On the Anniversary of World War None

The ambient tension of the world feels thick now. Drums beat for war. Who's beating them? And why?

Is it just the pale echo of a century's trauma? Is this '14 the year of the turning of the ages, like it was in 1914?

And like it was in 1814, of course. As every educated person knows, that was the year that the post-Enlightenment world order was created. Well, that and the year after it, of course, in a long conference of delegates in Vienna that lasted in to spring of 1815.

The conference was at the end of the long era of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon had been defeated and was in exile (his first of two).  In the peaceful aftermath, the crowned heads of Europe and their delegates, all the victor and vanquished, met behind closed doors for months and decided how the world would look like. They had to interrupt the conference to put Napoleon back in exile again, but eventually they wrapped up an agreement they all of them could sign.

The agreement attempted to create a new long-lasting peace in Europe and on the High Seas. Essentially it put the responsibility of maintaining this new global peace on Great Britain. As the strongest nation at the conference, Britain had arranged it so.

The agreement was amazing successful and stable. Over the next decades, the agreement would not only maintain the peace for the most part, but would create enormous world economic growth. IT would make London the center of a vast new and expanded global financial network, made possible in part by the order imposed on the sea by the British navy, which in turn allowed Britain to effectively monopolize the global banking system by a process of centralization.

The long world peace allowed the flourishing of a new liberal world system that gave birth to the great liberation movements of that century. The United States in particular took advantage of the greatly expanded free flow of goods and peoples to achieve incredible economic growth for an extended period of time, all while allowing most citizens to do as they please and to pay very little taxes.

Of course, this growth in the U.S. was necessarily accomplished by integration of the nascent U.S. banking system into the credit markets of London and the continent of Europe. In simple terms, it would have been impossible for the U.S. to become what it did, in the manner it did, without vast amounts of European capital that made its way to America through this system.

This British and European capital underwrote great public works and capitalistic enterprises in America as the young country stretched across the North American continent. In many ways this reintegration of America with London was effectively a reversal of what had been achieved by the American War of Independence. But it was inevitable.

It in disputable that the amazing agreement made back in Vienna in 1814-1815 was possible in part because the crowned heads and delegates were able to meet in private. They did not have to hold press conferences or provide minutes of their meetings for public consumption and official records. There were no recalcitrant legislatures back at home that had to be satisfied after the fact.

There were no nosy news reporters pestering, and trying to sabotage their efforts by publicizing their negotiations openly to a misunderstanding public (they were no doubt plenty of spies from other delegations, of course, but that was still private of the internal private way things were done).

It was beautiful, what they created. It must have seemed so perfect for so long.

It lasted ninety-nine years and came down it an Apocalyptic heap of fire, ashes, and poison gas.

The process of disintegration formally started one hundred years ago this week.  Once Ferdinand had been assassinated, the tripwires were set into motion---one declaration of war invoking another. The great armies were necessarily mobilized for irreversible advances according to intricate war plans. It was like a computer program playing out.

Emperors who were cousins cried when they were forced to declare war on each other. They sent waves of young men farmers and factory workers against each other to disembowel each other with bayonets, and to shoot out each others guts.

But it is a lie to say that no one wanted that war.

Many people certainly wanted it to happen. Some of them were common folk who loved the idea of tribal blood lust, and eagerly signed up for the chance to partake in it. Others saw in it the change to accomplish large-scale social change. Others were the ones who had booby-trapped the world over the ninety-nine years since Vienna, to make it into the Rube Goldberg apparatus of world destruction that it became.

There were also those few, among the powerful, who wanted the war to happen because they thought they could benefit from it some grand way, by the aggrandizement of their nation, or even more primitively perhaps of the temptation to become a Great Actor on the Stage of History. There is nothing like war for that, to create opportunities to be that kind of Great Actor, and to shape the destiny of nations and peoples with one's will.

This is precisely what one can learn from Napoleon---how to be that Great Actor on the stage of history. Part of the lesson he provides is obvious: to be a Great Actor in History, one usually must necessarily create piles of human skulls. It sounds tragic and unjust, and feels like a great tragedy as it is playing out, but it is impossible dispute its truth. For those that survive, the world will be much better than it was before.

The Germans in particular were obsessed with trying to figure out Napoleon's lessons, because they had been so thoroughly defeated by him. He had re-arranged the entire German nation as he crossed it, even all the way across Prussia.

Many a tender flower must be crushed, Fichte wrote. He was among the first German philosophers to try to understand the post-Napoleonic world. Out of his writings came those of Hegel, who attempted to formulate a theory of history. Out of Hegel's work came that of Marx, who refined and (some say) successfully formulated the correct theory of how history progresses from one great age to the next.

That's why Marx is the darling of the elite, and why they have pushed him so much for a century now. Marx is their great prophet of power, right along with a few others like Freud and Nietzsche.

Napoleon acted. Marx theorized. That's how one might understand it.

Marx even showed the way to co-opt the liberalizing movements of the Nineteenth Century, and steer them back into a form of centralized control, managed by a elite group of insiders. Lenin mastered this method. It involved setting up fake populist movements based on slogans that satisfy deep feelings in the people for justice and vague change.

Steer their ambitions for both justice and petty advantage to your own movements. They will be your foot soldiers. The people are so easily fooled that way. They are steered, like sheep and puppets, but it is ultimately for their own good of course. At least, that how the thinking goes in some circles, such as in both Neoconservatism, which is an Americanized form of Trotskyite Internationalist Marxism (World revolution wiht an American flag on it and with U.S. on top), as well as in Alinsky-style Leftism.

It is well established that the People will vote for a slogan of freedom and willfully hand over their power to anyone who will provide them with the security of not actually having to participate in world events. Also the bread and circuses thing works amazing well too. Tell them: just go live your life. Go and push a pin through a piece of paper every couple years. And of course let yourself be taxed.

All you have to do is sell them the same romantic stuff about the sacredness of Democracy. Tell the people that they are King. Absurd. Everyone who is educated knows this to be true.

That brings us to today.

Now I ask you: who is it who wants this next war to happen, the shadow big one they are trying to sell us like so much snake oil?

It's casting call for the Great Actors of Two-Thousand-and-Doomsday! Step up and strut across the stage and have your name recorded as "significant in the creation of the Twenty-First Century order."

