Vacation pix 2012

Beach at Crescent City, California

This morning finds me in the lobby of a motel in Crescent City, California, speculating on the wonders that await Maty and I in Redwoods National Park.  We've been trekking down along the Pacific Coast, enjoying the scenery in spite of the mist and rain.

Which brings to mind the time when I was in Munich and I encountered an Australian busker strumming a guitar and singing in the arcade of a government building:

"Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you..."

Mist-shrouded Oregon beach

We took our time driving south from Lincoln City, right along Highway 101.  I'd determined that we would pull over at every attractive highway-side viewpoint so I could snap photos.  But if we'd adhered to that ambitious plan, we'd still be on the road, now.  Twenty-four hours later.  

There's too much beauty to absorb.  As hard as I found it to be, I forced myself to pass by pull-outs where I saw motorists standing at the guard rails, pointing out to sea. 

Cliff dwellers

Maty is not what one would generally consider to be an outdoor enthusiast.  (I think it's an African thing.)  I was concerned that she might become wearied, what with me pulling the car over every 20 minutes or so.

Coastal traffic

All such fears were laid to rest when we came upon the imposing rocks on the shore near Brookings.

Coastal rocks

Ramadan having commenced, her faith is very much on her mind.  Quoth she:  "How great is God, to have made these rocks?"

No answer, of course.  It's a rhetorical question if ever there was one.

Mitt, John, and Eric talk veep

Scene:  Friday afternoon, July 13, 2012.   A dark, smokey bar in the basement of a DC office building.  Speaker of the House John Boehner slouches on a bar stool, forearms resting on the mahogany surface before him.  Seated on the stool next is presumed Republican nominee for President, Mitt Romney.  There are only the two of them and the unobtrusive bartender in the entire place.  Romney leans toward Boehner as he speaks.  Romney's hand, perched on Boehner's shoulder is a fleshy, wingless mosquito poised to bite.

Romney:  And, listen John, I kid you not --there we are, well into the vetting process --last round of interviews --and Rhodes asks her about that thing in Belgrade.  You know.  What did she tell POTUS?  Why wasn't there a forceful response?  Why didn't she let the president handle it?  And --as I live and breathe, John --she blew a gasket.  Like a goose protecting her gosling.  "Leave that poor man out of this!" she says.  "You have know idea what his mother did to him."  Can you believe that?  She said that about the former president of the United States. 

Boehner[casting a sidelong look]:  Have you ever seen that old Bush battleaxe get her knickers in a knot?  She could make anybody cry.

Romney:  You've got a point.

Boehner:  So I assume Condi didn't make the cut, then?

Romney:  She doesn't fit the ticket anyway.  We're not gonna win this thing with outreach.  Karl ran the numbers and he thinks we can pull one more rabbit out of the Southern Strategy hat.  Boy, I was eating up those boos at the NAACP thing.

Boehner:  Can't argue with a well-executed plan, I suppose.  But, if not Condi, who?

Romney:  All in good time, my friend.  All in good time.

[House Majority Leader Eric Cantor appears in the entrance to the bar, looks around then spots Boehner and Romney.  Cantor turns around and starts to leave.]

Romney:  Whoah, whoah, whoah!  Eric, my friend, why such a hurry?  

Boehner[wryly]:  Yeah, Eric, come sit down.  How're things now that Mudcat Saunders has taken an interest in your district?

[Cantor's sholders sag.  His chin drops to his chest; his feet are cast iron weights pulling him down as he turns and makes his way to the bar.]

Boehner:  Lookin' a little down at the mouth, Eric.  Come on, now.  That's no way for the leader of the Young Guns to be.

Romney:  Really, Eric.  What gives? 

Cantor:  So this is how the game works?  A guy gets a few bad breaks and everybody lines up to jeer at him?

[Romney looks confused.]

Boehner: Let me ask you something, Eric.  Have you ever been on a farm?  You ever seen how chickens act when they're penned up in the coop?  They call it a "pecking order."  And guess what?  You've got the smallest pecker in this coop.

Cantor:  Asshole!

Boehner: Yep, I'm an asshole.  [He lifts his glass, points his little finger at Cantor.]  But you're a Young Gun. [He knocks it back.  The bartender, a drink-slinging veteran, is already at hand with a fresh one.] 

Romney[brightening]:  Hey, now.  Those Young Guns. Don't get the wrong idea, anybody, but I've got my staff talking to Paul Ryan.  Hate to potentially rob you of one of your Guns, Eric, but, you know, Paul could maybe help in the Great Lakes.

