Connections Enmesh

Life and art and death and ceremony – over the last three weeks, separate threads have woven about me a web of connections, a net not unlike that in which Moby Dick ensnared Fedallah, the shaman. Moby Dick?! Yes, Moby Dick.

The G.A.N?

All began when I read a NYT review of Albert and The Whale in which Philip Hoare explores fabulous animals in renaissance art, the genius of Durer, the mystery of the whale. Hoare, a British polymath, follows rabbit trails into art history, German literature, cetology (look it up) and more, but merges them back again and again into his mainline of thought.  Thoroughly engaged, I next ordered up from the library his earlier book, The Whale – all one would want to learn about whaling. The skeleton of that book is Moby Dick, so that led to diving again into 600 pages of Melville.

This all at a time when daughter, Amy, and favorite son-in-law, Jeff Stoner were laying plans for their first salt-water foray into our Salish Sea’s San Juan Islands. Amy’s desire was to see southern resident killer whales. They twice encountered a pod of orcas, a good omen. Their visit culminated in a wonderful birthday dinner prepared by them and shipmates/dear Mpls friends, Colleen and Jordan, who happen to be trained chef and restauranteur.

Two Fridays ago, I finished Moby Dick (my third reading, the last some 35 or so years ago) and prodded by Hoare to look more deeply, worked at doing so. The next morning (connection?) the New York Review of Books reviewed an exhaustive biography of Melville, adding to my new-found esteem for this witty, informative, sensual, intriguing morality tale of life and death, good and evil.  Like most great works of art, Melville broke conventions and conceived a new form of the American novel. Last Thursday, in conversation with a young fellow-Hamilton Chi Psi, he brought up founder Philip Spencer, the inspiration for Melville’s Billy Budd. Connections.

Yang taking shape

Last Sunday, following a stint in the stone yard where I’m nearing completion of Yang of The Yin and Yang of Yearning, Ann and I attended another’s birthday party, a celebration of the 90^th of novelist Mary Morgan, our dear friend.  She was widowed two years ago, but carries on – spry, vibrant, witty and with it.  One-by-one, she introduced 40 guests from around the world, relating to us how and why each was important to her. She’s a model (though no longer writing; try The Sound of Her Name – a good read; St. Martin’s Press, ’05.)  

A tale of the long reach of war

Then, last Thursday, came the ultimate ceremony: the funeral mass and internment of friend and fellow Olympic Clubman, 77-year old Dennis Ortblad who died of COVID despite being fully vax’d, alone in an induced coma, on a ventilator, in a Moscow hospital ten time zones and 5,000 miles from loving Mari and family and friends. That austere Catholic message: he’s gone; you will see him again in Heaven.

We sobered clubmen met after the internment; a speaker explored Biocentrism, the theory that there is neither life nor death nor a single, separate existence, but a continuous flow of perceived time and space and energy, of perceptual co-existences in multi-verses. Mysteries . . .

. . . Dennis’ coffin laid in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery

. . . Ishmael in beloved Queequeg’s coffin, floating on the South Pacific

. . . Fletch in his web of connections, immersed in his Sea of Rumination.

Dennis Ortblad, Citizen Diplomat

O Canada

Over the border, they sing O Canada, not Oh, Canada. Well, you know – them Canucks -- don’tcha know, eh? And they say we talk funny!

Last week. Ann and I crossed that border, with fresh test results in hand, left US craziness behind, and nested in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. It was nice.

Looking for whales
in Active Pass 

First was a BC Ferry out of Tsawwassen through Active Pass – no whales to be seen – and into Schwartz Bay ninety minutes later. BC Ferries is twice the size of our Washington State Ferry system, but after all, BC’s coastline and islands are way more than twice the size of Washington State’s. We were parked right on the bow. Those BC ferries are nice. 

   

 It’s a cliché but like so many clichés it’s a cliché because it’s true – Canadians really are nice. They are.

