled and familiar they can become new and intriguing places for inspection and discovery. All it takes is a little grading and a little fresh topping appropriate to the road’s principal use. The very fact of its static quality as a driveway allows for a periodic refreshment by means of the expenditure of a small amount of money and some time and effort carefully applied. Would that the same were were true for living organisms.

Perhaps it is because I spent time with my doctor this week that I am looking forward to rediscovering my driveway this weekend. I like the thought of having to reacquaint myself with a newly refurbished constant in my life. My doctor told me nothing bad, so I have no health scare. In fact, she and her companion physical therapist have offered me the first glimpse of a life free of leg pains that have lessened my walks on my farm and, therefor, my enjoyment of it. So, to me, the driveway’s newness seems almost to be an augury of a shining new future for a well-used body.

It’s a Friday in a decidedly early Spring-like Summer, and the prospect of living in Humptulips County remains glorious – even under sodden clouds – for I have a new driveway to walk and the prospect of doing so on fresh legs.

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Tractor Dreams

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

As previously noted, Spring has forsaken Humptulips County this year, but it was warm enough on Memorial Day for me to grease the tractor and mow parts of the farm while Helen and her sister were visiting their parents’ nearby graves.

Mowing by tractor is a relatively mindless event, in that the driver’s principal obligation is to follow the lines of his previous pass and not miss any wayward clumps of grass. This does not take much in the way of active intelligence, so the driver’s mind is free to wander at will among the various subjects important to him at the time. In other words, mowing by tractor is a good time for personal contemplation on a subject of interest to the driver.

Since it was Memorial Day and since Helen was away honoring her dead, I found myself thinking of my parents and their relatives. Since all of these folks are buried far from our farm, visiting their grave sites was simply not possible. I do visit my parents’ and stepfather’s graves in Walla Walla whenever I am visiting, and rest alongside each of them for awhile by sitting beside their gravestones. Their sleep is undertaken beneath the enormous Eastern Washington sky and they are now of its earth. And while I find such visits peaceful, I have never found their graves to be imbued with their spirits – just with my sense of their loss.

For their spirits reside within me and they shared my Memorial Day mowing duties. Each mindless circle of the tractor gave me more memories: my father’s and my uncle Orville’s breakfast cooking extravaganzas; my uncle Orville’s obsession with real fireworks; my mother’s frequent reminders to eat my vegetables and brush my teeth; the seemingly haunted house on Boyer Avenue in Walla Walla where my siblings and I were raised; my mother’s sisters and their respective families; my grandfathers and grandmothers on both sides of the family, one of whom, Bunny, lived with us in 6 month stretches when I was a child and tried repeatedly to teach me to play the piano (which I failed at miserably to my eternal regret due to a preoccupation with being outdoors with the neighborhood gang).

And while I was mowing, I came to the realization that graves visitation, while an honorable affair, is not really the essence of Memorial Day; memory is. So while I mowed, my memories mowed with me and I passed the afternoon in pleasant mental homage to those of the generation preceding mine and curious contemplation of how their ancestors might have passed their times on earth. I came to the conclusion that working the land – albeit with a tractor and not by means of a horse and plow or by hand – is exactly the sort of activity that many of my ancestors might have enjoyed.

I wish for my children and grandchildren that they might enjoy their own tractor dreams at the time when I am no longer able to be physically present in their lives and that they not worry about visits to wherever I take my final rest, for tractor dreams are as much the stuff of life as is the tingling anticipation of one’s future. They are not dreams to be taken lightly, for in remembrance is grace.

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The Warmth of the Spring

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Dylan Thomas, The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower

Spring has not come to Humptulips County in the usual way this year. While our countryside is vividly green, Spring is without warmth and has unfurled under continuously overcast, and often rainy, skies. And so we approach Memorial Day having enjoyed only one day over 70 degrees in the last 200 some days. This is, in fact, one of our coldest Springs of record.

But Springs come and go, some warm and pleasant and some dank and cold. And even if this Spring represents the furthest in a pendulum swing toward dankness, a wondrously dark green canopy of plant life rules the day in all directions. The evergreen Humptulips County is now a truly glorious green, even if a bit shy in the enjoyment of the many other vivid colors that would normally preen themselves in front of the green backdrop of late May. Our country roads are awash in green, from the grass on the verge to the overarching deciduous and fir canopies. There is nothing more pleasurable now than to drive down these back roads through green tunnels of earth and sky.

The more I age, the more each Spring reminds me of my life’s springtime, especially as my oldest son’s birthday once again approaches. This weekend Don turns 41 and reminds me again of my graduation from law school – 41 years and two weeks prior to his coming birthday. These memories are pleasant ones, for that particular Spring gave birth to something and to someone special. Don is now a practicing lawyer in a very far corner of my elastically boundaried Humptulips County, at the start of his career in the law while I am nearing the end of mine.

Forty one years ago and four weeks hence, I began the practice of law. Technically, I wasn’t yet a lawyer when I began practice because I had not yet taken the bar exam and had not yet been sworn in, but I did show up at work, was placed in an office, was issued supplies, and did begin performing research for others. When, three days after I started work, a senior partner came into my office to ask why I was working when I ought to be studying for the bar exam, I gave him what was, to me, an obvious answer: I was married with a son and was broke, so I planned on working during the day and studying at night. It hadn’t occurred to me not to go to work in this circumstance, since from high school, and throughout law school, I had always worked full time and studied in the evenings. In the Sixties, student aid and student loans were available only in limited quantities, and while we had little time to ourselves as a consequence, we also graduated with little in the way of debt. Given the choice faced by many of today’s law students, I would again take work over debt. I have never suffered from hard work and the experiences gained from it sometimes even assume a roseate glow in the rear-view mirror.

