Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport, by Carl Hiaasen

You might think that the only thing more boring than golf is a book about golf. Especially a book about golf written by a person who isn't good at golf and doesn't even like the game that much. But if the author of the book is Carl Hiaasen, that creates a glimmer of hope that the book just might be somewhat entertaining.

Even though much of the book is a stroke by stroke account of one depressing golf game after another, documenting his lack of progress and his frustration therewith, Hiaasen does intersperse some amusing anecdotes and even manages to wedge in some political commentary:

"It's sobering to contemplate how many bribes have been negotiated in this country during casual rounds of golf. there ought to be a law that anytime a politician and a lobbyist tee off together, the foursome must be rounded out by two FBI agents." (p.119)

What really makes this book worthwhile is its personal tone. Parts of it are presented as actual journal entries, and the overall tone is confessional, full of dramatized self-loathing and Eeyore-like pessimism, made funny with literary skill. Hiaasen's attempts at improving his golf game are also a source of humor--he'll try anything, from a magical pendant to attention-focusing pills (which he keeps misplacing and forgetting to take). He also spends big bucks on books, equipment and lessons, but mostly what he learns is, "when you suck, you suck."

Though he is no big threat on the golf course, scoring-wise, Hiaasen is something of a hazard to wildlife, ironically so, considering his reputation as a nature-lover. He uses his nine-iron to loft bufo toads out of his friend's yard into the neighbor's yard. When rats chew the wiring in his car, he clobbers the whole rat family in its nest with a specially weighted training club. The turtles he beans with errant balls are more in the category of collateral damage, but I still was surprised at his lack of remorse, in light of the fury he has unleashed in his books on habitat destroyers of all kinds.

I've read most of Hiaasen's books and newspaper columns. I have wondered what he is like in real life. This book partly answers the question. Apparently, he is a loner who loves his family. A perfectionist who accepts his limitations. He would be more of a curmudgeon if not for his wife and young son, who keep reminding him that there is fun to be had, and his mother, who keeps him emotionally honest. I predict that he will continue to play golf, even if it continues to make him suffer.

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, by Adam Nicolson

I have used the Revised Standard Version of the Bible all my life and memorized my Bible verses out of it when I was a child. My only experience with the King James Bible was that we had a big "family Bible" that sat on our coffee table, and occasionally I would leaf through it. It was pretty, but hard to read, both because of the typeface and because of the vocabulary. I was taught that the KJV was an inferior translation because it was derived from earlier translations instead of the Latin and Greek texts. This is the prejudice I held when I picked up God's Secretaries to read the tale of how the King James Bible came to be.

Needless to say, I am less ignorant now that I have read Nicolson's book. The King James Bible did draw on previous versions, but it was put together by a large group of eminent scholars, and they did have the Greek and Hebrew texts as well as the earlier English Bibles. The author does an adequate job of listing and describing many of the people who were involved in the translation that King James commissioned, but there were so many of them that they didn't really have a chance to emerge as individuals in the course of the narrative. I will try to remember that William Tyndale, who produced one of the earlier versions of the Bible upon which the King James version was based, was executed as a heretic before he even finished his translation. I always want to remain cognizant of the blood on the pages of religious history because I believe it is one of our main tasks to be vigilant and steer away from any tendency towards persecution or judgment.

What I like best about God's Secretaries is Nicolson's characterization of the King James Bible itself. He obviously holds it in reverence, and he is not reticent about singing its praises. I came away with a new appreciation for the literary value of this Bible. Numerous examples show passages where the KJV has words carefully chosen for effect, for the rhythm and the majesty of the language. The aim was not just to convey meaning, but to set a tone of authority and grandeur. One of the methods the committee used was that they chose words that carried more than one meaning. This is the Bible as literature, which is appropriate because the message it seeks to convey is not a simplistic one. Here is Nicolson extolling the virtues of the King James Bible, in contrast to a more recent translation:

"...The modern world had lost the thing which informs every act and gesture of...the King James Bible...: a sense of encompassing richness which stretches unbroken from the divine to the sculptural, from theology to cushions, from a sense of the beauty of the created world to the extraordinary capabilities of language to embody it.

"This is about more than mere sonority or the beeswaxed heritage-appeal of antique vocabulary and grammar. The flattening of language is a flattening of meaning. Language which is not taut with a sense of its own significance, which is apologetic in its desire to be acceptable to a modern consciousness, language in other words which submits to its audience, rather than instructing, informing, moving, challenging and even entertaining them, is no longer a language which can carry the freight the Bible requires. It has, in short, lost all authority. The language of the King James Bible is the language...of patriarchy, of an instructed order, of richness as a form of beauty, of authority as a form of good; the New English Bible is motivated by the opposite, an anxiety not to bore or intimidate. It is driven, in other words, by the desire to please and, in that way, is a form of language which has died." (p. 154)

I would have preferred that Nicolson include more specific examples of the translation process, discussing the reasons why the specific words were chosen, including the discussions and arguments. He does have some documentation for that level of detail. Instead he spent more time on the general history of England in the early 17th century, which was too complex to be adequately covered in this limited book. Still, it's a good beginning and I look forward to learning more about the period,when the opportunity arises.

Adventures in Transportation

With my daughter (D) home from college, we have three adults, a van, a car and a bicycle. We all got to where we needed to go this week and here's how it went:

Monday morning, my bike developed a flat tire en route to work. I rode it the last mile on just the tire, no air—this is possible because I have heavy duty tubes and fat tires. Possible, but not recommended. I got to work on time, though. In the afternoon, D picked me and the bicycle up with the van and drove me home. I went to Walmart to buy a tube for the flat tire, but they didn't have any so I drove to the bike shop and bought a premium, puncture-proof tube. Came home and fixed the flat.

On Tuesday, I got on the bike to ride to work, but the wheel was not adjusted correctly and I didn't have time to fix it. My husband (R) gave me a ride to work, I got there on time. I planned to take the bus – actually, two buses -- home. I went to catch the first bus at the end of the day and found that my regular bus stop has been eliminated. I walked a mile and a half (in the rain) to where the second bus could pick me up. When I put my dollar in, driver said the fare is $1.25 now. So it's a good thing I missed that first bus because I only had $2.00. I got home, dried off and changed my clothes. Then I got a phone call from D to tell me the car she had driven to work was not running right, something about the transmission, apparently. I took the van to where the car was, added transmission fluid, and tried to drive it, but it was really bad. I drove in second gear to the garage, left it there and walked home. D drove the van home. That evening, I fixed the bike so it would be sure to be ready to go next day.

