There's no way to describe the end of the Twentieth Century, and the Twenty-first Century to date, except as one disaster following on another. It would take many, many pages to describe everything in any detail, and I really hate to even give it one word. Nevertheless, we lived through it - I'm still living through it! - and it affected us in many ways. Therefore, I'm just going to lump twenty-five years of horror and hurt, and get it out of the way.
And, truth to tell, with all the bad times, we had some pretty great times, too. With the world seeming to fall apart around you, you have to work extra hard to keep your perspective.
***
In April 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado, planned to blow up the school. I don't think anybody has uncovered the motive, but apparently they planned it for over a year. When their makeshift bombs didn't detonate, they began shooting, killing 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 21 others. After exchanging fire with the police, the two boys committed suicide.
I only bring up Columbine because it was the first United States massacre by firearms. In the number of people killed, it doesn't even make the "Top Ten" list, anymore. Since Columbine, we've had nine murders in which more than 20 were killed. Three of the nine saw over 30 killed, two saw over 40 dead, and one claimed 60 lives. Hundreds more were injured by gunfire in that last incident.
In the first 22 years of this century, there have been several hundred mass shootings that took the lives of between four and 19 people (four or more being the current "standard" for a mass shooting). One that was far down the list in number of casualties, but of particular interest to us occurred at a community college at Roseburg, Oregon in October 2015. A 26-year-old student fatally shot an assistant professor and eight students, and injured eight others. As I said, a relatively small massacre, but it was "close to home," so we heard a lot about it.
A particularly sad feature of this kind of murder is that those left behind seldom get any kind of "closure." More often than not, the killers shoot themselves when they're finished with their carnage, or the police shoot them - often, a planned and provoked "suicide by cop" situation. Seldom does someone stand trial. Few leave any kind of note to explain why they did it. Why are my children dead? Why was my fiancé killed? They'll never know.
As you might imagine, the four of us talked about these killings regularly. So did the public and the politicians. Every time there was a shooting, there was an immediate loud outcry to "do something!" The politicians agreed; yes, we sure should do something. The usual "something" they wanted to talk about were background checks, keeping better control of gun sales so crazies didn't buy firearms. I don't know if they just weren't thinking, or if they were stalling, but background checks - no matter how comprehensive - probably won’t change the number or severity of gun deaths. With almost 400 million guns already in private hands in the United States – by one estimate, that’s 100 times more than our military has, and 400 times more than our various police forces – there’s hardly any need for a would-be killer to buy a new firearm. Whose backgrounds are we going to check, anyway? Few of our mass murderers of recent years would have been considered “crazy” before they actually were. After the fact, people remember that the killer “acted strange,” or provocative writings turn up on the internet. It would take a pretty exhaustive background check to cover those bases for every gun applicant, and without strong “probable cause” that kind of probe wouldn’t be made, anyway. As it turned out, after the initial hurt and indignation had quieted, our lawmakers didn't attempt anything, anyway.
The fallback position on mass murders was for the public to band together to pray, sing songs, light candles, make piles of flowers and stuffed animals, and pledge their solidarity, togetherness, and zeal to keep such a thing from ever happening again. Those after-the-fact demonstrations may be well-intentioned and maybe (I’m not convinced) they do some good, but they seem a lot more about self-righteousness than righteousness. After all the rallies and marches and pledges of eternal solidarity are over for this round, what are we left with? We’re left with some people who will never fully recover from the tragedy of senselessly losing loved ones or their own good health. Everybody else is back to watching the news for the next chance to band together and cast prayers toward heaven. What is it that God is supposed to do, anyway?
I remember that the reporting on one of those vigils made Mandy especially angry - angry enough to use some language I'd never heard her use, before. (I couldn't blame her!) It occurred at a Texas church after one of the mass murders. About 500 people attended, instead of the usual dozen or so who normally showed up for Sunday services. The newspaper said they came from as far away as South Carolina to "show their support." The pastor - whose daughter was one of the fatalities! - told the congregation that “victory has a price... You cannot be victorious without being wounded in battle.” Mandy asked what “victory” was he talking about? I guess the pastor's next statement was what he meant about victory: “I guarantee without any shadow of a doubt they (the victims) are dancing with Jesus today. God gets the glory.” Texas Senator John Cornyn was impressed by the pastor’s remarks. He said: “It’s clear they are people of deep faith... and that’s what sustains them and gives them hope, even during dark times like this.”
"So, that’s it," exclaimed Mandy: "There’s joy in Heaven, and all’s right with the world? I’m offended, saddened, depressed, and disappointed." So were the other three of us.
I suspect we're too far gone as a species and a nation to completely stop mass murders, but the answer for making them less likely has always been evident to anyone who wanted to see it. Available right now in the United States are thousands of guns capable of firing bullets at a rate allowing the killing of dozens of people in a minute or so. We can immediately cut back on the availability of that kind of weapon by outlawing the sale of such guns to civilians. There is absolutely no reason for a civilian to have what was made as a weapon of war. (Although, after the Texas massacre, one man told the Press that he had to carry an AK-47 with him in case he was attacked by a raging herd of wild pigs. Really? And we’re the smartest creatures on the planet? It would be funny if it wasn't so poignantly stupid.)
***
The new century had barely got started when another type of massacre occurred. On September 11, 2001, members of an Islamic extremist group, Al Qaeda, hijacked U. S. airplanes, and flew suicide missions, crashing the planes in New York City and Washington, D. C. Over 3,000 Americans were killed, all the passengers on the planes, people in office buildings, and walking in the streets. It was the worst attack on the United States by foreigners in our history. Nine Eleven - as it is still called - was horrible enough by itself, but it led to years of chasing terrorists (and using torture and humiliation techniques that we once said were only employed by the "uncivilized" nations). We waged war against Iraq, not because of their involvement in Nine Eleven, but because of false information that they had "weapons of mass destruction" to use against us. We left Iraq shattered both politically and socially, and gained nothing for our efforts. We stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years, killing a few terrorists, and eventually leaving the country in the hands of the extremist religious Taliban, with nothing "won."
Although there were no additional terrorist actions in the United States, the country was on high alert for the next couple of years. Travel to other countries - even across our border into Canada - was much restricted. Americans needed passports for many kinds of travel, and checking in at airports became a nightmare of extra searching of luggage, having to remove shoes, and being unable to carry many standard toiletries, because they might be hiding dangerous substances. It was a time of extreme suspicion and overreaction.
***
Greg decided to retire from Federal service in 2002. It wasn't specifically because of the aftermath of Nine Eleven, but it did contribute to the timing. His job required regular air travel, and all the new travel restrictions were frustrating and time-consuming. Also, he had to show identification, and be escorted by armed security guards to the office he had occupied since 1968. Whatever "fun" there had been in working there was gone.