The senior partner left my office and returned a few hours later (doubtless having first made the rounds of the other partners to secure acquiescence) and told me I would be paid without having to work and I was to go home immediately and begin my study for the bar exam. Such a directive was unheard of at the time. New lawyers weren’t paid until they started to work full time; there was no such thing as a bar exam study stipend. I was surprised and tried to argue to the contrary since I felt guilty about taking the money without corresponding effort, but I was firmly and truly thrown out of the office and told to return following completion of the bar exam. And so I did, returning to work on the Thursday following the exam’s Wednesday afternoon completion (it was a full three day exam in those days) due to my strongly felt need to promptly return the favor of the gift the partner had given me.

And thus began a 41 year career in the law, one that began in litigation but which soon converted to a business practice as I realized that litigation was not my mĂ©tier. I have greatly enjoyed the counseling aspects of practicing law. Serving the needs of others – especially those of the type of clients I have been privileged to serve – has been greatly satisfying. I can well imagine that such service could well seem akin to slavery if the work or the clients were unwholesome in some way, but I have been fortunate to engage in complicated matters demanding intellectual acumen for successful clients possessing a strong sense of ethics.

In short, my clients have taught me as much as I hope I have given to them, and my career, in consequence, has been one long, continual learning experience. My education in the law did not end with that graduation those forty one Springs ago – only the more formal part did. For when a client looks you in the eye and tells you to complete an upside down transaction which he had every right to walk away from for the simply stated, elegant reason that ”I shook this man’s hand”, you learn well that business can be conducted ethically and compassionately. When that same client immediately follows his first statement with the admonition that ”And you are going to figure out how to make me whole”, you learn the importance of mental agility and the art of approaching each transaction as if you were on the same team with the other side’s lawyer with the shared goal of completing the mutually desired transaction, even if not as the parties originally envisioned it. And when, five years later, your chosen solution to solving the transaction finally comes to fruition and that client is at last made whole, the client phones to again thank you for your solution and your work, you realize the power of appreciation and the transformative effect of successfully concluding a matter by means supportive of, and not detrimental to, the needs of the adverse party. Finally, when you hear, serendipitously, from unrelated parties many years later during the conduct of a completely unrelated matter that the adverse party in the first transaction had been their mentor and that your client’s direction those many years earlier had saved the adverse party from bankruptcy and ensured him of a deserved retirement prior to his death, you realize the power of compassion in those who are strong enough to take what they might but chose, instead, to do only what they believe to be right.

I was blessed those many years ago with both the means to a meaningful career and a son. I was simultaneously given a child and the opportunity to serve those whom I came to admire; a twin blessing that has only grown with the increased opportunity for service that comes from experience and Don’s maturity, subsequent marriage to Sarah and the birth of their children, my two granddaughters, Chloe and Emma. Whatever its weather may have actually been, that long ago Spring was, at least in memory, much warmer than this one I presently enjoy. The warmth of that Spring, comes from these blessings and it has continued to warm me anew on each of Don’s successive birthdays.

So I don’t really mind the cold and wet that are the essence of this 2011 Spring, for Spring is as just as much a state of mind as is Humptulips County. I have been highly content with my choice of career, even as I wonder what I might do in the future. My choice gave me the chance to engage in service to others: as a counselor to clients, assisting them in the achievement of their personal and business goals; and as a mentor to younger lawyers, assisting them in the development of their skills and the personal attributes necessary for success in the practice of law. In such work I have found not only great satisfaction, but true delight.

If, as T. S. Eliot supposes in the opening passage of Burnt Norton:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

then that former Spring is as much a part of this present Spring as I am. That former Spring (as well as my recollections of that former Spring, however factually flawed those recollections may be) has informed this Spring and will continue to inform my future – just as those things I learn and experience in the present will also inform that future.

So this 2011 Spring is as much an extension of all past Springs and Summers and Autumns and Winters, as it is a precursor of Springs and seasons to come. And while I consciously do not dwell in my musings on the failings of my past, preferring, instead, to contemplate future challenges and their associated opportunities, I must accept that those failings, as well as past successes, are part and parcel of the here and now. What I will not accept, however, is Eliot’s elegiac reveries in Burnt Norton about passages not taken. While his words are charmingly evocative, his sentiment is not one I share:

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

For I do not regret the passages I chose and I believe there are multiple rose gardens to enjoy. I also do not regret past failings associated with those choices (except to the extent that they may have harmed others), since I have profited by them through learning and experience.

So I will revel in this Spring, even though I wish it were warmer and drier. I will revel in this Spring even though Don’s birthday, the touchstone that stirs all of my memories of that Spring, is imminent, since to do so is to revel in that long ago Spring as well. I will revel in this Spring because of the warmth of past Springs and the anticipation of the warmth of Springs to come.

Happy birthday, Don! May there be many more.

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Lyrics and Poetry

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

April is National Poetry Month. The state of modern poetry seems sad, with most practitioners of the art focused upon small, insignificant episodes of self-revelation with no attempt to find universal meaning. While I cannot pretend to have read the works of everyone now writing poetry, I know that far too many think that their recent trip to the woods is the stuff of intense interest for the rest of us. Their poems die with the first reading for their failure to extrapolate meaning to a larger world. They lack the genius of a Dylan Thomas or a William Carlos Williams, poets that derived huge meaning from pictures of small, intimate things.