Wednesday morning, I called the garage. They said the car needed a new transmission. After discussion we agreed they would install a rebuilt transmission and a new clutch. I bicycled to work; D used the van to get to her job; R worked at home. Wednesday afternoon, I bicycled to the garage, put the bike in the trunk, and drove home.

Thursday, I rode the bike to and from work without incident. D used the car to get to her job. R used the van for his purposes; all systems were normal.

Friday: TGIF! D called me at work at 1 p.m. - R was at the pool and had locked his keys in the van. D was at the house and didn't have a key to the van. I described where my copy of the key was hidden at the house, and explained that the key is a copy and might not work right away (R couldn't make it work last time but I used it to start the van after he gave up on it). D drove the car to the pool, R unlocked the van and drove home.

On Saturday morning, I drove R to the airport so he could catch a plane to visit his older daughter.

We are all hoping that our transportation situation is a little less eventful in the immediate future.

Some Sights from my Commute

Here's a tree I pass every day on my commute--it's a great example of an interesting species. It used to be a palm tree, but a fig seed germinated in the top of the palm tree, grew roots and tendrils that surrounded the palm tree, then proceeded to grow branches and take over, but the palm tree is still alive in there; you can see the fronds reaching up for their needed sunlight, out of the middle of the strangler fig.

After I pass the strangler fig, I am in an upscale neighborhood, home to rich people who keep their lawns nice and live in old, overpriced homes, not McMansions. This one house sticks out like a sore thumb, not because the inhabitants are Republicans--I'm sure that's common in these parts--but because they are radical and tacky about it. Their yard is surrounded by a high wall with a locked iron gate. Their flagpole flies the American flag, the Republican Party flag, the Confederate flag, and a pirate flag. Their vehicles are covered in bumper stickers, which leave no doubt about their ideological leanings:

• Fairness Doctrine (circle/slash) IT'S NOT FAIR - IT'S COMMUNISM
• Picture of Hillary Clinton (circle/slash)
• HRC (circle/slash)
• ANNOY A LIBERAL: WORK HARD AND SMILE
• I'LL GIVE UP MY SUV...WHEN AL GORE GIVES UP HIS PRIVATE JET
• (Peace Sign) : FOOTPRINT OF THE AMERICAN CHICKEN
• NEWT 2008
• NEWT 08
• I (HEART) HALLIBURTON
• SAVE THE SEALS--CLUB A LIBERAL
• (PICTURE OF AN ELEPHANT PEEING ON THE WORD "LIBERALS")
• USA LIBERAL HUNTING LICENSE

I've never met these people, but if I ever do, I have something to tell them: It doesn't annoy me if you work hard and smile. Your bumper stickers amuse me. However, I do find it somewhat irritating that you are BLOCKING THE BICYCLE LANE with your big ol' truck:

People Do Want To Fly

Everybody thinks about it; most people dream about it; some people make it happen for themselves.


Gennai Yanagisawa, 75, of Japan, developed the world's smallest helicopter in the 1990's, and he's planning to fly one over Leonardo da Vinci's hometown.














Meanwhile, Mubarak Muhammed Abdullahi, a Nigerian physics student, built himself a helicopter out of scrap metal and the engine from a Honda Civic.







Helicopters are too tame for fighter pilot Yves Rossy; he has a personal jetpack, like Buck Rogers.









I wish these people well. I understand they are expressing a human trait--three men from three different continents, driven by a desire to defy gravity and soar through the sky. I don't envy them; I'm happy to observe from down below, with my feet on the ground.

What is the What, by Dave Eggers

I'm really late reading this book. I meant to read it when it first came out, but partly because I had been disappointed by Eggers's book You Shall Know Our Velocity!, I hesitated to invest in What is the What. I have a great deal of admiration for Dave Eggers, however. His first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, really was. So when I saw this book on sale on the used book table for fifty cents, I grabbed it and I'm glad I did.

What is the What is the story of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Valentino Achak Deng. He's not a hero or a superstar, but he is a survivor and that makes him a riveting subject of this book. Eggers writes the story but it is Deng's life. The honesty comes through and the raw nature of the input, but Eggers adds literary value, the flow of the story and a graceful vocabulary. The Scotland Sunday Herald calls it "a stunning act of symbiotic literary ventriloquism."

The life in question should make any citizen of the industrialized west grateful for our blessings. Violence, deprivation, and displacement add up to a kind of poverty that is hard for us to imagine. Here's an example: After walking all the way across Sudan, a group of boys nears the refugee camp in Ethiopia. At the last village before they cross the river to Ethiopia, some of them, thinking they will be provided for in the refugee camp, trade their clothes for food. As a result, there are boys who remain naked for six months, until a shipment of clothing makes it to the camp. That's a level of poverty I rarely contemplate.

Deng eventually makes it to America but it isn't paradise and he needs all his resourcefulness and persistence to survive here as well.

Here's the story of the title:

"My father stood and began, telling the story the way he always told it.
"--When God created the earth, he first made us, the monyjang. Yes, first he made the monyjang, the first man, and he made him the tallest and strongest of the people under the sky...
"Yes, God made the monyjang tall and strong, and he made their women beautiful, more beautiful than any of the creatures on the land...
"...and whan God was done, and the monyjang were standing on the earth waiting for insturction, God asked the man, 'Now that you are here, on the most sacred and fertile land I have, I can give you one more thing. I can give you this creature, which is called the cow...'
"...God showed man the idea of the cattle, and the cattle were magnificent. They were in every way exactly what the monyjang would want. the man and woman thanked God for such a gift, because they knew that the cattle would bring them milk and meat and prosperity of every king. But God was not finished.
"...God said, 'You can either have these cattle, as my gift to you, or you can have the What.'
"But...Sadiq said, helping out, --What is the What? he said, with an air of theatrical inquisitiveness.
"...Yes, yes. That was the question. So the first man lifted his head to God and asked what this was, this What. 'What is the What?' the first man asked. And God said to the man, 'I cannot tell you. Still, you have to choose. You have to choose between the cattle and the What.' Well then. the man and the woman could see the cattle right there in front of them, and they knew that with cattle they would eat and live with great contentment. They could see the cattle were God's most perfect creation, and that the cattle carried something godlike within themselves. They knew that they would live in peace with the cattle, and that if they helped the cattle eat and drink, the cattle would give man their milk, would multiply every year and keep the monyjang happy and healthy. So the first man and woman knew they would be fools to pass up the cattle for this idea of the What. So the man chose cattle. And God has proven that this was the correct decision. God was testing the man. He was testing the man, to see if he could appreciate what he had been given, if he could take pleasure in the bounty before him, rather than trade it for the unknown. And because the first man was able to see this, God has allowed us to prosper. The Dinka live and grow as the cattle live and grow.
"The grinning man tilted his head.
"--Yes, but uncle Deng, may I ask something?
"My father, noting the man's good manners, sat down and nodded.
"--You didn't tell us the answer: What is the What?
"My father shrugged. --We don't know. No one knows."

Read more about the real-life Valentino and his projects to promote education in Africa at his website.

Shenandoah Hike

The wilderness phase of my mid-life crisis adventure is concluded, and I think it's fair to say it went entirely according to plan. Not Plan A or Plan B or even Plan C, but nothing was completely unforeseen; everything that happened had been prepared for in advance.

My original plan was to backpack the entire length of Shenandoah National Park, following the Appalachian Trail--115 miles--in seven days. I have no excuse for the insane optimism reflected in that estimation of my abilities. Just take into consideration that I have lived in Florida since 1980, and "mountain" has become a rather abstract concept to me. (Although I have actual memories of hiking up mountains in the Rockies and other places.) Somehow I thought the fact that I could walk 20 miles in 6.5 hours in Florida would translate into being able to cover 20 miles a day on the Shenandoah trip. "I'll have nothing to do all day but hike! In twelve hours, surely I can do that." It was obvious from the morning of the second day that it was completely out of the question, so I readjusted my plan, completely stopped worrying about mileage at all, and just hiked every day as far as I felt like going. In the end, I covered about 50 miles in 5 days, had a great time and made memories to keep for a lifetime.

But I'm getting ahead of the story--day one of the trip deserves attention, as it was the most dramatic of all.

I left Fort Lauderdale early in the morning, March 8, hoping to land in Charlottesville at 10:30 a.m. Weather-delayed flights resulted in my not arriving there until 1:45. Rodney from Mountain and Valley Shuttle Service was there to meet me and had brought the fuel for my stove that I wasn't able to bring on the plane. He whisked me off to the park and dropped me off at Rockfish Gap at 3:00. As we pulled up to the parking area, it was raining lightly and there was some snow mixed in, just occasional flurries. I put on my rain jacket but didn't take the time to put on rain pants, as that would require taking off my boots and I was eager to get going. Here's the beginning of the trail:

As I crossed the pedestrian walkway over the highway I looked at the horizon and saw a rainbow--the original good omen, and to say I was in good spirits at that point would be a gross understatement. In fact, I was euphoric, and I set off down the trail determined to go as far as I could before darkness forced me to set up camp.

It was cold--in the 30s--but I was comfortable hiking. I passed several small streams and considered stopping for water but didn't--at that point they seemed to be occurring frequently. About 6:00, circumstances started to converge in a dramatic way. The temperature dropped into the 20s, the wind picked up sharply, and it started to get dark. I had to cross Skyline Drive at Beagle Gap, where there are open areas on both sides of the road. In those unprotected areas the wind was blowing so hard that it literally stopped me in my tracks at times (with the pack on, I resembled a sail more than my normal profile would), and other times I turned sideways to present a smaller cross section, otherwise I would have been blown over. It was so cold my whole face was numb, and my euphoria was replaced with real, justified concern. This was a situation where good judgment was necessary, and nobody was going to help me--nobody knew I was there. I headed for the trees and stopped as soon as I found a marginally acceptable spot. I regretted not having water but that was a secondary consideration. I put up the tent, got all the necessities inside, secured my pack and crawled in for the night. It was dark, 7:00, and it was 23 degrees F. I stayed pretty warm all night, but didn't sleep much. The campsite was on a slope so I was sliding downhill all night, but this was Camp Desperation and I was glad to have met my first challenge so successfully.

Oh, did I mention, I climbed a mountain that day?

Day two, I woke up at first light - 6 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. That's right: even though the U.S. officially started Daylight Savings Time, I opted out. For the duration of my trip I had my own personal time zone. Now that is power.

I was packed and on the trail by 6:40--enthusiastic about reaching Calf Mountain Shelter, where there would be water, a shelter and a picnic table. Just had to climb one mountain to get to it--no, sorry, two mountains, Scott and Calf Mountain. I am going to stop naming every mountain after this, and just tell you now that the trip took me to or near the top of about a dozen mountains and that does not represent the amount of up and down--there are a lot of big uphills that aren't mountains.

The hike to Calf Mountain shelter convinced me thoroughly that I did not have the speed necessary to make the big mileage. And my night with no water convinced me that it was worth the weight to carry a day's supply--after that I always filled up my two one-liter bottles whenever I came to a spring.

I left the shelter determined to "hike until dark" but--

Journal Entry:

...Well, here it is 2:00 p.m. and I have changed my mind, am reevaluating this whole forced-march expedition. Factors: warm sunny weather makes hanging around in camp more attractive (2) mucho pain in shoulders and back from carrying the backpack is making hiking less fun. (3) Found a really nice campsite among the rhododendrons--it's LEVEL unlike last night's hillside bivouac.

So I'm stopped for the night, about to eat some Mountain House scrambled eggs and then read my book for a while.

My shoulders are saying "THANK YOU, THANK YOU"

The next four days went about the same. I enjoyed the hiking and scenery, while dealing with the shoulder pain, which sometimes seemed to be getting better, but never went away. I saw very few people--about seven altogether, all of whom appeared to be spring breakers (guys) except one guy with two dogs who seemed to be local.