And Victoria is very nice, especially right now with tourism off. But even in normal season, Victoria manages to be nice to, and in spite of, the tourist crowds. Now, a cynical BLM radical like my daughter would say, sure they act nice to you, Pop, because it’s a white enclave you’ve fled to. The charge is fair, though it’s getting less white and more diverse year-by-year. Greater Victoria’s third of a million are still dominantly Euro-Canadian; 13% are East Asian-Canadian, a bit over 1% Afro-Canadian, plus another few percentage of Pacific Islanders, Indigenous First Nationers, and South Asians. But believe me, they’re nice to everybody. It should also be noted that BC is 10% pts ahead of Washington in getting their population vaccinated. The homeless have not reached the tent city proportions of Vancouver or Seattle.

We spent the week in a small, corner condo on the top floor of Mermaid Wharf, harbor-side. Beautifully appointed by its film-maker and interior designer owners, we lived in style and quiet comfort: floor to ceiling windows, fireplace, a small deck, access to private roof-top patio, views of the waterfront with Washington’s Olympic mountains in the background across the Straits of Juan de Fuca. (Yes, it was nice.)  

Johnson St. Bridge,
right next door

Harbor taxis, right down below

      Delusions of Grandeur        

                          (click on a picture to see them in larger format)

Victorians are out-of-doors folk. I know of no other city in the Americas so bike-oriented. The garage ceiling was hung with bikes and racks of kayaks, canoes and shells. The town and nearby Vancouver Island towns and harbors are peppered with marinas. Parks and hiking trails abound. We walked Galloping Goose trail along the outer harbor from downtown to Esquimalt (pronounce the “t”; you’re in BC.) And within easy reach is the Salish Seashore and the Straits; we hiked along the shingle of Ella Beach, in Sooke, and lunched in French Provincial Park, further to the west on the Strait. 

French Provincial Park

Honey mead!

A further reach north on Vancouver Island (nearly ten times the size of Long Island) and you’re into truly wild country with some of the best fishing, fresh and salt, to be found south of Alaska and the Bering Sea. But we didn’t venture far, just to Sidney Harbor for lunch and out to Butchart Gardens. 

These century-old gardens are the tops: fifty-five acres of verdant, stunning colors, beautifully cared for and rotated to fit the seasons. Things really grow here. We saw huge though quite young sequoias planted, like I, in 1934. I’m growing smaller; they, larger. 

We dined well, both in and out. Great Saltspring Island mussels, fat and luscious. A wonderful evening on the patio of Il Terrazzo with a good bottle of Brunello and perfect service from attentive, friendly Adrian. On the way home, we stopped at Taylors Shellfish, state-side on Chuckanut Drive, to buy oysters and fresh-out-of-the-sea black cod. 

But the highlight of the trip was a gracious lunch at the home of Seattle friends Pam and Ron T, Canadians who have just returned to Canada after living 40-plus years in the States. Pam and Ron returned to be near family, not necessarily to leave disfunction behind.  They can watch our mud-wrestling with more dispassion now, though, like most Canadians, they care very much about what happens to us: like a younger brother who is more level-headed and reasonable than we. Their most recent election was just last week. Glamour-boy Justin Trudeau called the early election hoping to gain a clear majority in Parliament, but Canadians are too wary to give anyone that power in these troublesome days, preferring to force on their leaders the collaboration and compromise necessary to a coalition government. His Liberals lost the popular vote but still held a plurality in Parliament. Election campaigning is no less than 36 days and no more than fifty. And electioneering is civil. (Nice.)

O Canada, indeed.  A  granddaughter was graduated by Quest University, in Squamish, BC. Her brother is a sophomore at the University of Toronto. This next summer, I look forward to once again fishing for trout on BC’s Taweel lake in care of Karin and Guido. And Ann and I have beautiful British Columbia just an hour or so north into which to escape and leave US troubles behind for a bit. So nice. 

Government House

Idiot County Award

I am a resident of Washington State; only WA State counties are qualified to contest for my Idiot County Award.

The finalists which meet the cut-off of less-than-40% of over-12 vaccinated:

    Asotin    34.0%

    Columbia     36.4

    Ferry     35.1

    Franklin     39.8

    Garfield     32.3

    Pend Oreille     32.0

    Skamania     32.6

    Whitman     36.4

And the winner is . . .

    Stevens @ 28.7%

    In other words: 71.3% of Stevens County residents >12 are certifiable idiots! 