The same is not true of some modern songwriters, many of whom focus on larger themes drawn from practical experience. Poets tend to decry lyrics as not poetry and propound many technical reasons why this is so, but the rest of us understand that some lyrics are poetry. Frankly, I don’t wish to enter into this debate since it seems a waste of a good half hour. It is the art of saying something simple while evoking much larger themes that interests me, and whether the telling is in lyrics or poetry is irrelevant.

I start an examination of modern lyrics with Kevin Welch, a favorite American roots musician who takes chances with his lyrics, sometimes failing and sometimes enchanting. Perhaps my favorite lyric is from “Too Old To Die Young”, a song written with John Hadley and Scott Dooley:

If life is like a candle bright
Then death must be the wind
You know you can close your window tight
And it still comes blowing in

Linda Ronstadt’s version of this song on her album with Anne Savoy (“Adieu False Heart”) is, perhaps, the best I have heard. The version by The Trishas (a group including Welch’s daughter, Savannah) is also excellent.

“Anna Lise Please” is a song of Welch’s that I especially like, both for the opening stanza and the sparkling truism in the chorus that ”nobody sees except by their own lights.” The opening chorus is:

Everybody’s saying I’ve been sinking
Like I’ve got some kind of damned old curse
They keep talking about my drinking
They don’t care nothing about my thirst
There is no greater danger than trying to find yourself
Because there is no stranger stranger than a man is to himself

I have only ever heard Welch’s version of this song, sung in his own whiskey-voiced baritone. It is hard to imagine anyone else singing the song and I suspect it would hard to improve upon Welch’s version. It is perhaps this intimate tie with the music and the voice that is the poets’ best argument for lyrics not equalling poetry. To this argument, I simply respond: “Who cares?”

Welch’s paean to holding death at bay brings to mind Beth Nielsen Chapman’s “Sand and Water,” a song of acceptance written after the death of her husband. The song is haunting and the lyrics eternal:

All alone I heal this heart of sorrow
All alone I raise this child
Flesh and bone, he’s just bursting towards tomorrow
And his laughter fills my world and wears your smile

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by

After Elton John’s decision to no longer publicly sing “Candle in the Wind” following his performance of its revised version at the funeral of Princess Diana, he replaced it in his song list with “Sand and Water,” and Chapman wrote a special verse for him to replace the first one quoted above.

Nanci Griffith celebrates life in all of its aspects, big and small, and when she writes about something small she always is speaking of something much bigger in scope. You can listen to her songs at either level, for they work well either way. Consider the closing stanza and chorus to “Gulf Coast Highway,” a song she has sung as a duet with many male companions:

We kept our garden, we set the sun
This is the only place on Earth blue bonnets grow
And once a year they come and go
At this old house here by the road
And when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing
And we will fly away to heaven
Come some sweet blue bonnet spring
Yes when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing
And we will fly away together
Come some sweet blue bonnet spring

Amy Speace is a young singer-songwriter with a timbre in her voice similar to that of a younger Joan Baez. In her song “Ghosts” she says:

Some people move through our lives and then they’re gone like the morning rain.
Some stand with the stillness of a soldier at their post and never change.
Some dance along the waterline like waves against the coast.
Some forever haunt you like a ghost.

 This song is new to me, as is Speace. The economy of her words contrasts nicely with the breadth of her message. She is someone I will listen to for a good long while.

And then there is a particular favorite of mine, Danny Schmidt’s “Company of Friends” which deserves a special place here since it can only be understood by being quoted in its entirety:

When I die, let them judge me by my company of friends
Let them know me as the footprints that I left upon the sand
Let them laugh for all the laughter
Let them cry for laughter’s end
But when I die, let them judge me by my company of friends

When I die, let them toast to all the things that I believe
Let them raise a glass to consciousness
And not spill a drop for grief
Let the bubbles rise at midnight
Let their tongues get light as thieves
And when I die, let them toast to all the things that I believe

I believe in restless hunger
I believe in red balloons
I believe in private thunder
In the end I do believe

I believe in inspiration
I believe in lightning bugs
I believe in slow creation
In the end I do believe

I believe in ink on paper
I believe in lips on ears
I believe what’s shared is savored
In the end I do believe

I believe in work on Sundays
I believe in raising barns
I believe in wasting Mondays
In the end I do believe

I believe in intuition
I believe in being wrong
I believe in contradiction
In the end I do believe

I believe in living smitten
I believe all hearts will mend
I believe our book is written
By our company of friends

Schmidt is also relatively new to me, although I have three of his albums. The lyrics of all three sparkle, even when sung in his weary voice. If you want a treat, listen carefully to the two songs which appear back-to-back on his new album “Man of Many Moons,” songs which tell the story of a parrot, an elephant and a pig and the world’s reaction to them. You will not find a better investigation of the labyrinthine murk of the human mind than that told sequentially in “Guilty by Association Blues” and “Almost Round the World.”

Finally, I leave it to Guy Clark to summarize what many modern songwriters are attempting with their lyrics and music. After all, Clark has been at it for a long time and is admired by everyone else I have quoted here. This is from “Step Inside This House” (Lyle Lovett’s version of this song is haunting):

Step inside my house Babe
I’ll sing for you a song
I’ll tell you ’bout where I’ve been
It shouldn’t take too long
I’ll show you all the things I own
My treasures you might say
Couldn’t be more’n ten dollars worth
But they brighten up my day

The essence of excellent poetry truly is all about inviting someone else into your home where the visitor can discover the meaning and experience of things that transcend its walls. Who could have said it better in so few words than Mr. Clark’s lyric?