As I said, Nine Eleven contributed, but his primary reason for Federal retirement was so that he and Vic could work together on their long-term plan. He had 36 years of government service, and he was over 55, so he could start receiving his annuity immediately. Only the last ten years or so had been in relatively high-salaried positions, but taken together, his years gave them a satisfactory monthly paycheck. We had the house paid off, the kids were mostly on their own, and we split all the taxes and utility costs. We had always lived pretty frugally, so they didn't expect any money problems, no matter what happened with their work plans.
Actually, before Greg retired, he and Vic had come to the conclusion that their "business" wasn't going to be a have-an-office, print stationary with a logo, and make money affair. There wasn't an obvious market for what they were selling. Now, that didn't matter, because they had a guaranteed paycheck, and they could continue with Vic's work of giving away - rather than selling - their product. Without worrying about how they would survive, they could devote all their time to learning and teaching.
I'm sure I mentioned previously that Vic had been meeting informally with a variety of groups, ostensibly "fact-finding" for her own work, but also taking the opportunities to pass on some of what she and Greg had learned. Greg liked that approach, and they found that there were hundreds of groups between Seattle and San Francisco that supported - actively or passively - any number of social, political and environmental causes. Most were willing to talk about their activities. Greg and Vic spent most of the warmer, dryer months traveling up and down the Pacific coast, camping out most of the time to save money, and meeting with whoever would meet with them. They were seldom gone more than three or four days at a time, so we regularly got together to discuss their latest adventures. Mandy and I were always interested in what had caught their fancy, and we usually had a good sharing session after each trip.
***
By 2004, things had settled down enough after Nine Eleven that we decided to take a trip together. Mandy had always wanted to visit Hawaii, and we all readily agreed. We planned to fly to Honolulu, then spend several days on some of the other islands.
Greg had flown regularly on his job, and he and Vic had made the trip to Arizona. All four of us had flown to North Dakota a few times. All those trips had seemed pretty easy and leisurely. That was before Nine Eleven, however, and things had changed drastically. We had to be at the terminal hours before our flight. Passing through security involved showing proof of identity, taking off our shoes (!), emptying our pockets, and having our carry-on luggage highly scrutinized. Once on the plane, it was okay, but we were worn out, by then.
The long flight over water was a new experience. It was hard not to have a passing thought about the fact that, once we took off, there was no place to land for several hours - just deep blue ocean, as far as the eye could see. It's funny the silly things your mind remembers. I thought about a very old comic routine by Shelley Berman. I don't remember the details, but he was on a plane going somewhere, when the pilot announced they'd be landing a half-hour early. He said something like, "Now, that scared the hell out of me." I couldn't help thinking about where a half-hour before Honolulu would put us!
It must have been that same skit in which Berman talked about rifling through the seat pocket in front of him. He found the air sickness bag (luckily, none of us needed one), the airline magazine, and an old, forgotten Erskine Caldwell paperback - as if, he said, anybody could forget an Erskine Caldwell story! As I said, our minds certainly retain a lot of trivia. I wonder why?
We spent the first night in one of the big hotels at Waikiki, walked on the beach, enjoyed a beautiful sunset, and ate mahi-mahi (a popular Hawaiian fish). We also tried sea turtle, just because it was a specialty. I think we all concluded it was "okay," but a little dense and a little tough, and not anything to order on a regular basis. What does it taste like? Doesn't everybody always say "chicken," when they can't think of anything else? I guess it did taste a little like chicken.
We got a rental car, and toured around Oahu the second day. It was nice and tropical, but with nothing especially noteworthy. We left that evening for Kauai, where we had another motel and rental car waiting. The inter-island terminal was busy, but didn't have all the security we had on the mainland, so it wasn't too difficult to island-hop.
We stayed at Poipu Beach, at the south end of the island, and the next day drove all the way up the east coast to the Kilauea Lighthouse, on the north shore. We had great ocean views, and saw some of the taro plantings - the starchy root they make poi from. (We had it once. I didn't like it.) On the trip back south, Greg tried to spoil the vacation for us, by telling us that we probably hadn't yet seen a native animal or native plant in Hawaii. He modified that by remembering that the big Laysan albatrosses nesting at Kilauea were natives, but he stuck by the rest of his story.
We had seen quite a few birds, and certainly plenty of vegetation, so we had to question his bold assertion. He explained it, in several sad steps. First, foreign ships arriving in the islands had rats aboard, that escaped onto land. Without any predators, they increased rapidly - ate birds and birds' eggs, destroyed sugar cane and other crops, got into houses, etc. Knowing that mongoose from India were notorious rat killers, the sugar companies introduced them onto Maui, Lanai, and Molokai. They ate rats, all right, but they ate birds and bird eggs, turtle eggs, insects, fruit, plants - in fact, just about anything they could find. They, and the rats, were responsible for the extinction of a number of Hawaiian bird species. Luckily, mongoose were not released on Kauai, but there were the rats, so Kauai didn't get a one-two punch, just the one. It was bad enough.
Unfortunately, rats and mongoose were not the only foreign introductions to the islands. Domestic cattle and sheep got into the native forests, then the wildlife department introduced various deer from both North America and Asia. There were also feral goats. Native plants and animals suffered from the trampling and eating of the native forests. Most native birds disappeared. Birds from all over the world were introduced, and that's why we were seeing cardinals from North and South America, Shama thrushes from India, doves from Malaysia and India, white-eyes from Japan, etc., etc., etc.
As sad as the story was, we refused to be brought down by it, and continued to enjoy our time. Back at Poipu for the night, we swam in the ocean, sat on the beach, and watched another Technicolor sunset.
I think our last day on Kauai was the best of the trip for me. We drove west from Poipu that day, and up into the mountains along the rim of Waimea Canyon, dubbed the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. It is impressive, with a steep drop of 3,600 feet from the rim. It's carved into wonderful cliffs and buttresses, all red and green. Off beyond is real wilderness, the soggy rainforest of the Alaka'i Swamp. Ahead at the end of the road is Kokee State Park, where you can look over 4,000 feet straight down to the Na Pali Coast beaches.
The information signs at Kokee say that the nearby Mt. Waialeale was long considered the wettest place on Earth, with an average annual rainfall of 450 inches, and a whopping 583 inches in 1982. Several places have since been found with higher annual rainfall, but I think 450 inches is not bad!
A nice bonus at Kokee is that you actually get into some real natural Hawaiian forest, that still has a few native bird species. We saw several apapane (app-uh-pawnee), looking something like a scarlet tanager, with brilliant red plumage and black wing tips. But an apapane has a long thin bill, used for extracting nectar from flowers. We also saw an i'iwi (pronounced ee-ee-vee), another nectar eater, red and black like the somewhat smaller apapane, but with a very long sickle-shaped bill.