On my way down from Hightop Mountain, I met two guys and asked one of them to take my picture--this is not a portrait, just photojournalism, documenting the facts. No primping, no posing.

On Wednesday, my 50th birthday and the main inspiration for the trip, I stood out on a ridge and watched the sun go down, stood there in the silence of the woods until the red gradually faded from the sky and the stars came out one by one. The moon was a little more than a quarter, very bright. I felt perfectly calm and happy.

When I went to bed that night, though, my right calf cramped up with the mother of all charley horses--I've had muscle cramps before but this was in a whole new league. I spent the entire night lying there talking to my leg. I knew it wasn't broken or damaged, just tensed. Some nerve had been overstimulated and reacted by contracting the muscle; it was like the hiccups, only continual.

I had planned to hike one more day and then catch a ride out, but this new development required another plan revision. So I got up Thursday morning, limped down to the highway, and got a ride into town with a nice French Canadian couple. The scenery was gorgeous.

Front Royal is a great town. I got dropped off at the town limits and hiked over to the post office, where my civilization luggage was in General Delivery waiting for me. I made the transition, using the same box to mail my camping gear home. Then took a taxi to a motel, and I was officially back in the world. Time to spring forward.

Two final observations in general about backpacking in Shenandoah National Park:

(1)This was my second time hiking the AT in the park but my first time experiencing Skyline Drive by car and I was surprised to find that the views from the road are about a hundred times better than the views from the trail. So scenery shouldn't be a motivating factor.

(2) The best reason to backpack to a place is that there is no other way to get to it. Our Colorado backpacking trips were always like that. When we got out there, the only people we would meet were other backpackers. In Shenandoah, you can hike 50 miles, arrive at a destination, and meet up with people who walked 100 yards from the highway to get there. That opens up a much wider demographic. This is why I did both my Shenandoah hikes in the off-season--my first one started on Christmas Day 1977.

Postscript:

As you read this narrative, there is one burning question you should have been asking yourself: "What book did you take?" And I have a great answer for you. I took Proust. Swann's Way, the classic translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. The reason I took it was that the first section totally captivated me, made me a Proust convert, had me saying that from now on, I'm only reading Remembrance of Things Past, I don't need any other books. That was the section about his early childhood. Unfortunately, the whole middle part of the book is an endless, tedious, repetitious account of friend-of-the-family Charles Swann's obsession with his fickle and heartless mistress. It has its merits but is by no means equal to the promise of the opening pages. By page 50 the narrative opens up more and has some amusing character descriptions. I will certainly continue reading Proust's great work, which is, I believe, seven volumes long.

Interesting that I was reading Proust all week and then the first conversation I had upon reentry into civilization was in French. A surreal touch.

This entry was drafted at Computer Medical Center in Front Royal. The people here are very nice and the use of the computer terminal with internet access is FREE. Did I mention that I love Front Royal?!?!

Falling Man, by Don DeLillo

This is the second book in a row that I read because of its cover. Falling Man, by Don DeLillo has an exquisitely designed jacket. The front of the book is a view of clouds from above, with a blue but nonetheless ominous horizon in the distance. Between the two words of the title, two thin vertical lines reach from the clouds up to near the top of the book. Extended above the lines, the words "A Novel" are printed vertically, in white. The words read top to bottom, so they appear to be falling from the sky towards the cloud floor. All this is interesting, but the clincher is not visible until you turn the book over. On the back, the cloudscape continues but in the midst of it, the tops of the twin towers are emerging. No other buildings are visible, just clouds all around, to the horizon. It's a great picture and very evocative. All kinds of emotional states can come out of it: tranquility, suspense, wonder, dread.

The book itself is less perfect than its cover, inevitably. It represents, presumably, an attempt to summarize or sample the effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks on selected individuals in New York City. It's very jumpy and sketchy, so I didn't have much emotional connection with any of the characters. The best character isn't given any emotional life at all: the performance artist known as "The Falling Man" who throws himself off of buildings and hangs from cables, in the attitude of the man in the famous 9/11 photograph, falling headfirst, wearing a suit, representing all our worst fears, free fall, total loss of control, the terror of impending violent death. The artist takes control of the uncontrollable, defines the indefinable. But he dies, in the end, of heart failure, unrelated to his vocation. He wasn't in control, after all. Nobody is. I don't need a novel to tell me that.

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

Last week I found myself at the bookstore, in spite of my resolution to read more library books in 2008. I was just killing time while waiting for someone, not planning to buy anything. But then I saw this book. The cover is very beautiful, a metalic gold and lapiz lazuli butterfly wing on a black background. The title is catchy--it's the phrase that the Qur'an uses to refer to people who are neither Muslims nor apostates; i.e., practicing Jews and faithful Christians. The subject matter includes many of my favorite topics: books, history, the interactions among different cultures. The author just won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous book.

All right, all right, I surrender. But I grabbed the book, took it to the checkout, bought it and fled the store, before I could come across any other irresistible finds.

Without going into a lot of detail, I will just say that the book lived up to expectations. The best thing I can say about it is that it went a long way towards healing the wounds inflicted on my soul by my reading of The Da Vinci Code. It's a kind of antidote for that terrible book--rational where Da Vinci is hysterical, historical where Da Vinci is fanciful, factual where DaVinci is, frankly, full of baloney.

People of the Book has some of the same tone and techniques as Dan Brown's opus, I have to admit: mystery and speculation, sex and violence, feminism and glimpses of cultures sure to seem barbaric to modern readers. But it's all pretty tastefully executed, exquisitely researched and detailed.

. . .

I read to the end, as is my custom. The Afterword supplies all the actual facts that the imaginative novel was based on or inspired by. I had to read the dust jacket to find out that Geraldine Brooks is married to Tony Horwitz, who is the author of one of my most-often recommended books, Blue Latitudes. That's just literary trivia, I guess, no real significance but fun to know.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The library had a whole display of books by and about Dr. King in honor of his holiday last week. I picked up one called A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. I've read some biographies before but never sat down to read extensively King's message in his own words. There's no more powerful way to experience his life, other than to see and hear him delivering the message in person or on film. Having 700 pages of his writings, though, it's more dense, you can see the repetition of the key themes, and the way he phrased the same idea differently over time.