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The Value(s) of Simplicity

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

“The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion. ”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“get your big trucks rollin down hiway 9
put on the armor it’s party time
gonna dance with the devil of our own design
get your big trucks rollin down hiway 9

* * *

well we got caught sleeping at the sentry post
now we’re standing toe to toe with what we feared the most
that old father and his son and the unheavenly host
we gotta do what we can don’t give up the ghost”

Eliza Gilkyson, Hiway 9

Yesterday, America suffered a substantial blow to its prestige abroad in a manner that has, so far, largely gone unnoticed and uncommented upon by the usual media pundits. The event was reported, but only as a sidebar story about our former President, George W. Bush, cancelling a trip to Switzerland apparently for fear that he might be prosecuted for war crimes. What everyone seems to have missed is that this is much more a story about the morality of our country than it is one about the perils facing Mr. Bush if he dares, in future, to leave the safety of our boundaries.

Not so long ago, it would have been impossble to imagine a time when a former American President could not venture forth into the world without the prospect of being received with honor – much less of a time when he or she might be threatened with imprisonment abroad for war crimes. Yet, America has apparently arrived at such a time and we have arrived without fanfare, without the accompaniment of shouting and yelling, and without the merest attempt at societal self-analysis as to how we managed such a result. How did we come so far in such a short time? How did we waste the massive goodwill created for our country during World War II by America’s citizen soldiers in a mere 50 years?

Like many things in life, the answer is really quite simple. And, as much as I despise the man, the answer is not that we had the stupidity to elect George W. Bush to the presidency – not once, but twice. George Bush is merely the culmination of something we have forgotten how to do, and if it hadn’t been George whom we elected to become president, it would have been someone else who looked and acted a lot like him. For George Bush is nothing more than a symptom of a national illness, not a cause.

What we have forgotten how to do is to examine seemingly complex issues through the lens of simplicity. We have forgotten how to see through the complexity insisted upon by those who either don’t totally accept our basic ideals or, more likely, chafe under the consequences of their application due to a desire for more power or more money. Humanity’s basic intellect rebels against the notion that ideals can be simply expressed and applied, seeking instead to glorify the finite differences that distinguish each of us from another – an instinct that those seeking power and fortune have perennially manipulated to their advantage over the decades of mankind.

I grew up in a so-called simpler time – the 1950â€Čs. When those of us of my generation recall that era, we focus upon its outward manifestations, not its beliefs: the music; the lack of multiple, unimaginable forms of communication that exist today; the kinds of products that we used; our clothing styles and our hairdos; the overwhelming sense of safety we enjoyed. In short, those of us who are products of the era have wasted our time dreaming nostalgically of its aspects rather than about its beliefs. We have largely dismissed the 1950â€Čs as an unsophisticated era in which American society ignored the more complex issues of our time. Today the decade seems an idyll: a rude time when peasants ruled; the Midsummer Night’s Dream of American society.

Ironically, the strength of the 1950â€Čs lay in its simplicity. World War II proved to be a crucible in which American ideals were reduced to their essence, forged into the steel of belief, and generally shared by means of crisis among the increasingly diverse strands of the society which had evolved in the first half of the twentieth century. The 1950â€Čs seem simplistic in hindsight because it was an era of shared beliefs combined with a profound sense of weariness. No society can survive the crucible of war without a subsequent time of recovery.

I suspect that similar periods of respite and shared beliefs exist after every major war in all human societies. How can they not? Furthermore, how can such periods survive for any appreciable length of time given humanity’s penchant for complication? It is no wonder that, when seen through the lens of history, such periods are reduced to times of misplaced idyll, since much of humanity prefers that such periods exist only in mythology rather than in reality.

Just as certainly as such periods exist, it is inevitably certain that the decades which succeed them will attempt to complicate the societal norms which prevailed in such periods in the belief that the essence of human society is complexity, not simplicity. We denigrate times of widely shared belief as unnatural and misguided. In point of fact, these periods seem, upon reflection, to be the true periods of clarity in any society, and the decades which naturally follow as periods of obscurantism. The challenge of any successful society appears to be that of enjoying the complexity wrought by diversity while simultaneously sharing the sharp focus of common beliefs.

America has failed to meet this challenge in our time. If we had, how could we have condoned locking up people in Guantanamo and throwing away the key? How could we have justified invading Iraq and Afghanistan on the principle of national interest? How could we have sold our own hard-won civil rights for a false sense of security in fear of a few old men in caves in Afghanistan who set out to deny us those self same rights?

In doing each of these things, we denied ourselves the benefits of our own stated ideals and and admitted our weakness in the bargain. In turning Guantanamo from a military base into a jail, we denied the dictates of at least the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of our Constitution to others on the basis that they are not American citizens and they aren’t on American soil. We ignored the fact that we are denying them a speedy and public trial and that we deprived them of liberty without due process of law. We did this by arguing that they are combatants in war and terrorists. We have incarcerated them based upon shared conclusions rather than as a result of due process, an act that cheapens our beliefs and weakens our society rather than strengthening either.

In allowing our Executive Branch to invade Iraq based upon made up scenarios of weapons of mass destruction and Afghanistan based upon the excuse of finding and catching Osama bin Laden, we have severely damaged the power reserved unto the Congress by Article I, Section 6 to declare war. We have ignored the wisdom of our founding fathers that a declaration of war should be a sober, thoughtful decision undertaken only after debate, in favor of allowing a powerful elite to decide when and where to waste the lives of our youth and our collective treasure. In doing this, we have to denied to George W. Bush the right to travel freely in those countries undeluded by America’s self-deception, for he is, rightfully, the embodiment of that powerful elite.