Giv'em a hand folks!  On second thought, maybe only an elbow bump, and be sure to wear your N-95. 

In case you might suspect that Steven's win is skewed by an ethnic or racial minority, know that whites make up 89.2% of the county. They are a responsible citizenry: the 2020 election turnout was a high 84.3%. Trump/Pence took 69.7% of the Presidential vote; Culp scored 73.7% of the Gubernatorial.

Assassins

For over a week now, I have been haunted by feelings stirred up by two front-page articles in the Sunday Times of the 19th: the admission of our mistaken assassinations of Afghani Zemari Ahmadi and nine of his extended family, including seven children, and the account of our complicity in Mossad’s assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, chief of Iran’s nuclear program. Both murders were carried out with intent – our mistake was in mis-identifying the victim, not in our eagerness to murder – and both relied on elaborate, technological prowess -- the Afghan murders via a drone-launched Hellfire missile triggered from thousands of miles away, the Iranian murder via an AI-controlled automatic machine gun smuggled into and set up in Iran to intercept Mr. Fakhrizadeh and his family.

Two days prior to those NYT stories, a fellow member of the Olympic Club, Rick H, gave a talk on just wars and examined Afghanistan and Iraq in that context. While we were at war in Afghanistan, we were not at war with Afghanistan nor, thankfully, Iran. Rick’s conclusion? Iraq never was and Afghanistan had long ceased to be “just wars.”

 A few days after the Afghan tragedy, in Syria, a country with whom we also are not at war, we assassinated two more men, a Tunisian and a Saudi. It goes on. 

Under Barak Obama, a President I greatly admire for being reflective, smart, and cool, the CIA and Special Ops carried out with his sanction 563 drone assassinations, usually but not always killing their targets, plus hundreds of innocent bystanders. Most of these strikes were in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia – countries with which we are not at war.

The feelings that drag at me? Disgust and Despair: what have we become?

What has war become? In our last declared war, we firebombed Dresden (some 35,000 perished), Nagasaki (39,000), Hiroshima (66,000), and Tokyo (100,000) -- mass murder of nameless citizens. Had a loser done that, they would have hung among the war criminals at Nuremburg or Tokyo. A generation later our fruitless, oxy-moronic “strategic” bombing of the Viet Nams and Cambodia proved mass murder does not work (and that war-criminals can go free.)

Now war, no longer declared and, thus, extra-legal, has shifted to tactics borrowed from the Nizari Isma’ili of the 12thC : targeted assassination. The assassin knows the victim for whom he hunts. Back then he used poison or the garrote but his preferred weapon was the knife, close and silent. Today, he uses poison (Navalny) or the pistol (Nemtsov) or Hellfire missiles or a two-ton, AI-controlled, truck-mounted, automatic 50 caliber machine gun. Assassination none-the-less.

And, like our wars, our assassins are also extra-legal – in fact, illegal. Part 2.11 of Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981: No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination. What the hell is going on!?!

What have we become?

What have we become, sentencing to death and intentionally murdering Yemenis, Syrians, Somalis, Pakistanis? And even, in the case of Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen and his son. Where does it stop? Yes, disgusted and despairing . . .

. . .what have we become?    

PS That same week, I was somewhat uplifted by Sam Sperry’s Post Alley encomium to Kay Bullitt. She fought for what was right, expressed her disgust, and did not give in to despair. We need an army of Kay Bullitts.

 https://www.postalley.org/2021/09/19/making-waves-remembering-kay-bullitt/

When Your Limits Come Down to Meet You

Tomorrow, the 20th anniversary of 9/11, is also the end of my 87^th lap around the sun; Sunday, I'll start the 88^th.  It doesn’t get old, just older.

Last Tuesday, Ann, Roger W, and I took a “’moderate” seven-mile hike in the north Cascades to fish Lake Valhalla on the Pacific Crest Trail.  Total elevation gain 1,500’. We met several PCT’ers, most of whom had started at the Mexican border last April and were now nearing the finish. Their energy and speed are awesome. 