Here's just a sample of how Dr. King thought:

". . . there is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness. There is within human nature somethin that can respond to goodness. I know somebody's liable to say that this is an unrealistic movement if it goes on believing that all people are good. Well, I didn't say that. I think the students are realistic enough to believe that there is a strange dichotomy of disturbing dualism within human nature. Many of the great philosophers and thinkers through the ages have seen this. It caused Ovid the Latin poet to say, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." It caused even Saint Augustine to say, "Lord, make me pure, but not yet." So that that is in human nature. Plato, centuries ago said that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions, so that within our own individual lives we see this conflict and certainly when we come to the collective life of man, we see a strange badness. But in spite of this there is something in human nature that can respond to goodness. So that man is neither innately good nor is he innately bad; he has potentialities for both. . . .

"And so the nonviolent resister never lets this idea go, that there is something within human nature that can respond to goodness."

========
Those are your reasonable words for today.
========

Adventures in HTML

On New Years Day I took a bunch of photos and wanted to create a little narrative with them--but Blogger isn't that good with pictures and captions. So I tried to make a slideshow to post on line. I have been working on it for almost three weeks and it still looks extremely amateurish, but I have learned a lot about sizing pictures and linking one file to another. I'm tired of working on it, frankly, ready to move on to the next project. So, here it is.

Weekend in Key West

Friday morning, we were up before dawn for our drive to Key West. Richard drove his van with artwork to sell. Alice (Danielle) and I took my car. We had collaborated to create cd's for the trip so we had an interesting audio background while we watched the scenery and talked. Alice has been away at college since August, so we had no shortage of conversation topics.

As the sun was coming up, we were driving the Overseas Highway, which hops, skips and jumps the islands that make up the Florida Keys, until it reaches the End of the Road, Key West.

We made the trip with only a couple of short stops, to take pictures and buy sandals. We arrived at the Casa Marina Hotel before noon. Now, "The Casa" is arguably the finest hotel on the island. It was built in 1926 by Henry Flagler, and has been completely renovated in the past year. The property includes the most extensive private beach in Key West, two swimming pools, and all the amenities you would expect from a luxury resort. In short, it is not at all the type of place I would expect to find the Bertocci family. It is only because I happen to work for the company that owns this hotel, and they have an unbelievably low employee rate, that we can afford to stay in Key West at all. At regular prices, we can't even afford to stay at the youth hostel.

When we lived in Key West we used to make fun of the tourists who we saw looking out of the windows of the hotel--we thought they were stupid because they were in their rooms instead of out in the town, seeing the sights, soaking up the ambience. But now I have more sympathy for them. It is very seductive, the room, the balcony, the private beach, and so on. It's easy to let the time slip by and miss out on the chance to tour around the island.

We called a friend and went to lunch and then spent some time at the beach. By late afternoon we were ready to head to the Sunset Celebration. The week before Christmas is not an especially busy time for the Mallory Square artists and performers, and in fact many of the regulars were not working. We saw our old friend Jimmy Brogdon. He designs and makes glass jewelry that he sells at Mallory Square and at some shows around the country. This is something he began just a few years ago. His main career was as a professional photographer. He was the photographer at our wedding, and for several decades he took all the school pictures for the students at public schools in Key West.

Alice ran into some pirates at Sunset, and they invited her to be their date at the annual Cultural Preservation Society Christmas party later in the evening. We had already made plans to attend the party--in fact, I went to it last year, too. It's a great way to socialize with the sunset folks when they are not working and are all in the same place at the same time. We had a great time and came home at a reasonable hour.

Here's a romantic shot...

...and it's still pretty after the sun goes down, too.

Saturday, it was more of the same--visiting, sunning, touring around on our rental bikes. Saturday night the whole family had dinner at the New York Pizza Cafe--outside in the courtyard, with the parrots and the roosters. After dinner, Alice decided to see what the nightlife was like, so she set out at about 9:00 and wasn't heard from again until 3:30 a.m. Because she is not 21 yet, she had to use her diplomatic skills to gain admittance to the clubs downtown--working within strict constraints that preclude her from lying or using a fake ID. She was pretty successful. At the 801 Bar, she found her way to one of the owners of the bar, told him her story ("I'm 20, I don't drink, I just want to dance and see the show") and he escorted her to the upstairs room where the drag show was happening, introduced her to the bartender and waitresses: "She can't drink, don't sell her any alcohol." Alice also made friends with some of the performers and one of them drew a big martini glass on her upper arm with the circle and line through it:

After the drag show, she talked he way into a techno dance scene at Aqua and then...well, let's just say, she had a very good time, didn't do anything she couldn't tell her mom about, and got back safe. The 'rents, meanwhile, stayed in the room and watched The Wizard of Oz on television. We cried when Mrs. Gulch took Toto.

Sunday morning we got a late start, had brunch at Camille's, and drove back home with only two pit stops. Richard worked Saturday and Sunday mornings at Big Pine Flea Market and arrived home about an hour after we did.

Hope for the Future

Today was a good day for feeling hopeful about the younger generation.

This morning, Fred Grimm had a story about how students rallied to help farm workers protest Burger King policies. (For some reason it's not uploaded to the Herald website, so I have reproduced it below.)

Then on NPR's Sunday morning show "Speaking of Faith," evangelical social activist Jim Wallis was talking about how he is well-received by students when he visits college campuses. He recently got a standing ovation at Wheaton College, where he was banned from appearing back in the Vietnam war era. He takes the long view, pointing out that Wheaton was founded by Jonathan Blanchard, a politically active abolitionist pastor. In that light, the swing to the political right that has characterized the American evangelical movement in recent years could be seen just as a temporary aberration, and Wallis is working to get it back on the right track. He said that he tells his young audiences about Jesus's "mission statement"--His first presentation in Nazareth, when He said, "I have come to preach good news to the poor," and Wallis says whatever gospel you are preaching, if it isn't good news for the poor, then you aren't in line with the Jesus of the Bible. Wallis is putting out an "email altar call"--which is to say, a call for a commitment, and he wants people to commit not just to a personal vision of salvation, but to a struggle for social justice. He is getting support from young people, if not from their parents.