In seeking to feel secure in the aftermath of the terrible events of September 11th, we have sacrificed rights guaranteed to us under at least the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Even as I write, the Congress is deciding whether or not to renew provisions of the Patriot Act which allow the government to access my personal communications without a warrant and without probable cause. We have sold these protections for a pot of porridge, and we will rue the day when we finally realize the cost of their re-attainment, a cost now being paid by protesters in Egypt and Iran and a cost we already paid as a society during our own Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

We did each of these things only after much prolonged debate, the general tone of which in each case was that this particular situation was different for these specified reasons. In other words, in each case we have denied to others the benefit of those basic constitutional beliefs by arguing that the complexity of the matter at hand should prevail over their application. Even as such arguments deny basic rights to specific individuals and deliver demonstrable personal damage, the greater harm is always to the society that denies them through arguments of complexity.

I suspect that many of you reading the previous paragraph will immediately begin a mental sentence of your own beginning with the word “But”. If so, stop and ask yourself, instead, why you are attempting to do so. Then ask yourself whether you hold dear the basic beliefs written into our Constitution. If you hold those beliefs dear, you must also come to accept the consequences of the application of those beliefs and deny the use of the word “but” in the sentence you are forming in unthinking reflex to my comments.

In a nutshell, that is the challenge of shared liberties. They have always come and been retained only with great cost – great cost when first secured through the blood shed to defy the tyranny that denied them in the first instance and great cost in their application due to the societal fear engendered by the beliefs of those who demand such application. There was a simpler time when we knew and understood this challenge; a simpler time when we fought to maintain these liberties and did not hide them under a blanket of pejorative complexity; a simpler time when we knew what those liberties were with the clarity that comes from having just received their initial blessing.

And if we want to keep and enjoy these rights, we must stay focused on their purpose – they are nothing more than simple statements of our shared need for individual liberty. After all, liberty is nothing more (nor nothing less) than each individual man or woman becoming and remaining unburdened by an oppression that some majority wishes to impose upon them. Our founders inherently understood this, too.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The Declaration of Independence, In Congress, July 4, 1776


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Coffee and the Foggy, Foggy Dew

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

It is quite early and the city is swaddled in a dense fog of the kind that wraps closely around those at street level and swallows building tops. I can well imagine that the view from the higher city hills will be of the inverse – a myriad of building tops aswim in a billowing white sea, their means of support and the activity in the streets hidden from view.

This morning’s fog is pervasive. I first noticed it on leaving my garage and it was omnipresent throughout my drive to work. From a car, fog is less interesting since headlights deny its mystery by converting semi-transparency into a dirty wall of reflected light. For its mystery is in its ability to obscure, but not block; to convert well-known and much-loved landscapes into slightly askew alternative universes: a mystery best enjoyed afoot because fog operates on all human senses, not just sight – sound is muted and its sources made difficult of location; dampness chills the skin as it refreshes the spirit; smells are simultaneously less strident while more miasmic; and the air has a faint aftertaste remindful of a sip of ice-cold water taken from the Spring run-off in a wild, stone-filled mountain creek.

Fog always reminds me of the perfect succintness of Carl Sandburg’s poem and of the lyrics of an under appreciated Thom Moore song as sung by Mary Black, the superb Irish songstress:

Some days the fog in Monterey comes
Blowing from the grove above, and then tears away
The drifting patches lift and fold
Then sunlight cuts them white and cold
In Monterey — fog comes, oh, then
It tears away

If simple truths are best, then it must be true that coffee secured by means of a morning’s fog-bound jaunt tastes far better than all other varieties due to its enrichment by Nature.

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An Anniversary Card for Helen

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

While it is New Year’s morning for everyone else, for my wife, Helen, and me it is also our anniversary. And, not just any anniversary, but our thirtieth. As usual, we face New Years day and our anniversary here on our farm in Humptulips County. As has been true for almost all of those thirty years, our son, Peter, is with us today. True, this particular residency of his is temporary as he returns to his new home in Eastern Washington tomorrow, but, for now, here he is. At age 28, he represents a goodly amount of the thirty years Helen and I have been together as a married couple and the fruit of our marriage.

Much has changed over thirty years. First, there is Peter himself. He wasn’t with us when we started this journey, but the journey wouldn’t have had much meaning without him. The farm, too, is new, since we began our journey together by being married in our home in the city – the home we moved away from almost exactly twenty years ago because we needed room for Peter to be able to run at will and to be closer to Helen’s parents who were nearing the end of their time together. My parents and Helen’s both left us during our thirty years, but now reside with us here on the farm in our memories. My oldest son, Don, and his family (his wife Sarah and my two granddaughters, Chloe and Emma) are necessarily residents of our farm as well, even though their physical home and lives are in the Northeast, thousands of actual miles from our home but still within the expansive borders of Humptulips County.

While at any given time the residential core of our home is just the two of us, when memory cares to recall it is well populated with families and friends at every stage of their respective ages, conditions, and spirit. Memory easily serves to populate the farm with visits from sons and daughters-in-law, grandchildren, sisters and brothers, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces, great-nephews and great-nieces, close friends and casual acquaintances – I can see their faces now in the dark of an early Winter morning when, as usual, I am the only one awake in our home. The warmth of their visits keeps this home well insulated from the cold that swirls around its exterior this bitterly cold January morning.