And mine? I was shocked by how tuckered out I was after but 2.5 miles and 1,200’ or so.  The leaden legs begged to stop every 20 yards.  My A-fib kicked in, providing a handy excuse – except that before it did, I had been struggling with what would have been a nice workout just a couple of years ago. 

My chums suggested turning back but I didn’t want to disappoint them nor miss throwing a line in a pristine lake on a stunning fall day. They were genuinely concerned for me (and probably for themselves, envisioning having to schlepp him back up from lakeside to Union Gap from where it was all downhill back to the trailhead.) 

Up we went, over the Gap at 5,050' and down to the lake. A bite to eat, rig up, cast to rising trout.

 

My hiking partners were concerned; I was shaken. Sure, I’ve been aware of that malady called AGE. It’s been harder getting out of the shell now that we are back to crewing. I'm more wobbly; I don’t have the upper body strength of before; I tire in the stone yard after three hours, And I’m a bit whifty at times. I’ve always believed in willing my way through anything, but Tuesday’s drama has shown me that my limits are shrinking, coming down to meet a diminished me. 

How much faster and further to go? What will give out next? So far, I have been undeservedly blessed. Many of my classmates are gone. Some have lost beloved companions; others are struggling with progressive disease or cruel injury. I have so much to be grateful for.

Since Tuesday, though, sobering thoughts have haunted my days and nights. Will I have to give up our annual Sun Valley ski trip? Are things in order for Ann and family? Get going on cleaning out those office files and closets full of hobbies and junk! And -- no more cases of wine futures; start drinking your inventory.

I’m still willful: don’t get old; get older. The challenge is how to enjoy older, how to stay interested and interesting, to care. My only answer is to keep working Fletch Waller’s Three-part Mission Statement: 

Though still shaken, I’m thankful for Tuesday’s wake-up call on the Pacific Crest Trail. Come Sunday morning, what do I intend? What will I make of this 88^th lap? How many strikes do I have left?

The Best of '20

Since 2018, I have posted my likes among the photos I made during the previous year.  For 2020, the pickins' are slim; that was a year we stuck close to home, not rich in photo ops. So, few as they are, here are my 

Best of '20

The year seemed just to grind on --

Pulse, Tony Cragg, Mpls Inst. of Arts

In June we snuck away to a lake on San Juan Island. I watched an owl dive into the reeds, expecting her to come up with a duckling. No! Astonishing; she had a snake half again her height! She flew up into the fir right off our balcony where she sat gnawing on her lunch and eyeing me. The Athenians would have understood the good omen: their snake symbolized uncertainty, the boundary between one state and another, between life and death.  And here, Athena, goddess of wisdom in her manifestation of Owl, was defeating uncertain fate. It promised poorly for the virus, good for mankind (or, at least. for Athenians.)

  

Despite Covid, parents found ways to nurture their young.

Pa pileated and fledgling 

The sun rose each day, promising that we'd get through this -- 

-- especially if we stayed together.

September: day hike over Sourdough Gap into Rainier Nat'l Park

Wanted: an Angry, International, Teen-Age, Nuclear Activist

 Wanted: a Nuclear Greta Thunberg

Two potential disasters threaten the existence of mankind. One we can do nothing about; the other we can and must.

No, neither pandemic nor global warming threaten the existence of man. Global warming, already disrupting us, will cause more and more death and destruction but mankind will likely survive just as we survived the ice age 15,000 years ago.  Likewise, though immunologists warn us that pandemics will increase in frequency, big pharma (love’em or hate’m) has armed us with messenger RNA technology for fast development of vaccines. We will certainly suffer but survive future viral pandemics.

The two truly existential threats are a catastrophic asteroid collision and a nuclear Armageddon.  The first we can do nothing about (except nourish science fiction and our nightmares.)  The most recent close shave was with 2020QG on August 16^th last year; we didn’t spot it until six hours after it had already cruised by! (Incidentally, 2021GW4, a 16-footer, small but still very dangerous, will swing by today, as I write this.)

