The Rains Have Returned

 

The rains have arrived.

They are late this year.

Time for cocooning by the fire,

with Dvorak sonatas,

woolens, Kinda Blue,

Bill Evans and Monk,

a hot toddy,

and you.

 

This morning, I awoke as usual around four. Raindrops on the roof made the Johnny-call all the more urgent. The rains and grays apparently have arrived. For some of us Seattleites, those with a touch of melancholy in our soul, t'is time to woolen-up and settle-in.

For others, Sun-yearners, those drops on the roof signal time to flee to the tennis courts and greens of the desert. That’s how Barb and I wound up owning a home in Medina and a townhouse on a seventh fairway in Palm Desert.

Our seasonal separations surfaced more basic incompatibilities; the divorce followed a few years later. After the pain numbed, it all worked out. She found sun-loving companions; I found Ann.

By the fire and in the early dark. time to borrow into a book or better, into an author’s series of tales that take one away. That’s why Seattle is annually #1 in US per capita book sales. My current escape has been Anthony Trollope’s Palliser Novels, often called his Parliamentary Series.

It was Karen Lane, that remarkable Francophile, my successor as President of the Horizon House Board, who mentioned being in an Anthony Trollope reading club. Trollope! 1860s! That old fossil? “Yes, try him. He’s wickedly funny and cynical, and ever so pertinent today.” In high school English, I had been made to read Trollope’s Barchester Towers; what a drag, as bad to callow teens as Moby Dick.

A couple of years ago, I re-read Moby Dick: what a delight! Earlier this year, I found Barchester Towers listed in the Kindle library. In deference to and in memory of Karen, I thought perhaps it’s time, these three-quarters of a century later. Again, what a delightful revelation! This wickedly funny and cynical tale of the politicking in a CofE bishopric, the back-biting and lobbying and editorializing over the selection of a new Bishop for Barchester is as relevant to todays party politics (or university politics or corporate politics) as if written last week. My high school English teacher was right in literary judgment though in error when judging the capacity of teenage males. Karen was also right, and I’ve become a Trollope roadie.

So, suffer my ruminations as the rains, delayed no doubt by El Niño, finally return to our Pacific Northwest. Bundle up, light the fire, and find a good book. And don't fprget the toddy.

The Pungency, The Poignancy of Memory

I am not attending the Olympic Club these days, my luncheon speakers’ club, even though my mobility has improved enough to enable me to do so. I’m not sure I know why I have opted out. Today, a Thursday, brings my choice to mind because this is the weekly meeting day of the Olympic Club.

I don’t miss giving speeches. My public speaking skills have deteriorated over time; as with so many things, I must ruefully acknowledge that I am not so good as once I was. My gestures are stiff and unconvincing; my voice reedy and flat, without inflection. 

But, still, I have things to say and I enjoy the discipline of keeping a speech to eight minutes, (OK, truth be told: that always was hard for me to do. More often than not, I overran my time and suffered the time-keeper’s clanging censure.)

This morning I awoke with this notion: why not retreat and become a speech-writer? Prepare and script an eight-minute speech and post it on Northwest Ruminations? So, here is the first of what may become a Thursday feature on NWR: Olympic Talks.

Olympians: if these scripts trigger thoughts you'd like to use, feel free. Or, if you'd simply like to deliver one of these as practice for reading a speech (itself a skill to be practiced) or to lift parts of one, I'd be honored. Feel free.

 Olympic Tallks, 10/22/26

The Poignancy, The  Pungency of Memory

My purpose, in this talk, is to get you to reflect on the power of memory.

I had stayed overnight at Peter’s after another late-night, Senior-bash, still celebrating our graduation from Sidwell. It was a warm, bright Bethesda morning, the kind of morning that forewarns Washingtonians that it will be a scorcher. Peter and I saddled up his old Plymouth coupe and drove over to Chevy Chase to call on Mary -- his girl, my dear friend, our classmate Mary.  