Of course, the presence of some is more palpable than that of others. Peter is as much of the fabric of this house as either Helen or I could ever be, even if his room has given way to library and studio. His footprints are everywhere on the property and his spirit dwells in the folds of our land and the walls of this house. We wouldn’t have purchased the house but for him and his needs, and we remain on the farm even as he makes his own life in another physical biosphere which is another odd corner of Humptulips County. While Don never physically lived in this house since we bought it after he went to college, the exact moment when he convinced me of his self assurance and courage lives on in a particular corner of our living room, a moment I never fail to relive when I pass through the space where I was then standing. Our closest friends, Tom and Carrie, also reside in our home permanently courtesy of Carrie’s innate graciousness and Tom’s wonderful, thought-immersing watercolors, many of which bless our walls. I have only to turn a corner or climb a stair to see one of Tom’s paintings, to marvel at his sight, vision and skills, and to hear anew the sounds and movement which have always been resident in his work – at least when experienced by me. While they physically live in Humptulips County not far from our farm, a part of them is of this farm.

Thirty years is simultaneously a long time and a mere moment in time. Helen and I have known one another for forty years, for she worked at the first law firm where I was employed when I began my career. When we first met, neither one of us had any notion that we might become married one day, for each of us was then married to another and fully engaged in trying to be successful in our respective relationships. It was only as a result of our respective failures in those other relationships that we eventually considered this life we now share together, an adventure that would have been mutually unimaginable when we first shook hands as fellow employees.

We come from similar times and backgrounds – both of us were raised during a period of major change in American society in families rich in love and spirit but poor and lacking in wealth. We are both progeny of the Sixties. My first recollection of Helen is both that of a slight, very pretty girl in short skirts and of an efficient, hardworking legal secretary. I noticed her both as a fellow employee and as an attractive woman. And, while the latter was initially only an observation, after my own circumstances eventually fell apart of their own weight, her attraction proved the initial force that eventually brought us together as a romantic couple several years later. I believe that both of us were equally surprised to discover that we were suddenly part of something much greater than a handshake or a work relationship.

Helen and I have lived many lives together in our thirty years of marriage: as a young couple in love, without major responsibilities other than food and housing; as proud, young parents of an infant and toddler, with all the attendant responsibilities and joys; as middle-aged, working parents of two young boys, one of whom belonged solely to us and one of whom was regretfully but necessarily shared with a coterie of others; as delighted grandparents of two lovely and lively young girls with dedicated parents, each of whom, granddaughters and parents alike, makes us smile and laugh aloud; as proud, mature parents of two young men now living apart from us who are both successful in their chosen callings; and, now, as the only physically full-time residents of this home. Each of these lives has had its own challenges; its own benefits and burdens. While some of our coupled reincarnations have been more successful than others, because of our love we keep on trying – reinventing as we go, and adjusting as we must, to the situations and conditions which life presents to either of us – since if one of us is affected, so, of necessity, is the other.

In short, we are married and hope to remain so for the time allotted to us.

Amid all of the memories resident in our home, all of the importance that each of Don and Peter has made in our lives, all of the pleasure that Sarah, Chloe and Emma have given to us, all of the losses we have endured due to the passing of family or the migration of friends, and all of the enjoyment we have derived from our many friendships, nothing is more important to me than Helen. Without Helen, there would have been none of the other, and I would have been someone else with other memories, other connections and without this farm here in Humptulips County. This farm is as much of who I am as are my private thoughts; this farm is as much thought as it is a physical presence; this farm is my home and hearth and Helen makes it uniquely so. Humptulips County is my state of mind and she is its constant, essential ingredient.

Happy anniversary, Helen. I confess that in the press of business I forgot to get a card, and I hope this will serve in its stead.

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What Quadra Saw

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Eliot Mentor

Breaking the crust of drifted snow with booted foot. Struggling up and across dubious and perilous mountain paths. Following footprints in ancient mud now hardened by time into stone. Following your footsteps. You had been here before, and here I have come yet again. All time is unexpectedly compressed into the span of a short moment of reaching back, and in that brief moment I feel as one with those whose footsteps — your footsteps — we all follow.

Not everyone does.

Some years ago, I was crewing on a small sailboat, helping to bring it back to Portland from British Columbia where it had been sailed during part of the summer. Two of us met the owner-skipper of the vessel in Victoria and under motor power headed west into the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The day became balmy and no winds buffeted us, just an easy spreading of view in all directions. In late afternoon I stood at the helm. The other two men were below, loafing, shooting the breeze, playing cards.

As I looked around the seascape for oncoming freighters and other nautical hazards and then to the landscape beyond the water, my vision of the present faded and dissolved into a slightly bluish haze, a hue not unlike that which some painters cast over landscape paintings. On the starboard side the low hills of Vancouver Island. At the port hand the rising slopes of Washington State. I grasped the tiller with one hand and gazed lazily at the scene, but then slowly became aware that I discerned no man made objects, no navigation and channel markers, no telephone or electrical poles, no buildings, no wharfs, no piers, no pilings, no structures of any kind. In the blur of the afternoon’s fading light all evidence of civilization had vanished.

Suddenly, it came over me, dream-like, that I was seeing the past as others had seen it. Surely the image before me — all around me — was what Quadra and Vancouver and others had first beheld hundreds of years before. I imagined myself following in the long lost wakes of their ships. A kind of nautical kinship joined us as I realized that I was surely observing what they had observed. This feeling reaching out from the distant past caught me in an emotional grip, and I trembled beyond the agitation of normal excitement.