It will make a great HBO series sometime in the future.

Or maybe we just ignore them and "don't show up" for their war, like that old hippie slogan for the Sixties.

Peace out, y'all.

Haggling With Some Jewtown Merchants

Jewtown---that's what Red and I affectionately call the little neighborhood of SW Portland up on the hill next to where we live in Hillsdale.  Anchored by the expansive Mittelman Jewish Community Center and its lush green campus, that particular stretch of Capitol Hill Highway is lined by businesses that strive to cater to everything Jewish---including a Maimondies Day Center, a Chabad House, a yogurt place that separates kosher and non-kosher toppings, and a strip mall of businesses with Hebrew-letter signs, including one that is appropriately called "Everything Jewish."

We spend a lot of time passing through the neighborhood, since it is on the route to the nearby commercial district of Multnomah Village, and it's also the location one of our favorite restaurants in the area, right across from the entrance to the Mittelman Center.

Lately when I pass through the area, I can't help feeling a bit sorry for the American Jews I know. They are liberal/progressive, of course, as many Jews are. But the recent flare-up in the Middle East regarding Israel and Gaza, whatever the real facts are (and I don't pretend I know them right now), seem to have put many Jews in a bind.

This round of the Middle East conflict seems unlike previous ones in that, judging by the news articles and blogs in Facebook feed, support for the various sides has strongly broken along political party lines in the U.S., more so than ever before, with the Republican/Conservatives nearly unanimous in supporting Israel and almost all the Democratic/progressive blogs/writers I've seen just as strongly supporting the Palestinians.

The reflexive conservative support for Israel is nothing new, but the rush to embrace the Palestinian side by the liberals seems unprecedented in its scope. No doubt it is driven mainly by social media. Perhaps it is also because Obama and his handlers seem to have openly embraced Muslim causes in general, such as the ridiculously naive "peace overture" to Iran, and his faithful are taking their zeitgeist cue from him.

Whatever the root of it, the evolved situation has left many liberal American Jews caught in the dilemma of being on the "wrong side" of one of the many issues that liberal/progressives have settled in their minds as being clearly black and white, and which if you disagree with them makes you a "bad person." Not surprisingly it has left some liberal Jews confused and angry.

Personally I have no idea how this is going to play out. Moreover I don't know how I'd want it to play out. I do not possess the wisdom required to figure this out. Perhaps no single individual does. I'm glad I don't have to maintain a personal stake in it because of my "identity."

I am also certain that the U.S. media is a poisonous fountain of garbage and Matrix-level lies about nearly everything, so there is little point in my trying to figure it out from here in Oregon.  No doubt my own neutrality on this issue would anger folks on both sides. So be it.

I was musing about all this a couple days ago as I was walking past the Jewish businesses on Capitol Hill Highway on my way to Starbucks for a morning work session in Multnomah Village. I had set out on foot with my daypack and found myself thirsty in the hot sun.  

Should have taken a water bottle, I said. I'd broken my rule for hiking by not bringing one.

They'll be something soon, I said, knowing there was at least the Hoot Owl convenience store at the corner of Vermont. It's a bit musty and decrepit---not a place I make a point of going into----but at least it has consumable beverages.

My mouth was getting drier with each step and I could think only of slaking my thirst. Just at that moment, while passing the sign for Everything Jewish I saw a small table set up on the sidewalk ahead of me. Around it were standing a group of small children, about eight or nine years old---two young boys wearing yarmulkes and a girl in a dress. I could tell that they were peddling lemonade to those passing by.  

Hallelujah, I muttered to myself.  Exactly what I needed, right in my path.

When I got up to the table, I looked at one of the kids wearing a yarmulke and waited for his pitch. He pointed to the pitcher of liquid refreshment in front of him. Want some lemonade? he asked me.

"I'm certain that I do," I told him, earnestly. "How much for a glass?"

"It's name your price," he said.

My heart sank. There are many things I love about Portland, but the "name your price" fad among certain elements of the hipster set is not one of them. Red too detests that many of her colleagues in school spoke of opening practices based on this principle, as part of the so-called "gift economy." Pay me what you want for my time.

To me, it's sure way to confuse people and make them feel back about the process of buying and selling. Standing in front of the lemonade stand at that moment, all I could think was "Not the Jews too?"

Being very thirsty, I very much wanted to transact business with them, yet I did not feel I could endorse this method of buying and selling without at least making a statement. So I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters, over two dollars worth, and plunked them down on the table in a neat stack. I had already considered it be a donation and didn't care about the particular amount.

"All right," I said. "There's my price. Now how much do I get for it?"

I tried to get them to actually agree to a real business negotiation, but the kids were too young to follow my line of reasoning. They were just doing the trendy thing they thought was right, that they had been told to do, and my gambit only made them confused. When I pushed the issue, the kid just kept saying it was up to me to decide.

"O.K. then," I said, cheerfully. "I think I should get as much as I care to drink. So fill up a glass and let's get this going."

Relieved that we'd finally come to terms, the kid complied with my request. I picked up the plastic cup and chugged it quickly to take the edge of my thirst. Then I put it back on the table and said, "O.K., another round, please." I reckoned two glasses would be enough for me, although I didn't tell them that at first.

He filled it back up quite readily. The kids, being kids, were unfazed by the idea that I might drink all their lemonade. In fact they happily informed me that they could make more if I wanted.

Watching the World Cup With Goths and Vampires

Canada had been simply wonderful, but it was good to be on the boat heading back to the United States of America. Victoria harbor was radiant as we passed out of it,  sliding past the great cruise ships, but we soon crept into a fog bank for most of the trip. The Black Ball ferry took about ninety minutes to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Red and I spent most of the trip up by the little grill on the upper deck, and dined on meager but satisfying cheeseburgers from grill, while we watched the Olympics on the Washington side slowly come into view through the fog.  An Asian family at the table next to us laughed and guffawed at the top of their voices in boisterous conviviality.

It was a little past sunset when we were waved by the CBP agent through the last checkpoint into the streets of Port Angeles.

We stayed the night at a clean Indian family-owned motor lodge on U.S. 101 on the east edge of town. In the morning we ate an awesome omelette breakfast on Main Street, checked out the local bookstore, where I purchased a couple language phrasebooks.