The older I get, the more important it becomes to believe that young people have redeeming qualities. I appreciate the evidence I read and heard today.

Here is the article about student activists in Miami:

Good cause gives activism a new life
by Fred Grimm

(p. 1B Miami Herald 12/2/07)

The cacophonous throng of protesting farm workers weren't, most of them, farm workers.

Their faces betrayed them. Five miles into their march, they looked sweaty,sun burnt, affected by a long walk on a warm day through city streets. Clearly,these weren't folks who could spend 10 hours a day in Florida's tomato fields.

"Down with the king! Down with the king!" they chanted. They beat drums. They wore cardboard crowns. They held signs disparaging Burger King and marchedon the corporate headquarters to demand another penny-a-pound pay for Florida's tomato pickers.

But the Coalition of Immokalee Workers that marched through Miami-Dade Friday was, in fact, a coalition of a different kind.

The unsympathetic comments a number of readers attached to The Miami Herald's online version of the march story Friday demanded federal immigration cops scoop up the congregation and send them back en masse to whence they came.

The xenophobes would have been disappointed.

Thirteen kids had driven across the Everglades from Edison College in Naples. Fifteen down from Central Florida University in Orlando. Six more kids from Belen Jesuit Prep School in Sweetwater. Sarah Piper, 17, was among 13 students from Lely High School in Naples who defied their principal "and a few of our parents," skipped school and absconded to Miami. "We thought it was worth it," she said.

Four students drove down from Eckerd College St. Petersburg. Students from Florida International University and the University of Miami arrived by the busload. Youngsters from the United Church of Christ in Winter Park and Coral Gables Congregational Church joined up.

They were an unexpected sight for someone who had assumed that the term "student activist" had become an anachronism 30 years ago.

I had given up on the notion of student idealism after covering an anti-Iraq War rally at Florida Atlantic University in 2003. It was a gathering of gray heads. Hardly a student in sight.

But on a day when I expected so many farm workers of uncertain national origins, American students were out in force, full of determined talk about justice for immigrant workers at a time when immigrant workers have been reduced to political fodder.

I asked Edward Kring and Fabio Fina, both 23, both from Edison College: Weren't they supposed to be holed up in their dorm rooms embellishing their Facebook sites, playing online poker, blogging on the lyrics of Arctic Monkeys? Instead they marched nine miles. In person. Not an avatar in sight.

"We're supposed to be Generation Q, for quiet," said Fina. but he talked about a student activist revival "like in the 1960s."

So many idealistic fast-food consumers marching on Burger King must have looked a good deal more disconcerting to corporate execs than a bunch of hapless, Spanish-speaking, quite deportable farm workers.

Hundreds of energetic students had come to Miami-Dade in search of a righteous cause. And Burger King, determined to save a penny a pound, had given them just that.

The marchers headed down Northwest 20th Street, past a forbidding stretch of concertina-trimmed buildings and the custom motorcycle shop where Fabian Balbia was engrossed in a tangle of chrome pipes and gears.

"I didn't think much about this stuff until all those kids came by," Balbia said. "When I saw them, I knew it had to be a good cause."

Miami Book Fair III

The sightseeing component of the event...

I was looking forward to this weekend for a long time. I welcomed the opportunity to extend it to three days. ML arrived Thursday night which meant that we had all day Friday to relax and poke around close to home, before heading to Miami on Saturday and Sunday.



We planned a leisurely day and didn't try to leave the house early.




Mr. Bertocci has been working on some paintings for the Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort and he wanted me to photograph them so we started there. The paintings are whimsical, colorful atmosphere creators for the pool area--parrots, manatees, monkeys and a Florida panther.



We walked over to the beach from there, passing Primanti Brothers' restaurant--ML was happy to see this familiar landmark that reminded her of her hometown--not Seattle, where she lives now, but Pittsburgh, where she grew up.









We walked along the shore for a while and then headed to Las Olas Riverfront.















No boat ride for ML and me--we are landlubbers. We strolled the riverside, then visited the library, including the art gallery on the 6th floor, and had fish sandwiches for lunch at the Ugly Tuna Cafe. Inside the cafe, a mural depicts anthropomorphic fish catching, cooking and eating people in a convivial fish restaurant. I was glad we chose to eat outside.

We went across the street, past the Performing Arts Center to the Museum of Science to meditate on the giant gravity clock. It's fun and somewhat mesmerizing to watch the balls travel along their tracks, stacking up at intersections until they reach a critical mass, then dumping to the next section.



=+++++++++++++++++++++++=

We had some sightseeing opportunities after the book fair, too.

We walked through downtown Miami, which is mostly closed up on Sunday afternoon. Miami's historic business section is really struggling, in marked contrast to Bayside, the thriving shopping/dining/entertainment complex on the other side of Biscayne Boulevard.








"This store isn't empty. It's filled with OPPORTUNITY!"
Nice try, marketing geniuses.





After our walking tour we drove across the causeway to Miami Beach and embarked on a quest for the illusive South Beach Parking Space. Found one(!) and strolled over to the beach, dodging tourists and supermodels and eavesdropping on the beautiful people as they tried to hook up with each other.



South Beach is pretty cool, very art deco and cute--the public restroom on the beach is designed to look like a ship.

After dinner at a sidewalk cafe across from the beach, and one last look at the waves, we headed back to the hotel.

Here's the sunrise view from the hotel window, eleventh floor.

Miami Book Fair II

After a day of politely listening to authors, pundits, commentators, and literary mavens, a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of book fair attendees feel the urge to gather for some heartfelt rock 'n' roll, and so they show up at the Student Life Pavilion to listen to the Rock Bottom Remainders.

Stephen King, who joins the band whenever his schedule permits, characterizes the RBR's sound as "hard listening music." They do have a good time, and it is contagious. The playlist ranges from 60s and 70s classics to novelty tunes like "The Tupperware Blues" and perennial book fair favorite, "I'm in Love With a Proofreading Woman." Kathi Goldmark, the band's founder, also has a great song; I think they call it "The Slut Song" and the essential lyrics are "I wonder if he'd care / if he knew I had underwear / older than him" -- of course Dave mentions that it really should be "older than he."