Our plan -- no, a mere notion -- was to drive around a bit and hang out and see what the day revealed. Perhaps we’d pick up Barb, my girl, also a Chevy Chaser. I had never before been to Mary’s, so was more than a bit awed as Peter pulled up before an imposing brick Colonial Revival home, tall and stately, just the sort a decorated Rear Admiral might own seven years after the War.

A somber gentleman answered the door. He politely but firmly turned us away. “The family has suffered a tragic event” said he “and is unable to receive visitors. Thank you for coming.”  I still don’t know who he was; a friend of family? Perhaps from the Navy Dept.? Perhaps a funeral-home person? He was firmly tight-lipped about the “event.”

We soon pieced together that Peter and I had arrived about an hour after they had scraped up the Admiral’s body from the drive out back of the house beneath the third-story window out of which the Admiral had dived headlong: another belated casualty of WWII.

We now call such PTSD, a glib, too-comfortable label we’ve used to paper over tragedy, as if by naming it, we’ve denied it wrenching at our gut. 

End of summer: we callow teens went our ways, I to HamiltoSn, Mary to Smith, Peter to Princeton, Barb to Skidmore. Mary was not invited to Barb's and my wedding. By then, she had dropped away from our circle. I never saw Mary again.

But the chagrin of arriving at the wrong place at the wrong time has never left me. The feeling of shameful inadequacy, the somber firmness of the man at the door; the warmth of the sun, the sound of the Plymouth; these details and images I cannot leave behind. They haunt me to this day. I trust they always will.

This was my first confrontation with the reality of Loss. Of Grief. Yet there was no confrontation; it was all second-hand. Pungeant, none-the-less. I would have to wait years to own grief and loss of my own.