Then we drove through downtown to find the sports bar I'd found on line. We rolled up to the curve right before noon. They would be open for the soccer game, they said, but not until noon. We waited a few minutes then went in and found seats. The place was not really a sports bar. It was a live music venture---it had a bit of hard core edge, but it also had large televisions, so it would do, even though the sound was turned down on one of them. At that hour of a Sunday morning, watching the staff prep the place for an early opening, it felt a bit like we had woken up a bunch of friendly vampires in the middle of the day.

We were among the first customers to arrive. We sat at the table near the television in back and  ordered a pair of ginger beers in bottles when the scraggly tattooed bartender came over to take our orders (he was very friendly).  We nursed the ginger beers the entire game. The bar did plenty of business that day. By the time the match had even started, a couple dozen other people had filled up seats, as well as the bar. By that time they had turned the sound up on ESPN. I couldn't help wishing it was on Univision, but that would asking to much.

I'd thought I was neutral in the game----and of course who really cares, it's a game---but I found myself rooting for Argentina, since they were the underdogs, and I thought i would be nice for the South Americans to win the tournament (although it would mean extra humiliation for the host nation Brazil).

When Argentina seemed to have scored the first goal, I jumped out of my seat with excitement, and then felt the mild disappointment as it was apparent that they were offside.

There were obviously other folk for Argentina in the bar, but by far the loudest and most enthusiastic fans were the ones for Germany. There was one guy behind us who was very much a supporter of the Germans. He was vocal and loud, almost in an "in your face" kind of way, as if he'd waited a long time to express himself that way. Even though I was for Argentina, it was fun and enlightening to be an audience for him. He crowed majestically when Germany finally scored its goal, so late in extra time, and then when the final whistle was called shortly after that to seal the championship.

"Thank God that's over," I said to Red, as we got in the car to head out of town.

"What a pain in the ass it was to have to watch it." 

But of course it was privilege to do so, as it is a privilege to walk the earth and breath the air. It was only an inconvenience, to be sure, and it turned out to be a good excuse to spend a little time in town before we headed out on 101. Besides it was good to see the official debut of the New Germany.

I wanted say that I was done watching the World Cup, and in fact I did assert that at the time, but who knows what I'll feel like doing in four years. In the meantime there is nothing sportswise that I have to see on television until the Rio Olympics in two years---if they indeed have them there. The thought of not having to watch any paritcular sporting events on television for the next couple years was greatly satisfying, as if I'd achieved some kind of profound personal gooooool.

Canada, Wunderbar

Our three days out on the fringe of Vancouver Island had been marvelous in many ways, but when we drove out of Tofino we were ready to head home.  We switched off driving and spent most of the mid day picking our way back across the island then down past Nanaimo to Victoria on the smooth mostly four-lane expanse of Highway 1.

We got to Victoria a bit early for our ferry, so we hung out at a Starbucks, the same one where we'd been a couple days back working. The wi-fi there both times were very touchy. It took a very long time to connect via the splash page. One had to be patient. The same had been true in Nanaimo at the Starbucks in the new lifestyle center next to London Drugs. It seemed to be a trend in British Columbia. Starbucks in the U.S. had been my mainstay for three years running, but no way could I have done the same thing across Canada, at least if the ones on Vancouver Island were any indication.

On the other hand, Canada has successfully done away with the penny. They still quote prices down to the cent, but one is expected to round down or up appropriately. No change in pennies is given.

The Canadian attempt to convert to the metric system is quite an interesting topic on its own, one I shan't delve into much detail here.  On the radio the local d.j.'s quote the temperatures and other measurements dutifully according to the Directive From On High.

"I wonder if they get fined if they use the old units, " I mused to Red, as we drove.

But when they interview folks on television, the common folk still use many of the old units. Miles per hour and pounds still trip off the lips. How long will the experiment of societal transformation take place?

(That's the real difference, in my mind, between the U.S. and Canada (and almost everywhere else on Earth). In the U.S., ultimately we are supposed to decide these kinds of things for ourselves, individually, whereas in Canada and much of the rest of the world, it is o.k. to be forthright about engineering society to betterment, with ideas implemented via the Law about human behavior.  Many Americans seem to have lost this insight, of the essential difference between the U.S. and every other country that has existed. It was created as a unique experiment along those lines. A flawed experiment, yes. But really you're going to obsess on the flaws, all of which are shared by every other nation/state that has ever existed? Shared by every one of them...)

At 6:00 p.m. we drove down to the ferry, right near the Grand Pacific Hotel.  The young kid attendant at the gatehouse checked my name on the list of reservations. After we parked in the numbered line on quay I walked up to the CBP trailer with our passports and showed them to the dude inside. He was friendly and made a joke about how my appearance had changed, because of the beard I'd let grow.

The CBP trailer sort of reminded me of the ranger station at Burning Man.

The Lost Kids at the Edge of the Known World

Tofino was familiar to me, even though I had never been there before.

I recognized the kind of place that Tofino was----at the edge of the continent, and at the edge of some corner of the civilized world, as some places are.

If you have been traveling a while, on the road say, looking for yourself or something akin to that, and you arrive at such a place, you might find that you have not in fact found whatever it is you were looking for,  that you were forestalling the issue of while you were yet in motion. Now there is no more road to follow that direction---in some direction of the compass, or up or down, or inside or outside. You might begin wondering "what was it about, really?"

You might linger there awhile, waiting for the full impact of pilgrimage to set in, hoping to store enough of the experience to bank upon later, and then you turn around, having perhaps felt as if you have come to some disappointing defeat, even though nothing concrete has happened to you to make you suffer.  It happens.

Any place on Earth can be that to anyone, perhaps. But in a place like Tofino, many people can wind up coming to that same kind of realization at roughly the same time, simply because of geography and sheer awe-inspiring beauty.

Red and I couldn't help but notice, independently of each other, how many Europeans and Canadian young folk we met at the guesthouse in Tofino seemed distant and down-in-spirit. We shared notes on the last day there.

From our very first conversations on the patio, there had been awkwardness trying to talk to some young Europeans. Among other things, I somehow got the impression that they thought that because we were Americans, we were stupid and therefore beneath the contempt of talking to as intelligent people.