***
OKAY, TIME OUT. Thinking about how to pronounce I'ivi prompts me to insert a dumb joke someone told us while we were in Hawaii. It seems that a linguist came to the islands, and was confused to hear many people pronounce the name of the state "huh-wy-ee," but others said "huh-vye-ee." He assumed the "v" sound was most likely the original, but no one seemed to be able to tell him. One day, he was driving around in a very remote area, and there saw a very wizened old man - probably the oldest he had seen in the islands. He figured if anyone would know the correct pronunciation, this would be the man. He introduced himself, then asked the question. With no hesitation, the man replied "huh-vye-ee." The visitor was elated. He thanked the old man, who replied "You're velcome."
Okay, I'm sorry for that. But no doubt when somebody reads this, I'll be long gone, and I won't hear the groans.
***
After visiting at Kokee, we drove directly back to Lihue, turned in our rental car, and flew to The Big Island (aka Hawaii), We picked up a rental car at the Kona airport, and drove into Kailua-Kona, where we had motel reservations.
The Big Island really is big, compared to the others, and there are a lot more places you can drive to. We didn't have any real plans for our two days there. We knew we wanted to go up to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where Kilauea was erupting, again. We decided to just drive around the north coast the first day, and see what we could see. That's what we did.
It was a nice day for a drive, and the coast line was beautiful. Still, we returned to the motel early, spent sometime on the beach, took a nap, and ate an early dinner. The next day, we did go up to the National Park, and saw Kilauea spouting a little fire, and saw red-tinged lava rolling down the slope away from the crater. But the volcano seemed to have more steam than we did, and again we returned to the motel early. We spent a quiet afternoon and evening at the motel, had breakfast next morning, turned in our rental car at the Kona airport, and boarded a direct flight back to Portland, Oregon.
There's a certain novelty to being on an island - no matter how big or small it is - and it's certainly unusual to hop on a plane every time you want to get to another part of the state. But it's stressful, also. There are always lots of people around (not our usual milieu). Every couple of days, we were picking up and returning rental cars, checking in and out of motels, finding new places to eat... I don't want to give the impression we didn't enjoy our Hawaii visit, because we did. I think "tourism" just kind of wore us out. If we had ever gone back, I think we might have picked one place and just settled there for a week, absorbing all the sky, sun, sand, sea, and sunsets the place had to offer. That might be the essence of Hawaii.
When we asked each other what we liked best about our Hawaii trip, the place was unanimously Kauai. Maybe if we'd given the Big Island more of a chance, or if we'd seen Maui or Molokai, we might have felt differently. Still, I kind of doubt it. Kauai, the Green Isle, had a lot of good stuff packed into a relatively small area. You could explore or you could sit on the beach. Either felt just right.
When we asked each other, what particular experience was the best, the answer was again unanimous: breakfast! Every morning, sitting in an open-air restaurant - sunny skies, with light breezes - fresh, hot Kona coffee, grown locally - big glasses of pink guava juice - and golden papayas, picked ripe from nearby trees. What could possibly be a better way to begin your day?
I like papaya a lot, and I sometimes buy it here in Portland. It's "okay," but it's been picked green, and shipped over to the mainland to ripen. It really isn't the glorious fruit that we got with breakfast every morning, and occasionally bought ripe and fresh-picked from farm stands, for an afternoon treat. That's one piece of Hawaii I wish we could have brought home with us.
I didn't mention orchids or leis. There are dozens of species of orchids - maybe hundreds? - of all sizes and colors. They grow wild everywhere, and also there are large nurseries where they are grown commercially.
We were given leis when we landed at Honolulu. They were pretty nice, but we found some really elegant ones to bring home to show the kids. They thought they were pretty cool, and they kept fresh in the refrigerator for several weeks..
***
Obviously, this isn't a journal of every day of our lives. I'm just "hitting the high spots," so to speak - special events, unusual adventures, and other happenings that have claimed special spots in my mind. If another of us had been writing this, there might have been a little different list. The four of us were always so close, I suspect I've done a pretty good job of fitting in the best memories of each.
After our return from Hawaii in 2004, I think it was pretty much just "home life" for us until June 2006. I had my 65th birthday, and retired from teaching with a good pension. Well, I "retired" in the sense that I didn't go into school every day, and teach regular classes. However, the University bestowed upon me the honored title of "emeritus" professor, and let me keep an office in the English department. I went into school regularly to arrange graduate seminars, mentor individual students, attend meetings with other professors, and extend my own education in language and literature. It was a nice way to spend my time, free from the pressures of daily classes, but still strongly involved in my life-long passion.
As part of the celebration and transition, we agreed that we all wanted to be part of Vic's achieving the last of her "Big Four" - things she really wanted to see and do in her lifetime. I've talked about her getting her ocean and redwood trees when she and Greg went to California just before their wedding. Their trip to Arizona had been for Number Three, saguaro cactuses. The remaining objective was to see autumn leaves in New England.
We decided that taking the train east would be more restful than going by air, so in early September, we went by rail to Albany, New York, and picked up a rental car there. It seemed pretty quiet in the vicinity, but the leaves were just barely beginning to change color, and we were warned that it wouldn't be quiet much longer. We had been cautioned before leaving Portland that we better make motel reservations immediately, because we wouldn't find any vacancies once the "leaf peepers" arrived. "Leaf peepers" - that was us, tourists out specifically to see the famed New England fall color. We had made reservations. We didn't know exactly where we were going, but we picked a few towns that looked like they were in strategic places. It turned out that we guessed pretty well.
We drove north from Albany, then turned east across Vermont, through Bennington and Brattleboro, to the Connecticut River Valley between Vermont and New Hampshire. We began to see the first signs of real fall color in the mountains east of Bennington, where whole hillsides were reddish-pink with red maples, one of the first of the tree species to turn. Coming down out of the hills, we found it was still "summer" at Brattleboro, but as we drove north along the Connecticut River, we began to see more color. We had learned before leaving home that the leaves turned first in the north of Vermont and New Hampshire, gradually spreading south to Massachusetts a few weeks later. That was proving to be true, and by the time we reached Lebanon, New Hampshire - our goal for the first night - we thought the colors were quite nice.
We had been told that a "must do" was a ride to the summit of Mt. Washington on the cog railway. So, we angled cross-country from Lebanon to Crawford Notch, past the gigantic Mount Washington Hotel - one of the few remaining of the "grand hotels" of early New Hampshire - to the cog railway Base Station. There were a lot of people, but at least it wasn't a weekend at the height of the fall color, and we were able to get seats for the ride to the summit. It's an amazing trip! I don't really know how to explain it. The little steam locomotive pushes an attached passenger car three miles and 3,800 feet to the summit of Mt. Washington, at 6,300 feet elevation the highest spot in the northeastern United States. It runs on trestles, with average grades of 25 percent - and at one point over 37 percent! At those grades, when you are sitting in the back of the coach, people in the front of the coach are higher than your head!