The second existential threat, nuclear Armageddon, i.e., genetic mutation and nuclear winter, we can and must do something about. Must, because it's imminent and must, because we can. We have the knowledge; what is required is an aroused, worldwide public demand to delegitimize nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Armageddon is very real, very near, and increasingly likely. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ metaphorical Doomsday Clock has been moved forward to 100 seconds before midnight -- mankind’s annihilation – the nearest in its 74-year history. (In 1991, the clock was re-set from seven to 17 minutes, its longest, reflecting the end of the cold war. Think of that: from 1,020 seconds to 100 over the past thirty years.)

So why isn’t the public aroused?  Because we’ve been living with the threat for 3/4ths of a century. Because it’s sober, serious greybeards who have been issuing the warnings: people like Sam Nunn and Ted Turner of NTI, Helen Caldicott of Physicians for Social Responsibility, Andrei Sakharov and Robert Oppenheimer, Sen. Merkle of the Arms Control Assoc., and so many others.  But as the history of global warming concern shows us, eminent and knowledgeable authorities are necessary but not sufficient.

Wallace Smith Broecker called out the connection between abrupt climate change and the Ocean Conveyor Belt half a century ago and sounded the alarm about greenhouse gasses before Congress in 1984. Astrid Caldas of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Peter Kalmus of NASA, and innumerable other scientists joined the call for action. Al Gore and his PowerPoint slides; Gaylord Nelson, Peter McClosky, and our own Denis Hayes (now of the Bullitt Foundation) with their Earth Day; and those worthies of the UN Climate Change conferences, Kyoto and the rest – all got nothing from political leaders other than lip service.  Until, that is, along comes a 14-yearold Swede with a raw, j’accuse attitude to point an angry finger at us, the older generations who created this threatening mess for her and her Gen Z compatriots.  Arouse them Greta Thunberg did!

The lesson is clear.  Politicians with their short-term next-election or vote-of-confidence horizons are not going to act until young people get mad. They, in turn, get their parents mad and irreversible public demand for action builds.  Witness: the Viet Nam war protests started with campus teach-ins. Witness the student lunch counter sit-ins and SNCC voter registration crusades. What followed was public support, demands for action, and change.

What we now need is a Nuclear Greta Thunberg to back up the scientists and prophets of nuclear Armageddon with angry pressure on politicians worldwide.

Take little solace from Biden and Putin having extended New-START by five years: that’s nothing but a band-aid. It’s time to rip off scabs. Triage and emergency treatments must begin on:

·       Biden’s endorsement of a $1 trillion program for “sustainment, replacement and upgrades” of our nuclear arsenal, which includes our antiquated (still necessary?), silo-bound ICBMs.

·       Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade levels.

·       China’s development of war-head-capable cruise missiles and – a recent development – construction of a field of 100 ICBM silos in the desert of China’s northwest province of Gansu.

·       Putin’s development of Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed, super-sonic cruise missile of indeterminate range.

·       Northrup Grumman’s Air Force contract for development of a replacement for the Minuteman ICBM.

·       Indian and Russian collaborative development of BrahMos, an air, ship, or land launched super-sonic cruise missile.

·       Pakistan’s and India’s continued build-up of warhead inventories and development of new delivery vehicles.

·       North Korea’s continued testing and development of warhead delivery systems, including submarine launched cruise missiles.

·       Saudi, Turkish, and Japanese internal pressures to become nuclear.

·       US development of the new Columbia class of nuclear submarine.

·       China’s construction of large aircraft carriers with nuclear-capable, carrier-based aircraft.

·       Russia’s and China’s testing of anti-satellite missiles.

·       Raytheon’s contract for development of the ALCM 1000, an air-launched cruise missile, and the Nat’l Nuclear Security Administration’s $11.2 b development of new warhead for it.

·       China’s and US’s weaponization of space initiatives, and planned heavy-lift establishment of moon bases.

·       US response to the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into effect this past January 21^st.

·       US, NATO, and Russian refusals to declare a no-first-use policy.

Aren’t Russia’s and our 4,000 warheads a bit much when 200 or fewer going off simultaneously are all it takes to trigger a nuclear winter???

 

WANTED

An Angry, International, Teen-aged, Nuclear Activist

Until she comes along, riles up Gen Zers around the world, and together they de-legitimize nuclear weapons, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will continue its creep toward midnight.