Oh well, it's not as if I couldn't see that coming for a while (Besides being underestimated that way gives one a special kind of freedom, doesn't it?).

But Red thought it was just basic ill manners.

"Where are you from?"

"Switzerland."

"Cool, what part?"

"Oh, uh, the central part."

"Oh yeah, where?"

"You probably haven't heard of it."

"Try me."

"It's called Zurich."

(Oh heck, sonny, I been there---prolly 'fore you wuz born. Second week of July 1992. On my way back from the East. In early morning light I walked down from the station by the lake to the park where the junkies leave their needles and talked to some strung out Goth kids all in black, next to a cold fountain of water pouring over a stone globe. But in any case, any educated person has heard of the place).

Italian guy also at the table: "So they say Portland is the place in the United States that is the most like Europe."

(From his tone I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react to that one. I'm thinking he's going to expect me to brag about how it is in fact so very European, and of course that is something to be automatically proud of. Sure as heck he's met Americans that have said stuff like that, so I don't really take it personally. But I can't help myself so...)

"Portland is the place most like Europe? Well, I guess I know what they're talking about, when they say that..."

"But I wouldn't insult it that way." 

Like a stand-up comic, I stand at the picnic table with a goofy expression, waiting a beat for the audience reaction.

There is no reaction at all to my comment, and I immediately crack a huge smile and interject a well-enunciated version of "I'm just keeeeedding!" Still nothing.

(Woah. Tough crowd tonight. Anyway the correct answer is San Francisco).

Later I talk to a a pair of graduate student sisters from Toronto on vacation. They are of Subcontinental family background but from a fully Canadianized generation. When I tell one that we're from Portland, she replies immediately, "I'm obsessed with that show Portlandia."

(Hah. Good one)

"Is it really like that?" she asks me, eager for real information on the mythical place she has seen in videos.

"Pretty much exactly like that," I tell her.  It seems gratifying to her to hear that.

Later I sit next to a pair of young Germans. The slender young woman refuses any introduction or eye contact, just nods along with the narration of the young man, as he talks with pride about the German soccer team, which is about to play in the finals.

"It'll be interesting to see Argentina and Germany play each other again," I said. "An old rivalry in the finals."

"No, this is the first time they have met in the finals," he tells me, with conviction of certainty.

(Indeed? because I watched Maradona personally will the ball down the entire field like a demigod and score the winning assist in one in 1986, and then of course there was the rematch with German "Machine" of 1990, as my hosts in the former East Prussia called them. But whatevs, as the kids say. Not gonna point it out).

As I had predicted to Red, he gave me the usual line of America could be proud of its team this year, and one day might be a competitor in the finals.

"Well, I hope that never happens," I said.

"We don't need that. Other countries need it way more than us."

A man in the true spirit of old Captain Hatch.

But I think by then he had shifted his attention elsewhere. His female companion just kept smiling to herself, nodding her head, and looking down at the table. She never looked up the whole time.

My thought while I was there was that more than a few of these kids gave the impression of being in a Lost Generation, having witnessed great horrors in a catastrophic war, but with no such recently great war having been fought.

This detached sadness was not new, but its proliferation seemed far beyondI had seen among the vagabond youth in Lisbon even five years ago.

Red noticed how this sadness was especially evident in the young women. One could not help but notice them---the slender ones from Germany, Switzerland, and Toronto who don body suits and choose their companions among the fittest of the surfers. They are told the world is theirs for the taking, and the worlld seems ready to give them whatever they want.

Red noticed how they hid their gazes and never smiled. "It was very off-putting," she said, on our last evening there. "Finally it me, like a big realization, how miserable they were."

Riding in the passenger seat, I couldn't help but laugh a little because to me it was a trend I noticed for a while, but quite to this degree yet. Most young women you meet still like to smile. But it seems trendy to move away from that.

"I noticed that on the first day here," I said. "Sad to say, but I basically wrote them off as so much non-interesting bystanders. I cut my losses, didn't even try to make eye contact or say hello, and just concentrated on the few people whom one could actually talk to."

We agreed mostly on the names of the folks with whom one could carry pleasant conversation, including both of the folks our own age---Nick himself of course being foremost. He's doing the Lord's work tending to the breakfast waffle needs of these kids, and spreading the gospel of Eighties pop music and universal ohana. But even he can only do it six months a year. He spends the rest of the year traveling the world himself.

Also we agreed that among the better conversationalists was a guy named David from Scotland, who now lives in Arizona and who was traveling with his Americanized son, who himself was also very pleasant. We shared our hard cider leftover from the San Juans with them, while on the outdoor deck table on the last evening, just before the amazing inevitable sunset. We found ourselves wishing they had been there a day earlier.

"There were a few others whom I chatted with as well, among the kids," I said. "There were a couple cool guys from Switzerland---I recognized their Schwyzerdütsch---they were carpenters on vacation. We didn't talk that much, but mostly because of the language. But somehow it didn't matter."

"Also the two guys from Ireland-did you meet them? I sat across one at breakfast. He was about twenty years old. Traveling with his friend. They came down from Banff by means a long miserable bus trip to Vancouver. Full of the vigor of life, of spirit. They way he talked himself, traveling, reminded me so much of myself back then, and of just about everybody else who was on the road with a backpack." 

"Thank God for the Irish," I added. "They aren't all of them like that, to be sure, but many of them seem to be, when you meet them."

"No wonder they are the last ones left to still believe in America. They know what is really at stake."

Then a deep thought occurred to me, like the proverbial light bulb going on, a realization about the sad young women in the body suits who never smile at anyone, and who hide their faces, and seem miserable despite it all.

"I think...I know how we can help them," I said. "It's so obvious."

"How's that?" asked Red.

"We can help SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!!!!"

Canada's Hawaii

Canada's Hawaii, that's what Red and I called Tofino. In the sunshine, which is how we saw it, in all its color, it reminds one of Oahu---the steep green rounded mountains near the sea, covered with sculpted rain forests. The sound is a miniature version of an unspoiled Pearl Harbor, but where the islands are covered with firs rather than palms.

Of course there are the surfers, who come from all over Canada and the world, to ride the cold waves of the Pacific currents, out past on the opening of the sound in the open ocean beaches. Evidently February is the prime time for the waves. The cold then can be mitigated partially by hot springs.