The trip begins in pretty hardwood forest, runs through an area of weather-stunted conifers, and finally above "timberline," into just bare granite rock. When you reach the summit, you find a large visitor center and gift shop, and also the Mt. Washington Observatory. As a surprise, you also find cars, driven up the east side of the mountain on a steep, winding auto road. The view in all directions is, of course, fantastic.
In the gift shop, we saw post cards of a sign that is apparently posted on all the trails coming up the mountain. It reads, "Stop. The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure, even in the summer. Turn back now if the weather is bad."
Our first reaction? This is a joke, isn't it? After all, we’re only a couple hundred miles north of Boston, and while winters can be cold and snowy, it’s not really The Arctic, is it? And these aren't even mountains. There are only seven summits in the entire range that are higher than 5000 feet. That's lower than the bases of our Cascade volcanoes. These are hills, not mountains!
But the information signs around the visitor center presented us with a lot to reconsider. For instance, the highest wind speed ever experienced by a human was recorded on Mt. Washington - 231 miles per hour. (I say “by a human,” because an unstaffed weather station in Australia measured a wind speed of 253 miles per hour during a 1996 typhoon.) Hurricane-force winds (75 mph or greater) are recorded on average more than 100 days each year. Winter temperatures have reached minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, as cold as anywhere on earth, except the South Pole. With strong winds, the wind chill factor can dip below minus 100 F. Snowfall averages almost 300 inches a year, with a record of almost 50 inches falling in one 24-hour period. Put that all together, and it sounds pretty severe.
Obviously, those extremes are not daily features, and not at the times of year that most hikers are in the mountains. But violent storms can develop suddenly, it can snow any day of the year, dense fogs are common, freezing temperatures can occur in mid-summer, and daytime temperatures on the peaks seldom exceed 60 degrees Fahrenheit, even in July and August. With a wind that seldom completely stops, and that regularly blows at 30, 40 or 50 miles per hour, the summer wind chill can be surprising, they say.
Our whole time on the mountain was sunny - not a cloud in the sky - but the wind blew steadily, and it was chilly. As we made our trip back down the cog, it was a little easier to believe the trail signs.
We stayed in Lancaster, New Hampshire, that night, then followed the Connecticut River north to Colebrook. The woods were obviously at the peak of color by then, and the color was spectacular! Orange, yellow, red, brown - all mixed together, and exceedingly bright. We were told that some years the colors were very bright, while other years they were beautiful but more muted - more pastel. Obviously, this was one of the bright years.
I think if our "leaf peeping" had ended right there, all four of us would have been fully satisfied - and we still had the whole southbound trip to go! We turned east at Colebrook, and climbed over a low mountain range through Dixville Notch to the Androscoggin River valley. The colors continued marvelous. As we were about to start down the east side of the pass, Mandy exclaimed that she knew this place.
As none of us had ever been even close to New Hampshire, that seemed unlikely. I asked her if she had seen it in a dream. As I recall, she stuck out her tongue at me. "I haven't been here," she said, "but I've seen it. So have you. Dixville Notch. The Balsams Hotel. This is where New Hampshire always casts and counts the first election ballots - at midnight, on election morning." She was right. We'd all seen the procedure on television, a number of times.
We followed the Androscoggin River south through lovely fall forests, through what was called the Thirteen Mile Woods. Beyond was Berlin, New Hampshire (pronounced bur-lun), apparently once a prosperous lumber mill town, but looking pretty seedy by then. A few miles farther south was Gorham, an obvious tourist town, where we spent the night.
It was at the motel that Vic heard the story of Dolly Copp, but I can't tell you about that, yet. It was there, also, that we were advised not to drive south through Pinkham Notch when we left. It seems that route leads into one of the worst traffic jams of the fall season. It's mostly because it is a favorite "leaf peeper" route, but also the town of North Conway has several hundred outlet stores, selling everything from clothes to appliances at discount prices. The combination of "peepers" and shoppers slows traffic to a crawl for miles and miles. The motel manager suggested we drive east until just inside Maine, then go south through Evans Notch. He told us there would be traffic, but nothing like Pinkham Notch, and the color would be as good - maybe better.
He was right about both the traffic and the color. The first was fairly light, the second better than we'd seen previously - and that's saying quite a lot! Because we weren't in any particular hurry, the countryside was pleasant, and there was few cars, we followed small roads generally south, sometimes in Maine and sometimes in New Hampshire, until we reached the coast near Rye Beach, New Hampshire. The leaves were turning, but it was still far from peak foliage there, and we had no trouble getting a motel room near the ocean. Vic got a second ocean to go with her first, and so did the rest of us.
This was the first night that our guess about accommodations had been wrong. No harm done, we just called and cancelled the other reservation. We had a nice dinner with Atlantic salmon and steamer clams, walked on the beach for a while, then called it a night.
Next morning, we discussed going in to Boston, and seeing some of the historical sites. We were all interested, and probably wouldn't be getting another chance. But, like in Hawaii, we seemed to be running out of tourist-type energy, and decided to just head west, taking our time, back to Albany and our train connection. That's what we did.
***
In the summer of 2009, the four of us went on what turned out to be our last big adventure. We took a trip to Alaska. I'm not sure how we decided to go. Alaska wasn't on any of our "I have to see Alaska before I die" lists. Still, it had always seemed "interesting" - its size, its remoteness, the highest mountain in North America, glaciers, Northern Lights, grizzly bears, etc., etc.
I don't know which of us first suggested it. In some ways, it didn't look very practical. We would have to fly there. We wouldn't have a car, so we'd have to rent. But there weren't that many roads to drive, anyway. It seems like all the more interesting places were only reachable by small plane, train, or boat. It seemed a challenge that maybe us old folks weren't up to.
Mandy and Vic decided to figure it out, and they did. The answer, they said, was a package tour with Gray Line Alaska. Gray Line would give us a week of various trips on buses, trains, and charter boats, with hotel accommodations included. We'd have to get ourselves to Anchorage and back, and pay for our own breakfasts and dinners. Everything else was included in one cost. It seemed reasonable, but we'd never done an arranged trip like it, and we'd heard that there could be problems. Vic and Mandy said that everybody they dealt with seemed very professional and business-like. We decided to do it.
In June, we flew direct from Portland to Anchorage. The lines and security checks were as bad as they had been when we flew to Hawaii. It wasn't a pleasant way to start any trip, but that's how life is, now. At least, we lived close enough to the airport that we could call a taxi, and not have to worry about finding a parking space. The flight was uneventful (always nice to be able to say!), and we checked in at the hotel where Gray Line had made our reservations. It was old and a little shabby-looking (like most of Anchorage), but was clean and comfortable. The restaurant was acceptable.