Do childhood or teenage memories haunt you? Are they pungent? Are they poignant? Do you treasure them or wish to be rid of them? Do they come unbidden from a secret somewhere mysteriously triggered by an unknown what?

~~~~

I live in a house made of memory. A house furnished with hidden triggers. Don't you? Do not we all?

"Vintage Nature"

I just ran into this phrase on a retail web site I was visiting:

Please note that due to their vintage nature, some items may exhibit charming signs of age and gentle wear, adding to their unique character.

If the shoe fits, Fletch, wear it.

Taking the Gloves Off -- An Open Letter to the Clan

To the clan, all 41 of us:

For years in these Northwest Ruminations, I have pulled my punches so as not to offend the true believer among us, the true believer in the Apostle’s Creed or Trump or Evangelism or whatever. And I have sought not to offend those who do not like being lectured to (which includes all of us.)

But tonight, on this eve of finishing my 92^nd lap around the sun, and being elder of the clan, our current nonagenarian, I will take off self-constraints and tell you candidly what concerns me about us and this society that now belongs to you and your offsprings. And I will presume to tell you what you should do.

I’m not thinking about matters like global warming but, rather, about us as citizens of this 400-year-old experiment. Right now, it seems to me that we are f*****g up our system so badly (fouling, fiddling, FUBARing, use your own f word) that I am beginning to doubt Madison’s rebuttal – Federalist #10 -- to the argument that a democratic-republic cannot work in a large, dispersed, heterogeneous community. I still have hope that it can – and will again. I will tell you what I think you should do.

My first concern: we Americans have become crude and inured to behavior that would have drawn censure from my mother and probably yours. We turn a blind eye to vulgar flaunting of wealth, to seeking unethical advantage, to telling jokes about immigrants and anyone considered “other”, to turning away from people in need, to naked greed, to selfishness, to gratuitous violence – all too often committed by people who flaunt their Christianity -- too often, faux “Christianity.” For God's sake, let's all of us clean up our acts.

It is community we have turned our backs upon. In our exalting individual freedom, you and I have eroded our sense of and commitment to community; we have let self trump community. Time to re-build your community, however you constitute it. Get involved; take on a responsibility; volunteer to a committee, whatever.

Second, our understanding of the Declaration of Independence is scanty, at best. Thomas Jefferson’s sacred words in the declaration’s second paragraph, backed up by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman representing defferent political views and values, are not mere cant but, rather, are directions. “All men are created equal” means that all must be respected and treated equally by us and all must be given equal opportunity to pursue their “safety and happiness.”

Next, I am concerned about how little is known of, and attention is paid to, The United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the crowning work of Eleanor Roosevelt (and a notable Cold War defeat for the Soviets.) We are a signatory to it, yet we have dishonored it again and again since 1948. It’s time to renew our commitment to it’s principals by adopting its articles as the platform of a pacificatory, progressive party. (Go and read it here.)

Next, I am concerned about our knowledge of and respect for history, ours and other countries’. From both there is much to be learned about evolving relations between citizens and their government.  Why did the Weimar Republic collapse? Why do ’cracies’ arise again and again: like Aristocracy? Autocracy? Kleptocracy? Have Democracies ever been made to work? (And don’t tell me about Athens: Athens, where women citizens were not even allowed in the Bouleuterion or to appear in court, much less to vote. Meanwhile, slaves cleaned, cooked and served Athenians their meals.)

We also must pay attention to current affairs; what can be learned from watching Erdogan, Magyar, Putin, Modi, General Sisi, Netanyahoo? (The pun is intended.) It’s a rare autocrat who has his/her people’s welfare at heart; perhaps Ataturk was one such, maybe mis-guided Netanyahoo. But history tells of the many others who were clearly lusting for power, as were Hitler and Stalin. Others sought to build Empires by annexing or conquering territory and imposing his or her governance, as did Napoleon and the Great Khan. Yet others had their own welfare at heart: riches, advantages for himself, family, and sycophants: the amoral kleptocrat model we see in charge here today.

Of course, the worst of all would be an egomaniacal, empire-building, narcissistic, kleptocrat desperate for adulation, and lusting after power and Greenland.   

History and current events teach that rule of law for all is one's protection from such ‘cracies.’ but only if the independence of the courts is protected. If the ‘crat’, the autocrat or kleptocrat or even the democrat, enjoys an overwhelming majority in the legislature, that majority can and likely would alter and weaken the courts which are proving to be our guardians. The lower courts, that is; we have a Chief Justice willing to emasculate the lower courts in his career-long quest to legitimize a Unitary Presidency. May this, too, pass.