But during our July visit, there were plenty of young folks in black body suits coming and going on the deck of the Tofino Traveler's Guesthouse, which felt very ohana, especially with Nick acting as the soft landing pad coach for those who come to stay there. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would have taken him for hapa, if I hadn't known he was Canadian. But I didn't ask.

Part of Nick's therapy for the mostly young mostly Euro and Canadian visitors to his house is various peppy Eighties hits, played in the kitchen during the day, starting at the tail end of the long morning breakfast, during which it is very impolite to refuse to eat at least one of his waffles, let alone two.

The Place to Stay in Tofino

As it happens  I was once a huge Jerry Brown for President guy. That was back in the spring of '92. James and I both voted for him in the Texas Democratic primary (against Bill Clinton, whom we loathed, and Paul Tsongas). We lived on Duval Street in Hyde Park, next to the golf house. James is still a big Brown believer, the last time I saw him in Austin, a couple months back.

I thought about my old 1992 self a bit---my young vagabonding days---when Red and I were up on Vancouver Island a couple weeks a back. That was especially true during our three nights in Tofino, which turned out to be a an extremelyinteresting experience, mostly because of the place we had booked---the Tofino Traveler's Guesthouse. If you are ever in Tofino, this is the place to stay.

"I think that's it'," I said to Red, as we drove it, on the very last street before the waterfront. "I recognize the design on the house, from a photo I saw online earlier today."

It had not looked like that on Booking.com.  It had looked more plain and traditional. Evidentally the place had changed a bit (as we later learned, it had). Had I seen the updated version, I would not have gotten the erroneous idea it was a quiet family place. Instead, even before we got to the door, I could tell it was a different kind of place altogether. It was essentially a hostel. Fortunately that seemed just perfect for the kind of experience we were looking for in Tofino.

The place was swarming with activity of young travelers. We parked on the curve and picked our way up the drive way to the deck. Already three cars were in the drive-way, double-parked.

At the house next door, the front yard was busy with a yard sale. The young folks tending to the rack of used clothes items were sharing a joint as they talked (in B.C. we noticed it is spelled 'marihuana,' with an 'h,' at least for medicinal purposes).

We walked up the steps to the outdoor front deck. About six young folks---a mixture of sexes---were strewn in repose around a long table, in swim suits and t-shirts, soaking up the gorgeous sun and drinking beer. The deck near the door was crowded with dozens of pairs of shoes. Above them was a sign saying shoes were forbidden in the house.

We complied with the sign to remove our shoes at the patio door and stepped inside into the carpet. There we were met by gregarious and awesome Nick, a guy about my age who acts as the mother hen and proprietor of the Tofino Traveler's House. He was sitting at his computer tending to a spreadsheet when we arrived. We gave us the warmest of welcomes and showed us to our room, which was right off the living room, with its own bathroom.

He also gave us a short tour, including the kitchen, with it's long wooden table. Waffles from seven-thirty ten in the morning," he told us. Nick makes good waffles. Like I said, this is the place to stay in Tofino.

President Jerry Brown would agree.

Jerry Brown For President

Obviously,
Slogan: Face it, America, He's all that's Left.

 

Jerry Brown is the obvious choice for U.S. President in 2016. Among other things, he would be a great uniting figure. As a former Mayor of Oakland and Governor of California over many decades, he has impeccable liberal-progressive credentials. He knows how to make the machine of government work in way that keeps folks mostly happy that they are getting their piece of the pie. But at the same time he would be a very conservative president, in that he is an old white man, and is a product of the old Regime, and the old system. He cut his teeth and created his power base in a very Old School way. People will want that, after the chaotic madness of the Crypto-Marxist Obama and his handlers (the weirdest presidency since Warren Harding). America needs to gel on something solid again, and Brown will give them that. Also Righties should know that he would be perfectly willing to pivot to libertarian positions, if he felt the tides turning that way. His big issue in 1992 was the Flat Tax.These will be the concepts and the alliances that sweep him into office with a big Electoral College majority. It will be America's last great attempt to make the old way work. And who am I to say it won't?

Also perhaps he could still marry Linda Ronstadt and we could have a Hispanic first lady---with roller skates! 

Toftino: The End of the North American Road

After Victoria we drove north on Vancouver Island on Highway 1---the Trans-Canada Highway. The day was sunny and bright, the perfect weather for this kind of road trip.

The first day we stopped after a short drive in Nanaimo, the second largest city on the island. The Strait of Georgia was lush blue, in the view from the town.  One could see the mountains of mainland sB.C. quite use. That evening we used our hotel room key to get a discount at the White Spot restaurant next door.

The next day we headed west over the passes to Port Alberni, a working classs which sits in the middle of Vancouver Island, surrounded by mountain, but is curiously on the ses as well, being that it is at the tail of a long winding sound that cuts deep into the island from the Pacific. Port Alberni is supposedly "the worst place to live in Canada," according to a web article that Red found.

I found nothing obviously wrong with it. Perhaps it seems bad by comparison, because it is the last outpost of "civilization"---the Wal-Mart and Starbucks are to be found here, for example. One is supposed to despise these things after all. At most they are a necessity, but if they are all one has, it is a sign of "blight."

From there the highway continues westward through more steep mountains, roughly follows the aforementioned sound, but also climbing a few low passes in the green forested hills to come upon the shores of inland lakes in their enclosed basins. Another hour like this brings one to the western shore of the island.

There the road reaches a tee junction. Left is the town of Ucluelet on the coast. Turning right, one follows the Pacific down a long finger of land pointing parallel to the coast, carved by the fjords and sounds.  One passes through a lovely Reserve de Parc. where the signs are explicit in informing us that it is a rain forest. That's a term with a lot of cache in our culture.

In the preserve are wonderful beaches, visible from the road through a thin curtain of tree trunks that make a zoetrope of the brilliant Pacific as one drives past them. The roadside is crowded with cars of various sizes in a jagged parallel parking arrangement, to maximize the number of visitors to the beach.

After another dozen kilometers, one leaves the Reserve ("Merci pour votre visite!"). By this time one is near the end of the long peninsula along the coast.