Boehner:  Paul Ryan?  What's wrong with young Eric, here?  He's not a Gun; he's the Gun!  He's the guy who put the whole thing together.  Isn't that right, Eric?

[Cantor shoots Boehner a look that would drain all the color from a garden-fresh salad.]

Romney[looking wistful]:  Yeah, I thought about it.  No offense, Eric, but you know, I'm Mormon, which is already pushing it for a lot of our base.  I think adding a Jew to the ticket might be too much of a stretch.

Cantor:  Oh, yeah, Mitt.  No offense.  Instead, you're gonna take Ryan.  Or better yet, Marco Rubio.  Marco Rubio.

Romney:  Yeah, Rubio.  He's Mexican.

Boehner:  Actually, he's Cuban.

Romney:  Hispanic, John.  Hispanic. That's what counts.

[Boehner chuckles, in spite of himself.]

Boehner[To Cantor]:  You're not gonna tell me you didn't see this coming, are you?

Cantor:  Just because you're right doesn't mean you're not a washed-up shlimazel. 

Boehner:  We play the hand we get dealt.

Romney[looking confused]:  What are you talking about?  What the hell are you talking about?  Really!

[Boehner and Cantor study the dark surface of the bar.]

Romney:  We're all on the same side, right?

[Silence descends on the scene, broken only by the sound of the dishwasher behind the bar.  Happy hour is approaching.]

Happy little time

Remember, remember. Make note of times like these!

The garden is doing well.  Our blueberries are but a few days from producing record bounty.  We'll have squash and tomatoes next month.  The raspberries have been tart and plentiful and --who knows? --we may even have watermelons by September!

We've got a nice relaxing road trip through Oregon and Northern California in our near future to look forward to, as well as a couple big, exciting international voyages further out.

The new kitchen still looks great, and the new paint makes the house look --well, maybe not young; she's 97 years old after all --but fine, happy.  She's a happy house on the inside and the new paint makes her outside look happy too.

It's a happy little time we've got right now, my love. Let's savor it. Let's let it linger. We don't know what we'll find a little further up the path.  But it's a happy little time, right now.

Ethnic food cornucopia

Senegalese food served up in Portland

Mom once told me that she did not know what a taco was until she was in college.  I was a kid at the time, born of a Mexican father, and I found her revelation to be hilarious and inconceivable.  But, as she pointed out, there just weren't many Mexican restaurants in the Willamette Valley in the 40s and 50s.

People my age, of course, grew up with a plethora of ethnic foods available.  Well, it seemed like a plethora.  Specifically, there were three:  Chinese, Mexican, and Italian.

My, my, how times have changed!  The three varieties of ethnic food I knew as a boy are so integrated into American culture that they're hardly considered ethnic any more.  Who doesn't know what a taco is today?  Or an egg roll?  Or chicken parmigiana?

Ethnic food today is much more diverse.  Indeed, within walking distance of my home in Portland there are half a dozen Thai restaurants, several Indian restaurants, a sushi house, a couple Mediterranean places, an Ethiopian place, a Korean barbeque, and a couple Vietnamese pho houses.

Just another benefit that comes from ethnic diversity here in the land of plenty.  It's a good thing I have such an iron will when it comes to dietary restraint.  (Er --strike that --heh.)

Ernest Borgnine passes

Ernest Borgnine, the star of numerous films and television shows, passed yesterday of renal failure at the age of 95. 

Borgnine is perhaps best known for his role as the conniving skipper of a World War II PT boat in the 60s television comedy "McHale's Navy," but he was successful on the big screen as well.  His list of films include some of my favorites:

• The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah's ground-breaking 1969 film;
• All Quiet on the Western Front, the 1979 adaptation of the novel by Erich Maria Remarque;
• Emperor of the North, Robert Aldrich's set-in-Oregon 1973 film about life on the railways during the Depression;
• The Poseidon Adventure, the 1972 seminal disaster flick about a capsized passenger ship;
• Marty, the touching 1955 film about a lonely man who fears he will never find love; Borgnine won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in this film.

When I was 10 years old, I met Ernest near Cottage Grove, Oregon, where he was researching his role for the upcoming Emperor of the North film.  My Grandpa Metzger convinced me that I should approach him for an autograph, which I did.

Ernest was very kind to me.  He laughed and patted the back of my head and signed, then took the time to ask me my name and age.  From that point on, he was my favorite actor.

Ernest and Lee Marvin having an honest exchange of ideas in Emperor of the North

Although many of his movie appearances had him playing the "heavy," Ernest Borgnine was also capable of subtlety and poignancy.  In the Marty flick, he delivers this touching soliloquy to his mother as he contemplates life as a bachelor:

"Sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts. And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my life. I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough. I don't wanna get hurt no more."