Next morning, we ate, checked out, and raced with our luggage up a hill to where our bus was waiting. The bus ride took us on the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm to the Portage Glacier. The travel brochure told us that Turnagain Arm got its name because Captain Cook thought it might lead to the mythical Northwest Passage, that would allow a ship to sail clear to the Atlantic Ocean. He soon found out the Arm was a dead end, and he had to "turn again."
Portage Glacier is one of the most famous ice sheets in Alaska, probably because it is so accessible. In the early 1900s, the glacier extended right up to where the highway and visitor center are, now. Since then, it has retreated far up its valley, and now you look at its head across a large lake. There are boat tours to take you up close, but we didn't take one. (We saw plenty of glaciers up close, later that week.) Instead, we boarded a train for the trip to the town of Seward, where we stayed overnight.
At the end of our trip, I'm sure we had a session to discuss what each of us had liked best. Probably - like in Hawaii - food would have been a unanimous favorite, with either fresh-caught salmon or fresh-caught halibut with every dinner. I don't remember what was said about sights or non-food experiences, but there wasn't any question in my mind. It was that day on the charter boat from Seward, out into the waters of Kenai Fjords National Park. The day was overcast, but not particularly cold, and the water was like glass - more like a lake than an ocean. As we got out of the harbor and in to the open water, there were suddenly thousands - I'm not exaggerating! - thousands of sea otters floating around us. There were also thousands of puffins, with their rainbow-colored beaks, on the water and in the air, everywhere you looked. There were other seabirds, but the puffins and otters dominated the scene then, and also in my mind now, some fifteen years later. It really was magical.
The next "magical" thing that happened was that the captain saw Greg with his binoculars, scanning all the bird life. He asked him if there was anything in particular he wanted to see. We thought he was just being polite and interested, but then he clarified. He said he didn't have any set route for their cruise. He just wandered around the area, and showed people glaciers and wildlife. Most people on board were just out for the experience, and didn't care where they went. If somebody - like Greg - wanted to see something special, he would be glad to oblige.
I'm not sure Greg still believed his good luck, but he listed several birds that he would really like to see. I think there were three species, and I think the captain was able to show him all of them. I only remember one, the thick-billed murre.
Murres, sort of the penguins of the North with their black and white tuxedos, are common along the Pacific coast, clear to northern California. We see them regularly on the Oregon rocks. The thick-billed species doesn't come any farther south than Alaska. I guess they are fairly common, but they look so much like the common murre, it might be difficult to identify them. The captain took our boat directly to a cliff where he knew both species were nesting, and got Greg as close as he could without scaring the birds. Greg was elated. That probably made the Kenai Fjords day Greg's favorite part of the week, also.
Back to Seward, we boarded the train, again. My mind is a little fuzzy on whether we took the train all the way to Anchorage, or whether we changed to the bus at Portage. In any event, we got to Anchorage late that evening. Next morning, we took the bus back to Portage, then drove through the two and a half-mile long Anderson tunnel to Whittier.
The tunnel is pretty unique. It has only one lane, but is built so that both trains and motor vehicles can drive on its surface. It's only one lane wide, so traffic bound for Whittier has to wait for the tunnel to be cleared of traffic coming out to Portage. Also, cars and trucks have to wait while trains go through. The tunnel is so low and narrow that they have big fans that they use to clear the fumes a few times each day. Very odd, but it works.
From Whittier, we took another charter boat across Prince William Sound to Valdez, where we spent the night. After our Seward cruise, the day was a little disappointing. The scenery was beautiful, and we saw quite a few hump-backed whales, but there were no sea otters, and very few seabirds. Probably, the 1989 oil spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker was the reason for some of the low numbers. When the tanker hit a reef, it leaked oil in massive amounts that spread along the coast for hundreds of miles. The damage to the marine environment was immense, and some scientists think the area may never fully recover. It was a nice enough boat ride, but...
The trip out of Valdez was another change of pace, a bus ride all the way back to Anchorage. With glaciers to the west, and the canyon of a big river to the east (I forget what river), it was an interesting enough day. But it was long, with not much variety, and I think most of the passengers used the day to catch up on their sleep. I know that we did.
The last of our Alaskan adventures involved a train ride to Denali National Park. We had clear blue skies all the way, and the Alaska Range, with 20,000 foot Denali (Mt. McKinley, highest point in North America) was in view. The train trip itself crosses some high trestles, and is quite interesting. We stayed in the park lodge overnight, then the next day took a long ride into the park. The scenery was excellent, but we had hoped to see caribou and grizzly bears, at least, but didn't see either. We didn't view the Northern Lights, either. We returned that afternoon by train, and caught our flight home to Portland.
We had one more bit of excitement before getting to Portland. A couple of guys on their way home from a fishing trip had obviously had too much to drink. They got into a loud argument on the plane. The flight attendants got them calmed down, but the police were waiting in Portland to arrest them. I guess there's no latitude given to bad behavior of flights, which is probably good.
***
Vic's and Greg's 50th anniversary was July 23, 2016. They wanted it to be just a family affair, so we stuffed our Mount Tabor house to the brim with children, grand-children, and a few work and college friends. Vic and Greg had talked it out ahead of time, and had decided that Vic should lead off. In a moment of extraordinary smartness, I had a recorder set up to get her actual words. Here's some of it.
"We didn't have our wedding song for our wedding," she began. "By some lack of foresight and understanding of our needs, the author of our song didn't get around to writing it until 1988. This was inconvenient, but we found another song that we both really liked, and it played while I walked up the aisle to my waiting fiancé. We still love it - it's called 'Seven Daffodils' - but this one that we really consider our wedding song conveys how we go together - how we have since the earliest moments of knowing one another. I'm going to read you a few lines, play the entire song for you, then tell you a story and make an important announcement.
"Here are some of the words. 'It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart. Without saying a word, you can light up the dark. Try as I may, I can never explain what I hear when you don't say a thing.' And another bit of it. ' All day long, I can hear people talking out loud. But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd. Old Mr. Webster could never define what's being said between your heart and mine.' Now, here's the whole song." (She played it.)
"Now, for my story. This is true, by the way. Dolly and Hayes Copp were pioneers in far northern New Hampshire, in the days when it was mostly wilderness and there were still very few settlers. They established a homestead on the slopes of Mt. Washington, and raised a family. It was hard work, but they were obviously of rugged stock, and eked out a pretty good existence on their farm.