One begins to pass many commercial summer resorts with prominent welcoming signs, the resorts themselves obscured by thick trees. At the tip of the peninsula is a little town, an old fishing town that is now a summer tourist hub. It sits on a bluff overlooking the enormous wide lower part of Alberni Sound as it opens to the ocean. One there sees the calm lagoon and the archipelago of tree-topped islands within it, framed by the steep mountains on the other side.

As one watches the sound, which in the July sun was as marvelous in hue as any place on earth, sea planes land and take off nearly constantly, on a permanent self-regulating watery airfield.

Red informed me that the road from here to Port Alberni was completed only in 1973. Here at the tip of the peninsula, is obvious the culture of self-sufficiency by good transported here by boat and plane survives, but with alterations in the wake o the land artery. At the town's marina, what appears to be a Tla-o-qui-aht family unloads multiple Wal-Mart bags from there minivan onto a rusty shopping cart. When it is full, they gentle lower the cart down the steep ramp to a boat at the dock, where the goods will be ferried across the sound to a settlement or house.

Hank Stamper would have been right at home here, I think to myself.

Much of the year, the place is shrouded in mist and fog, the hues of green and blue suppressed by nature's own lightbox of the grey slate skies.

But in July, in good sunny weather. it feels like paradise.  On the map, it's called Tofino.

Secede from Cascadia

Victoria, B.C. is a lovely city, with great harbor vistas, fine architecture and lively restaurants. It was much fun to spend an evening or two strolling around.

But if you do so, keep in mind that you will run across many homeless men who will panhandle you, both day and evening.

Not only will they panhandle you, but they do so quite agressively, more so than in any American city I have been in. If you deny them a contribution, it is not uncommon for them to push back at you, sometimes with loud profanity as they walk away.

There are street urchins as well, floating around in small packs of both sexes with battered punk clothes and sometimes toting musical instruments.  They are often found along the waterfront, which is less redeveloped than one might think, and along the storefronts of downtown where the upper stories of the old buildings are often empty with For Lease signs in the windows.

I was not surprised to see the panhandlers so numerous and direct in their approach. Vancouver had felt somewhat the same way, last November in certain quarters such as the West, but that metropolis has more things to distract one from this street-level phenomenon where it exists.

Red and I like to joke about how many folks from Portland seem to have "Vancouver Envy," in referring to the city on mainland British Columbia (not the 'Couve, of course!).

The perceived "diversity" of Vancouver, B.C.,  as well as its postmodern urban beauty, is sometimes cited as a reason that it would be splendid if we could all just drop the pretense of the international border and create a new Pacific Northwest nation encompassing (at least) Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Last year I told Red abotu the Cascadia movement, which essentially promotes this concept. Surprisingly to me, the concept and even the name "Cascadia" were new to her, despite her having lived in Portland five years. I gave her a brief background history of what it about, including the influential 1972 novel Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach that helped promote a variation on this concept. I told her how I read that book in college in the 1980s in Salem, for my environmental ethics class. It was popular class, and many people on campus were often seen carrying it in the campus bistro.

The "Doug Fir" flag displayed at a professional soccer match in Portland.

Since then she has noticed the name mentioned not infrequently, including the movement's emblematic "Doug Fir" flag.

"Cascadia is an interesting concept," I said, " but would it mean that we in the current U.S. part would necessarily have to accept the sovereignty of the queen, or another British monarch?" I asked.

"No way," said Red.

"Never," I added. 

"But I don't think that B.C. would want to give up the queen, just to be in the same country as us, so that could be a big problem," I said.

Then after thinking about it a minute I had a thought.

"We should start a movement for Oregon to secede from Cascadia!" I said.

Victoria, Full of Queens, and Looking Quite Marvelous

We had a lovely time in Victoria. The Helms Inn down at the foot of Beacon Hill Park, just near the harbor, lived up to its ranking on Booking.com. The king size bed was large and quite comfortable.

To my delight, they even had TCM in the hotel. When we flicked on the tube, My Fair Lady was showing. It was almost at the end.

Red had never seen it, so I explained some of the plot and characters to her. "It was the Academy Award winner from the year I was born," I told her.

Then afterwards, by a most wonderful coincidence, Robert Osborne introduced a featured screening of a Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy movie---Rose-Marie (1936), which is in fact the defining MacDonald-Eddy "Northern genre" flick. It is the one in which MacDonald is a Montreal opera singer out in the Canadian wild, and Eddy is the Mountie out to get his man. They meet and fall in love.

This is the one in which they sing The Indian Love Call to each other. I had been waiting to see this movie for years. We could not have asked for a better welcoming to Canada.

As it happened, the celebration of Pride, which we had encountered already in Portland and Seattle over the last month, rolled into Victoria right with us. At our lunch out in quaint Oak Bay, our popular hip cafe featured a "Pride Benny" special (Benny, we learned, is Canadian for Eggs Benedict, which is a popular brunch item at least in BC). The toppings for the Pride Benny special were listed as "Leeks Gouda Bacon Thyme," with the first letter of each ingredient in bold type in the menu.

After brunch we drove over to the beautiful modern campus of the University of Victoria ("UVic," as it is known locally) and went into the gorgeous campus bookstore to browse after an hour or two.

Inside on the bookstore, they were showing the World Cup match between Costa Rica and the Netherlands on big screen televisions. I sat down in the comfortable chairs and watched the match until its end, rooting for Costa Rica. The CBC television commentary of match was quite different from Univision.

I decided to pull for the Costa Rican side.

"Go North America!," I said, with polite assertion, raising a loose fist in a gentle non-threatening way, no higher than the height of my chin.

One of the coolest things about going to university book stores is you can see all the books that are published by their own university press.  It can give one an idea of what the research is like there.

Not surprisingly, the store was also resplendent with Pride-related books standing on a large display table---how to be gay, how to love a woman (for women), how to raise a transgender child, and such. I perused as many as possible to get the substance of their themes.

I also wandered into the spirituality section,  a single shelf along one aisle. A good portion of the books there appeared to be by atheists. Eastern religions were well represented ---Taoism, Buddhist in the middle shelves, as was Islam. A few books on Judaism sat on the topmost shelf at eye level. The sole Bibles were a few generic paperback copies of the Revised King James version on the bottom shelf, somewhat hard to notice unless one crouched all the way down. Next to them, Christianity was represented by a slender volume about Jesus authored by Deepak Chopra.