I yelled to my two companions below, “come topside, come up here quickly.” They did. ”Look.” I pointed. “Look. This is what Quadra and Vancouver would have seen.” My arm swept from left to right guiding their eyes to the lack of any signs of encroached civilization, only the hills, the distant trees and vegetation, the unblemished littoral. I explained. They grunted, said “Uh-huh” and went below.

I remember my feeling of elation that in a sense I had stood on deck with those early pioneer sailors who had first come to those waters, of knowing what their wonder might have been as they stared about. But I also remember the disinterested, unemotional grunts of my fellow crew members. The emotion that surged through me did not touch them in the slightest. Their interests lay in the here and now — as it might be from one day to the next. The past, who they were and how they got here, in whose footsteps they had followed — was that important?

Eliot Mentor

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Waiting for the Snow

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Gavin Stevens

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales

It has been snowing here in Humptulips County the last two days. The snowfall has been gentle, but persistent. Blizzards are not the norm for our county, but intermittent flurries are. We haven’t accumulated much in the way of depth, but our roads are icy and full of abandoned vehicles. We don’t generally see much snow in Humptulips County and, when we do, we are always unprepared to do anything but flee at the first flake.

Here on the farm, we are enjoying the snowfall. On Sunday, I purposefully waited until the advent of a heavier fall to walk down to our roadside mailbox to collect the Sunday New York Times. I wanted to walk in the snow in a heavy coat and hat for the first time this year, and to poke my walking stick into the snow to test its depth. I was anticipating the peculiar hush that envelopes the land when it is snow covered and the resulting quietude. Distant road noise is muted and the soughing of wind in the trees and birdsong prevail over everything but the crunching of one’s own shoes. Flocks of starlings flit from tree to tree, or even from a tree to the same tree, without any observable motivation comprehensible by humanity. Rabbit tracks tell of the passage of a hare from an unknown food source to his warm den. Life is lived by all creatures at its most basic level.

It is during a snowfall that I can best imagine the land as it must have been 200 years ago, and on my snowbound walks I always feel as if I am walking backward in time. Everything is more primitive, more elemental. During my snow bound walks, I feel a greater affinity for those who lived on and worked this land those many years ago. I know for a fact that the simple pleasure of walking through snow is a pleasure shared with my forebears and I can feel them close by: huffing from the added exertion caused by the snow’s depth; pushing off with their walking sticks or swinging the stick at snow accumulated on a low hung tree branch; enjoying the warmth of hats and gloves; perspiring lightly from exertion inside their heaviest coats. I do not know them by name, but I share this unchanged experience with them. We walk together on such days in unspoken, but acknowledged, anonymous companionship.

It will take far more than the inch or so of snow we have at the moment to transport me very far back in time. I only got a taste of things to come on Sunday. Yesterday, I was back at work in the city watching the snow fall from my office window. I left work early to miss the madness of Humptulips County’s evening commute, and in that I guessed well. While many experienced a two hour or longer commute due to general unpreparedness, I watched the dusk settle on our snow covered field and enjoyed an early dinner with my wife, safe from the madness of the roads within our cocoon of snow.

Today, I am staying home as the roads remain bad and our office is closed.

Today, I just might take another walk in time.

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It’s a Strange Life, Indeed!

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Gavin Stevens

“Strange, isn’t it?  Each man’s life touches so many other lives.  When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

Clarence Odbody, the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, to George Bailey

Whenever I think I know something, I generally find out that what I know isn’t completely correct.  Strangely, this also seems to be true about memories of things that actually happened to me.  The telling of a story over the years seems to include a process of winnowing the truth down to easy catch-phrases which, often repeated, rob us of the full reality of what occurred.  In other words, we seem to dumb down our memories to their essence and forget much of the vivid detail as a way of saving the core knowledge.

A case in point occurred this last weekend when I attended my 40th law school reunion at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor.  I do not usually attend reunions of any sort, since I have preferred to live my life looking forward rather than backward, but this reunion has caused me to spend the last 48 hours looking intensely into the rear view mirror. 

Michigan Law School is a wonderful place, both physically and intellectually.  I spent the twilight hour Saturday evening before our class dinner sitting with my wife in the law quad, watching the grey squirrels forage, the leaves tumbling to the ground, and students walking through to study or to go to their rooms.  Much of that time was also spent ruminating on a conversation from the prior evening at a local watering hole where Michigan law students have congregated for many decades.

When people of my certain age get together, the discussion frequently turns to the Vietnam War and the draft.  It is hard to ignore this topic at a reunion of those who graduated in 1970, since the draft and how to deal with it were central to our lives forty years ago.  Ours was the smallest graduating class at the law school in modern times.  The reason for this is simple: many of us were drafted, some to return to graduate in subsequent classes and some to die in Vietnam.  Since a reunion is all about memories, a topic of this intensity can hardly be ignored.

For years, I have told my story this way:  In 1968, at the start of my second year of law school, I received an induction notice.  The notice was particularly galling to me because I had written to my Eastern Washington draft board prior to ever leaving for Ann Arbor, advising them that my then-wife and I had been admitted to law school and that I would rather enlist than go 2,500 miles to law school only to be drafted before I could complete my education.  The draft board replied, advising me that they wanted their young men to get an education and that I should go to law school with their blessing and they would see me upon graduation.  Accordingly, the induction notice not only was a blow, it was also a slap in the face.

