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.