By contrast, the women's studies sections was a nice solid aisle. I loved pouring over the titles and reading the blurbs. I spent most of my time there reading from Brazen Femme, which purported to " a manifesto of the unrepentant bitch." The cover showed the semi-clad torso of a young woman sitting on a stool, her legs apart, and her band cradling a pocket knife jammed into the stool in front of her crotch. I found many of the essays quite tantalizing, and almost purchased the book, but I had already spent my self-imposed book-buying budget while we had been in the San Juans.

That evening there were music events along the harbor in honor of Pride. We took a water taxi ride up towards the music pavilion, right near our hotel.

The parade itself was the next morning. It beautiful sunny day, perfect for such an even.. The route was right along Government Street, along the waterfront and up to the foot of the provincial Legislative Assembly, where along the street, the dark monument to city's namesake stands with crown and scepter, greeting all visitors who come by land and water.

Right there by the waterfront is the opulent grand Empress Hotel. Its tall outline has been the crown of the waterfront skyline for a century. It is owned by the Fairmont chain, the same as the hotel by that name on Nob Hill in San Francisco, where Red and I recently were fortunate enough to have dinner.

Before we had even arrived in Victoria, Red discovered that the Empress serves an Afternoon Victorian Tea. She very much wanted to go, so she booked reservations for us online.

It was marvelous. As we arrived, we walked up the walkway of the the lush lawn, which was resplendent with rainbow flags leftover from the Pride parade. Inside the tea room was like something out of My Fair Lady. The tea---we both got their special Empress house blend---was indeed delicious.

The serving tray had three plates stacked with goodies, both savory and sweet, including cucumber  and cream cheese sandwiches, which are a must. Everyone there seemed to be having a very good time.

"Who's that woman in that portrait?," Red asked me, looking up at the elegant framed painting along the side wall, of woman wearing a crown. It appeared to be from the early days of the hotel.

"Don't know," I said.

"There's one of a man on the opposite wall," said Red, pointing the other way.

When our tea server came back to check on us, I inquired about the woman in portrait. Before even I had even finished asking my question, the server replied, "Queen Mary."

Using Red's iPhone, we figured out that the portrait of the man was surely George V.

"He looks like the Tsar," Red said.

I smiled at the innocence of her comment.

"Well, there's a reason for that," I said, raising my cup to take another sip of tea.

After I put my cup down. I proceded to wax unabashedly for a few moments about the House of Romanov, Haus Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, and the intricacies of various causes leading up the advent of the Great War, and the destruction of the old order.

Red found it all delightful to listen to, as we munched our delicious deserts on the top tray.

Why I Abandoned the Environmental Movement

In short, because of crap like this piece in Salon. I can't have anything to do with any movement pushing the kind of rhetoric in that piece.

Look, I get it. You think the atmosphere, oceans, flora, and fauna of the Earth's natural environment, as well as its landscapes and seascapes, are endangered by the seemingly dauntless advance of modern civilization. If one values those things---and what decent person wouldn't?---then one must somehow to check the deletrious effects that human civilization seems to have on the various portions of the globe. If one thinks of posterity, one imagines they will value our attempts to bequeath them the same remaining portion of bounty that we ourselves have inherited.

But you go perverting science like this piece does---I mean perversion in the wickedest sense of the word---then you can not only count me out, but you can count me a fierce opponent. In fact, you will have earned my deep contempt.

At least the Creationists have the guts to admit that relying on the Bible in a debate about geology is outside the scientific method. They admit that they are pushing an ideology. They admit they are promoting a religion.

I would love to come back to the Environmental movement someday. In fact, I think they'll get your wish fulfilled, in terms of what they are really looking for. 

To them I saw: your goals will be achieved, but only if you abandon your methods. Just like Russia became prosperous and egalitarian far beyond the dreams of the any early Bolsheviks, so too will you achieve what you want.


Good luck on finding that path.

According to our beloved mentor Quigley, it has been known since 1964 that the world population would naturally level off at around ten billion in the mid Twentieth Century, then drop off fairly quickly. That's Chapter One, actually. Keep that in mind.

And for the record, we humans are not tenth-level maggots, either. I can't prove that. It's my own religious belief.

The Purpose of My Visit to Canada

...is to enjoy the scenic summer sights on Vancouver Island and meet interesting people.

This statement is officially made for the United States Customs and Border Protection folks, who, judging by my last trip to Canada, are extremely interested in my motivations for travel outside the country, and who moreover seem to enjoy reading this blog.

The Holiday Formerly Known as Independence Day

The tone of the Fourth of July this year, as a public holiday, seemed to have be set well by the open mike singer at Doe Bay who sang about his experience at the Seattle riots. For his second number, he performed a bombastic falsetto adaption of America the Beautiful, ostensibly with his own lyrics, ones reflecting his sentiments regarding the nation that were in line with his political beliefs. It was quite a hoot to listen to him.

All in all, perusing the news headlines and Facebook posts that day, I couldn't help feeling like the Fourth is now nearly dead as a concept. It no longer has any official meaning, at least on the level of the national media and the federal government. It has become a legacy holiday, joining other dead holidays such as Labor Day and Memorial Day as a day off from work to relax and fire up the barbecue, but containing little substance beyond that for most folks.

Anything emphasizing the founding of the Republic is now embarrassingly out of step with the times we live in and smacks of cultural insensitivity to those groups left out of the 1776 thing. The federal executive's own Facebook post that day pretty much summed it up what the holiday has become.

If the current trend keeps up, I predict that although the Fourth will remain on the calendar for the time being, eventually it will be dropped and replaced by a more appropriate mid-summer holiday that reflects the updated cultural sensibilities and the new model of social justice. I suspect Pride will emerge as the winner in that contest. It's an inclusive holiday we can all celebrate with the rest of world, with the blessing of the international community, without making anyone feel uncomfortable except for hateful reactionary bigots clinging to the past with their guns and Bibles. Just make sure that you stand up and clap heartily when the parade goes by.

On this now-diminished pseudo-celebration of America's racist/hateful/sexist/cissexist/misogynist/genocidal/homophobic so-called "Independence," Red and I found ourselves, along with the rest of her family, decamping from Doe Bay and heading back along the winding narrow island roads towards the Orcas Island ferry terminal.