We must have a balance of views in a legislature; no one has a monopoly on best policies, on the correct political view. Don’t just vote the label; look at the character of the candidate seeking your endorsement and your entitlement. Be a Gamaliel of moderation and respect for the law.

We need to exult Cincinnatus, teach his example, and search for another such as him or her among our party leaders. Vance or Rubio ain’t it; Newsome or Sanders aren’t it. Maybe Whitmer or Moore? Rahm Emmanuel, as attractive as he is, istoo angry to model Cincinnatus. Perhaps my man Corey Booker? Maybe.

We must remind ourselves and these faux Christians among us that He taught us to welcome the stranger.  This means the immigrant and asylum-seeker.  And how else to bolster the population and our labor force? Encouraging women to become home-makers and baby-makers may be denying us 50% of the nation’s brain power and productivity -- and isn't going to replenish our labor force. Remind yourself where your grandparents and great-grands were born.

Universal day care/preschool would release from home detention those women among that 50% who want to work and raise a family. Universal day care and preschool enriches children lives and prepares them for learning and for collaboration in our society. For becoming educated. Support enrollment in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and in TK programs. (Don’t know what they are? Look them up here and here.)

With regard to education: are you educated? Have you read or are familiar with Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex; with Steinbeck’s East of Eden?  Fathers and sons: I think there are only nine stories of which Fathers and Sons is but one. Others are Road Trip (The Odyssey – I found the Fagels translation the most accessible, Kerouac’s On the Road, Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring); Love (Romeo and Juliet, Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago); War (Caputo’s A Rumor of War, Homer’s The Iliad, Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Tolstoy’s War and Peace); Inanity of Life (Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Heller’s Catch 22); Courage in Defeat (Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, Heminway’s Old Man and the Sea, The Book of Job); Aging (Shakespeare’s King Lear, Stegner’s Crossing to Safety); Compulsion (Melville’s Moby Dick; Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment); Origins (Fuente’s Terra Nostra, The Book of Genesis, Silko’s Ceremony). Of course, the best of these fit into more than one category. If you haven’t read them, read them.

With AI taking on an increasing role in analysis and writing and coding, we’re going to need more philosophy and history majors asking why? Where do we want to go? And where have we been? We need to nominate and elect more senators like Patrick Daniel Moynihan, willing to work in either D or R administrations, to challenge and improve effectiveness, And we need more Richard Fenymans to ask the dumb or unaskable question. Ask the unaskable question of your Congressperson or at the next caucus.

We must restore and protect a level playing field in our political-economic system. Remember, even Adam Smith (not my congressman but the Scottish master of political-economy [what they called economics in those days.]) Even he, of Wealth of Nations and the Invisible Hand, called for government regulation of competition lest monopolists jigger the system and create uneven playing fields. Milton Friedman should have read Smith more carefully.

Well, I’m getting pretty heavy. I need to lighten up – Oh, and, yes, we need comedians to open our minds, perhaps even to lead us (Al Franken? Volodymyr Zelenski? Bill Maher? Dave Barry? The Monty Pythons? Why is it so many more comedians come to mind than politicians?)

Remember also that Progressive is not a dirty word. It was first popularized by TR, a Republican. And Conservative is not, either; it means honoring the institutions that got us here and protecting and sustaining our core values. By those definitions, I am a liberal conservative democratic-republican. But be wary of simplistic labels.

Also, be wary of religions, which too often come to believe they guard the truth, the correct way. Follow whom you will: the Buddha, or Jesus of Nazareth, or Muhammad, or Aristotle, or Zoroaster, or Johanan ben Zakkai, or Adi Shankaracharya or whomever teacher you choose -- but don’t follow religions. For myself, I do not believe in the Apostle's Creed; therefore, I am not a Christian. Perhaps an agnostic fellow-traveller is a better descriptor.

Welcome and worry over the artist; what is s/he trying to say to us, to get us to see? Better yet, express yourself in art as many of us already do. The joy of expressing yourself in art – whether designing jewelry or painting or drawing or making prints or sculpting – is a balm in these rash and raucous times.

Well, It’s getting close to my bedtime, so the old gentleman will close by presuming to tell you what to do (as I warned you at the beginning and despite you don’t like being so told:

•        Value (and willingly pay your taxes for) education, especially of the very young, and of adults who         think they are finished with school.
•         Welcome the stranger.
•         Value diversity; tolerate it even when it makes you uncomfortable.
•         Be wary of organized religions.
•         Behave in ways your Mom and Miss Manners would approve.
•         Visit and ponder over a history museum and an art museum.
•         Believe that all men and women are created equal and do as that belief demands of you.
•         Value the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
•        Value marriage vows. Not married? Treat your partner as though you were (and behave toward s/he in     ways Miss Manners would approve.)
•        Believe that a "Democratic Republic is grounded on the sovereignty of the people” as John Ferland   says; and remember: we’re in charge. Vote.
•        And, especially, laugh. Don’t forget to laugh.

Good night.

“God bless us, everyone!”

C E Taylor

These sunny days on the patio with the sun fading southward somehow reminded me of my Grandparent’s place, Elhedo Lodge on Lake Moraine, near Hamilton, NY. I spent much of a sleepless last night thinking of Granddad C E Taylor. He used to tell visitors the lodge’s name was Onondagan, meaning welcome (but sometimes “in peace” crept into it; it varied from telling to telling.) None of which was true. The lodge was named for their daughters: my mother Eleanor, Aunt Helen, and Aunt Dorothy.

This was just one of CE’s many fibs and pranks and stunts. Like once a month playing 26 games of chess simultaneously at the St. Petersburgh Lawn Bowling Club. Or, at the St. Louis Worlds Fair, by stepping into and posing in a Madam Tussaud wax figure exhibit -- until an alarmed customer spotted the imposture and called the cops. Or, at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1906, by pretending to print paper blanks into $5 bills from a hand-cranked, pocket printer. Real $5s were hidden in the roller, so he was, in fact, legal. This time, it was a storekeeper who called the cops.

My Grandparents settled in Earlville, in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York. The village had a circular, bandstand park in the middle of town. CE, having been apprenticed to a blacksmith, a professional carriage horse trainer, and then obsoleted by the adoption of the automobile, opened the town’s first car dealership, around 1906. He would take one of his Franklins, set the choke or spark or whatever, set the steering wheel, put the car in gear, and step out, leaving the car all day circling the park on its own at 2 or so mph. That got villagers talking about Franklins and, shaking their heads with a wry smirk, about “that there CE.”

CE occasioned much scoffing in 1919 after the local paper reported that he had gone to Norwich and paid an outlandish $25 for a ride in a barnstorming WWI aeroplane. The next Friday, a bi-plane circled over the village, coming lower and lower apparently preparing to land in a meadow just east of town. Everyone rushed out to see the plane. And there was CE in a ticket booth selling 20-minute rides for $5. The plane rides continued Friday through Sunday. Sunday evening, CE and the pilot split their considerable take and the aeroplane flew off to home.

Autos and airplanes came, but CE never lost his love of horses, his tandem and pair rigs, and especially harness races with their trotters and pacers towing satellite sulkies. Grandpa took me to my first horse races, harness races at Vernon Downs. Bewitchingly beautiful -- but CE wouldn't let me bet: "Your Grandma would skin me alive if she learned I taught a grandson to bet on the ponies." 

Granddad wrote and published short stories in magazines such as Field and Stream and Outdoor Life. Mainly, stories about his beloved hounds and retrievers.

CE inspired us, The Super Seven cousins, to pursue our curiosity, to use our imagination, to find the humor. He loved adventure tales. CE introduced me to Richard Burton's books which eventually led to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and, perhaps, to my propensity to fall in love with the likes of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo and all the rest; with Capt. Aubrey and Dr. Maturin; with Luke Skywalker and the Force. CE always had a full head of hair, an outrageous sweet tooth, and a pocket full of butterscotches or horhounds. 

CE created a rich and full life for his beloved Alice and for the rest of us until a broken hip took him off at age 90. Foks tell me I favor him, and so I try to do.

Hatreds May Fade Away But They Never Die

Yesterday was the 30^th anniversary of the massacre of Srebrenica. It passed with no apparent notice here, though there probably were in Bosnian neighborhoods of St, Louis, Chicago, Toronto, Utica, and elsewhere in the Bosnian diaspora. Some say 8,6000; others, 10,000 Muslim Bošnjaci were systematically assassinated, rank after rank, by Serbian Orthodox troops under command of a fellow, but Serbian Orthodox, Bosniak, General Ratko Mladić. Mladić also commanded Serbian troops during the siege of Sarajevo.