The band's roster is extremely fluid. This year's book fair edition included--in addition to Dave Barry and Kathi Goldmark--Scott Turow, Greg Iles, Roy Blount, Jr. , Ridley Pearson, Tananarive Due, and assorted vocalists such as Dave's son's girlfriend. (I'm sorry but I didn't get her name. ) Dave's brother, Sam ("the one who got all the musical talent in the Barry family") delighted the audience with a gospel number, "Nobody's Fault But Mine."

The most incredible addition to the band was real life musician Monte Montgomery, from Austin, Texas. Guitar Player magazine named him one of the fifty best guitar players of all time. This guy does not belong on the stage with the group whose recording contract is literally(!) with "Don't Quit Your Day Job Records, Inc." I'll tell you what it was like. If you make lemonade from powdered mix, it doesn't taste anything like fresh-squeezed lemonade. But if you mix the powdered lemonade with water and then squeeze one fresh lemon into it, you might be very surprised at how much it tastes like the real thing. Monte was the band's fresh lemon and his talent and professionalism turned a fun evening into a fun musical evening.

I was there with my new digital camera, not a fancy piece of equipment by any means. The photos I took didn't come out well. I borrowed this one from Dave's blog:

That's Brother Sam to Dave's right and Kathi Goldmark leading the clapping.

I more or less accidentally took some video of the opening act, a supremely talented juggler named John Nations, or as he says in Miami, "Juan Países." I don't know how to edit the video, and that is obvious. But you can get an idea of how good he is. Check it out.

Miami Book Fair 2007

The 24th annual Miami Book Fair concluded yesterday. I'm still recovering. The fun of the book fair was greatly enhanced by the companionship of my blogfriend, the Imaginary Friend Known As Mostlylurking. She came in from Seattle, and that was very special. She'll be referred to as ML hereafter in this account.

Compared to last year's book fair, the weekend was more political, more educational, and less star-studded. All the events we attended were good, but all the high points somehow came back to Dave Barry.

Looking back on the weekend, trying to sort everything out, I got quite nostalgic about the role Dave Barry has played in my life since I came to south Florida in 1980. In Key West in the 80s, it was a regular ritual for my husband and me to take the Sunday paper to the beach, and for me to read Dave's column out loud to him. The couple who laughs together, as they say, might just still be married 26 years later.

The year our daughter was born, Dave's son Rob started kindergarten. The column he wrote on that occasion was not just funny, but could move a new parent from laughter to tears in the space of 15 seconds. I don't have a copy of it but I remember it very well.

When our baby was about six weeks old, we took her to the 4th annual Miami Book Fair. We walked the aisles of books and browsed the children's section, dreaming of the books we would read to our daughter as she grew older. We attended one author event: Dave Barry. The only specific thing I remember was he was making jokes about Robert Bork, who had been nominated for the Supreme Court. Dave was funny. I laughed, the audience laughed, it went on and on. The next day, our baby laughed for the very first time. I don't think it was a coincidence.

After all these years, all the humor, the Tropic Hunts and the book fairs, Dave seems like a member of our family or an old friend. Seeing his presentation this weekend was a priority. He did not disappoint.

He was presenting the book he wrote with Ridley Pearson, a prequel to Peter Pan--a children's book. But he knew who was there and why. "Are there any actual children in the room?" he asked, peering around the auditorium. There were--about four of them. So he obliged the rest of us with some classic humor. "I'm sixty!" he announced, and then dropped to the floor for a pushup demonstration. I couldn't see if they were real pushups, or one-handed or what. But it got a laugh. Then he talked about how when you get older you lose your nouns, which makes it difficult to speak coherently. The names of things and especially people, you know, you can think of the verbs and adjectives and even prepositions, but the nouns are elusive. He got his biggest laugh from the South Florida audience talking about hurricanes. He experienced Hurricane Andrew personally. He said after Andrew, the screen enclosure that had been at the back of his house was "orbiting the earth"--and he said, "you need screens in Florida, to keep the mosquitoes from stealing your patio furniture."

After the presentation, we lined up in the booksigning area. When we reached the head of the line, I said, "I bought the pre-autographed version of your book, so would you sign my book bag?"

Dave caught on right away, and there was a hint of envy in his voice when he said, "I didn't know Joel had..." (his voice trailed away, but the noun that was escaping him in his confusion was "merchandise.") [Reading his mind: I didn't know Joel had merchandise, hey what is up with this?] I told him, "Oh, he doesn't. These are Bootleg Boodle Bookbags™." He liked it.

Here we all are, kb, Ridley, Dave and ml:

Check back late tomorrow night: our next installment will be about the Rock Bottom Remainders, with VIDEO of the warmup act (really bad video of a very talented opening act.)

The Book I'm In

Here's a cute cartoon from xkcd.com:

I guess I'm carrying a lot of books around inside my head--although I don't remember all the details. But that's the reverse of what this is about; it's not about the books in me, it's about the book I'm in: Callahan's Key, by Spider Robinson.

If he hadn't mentioned me in the book, I would not have read it, but it's a fun book and I respect the obvious fact that Robinson loves Key West as much as I do. I don't think he really succeeds in capturing its ambience but I'm on record as believing that the essence of Key West cannot be captured in prose. Poetry might come closer, but the island is such a multi-sensory experience that in the end, you really have to experience it first hand.

Before I get to the point, I will just mention that Robinson is a fan of the John D. MacDonald Travis McGee novels, which are set in Florida. In Callahan's Key the main character and his entourage visit the Fort Lauderdale marina where the fictional McGee keeps his boat:

It was there. The place we'd all spent countless happy hours in, and had never laid eyes on before.

Not a lot to see, really. A parking space for a boat, like hundreds of others here. An empty one, at that: no vessel was moored there now. But there was something to see. Someone had placed a ceremonial brass plaque there on the dock, just in front of one of the shoulder-high wooden pilings...We stood around like pilgrims and read it silently together.