Several days later, I found a memo written by Yale law students setting forth an argument relating to the timing of my induction.  It seemed that the law allowed me to finish the academic year in which I was enrolled, even though the draft board was insisting, in accordance with the admonitions of the Selective Service headquarters, that I be inducted at the Christmas break.  Six of us decided to contest the timing of our inductions and a law school professor agreed to argue our case if we students would do all of the necessary legal research and write the briefs.  We filed our case and a friendly federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on our behalf.  At this point, the other five enrolled in National Guard units, but I found myself unwilling to do so despite well-intentioned advice to the contrary.

The judge waited until April to call us back for a final hearing, telling those in the courtroom, with a wink, that he had lost the file on his desk and was apologetic for having done so.  He was ready to rule that the case was moot because I was about to finish my second year of law school in a matter of a week or so, when my counsel advised the court that I had been mis-classified and that the draft board was obligated to re-classify me properly and then begin the induction process anew.  The judge seemed surprised by this and asked for confirmation of the argument from the US Attorney, who reluctantly agreed. The judge mused aloud that if the draft board was unable to move quickly enough, I would have the same argument for my third year and might be able to finish law school.  He then took the matter under advisement, waited several weeks while writing an opinion, and eventually ruled in my favor.  The draft board could not move fast enough to reclassify me prior to my commencing classes, and I entered my third year of law school with the added argument that my wife was pregnant with my oldest son, Don.  Don’s advent eventually led to a fatherhood deferment, following a further exchange of letters between myself and my draft board.

I have always remembered the judge’s opinion as relatively unsophisticated, focusing mostly upon the definition of the word “shall.”  I have also said over the years that my main regret was that the decision favored only me and my fellow plaintiffs and helped no one else.  I discovered this weekend that both recollections were incorrect.

Last Friday evening, a former classmate said, in my hearing while speaking with me and others in a side gathering at an open house, that the lawsuit some of his classmates had filed had allowed him to complete his third year when he would otherwise have been drafted.  When I subsequently revealed my role in the case, he thanked me for letting him complete his law school education.  After I indicated that his situation was news of first impression to me, he indicated that the Ann Arbor draft board had, following the judge’s ruling, decided to be bound by the decision even though the Selective Service headquarters had advised otherwise.  The Ann Arbor draft board told graduate students enrolled at Michigan that they should transfer their induction point from their local draft boards to Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor board would allow them to finish the academic year in which they were enrolled.

To say the least, I was stunned.  One of my major themes – that I regretted that I was the sole beneficiary – went up in smoke in a single conversation.  The proof was in the presence of the man speaking to me.  He had gone to the Ann Arbor draft board, received their advice, transferred his induction to Ann Arbor, and been allowed to complete his law school education before being inducted. 

How could I have not known of this until 40 years had passed?

The answer is that I kept facing forward, didn’t look back and dumbed down my recollection of the case.  When I re-read the case yesterday morning upon returning to my office, I found that it was not only far more sophisticated than I remembered, but that it was also a class action in which the judge had ruled in my favor and on behalf of all those similarly situated.  In other words, the second basic tenet of my long told story was also bunkum and I was the one who had made it so.

I am not yet ready to reach the conclusion my classmate reached that our case may have assisted thousands of people.  I am unable to go too far astray from my prior belief in a single bound in the absence of additional evidence.  I only know for certain that (a) at least one other person got deferred because of the legal issues espoused in our case, and (b) there were three or four similar cases in the courts, most of which came out the same way ours did and some of which did not.  It may well have been the decision in our case that the Ann Arbor draft board relied upon (the anecdotal evidence from my classmate says it was and the draft board was within the jurisdictional boundaries of the court granting our sought after relief), but I cannot be absolutely certain.  I can be certain only that if it was our case that protected my classmate, it was due to my stubbornness in refusing to enlist in the National Guard since, had we all enlisted, the case would have been moot by the time of the April hearing.

So I am faced with the knowledge that my stubbornness – a subject of some discussion with a former and present wife – may have been of benefit to someone.  The question now becomes what this lesson means.  I am not certain that I can now say anything more than I will be pondering this for some time to come.  What is clear is what one of my best friends in my law school class said to me after this all occurred:“As we go through life, we don’t know how we affect or benefit others.  Isn’t it great you learned how your lawsuit helped others!”  But it is also likely true that some other decision I took – in another time and place and about another subject – may have harmed, not helped, others.

So what is the place that each of us occupies in the hierarchy ranging from evil, on the one hand, to good, on the other?  How am I to know where I might place, especially after the weekend’s revelations?  I went from thinking I had assisted no one and that my actions in proceeding to judgment were essentially selfish (I remain very conscious of the fact that the graduate student deferment was not color blind in those days, and that African Americans served in Vietnam in far greater numbers than whites), to realizing that at least one other person may have benefited from my stubbornness.  At this moment, I have no idea what that might mean to me now.  I have reached out to my former law professor to see what he remembers, and can only hope he will respond to my email of inquiry.

I have long advised my children that, on their last day, they need to be able to look in the mirror and like what they see from the standpoint of doing good, and, since it is not given to us to know which day is our last one, they had better be able to do that each and every day.  I know of no other way to try to live a good life.  But, how can one look clearly into the mirror when one’s own recollections may well be faulty?

Since today has not yet proven to be my last one (and, hopefully, will not), I am unable to assess what this news might mean in this regard. I only know for certain what King Mongkut in “The King and I” says so frequently to Anna Leonowens:  “Tis a Puzzlement!”  I will have to wait to see if the wake I leave behind does or does not contain phosphorescence, and, even then, that judgment will be left to others.  I have now learned that I am not the best person to make that assessment.

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