Adieu, Mr. Borgnine.  You'll be missed.

Gettysburg exposed the unvarnished truth

Pickett's Charge:  Confederate delusion reaps its just desserts

One hundred forty-nine years ago this week, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of General George Meade and the Army of the Potomac near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  The three-day engagement was the culmination of Lee's second foray into Union territory and, like the previous episode, ended in defeat for the Confederacy.  Although Lee's reputation as an invincible commander had already been shaken at Antietam some 9 months previous, Gettysburg, as this battle would be named, forever dispelled the mystique.

The total number of casualties from the battle are some 46,000.  (Forty-six thousand casualties in three days.)  Although this number is divided nearly evenly between the two armies, it was a much greater loss, proportionally, to the smaller and less adequately supplied Army of Northern Virginia. 

Although it was not clear at the time, historians today point to the battle of Gettysburg as the high-water mark for the Confederacy.  It was all downhill thereafter.  When Lee abandoned the field, two days after Pickett's disastrous charge up Cemetery Ridge, his army was mortally wounded. 

The war lasted another two years, but after Gettysburg, any quaint, idiotic notions about honor and righteousness were cast aside in favor of the unvarnished truth.  "War is cruelty," as Union general William T. Sherman so famously said.  The Union generals, Meade, Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant, understood the new reality: attrition, economic destruction, total war.  Although Meade failed to press his advantage in the battle's immediate aftermath, once General Grant assumed command, they set about systematically crushing the Confederacy. 

Perhaps General Lee and his generals understood as well.  But, if so, how could they have imagined that there was any possibility of Confederate victory?  And why would they continue?  How much blood was owed to the antiquated and ridiculous notion of honor?  How much blood would sate the appetites of fanatics like Jefferson Davis?

Meade and Lee:  victor and vanquished

Were it not for the abolition of slavery, it is difficult to see how anything positive came out of the war.  The practical reality of the Civil War is that it was not so much a victory for Union and abolitionism as it was a triumph of industrialism over agrarianism. 

Put aside President Lincoln's beautiful words at the consecrated graveyard.  The Civil War was ruthless capitalism subjugating and destroying delusional aristocratism. Pick your poison.

Okay, bro!

Two years in Shanghai, China, population 23 million!  The most populous city in the world!  What an adventure!

Invoking older brother prerogative, I'll tell you that although packing up and moving across a vast ocean to an alien world is a terrible hassle, not to mention a bit intimidating, in the end it'll be worth it.  A recurring acknowledgment in conversations I've had with other world travelers (Bobbie and Paige most prominent among them) is that travel is best in retrospect.

Travel causes disruption in one's life.  Before the trip, arrangements must be made.  Funds put in order.  Then, there is the commute to destination.  Long lines; unforeseen expenses; terminally monotonous waits at terminal gates.  When you do arrive, you're exhausted, jet-lagged and frazzled.  But then there's the touchdown scramble to orient yourself, arrange transportation and exchange currency.  It's a frantic melee made all the more complicated by communication problems.

Frustration mounts when all those things that were so easy at home are suddenly very difficult.  Ordering food off a menu, for example.  Calling someone on a telephone, for example.  Finding a drug store or giving directions to a cabbie, for example.

When you're away from home on a trip like this, nothing is easy. 

I remember coming home from Chile as the year of our Lord 2004 was coming to an end.  I'd been 3 weeks on the road, and had wandered all the way from Santiago down to Castro, a journey of some 800 miles.  I made the trip alone (¡Que valiente! una mujer me dijo;); I was at the desolate (even desperate) end of my financial resources, confidence in my Spanish language skills had been shattered by that notorious Chilean accent, and I was afflicted with a nasty respiratory infection.  One big hassle, let me tell you.  But on the 15-hour bus ride back to Santiago I looked back on the previous 3 weeks, on everything I'd seen and experienced in that time, and I was gratified and awestruck.  I recognized that this enormous ordeal I had been through, was in fact still going through, was one of the richest and most rewarding experiences of my life.

This trip will change you.  You'll come back to Oregon a familiar stranger.  You'll learn things and know things that you'll never be able to relate to anyone else.  In the light of this new knowledge you'll see everything --Oregon, your friends, your family, America --differently.  You'll have a depth of wisdom outside the purview of everyone that you know today.  That's another gift that travel gives you.

So I'm green with envy.  Not because of the frenzy and fuss that you are, at this minute, experiencing, but because of the epiphany that is in store for you when you've finally cleared the hurdle.

I refer you to a quote I found by one Regina Nadelson:

"Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage."

Enjoy, hermanito!