SLIP F18 BAHIA MAR MARINA

DEDICATED TO THE "BUSTED FLUSH"

HOME OF TRAVIS MCGEE

FICTIONAL HERO AND SALVAGE CONSULTANT

CREATED BY JOHN D. MACDONALD, AUTHOR

1916-1986

DESIGNATED A LITERARY LANDMARK

FEBRUARY 21, 1987

For the second time that day, I found myself grinning and leaking tears at the same time. (P.144)

So we know Spider is sentimental. And so is our fellow-blogger, yellojkt, who blogged about the McGee landmark last year.

But this isn't a story about Fort Lauderdale; it's about Key West, and it's about how I'm in a book. When Callahan's group arrives at the End of the Road, they are amazed and delighted by what they find in Cayo Hueso. He describes some local characters, and the nightly Sunset Celebration. Then Will Soto, a real person who becomes a character in the book, describes briefly the history of Sunset and how it changed from a free-form happening into a slightly more organized (but still sufficiently chaotic) nightly event. That's where I come in. I was the person who wrote the Articles of Incorporation for the Key West Cultural Preservation Society, the non-profit corporation that took responsibility for the nightly festival in the mid-80's. So, Will mentions me along with my husband--we're on page 177.

[After sunset] we stayed long enough to introduce ourselves to Will Soto, and found the conversation illuminating.

"In the late Seventies, early Eighties," he told us, "vendors and buskers were setting up here illegally, and the tourists loved us, and the merchants loved us too, but the city had eyes to put a cruise-ship dock here, so they started hassling us. Recognizing the levity of the situation, we got organized about five years ago. Karen and Richard Tocci and Featherman Louie and Marylyn the Cookie Lady and Love22 and Sister and me and a bunch of others formed the Key West Cultural Preservation Society in '84, and managed to cool the clem. We got a great show of support from the nearby merchants, and that helped a lot. We finally cut a deal with the city, where the Society leases this dock for four hours every night, and then turns around and rents space to the various artisans and performers. We clean up after ourselves, we keep out the drunks and dealers and dips, everybody's happy."

I shook my head. "Jesus. A town that makes a fair deal with its buskers, and then keeps it. I'm gonna like it here."

Will grinned like a pirate. "Don't get too starry-eyed, Jake. They got idiots here like everywhere else. No place is perfect." Then he blinked. "No, I take that back: this place is perfect." He sighed faintly. "But no place can stay perfect.

[Please note: "cool the clem" was, when last I checked, a googlenope, meaning that (1) this is the first it has appeared anywhere on the internet and (2) probably I'm not the only one who has no idea what it means, other than just guessing from the context here. It's SpiderSlang, I guess. ]

The Beatles in the 21st Century

Yesterday afternoon, I was painting the second bedroom, listening to Middlemarch courtesy of audible.com, when my husband decided we needed to go to a movie. I got to a stopping place, cleaned up and we went to the nearby cinema to see Across the Universe.

Wow.

A simple love story, set to the music of the Beatles, against the background of the sixties. I kept trying to compare it to other films--Grease, Moulin Rouge, Chicago, Hair. But every time it reminded me of something, it immediately took off in another direction. I finally stopped with the comparisons and just sat back and enjoyed a very fresh, very original, work of cinematic art.

Lots of fun Beatles allusions and 33 original interpretations of songs written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. My feeling coming out of the movie was that, although the Beatles wrote amazing songs and their performances of those songs were definitive, two of the Beatles have died. It's a new century, and their performances are history. But the songs have passed into popular culture; they are like folk songs now. This movie seems to be claiming the songs for America, despite the spirit of Paul McCartney which permeates the film in the character of Jude (Jim Sturgess). The gospel choir belting out "Let it Be," the Janis Joplin wannabe singing "Why Don't We Do it in the Road" and then joining the Jimi Hendrix-like character to perform "Don't Let Me Down"--this is cultural imperialism at its best. Poor Jude even tries to return to the dreary coal-smudged life that was his in Liverpool, but he has been bewitched by the rich blonde girl with the perfect New World teeth, and he is going to have to accept his birthright after all, even if he has spent his life "trying to hate" his American father.

Across the Universe is close to being the perfect Hollywood movie. The production is flawless, and there are enough happy endings to go around for everybody.

Remember: "All you need is love!"

P.S. Julie Taymor has the most impressive resume I've ever seen for a director.

P.P.S. By 9:00 p.m., I had finished painting the bedroom, and today it is all reassembled. Mission accomplished. Next weekend: the living room!

H. John Deutschendorf, Jr. AKA John Denver

Ten years ago this week, John Denver died in a plane crash. Coincidentally, I've been thinking about him and his music recently. It was an internet thing. I was thinking about Steve Martin and that reminded me of David Steinberg. When I googled David Steinberg, believe it or not, I ended up on YouTube watching Three Dog Night. And Three Dog Night led, somehow, to John Denver. Then I realized that the anniversary of his death was coming up so I thought it might be nice to spend some time watching and listening to him. So I did.

When I was in high school, I was one miserable, depressed little honor student. I had never heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I did suffer from it, among other things. Mostly I just hated my school, was terminally alienated and perpetually bummed out.

When "Sunshine on My Shoulders" hit the top-40, it grabbed my attention in a big way. That song was an anthem for me, like a hymn to the happiness that was there, just out of reach. I started buying all Denver's albums and listening to them compulsively. It was an era when I was going to Colorado every summer with my family, and towards the end of high school I took up backpacking and did some high country hikes. It seemed to me that Denver's songs really captured the feeling of the Rocky Mountains, the way that "City of New Orleans" sounds like a train, or Jackson Browne's road songs sound like a bus.

I am aware, of course, that John Denver is not considered "cool." As Rolling Stone magazine put it, the critics were never won over. Still I do like his music, and I can't find it in myself to complain that there is no irony in the lyrics, no dark side.

Denver had a nice voice, in addition to being a decent songwriter. He appeared with Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas for a season. Tonight when I was listening to some song samples, I remembered a song Denver did not write but it was on his live album "An Evening With...": "Today" by Randy Sparks. That is a classic song that John's voice is very well suited for.

Here's a YouTube video of "Today" and "The Eagle and the Hawk" from a 1973 concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. The video quality isn't great but the setting is just perfect.

I picked this photo to illustrate because it shows John in a bookstore. That's not me with him, it's some other fan. I did meet him once, but that's another story.