"Now, when their 50th wedding anniversary arrived, they gathered all their offspring, and Dolly delivered a short speech - much like I'm doing, today. This is what she said. 'Hayes is well enough, but 50 years is long enough to live with any man.' Dolly went to live with their daughter, Sylvia, and Hayes moved to another town by himself. Apparently, it was a very peaceful separation. They split their possessions equally, they never filed for divorce, and they never got back together.
"Now, Dolly is entitled to her opinion, and I guess for her, 50 years really was enough to spend with one man. I would gladly stay 50 more - or 100 more - with my man. We're just getting started, and we're here to stay!"
***
Mandy and I celebrated our 50th anniversary on September 20, 2019, and we had a get-together at the house. All the kids and grandkids made it (both Rafferty and Cleveland types), plus some college folks and miscellaneous friends. Mandy started out with a little speech that made it sound like she still liked me, a lot - which was nice to hear. I didn't have any Dolly Copp-type stories to tell. I offered to read a few pages of my favorite quotes from literature, but there were no takers. Consequently, I said pretty much to Mandy what she'd said to me, and I meant it just as strongly. She seemed to appreciate it. There were various tributes from various twigs off the family trees, some thoughtful and some silly (although no less sincere). We had a cake and champagne (a rarity for us), and started on our next 50 years.
***
Not long after our anniversary, a very serious, very contagious respiratory virus - labeled Covid-19 - was discovered in China in November 2019. In just a few months, it had spread around the world, causing millions of deaths. Hospitals and medical staffs were overwhelmed by the numbers of critically ill patients, even in "developed" countries like the United States. Because the disease is so contagious, people were urged to stay at home, and not gather in crowds. Schools, restaurants, businesses, churches - any place where there would have been an opportunity for the disease to spread - went on virtual lockdown. For most of 2020, the United States became a ghost country. Even so, the death toll climbed to 350,000, more than any other causes of death except for heart disease and cancer.
Despite the visible evidence of Covid's virulence, there was a general resistance to quarantine, and even to the simple measures of wearing face masks and not gathering in crowds. Our President made light of the problem, suggesting that the Center for Disease Control was "crying wolf," and was contributing to a government overreach of power. Militia groups, always on the lookout for ways to be anti-government, challenged all the rulings and suggestions. I had saved this newspaper story about a militia group in Idaho, “The scene at the warehouse in Emmett is like something from a pandemic safety nightmare. Dozens of people sit elbow to elbow, greeting each other with hugs, even posing for pictures with an arm around (the leader’s) waist. The small rally is also illegal, according to the emergency order issued by Idaho’s governor.”
Churches asked to be exempted from restrictions, claiming their need to get together to pray to God. Government restrictions were getting in the way of worship, they claimed. (I seemed to remember from my reading of the Bible that Jesus had recommended praying "in your closet" - in effect, just between you and God - rather than in public, where it came across a little like bragging!)
A vaccine to combat Covid became available in December 2020, and many people took advantage. However, many didn't, a segment of the population that became known as "anti-vaccers." Probably this group included some who still believed the long ago debunked stories of a link between vaccinations and autism. Whatever their reasons, adding them to those who continued to resist simple isolation and protection measures, resulted in a 2021 death toll in the U. S. of 415,000 people.
Being good, responsible citizens, in the age group most likely to die from Covid, and leading a pretty sedentary life already, we had committed ourselves to "quarantine." It wasn't as hard on us as it was on many people - those who lived alone, and didn't have the local support group that we had. Still, we never dreamed that it was going to last for two whole years!
Since Covid was imposing a lot of "free time" on us, we decided that this would be a good time to begin preparing for that ultimate event - usually occurring between 60 and 100 - which none of us could avoid. We began by updating all our wills, and organizing all our financial papers. We also wrote out some personal wishes of how we wanted certain things handled at the end. This sounds like it might be a little morbid, but we actually had a lot of fun, and were happy that we would be simplifying the business of death for those left to take care of such things.
Then, we started on our dozens of boxes of miscellaneous "family papers," organizing them by years or events, writing explanations for any that needed them, and generally making them as useable to future generations as we could. We did the same with photographs - thousands of prints, color slides, etc. - making sure they were labeled, and getting them together in some kind of sequences that would be understandable to our kids and grandkids. Miscellaneous memorabilia got the same treatment, and we tried to figure out who might want what in the future.
When we weren't working on our material assets, our "forced togetherness" left us a lot of time to reminisce, and analyze our lives - individually and together. This wasn't a new exercise for us. We've always enjoyed our group sessions, in which we'd bring ourselves up to date on what each of us was doing. For instance, when I was actively teaching, we'd discuss what I was reading, what I was having my students read, and what kind of discussions I was having with the students I was monitoring. Mandy had always read the books I was having the students read, so we could analyze together their essays and questions. Greg often did the same. Vic usually was pretty deeply involved in her own research, but was always an active participant in our discussions. As you can imagine, I was deeply gratified that they would all take the time to consider my work so seriously.
Just as Greg took a real interest in my work, I found what he did pretty fascinating. I didn't know him when he was a refuge manager, but as we grew together, I became pretty certain that he had made the right decision to move on to other aspects. He seemed to be well-regarded by his co-workers, and he had earned a respect among other scientists for his work outside of his federal duties. Still, I sometimes found myself thinking that he still hadn't found his ideal place. I remembered a quote from the book "Les Misérables, in which Victor Hugo had described one of his characters, thus: The Bishop “did not study plants, he loved flowers.” I think that describes Greg, in a way. He had made himself into a competent scientist, but he was really a naturalist, at heart.
I have a copy of an essay Greg wrote not too many years before his death, that I think gives an interesting perspective on how he looked at things. He called it "Losing the Species in the Statistics." It's mostly about birds, but I think it actually tells a lot more about him.
He began by talking about how he used to review papers submitted for publication in scientific journals. In more recent years, it had become difficult for him because (as he described it), the "science" had become too technical. "I've been gone from school far too long to understand a lot of the math and statistics that make up the bulk of scientific papers nowadays."
He wrote that "a typical journal manuscript consists of maybe twenty paragraphs of narrative, four or five statistical charts, maybe a table of data, and a whole bunch of mathematical equations." He supposed that this abbreviated format was the result of economics (printing journals costs money), and a need to save time. "There is so much to read nowadays that we mustn't waste our time wading through ten pages of text if the same story can be told in a paragraph and a table." He added (maybe tongue in cheek, but maybe not) that "there seems to be an unspoken rule that real scientific information can't be presented as enjoyable reading."
He said he understood the cost and (maybe the) time concerns. But "I also know we've lost something very important and very precious in our perceived need for fiscal, spatial and temporal economies -- and in our need to make science reporting 'scientific.' For me personally, if I hadn't been exposed to that lost 'something' when I was young, I might never have become a naturalist, wildlife biologist, and ornithologist. My training started with nature stories, like those of Thornton Burgess and Henry Williamson, where birds and mammals had personalities and even names. Clearly, those were fiction -- some were so much fictional that they were fantasy -- but some were very good at showing animals at home: where they lived, who lived near them, what they ate, and -- sometimes -- who ate them. Even though the stories were unreal, they helped to make Nature real to me. Later, I graduated to the real life adventures and observations of explorers and naturalists.