Also yesterday, appropriately, came word that General Ratko (isn’t that the right name for such as him?) Mladić, 83, had died while still imprisoned in the Hague. Mladić, hiding in rural Serbia, was captured in 2011 by Serbian security forces (at that time, Serbia was seeking admittance to the EU, and needed to be seen as reformed  – but is still awaiting admittance.) He was tried by the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, convicted in 2017, and sentenced to life in prison. (As you probably know, the US has rejected membership in and refused to recognize authority of the UNICTs and of the International Criminal Court, not only passively citing our sovereignty but also undertaking active opposition, which has included sanctions, legal barriers, and non‑cooperation. Jack Smith’s service in the Hague as an ICC investigator and later as Chief Prosecutor of Kosovo War Crimes trials, is in the eyes of he who shall not be named and of MAGAs his “treason” to the US.

When Ann and I were in Sarajevo in 2019, we visited the Srebrenica Memorial Center, another of Europe’s many grim memorials to man’s bottomless capacity for inhumanity to his fellow man. The Center should be a required stamp for any tourist visa holder or penalty upon leaving Bosnia of a healthy fee. The exhibits and photos are stomach-churning, searing themselves into one’s memory. Unlike Buchenwald or Treblinka, slowly fading into ancient history in the minds of young people, Srebrenica is still fresh enough to be relevant, still horrific enough to chill the blood.

Can such happen again? Of course. The only thing we seem to learn from history is how not to learn from history. And in the case of the Balkans, these land of honey (bal) and blood (kans), hatreds do not die. They may fade away but they never die. If the Russia-Ukraine War spreads, it may be Serbia that brings it to the doorsteps of NATO (i.e., Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Greece) via its dream of Greater Serbia throughout the peninsula. It is Ratko we should remember and vilify in our memories that this never happens again.

For more on the Balkans, read Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, A Journey Through Yugoslavia, as relevant today as when written on the eve of WWII. 

Nous Somme Tous Canadien

 You’ve heard about Trump attacking Canada: fantasizing about it becoming one of our United States; trashing the tri-lateral trade agreement he signed with our two largest trade partners (yes, trade with Mexico and Canada are each larger than trade with China, and have been so for many years); and now putting punitive tariffs on Canadian products, claiming that our overall trade deficit with them and their attitude justify it. Take away our oil and electricity imports, however, and it turns out we have a manufactured goods trade surplus with Canada.

Trump is pissed at Mark Carney, first because of his speech at Davos calling for consortia of mid-sized economies to stand up to giants like the US, China, Germany and Japan; second, because of his rejection of Trump’s notion about Canada becoming part of or subservient to the US; and now, because he won’t roll over in Trump’s tariff war.

You’ve seen the headlines and perhaps short news clips of Carney’s speech to Canada. But until you see the whole of Carney’s speech, you don’t grasp what a powerful leader he is. My Vancouver (BC) friend Bryan R sent me the tape of his statement to the nation and his press conference. Here it is; the first 23 minutes are his views and report on why Canada is withdrawing from the trade talks and retaliating, dollar for dollar; the rest is press conference give and take: https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/pm-carney-speaks-to-media-after-suspension-of-canada-us-trade-talks?id=6b77d2c2-d09d-47fb-9bf1-7c88f3c2445c.

 Take a look. Compare the Canadian leader behind his podium with ours. Their leader is articulate, smart and resolute; he is self-aware and self-controlled; he knows what his goals are and how to use his tools (e.g., dollar for dollar retaliation) to achieve them. He knows how to deal with a playground bully.

 And think about our Iran war; first we fight to close the Strait of Hormuz, next to keep it open, now to close it again. We achieved regime change, and now we face a more determined and radical regime than before. Meanwhile costs, interest rates, and inflation rise. What kind of leadership is that?

 A US/Canada trade war makes no sense. It is a trade war nobody can “win.” It raises the costs of living and of making – of food, gas, electricity, clothing, booze and beer, cars, lumber (for building new homes,) steel and aluminium (I said I was a Canadien), dairy products, beef, and all sorts of products. It hurts US households more than it does Canadian ones, but it hurts both sides.

I am a loyal American, but boy – do I ever admire Mark Carney and what Canada is doing and stands for. Compare how they handle immigration with our ICE-tyranny. Would that Mark Carney’s example embolden Republican Senators and Representatives to stand up and take charge. 

In the meantime, one of our granddaughters, a student at Toronto Metropolitan University, is awaiting her Canadian work permit and intends to eventualy become a Canadian citizen. Another loss for America.