"Thoreau's lengthy description in 'Walden' of the work and war activities of red and black ants was attention-riveting. Arthur Cleveland Bent's 'Life Histories' of North American birds sometimes spent ten or more precious pages on a discussion of a subspecies of bird -- the coverage for the entire species sometimes ran to 50 pages. But 50 pages might be needed to make the bird and its habitat really come alive. When I read in 'Bent' about Colorado great horned owl habitat 'where diminutive junipers struggle for existence among the limestone hillsides, and whose branches, unlike those of the giant sycamores, sweep the ground rather than the sky,' I'm ready to be out in those rocky reaches. When I read in a recent ornithological journal that a certain bird's habitat is 'a dry, open woodland' dominated by two species of shrubs, one of which is about nine times as abundant as the other, and both of which grow up to about four meters high -- well, it may be important information, but had I read it in the 1950s, I don't think it would have started me wishing that I could be out there in the brush with them."
Greg admitted to writing "plenty of boring scientific literature," but then went on: "I'm just sad that there is no longer an outlet for the broad-brush, larger than life nature writing that meant so much to me as I was growing up. And I don't think the loss is just in nostalgia; I think of some of my ornithological peers who have studied one species of bird for twenty, thirty, or even forty years. They know their species intimately - often to a degree that no one else will ever have an opportunity of knowing them -- yet when those researchers retire and/or die (both of which we all eventually do), all the world may ever have of those decades of in-depth knowledge are a few pages of text, a table, a graph, and a mathematical formula. No matter how good the science, surely a bird is more than that."
Greg finished the essay with part of a letter he had received many years before. It was from the son (then, probably an octogenarian himself) of one of those early naturalists - who Greg thought was "the writer of some of the best bird descriptions ever put in print." The son had shared some boyhood remembrances of trips taken with his father in pre-1920 California, and then he asked a personal question: "If you have a few minutes to spare I should much appreciate your giving me a candid appraisal of my father's chief ornithological work. My impression is, of course, that my father was a true scientist and rendered valuable service in his scientific observations and descriptions. But he was also a lover of birds, and scientists ought not to love the objects of their study. His descriptions reveal his love and much more about his character. Doubtless he is too ecstatic, too fond of pouring out his feelings about birds and wildlife in general."
Greg had been happy to give him a critique of his father's book: "Your father's work is, in my opinion, a unique contribution to the ornithology of this state. While he was obviously a poet and lover of birds, his information is sound and he provides considerable historical and life history information not readily available elsewhere. His writing style is a regular source of pleasure to me, in that he reaches beyond the obvious and gets down to the nature of the beast.
"To your father and his generation of naturalists, a bird could never be just a statistic. I miss him and his kind of Science."
As I will miss my friend Greg's unique mixture of Science and Love of Life!
***
Inevitably, our discussions turned to assessments of our lives. Had we made the right choices? Had we done everything we wanted to, or everything we think we should have done? Those aren't easy things to think about, or talk about. We have ideas, and we make plans, but life inevitably changes them over time. Also, it's sometimes very hard to be honest with oneself, let alone with others. We don't like to think we've failed at something, or have someone else judging how well or how poorly we've done. On the other hand, we don't gain anything by making it sound better than it was.
The exercise was probably easier for us than it would have been for most people. After all, the four of us had been operating pretty much as a single unit for over fifty years. It would be pretty hard to say anything to one another that we didn't already have a pretty good idea about.
Mandy went first in one of these discussions. She made it clear right up front that she had never had any aspirations of becoming President of the United States, or the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. With those potential goals off the table, what she had wanted was to be sweetheart, wife, friend, lover, and mother of the children of the man who was all those other things to her. She wanted to be with that man for a long, long time, and she wanted there to be lots of sex. (I think I was both grinning and blushing at that point.) She wanted lifelong friends with whom she could share all aspects of her life. She wanted to have a strong role in raising all their children to have dreams of their own, but she didn't want to tell the children what those dreams should be. Finally, she wanted to know enough about what was going on in the world that she could understand, and help out where possible. Was that setting the bar too low, she asked. None of us thought so.
***
Vic also denied any interest in high office, but she also denied any early interest in men or sex. (We all scoffed at that.) She claimed that Greg - and lots of excellent sex - were just happy coincidences that came along with her real dreams. (We scoffed at that, also. Greg didn't blush, like I did, but he certainly produced a broad grin.) What she really had been interested in, she said, was knowing everything, learning the facts about everything, and then doing something about everything.
This was an obvious exaggeration, or simplification, but I think it was close to the truth. Back in the '80s, that horrible tabloid "The National Enquirer" ran tv commercials stating that "Enquiring (or inquiring) minds want to know." Vic would have hated to be identified with "The Enquirer," but she was certainly the ultimate Inquiring Mind. I don't know if she was that obnoxious little kid who asked "why" every time her parents said something, but - as Greg can attest to - she had a whole arsenal of intelligent questions to ask by the time she graduated from high school. Their long, and deep, discussions of everything from civil rights to religion to the female orgasm (!) set the tone for much of their future life together. She, and they together, got better at prioritizing what was most important for them to pursue, and it became the foundation for their "business" of helping people and groups be more effective problem-solvers.
In college, one of her teachers paid Vic what she considered a major compliment. He was lamenting about how passive and disinterested most of his students seemed to be. It was only the one or two students each semester who - like her - really wanted to learn that kept him teaching. He quoted a line from John Steinbeck's "East of Eden," in which Adam Trask is trying to provoke one of his sons to action. “You see, there’s a responsibility in being a person. It’s more than just taking up space where air would be.” The professor strongly implied that most of his students were "just taking up space." Vic vowed never to be in that category.
How did she feel her life had lined up with her objectives? Pretty good, she said, but of course, you can never really know how much you accomplished. Making the world better - which is how she considered her and Greg's work - wasn't a one person, or a short-term, job. At least, they'd had a little response to suggest they were doing some good. The work they had done on the military draft had provoked some discussion, and all their talking and writing about how to be effective at addressing problems had certainly led to a lot of analyzing and arguing. It wasn't possible to get much more affirmation than that.
Of course, she concluded, work is only a small part of life. The affirmation for her came from what she and Greg had together, what the four of them had developed, and the success of their combined "family." There was also the question about how the outside world perceived her, and them. She reverted to another Adam Trask comment from "East of Eden." “It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world." She thought all four of them could feel comfortable on that score.
***
I was quite interested to hear what Greg would say. I knew that much of his life was the same as Vic's, and that he would agree with her assessment. He and I knew each other pretty well, I thought, from the four of us being together for so long, but more significantly from many one-on-one sessions with just him and me and a couple of bottles of West Coast IPA. Still, I wasn't quite sure what his conclusions would be.
As expected, he started out agreeing with what Vic had said about them and their work. Then, he turned to his own wildlife and conservation career. (NOTE: As I sometimes do, I'm putting this in quotes, even though it may not be verbatim. It's very close to his actual words.)
"I think I'd give myself a B+ or maybe even an A- for my work. I did a creditable job, and I don't think I did any harm. But it's like Vic said about our other endeavors. 'Saving the world' isn't a one-person job, and you can never know how your part fits in with the other parts. I got enough accolades to know that, in general at least, people I worked with thought I was on the right track.
"Having said that, I'm not sure I ever found the ideal place for me to be. I've been happy enough - particularly because the rest of my life was grounded in you guys - but in my last years before retirement, and ever since, I've felt a vague disappointment in the way things have been going. Some of it's probably the result of getting old and being out of touch, but it doesn't feel like the world is working right, anymore.
"Almost every month, it seems, some group of scientists publishes a report on what's happening to the animals of the world. They're all pretty consistent, though they measure in different ways. One figure you see a lot is that the world population of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles had decreased by almost two-thirds in the last 50 years. One in eight bird species has a high risk of becoming extinct in the foreseeable future. Another report says that a tenth of all the plants and animals in the world could be extinct by the end of the 21st century. Insect populations are way, way down.
" What are we doing about it? We're talking about it, and doing the same things that got us in this mess.
"We may have completely lost the fight against climate change. If we haven't, we have very little time to make some drastic changes. What are we doing about it? We're talking, and not much else.
"We've had innumerable chances to get rid of the military weapons that are allowing so many mass murders. What are we doing about it? We're talking, and maybe praying a little.
"Almost every analyst agrees that our entire political and social system is badly broken, and the threat to our democracy is as great as it’s been since the Civil War. What are we doing about it? We're talking, and wringing our hands.
"Are we, as a species, unable to make any important decisions?
"As I said, I'm disappointed, but I guess I'm resigned."
***
Well, that was a little more surprising than I had expected, and I still had to make my statement. It might have been a hard act to follow, but actually I knew pretty clearly what I wanted to say.
My life must have seemed pretty sedate and unremarkable to many people. I spent most of my time in the classroom, with books and students. I learned a lot from Greg and Vic about addressing the needs of the world, and I joined them and Mandy in supporting various causes. But I seldom initiated anything like that. Had my life been important? I think the answer is a very definite "yes!"
Books introduce us to the world - how it was, and how it is. They describe places we'll never see in person, and times and events we'll never experience. They let us look in depth at human nature and human customs, over time and in different situations. They present us with models to live by, and situations to avoid. They help us think about the future, and what we might do with it - as individuals, or as a species. Together, they are an amazing open door.
Teachers may not always be necessary to get the good out of literature, but teachers can help a lot by explaining the times and circumstances when certain books were written. They can direct the students to other books that further illuminate or elucidate what the writer was experiencing. The teacher can also help the students learn to think their own thoughts, and eventually add those to the world of literature.
All my life, I've heard the supposed virtues of teaching and teachers extolled. I guess we believe that at some level, but we believe more strongly in what can be accomplished today. "Education" is good, but reading is more of a hobby, a pastime. Whenever I hear that, I think about Bishop Myriel, in "Les Misérables." I mentioned him above, in talking about Greg. Here's the fuller picture.
Victor Hugo presents Bishop Myriel to us as a man who could be well-to-do, but chooses to use most of his money and other resources for the poor and needy. In old age, he lives with his elderly sister and an equally elderly housekeeper, Mme. Magloire. His residence has a garden, divided into four plats, three of which Mme. Magloire uses to grow vegetables. Bishop Myriel uses the fourth for flowers.
Mme. Magliore gently chided the Bishop about his flowers: “Monseigneur, you are always anxious to make everything useful, but yet here is a plat that is of no use. It would be much better to have salads there than bouquets.”
“Madame Magliore,” replied the Bishop, “You are mistaken. The beautiful is an useful as the useful.” He added, after a moment’s pause, “perhaps more so.”
Vegetables are good, but so is the color of flowers.
***
While we were philosophizing in our semi-quarantine, the world was going on outside. It wasn't good. The Covid deniers and the "anti-vaxxers" were still hard at it, By the end of two years, increased vaccinations were the probable cause of reduction in deaths to only (!) 250,000. But by then, people were exhausted with being confined, and both the economic and social structures of the country were in shambles. Our government (by default, not officially) declared the real danger passed, and life went back to something like "normal." The 37,000 deaths recorded in the first half of 2023 were largely ignored (by anyone not directly affected, anyway).
On another front, there were protest marches all over the country, as a new group, "Black Lives Matter," called attention to all the shooting deaths caused by police, the victims being predominantly Black men. The marches reached Portland in the summer of 2020. They started out peacefully, but were infiltrated by various troublemakers (Vic and Greg had often discussed this in their meetings with civil rights activists). Militia with far right leanings, and White supremacists, harassed the marchers, blaming the ensuing troubles o a non-existent group, Antifa, that presumably wanted to overthrow the government. The news media, in a major gaffe, accepted the "Antifa" story, not realizing that there was no such organization, and that the term was a shortening of "anti-fascism" - in other words, those who considered themselves "antifa" were actually the ones trying to preserve the country from the militias and White supremacists! The police and the National Guard were called in to quell the non-existent riots, and used tear gas and rubber bullets against the marchers. Many marchers were arrested without cause. When things finally calmed down, there had been considerable damage done to downtown Portland, but mostly as a result of the police and military intervention.
Other major events were occurring, also. The incumbent President lost reelection in November 2020. For the first time in our history, a defeated president refused to accept his loss, and begin the orderly transition to a new administration. He cried "voter fraud," and tried to get states and jurisdictions to refuse to certify the election results. He whipped up the militia groups, the White supremacists, and a lot of others until finally, on January 6, 2021, a mob invaded the Nation’s Capital. They did considerable damage, desecrated offices, destroyed papers, and injured many police officers trying to defend the building.
We're now in the fourth year of the new Administration, and a new election will be held in November 2024. The man who lost in 2020 intends to run for a new term, despite the fact that he is under legal scrutiny for everything from sexual abuse, to business fraud, to mishandling of restricted government documents, to interfering in the orderly business of the government, to inciting insurrection. There is a pretty good chance he will be the Republican Party's nominee!
There have been days when we thought it would be nice to go back into quarantine, and forget all this.
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