But whereas the rest of her family were bound for the boat back to Anacortes and the mainland, so that they could catch their flights at Sea-Tac, the two of us of waited a few extra hours in Doe Bay and instead caught the later inter-island ferry to Friday Harbor on neighboring San Juan Island.

As the largest town in the islands, Friday Harbor is the unofficial capital. Coming up to the dock, one could see the streets of the bustling downtown along the slope of the hill in the small cove. It felt like being back in civilization again.

But we spent only a single night there. We checked into the little motel I'd booked online several months back and in the evening we had fish and chips in a nautical themed restaurant down by the waterfront. Of course there was evidence of the dying holiday still about---folks of bulging overfed frame dressed in garish red, white and blue shirts and shorts, as if proclaiming that wanton gluttony and sartorial slobbitude is the ultimate freedom derived from the events in Philadelphia over two centuries ago.

And there was a solitary mobile float of a benevolent Uncle Sam parked down by the ferry terminal. It tottered down the main street comically as we were strolling past the boutiques. Although he is a white male (ugh), Uncle Sam is still sanctioned in a our new postmodern culture because he represents the benevolent Federal Government, the regent on earth for bringing social justice through the power to tax and to do All Things Considered as Good.

Back in our motel room we saw no local fireworks but heard the distant sounds of their explosions over the harbor, the receding echo of the corrupt disgraceful America that hopefully will soon no longer exist.

True to that spirit, in the morning we checked out the little motel and followed our plan from months ago. We fired up our legacy fossil-fuel burning vehicle and drove to the waterfront, where we parked in line for the morning ferry.

Our destination---a true land of freedom, ruled by a benevolent monarchy representing social justice and goodness bestowed through loving and gentle personal coercion, one where the rainbow flag already flies proudly and where the native tribes are not denigrated by the R-skin-word, but are elevated not only as "nations" but with the qualifier of being "First," lest anyone think otherwise.

From what I've heard at least, in this beautiful place where we were heading, gun ownership is frowned upon, and the will of the international community is considered to be the final word on matters of importance. Best of all, the hateful Christian Right which hangs on in the U.S. standing in the way of the Great American Transition to the New Just World Order has already been relegated to the margins of polite society---a pipsqueak voice that can be ignored.

It is truly a place that shows what America could have been, and still could be, had it not been for the Great Mistake of 1776.

In short, we were bound for Canada.

Can't Get Enough of Those Feisty Gingers

A follow up to the this post about my visit to Hollywood in April. Maureen O'Hara is the TCM star of the month right now. They are running the interview they did of O'Hara from the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, during the recent TCM film festival. Yours truly gets his big moment of fame at 6:59, laughing at a joke about the Duke.

By a delightful coincidence, my appreciation of classic movies was first kindled back in college in Salem, when I was the projectionist for the film class I was taking. The very first movie I had to put on the reels: The Quiet Man. I love it when life leads you on those fun upward circular paths.

Love Live the Costco Revolution

During the week of the Great Rant-Out, the week that the Revolution was declared---when women in the United States were declared non-beings by the high court, and then began the long process of rising up to overthrow their hateful oppressors, yours truly spent the week at the most progressive redoubts of the entire nation---the resort at Doe Bay, on Orcas Island in the San Juans of Washington State.

We had gone up there with a bunch of Red's family in celebration of her having finished medical school. On the day we drove up to the Anacortes ferry, while passing through downtown Seattle I noticed the Space Needle was flying a giant bright rainbow flag in honor of Pride.  

There are rainbow flags too above the porch in the little wooden structure that serves as the office and general store for the Doe Bay Resort. All three flags are heavily faded from the sun, and one is frayed at the edge. They have been flying there a long time, beside the water, and the cove that opens out to towards the Rosario Strait, and the islands to the East.

The view in the evening is heavenly. This evening at dusk, the shimmering water of the sound, in different dark hues on the shade side of the island, towards the tiny twinkling lights of Bellingham, made a tableau that I joked reminded me of the perfect blue stream, in the old Hamms Beer signs in bars back in the old days, the ones that looked like an animated running stream. Except it was enormous in scale, filling one's entire field of vision.

We occupied two cabins all in all---eleven of us at one point, when Red's cousins showed up from Vashon Island. There was soaking the clothing optional tubs by some. There was a whale watching cruise by members of the group, and a hike up Mount Constitution, the high point in the San Juans, where one can see to Vancouver quite easily (one can also drive up the mountain too).

Internet connectivity allowed me to do my job from the cabin during the day, and from the wooden deck chairs the faced the cove. I felt like I was in an Bergman movie. I even squeezed in some sea kayaking today. We got a free forty-five minute trip because we had to turn back due to white caps out in the open straight. Forty-five minutes was perfect, I said. Just enough to enough it and feel the strain in my arms from paddling.

We cooked our own meals in the cabins each night, having loaded up with food at the Costco right before we boarded the ferry. They were showing both the live World Cup and the recent Super Bowl on the televisions in the Costco. Costa Rica was winning, and the Seahawks were up by five touchdowns on the Broncos. Before we left Portland, I had bought a Costco membership, and joked at the time that I felt like I'd become a citizen at last.

Tonight as a farewell here on Orcas, we dined at the Doe Bay cafe, which is behind the general store. It was pizza night. It was also the night before the Fourth of July, the true start of the season. The crowds just coming in and filling the place up.

It was alo open mike---the true opening of the summer season. We sat on the patio under the heaters and listened to the music as we dined. The first singer strummed a guitar sang a loud and somewhat profane protest ballad about how he had attended the 1999 Riots in Seattle, and how he had not thrown the rock through the window of the Starbucks, but that he wished he had, and thought himself a wussy liberal instead of a true anarchist.

Hobby Lobby: Refuse to Comply

My peaceful summer day here by the sea was punctuated by repeated observations that my Facebook feed was blowing up with outrage and frustration about the Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby and Obamacare.

It seems a lot of my friends were very angry about the result, to the point of describing it as tyranny.

Personally it's not an issue I found that compelling, but I know a lot of folks did find it compelling, so in the interests of being helpful, I thought I'd chip in my two cents about it.

My advice to the outraged folks is the same I would give to anyone who feels that a particular law is tyrannical, as passed by a legislature, interpreted by the courts, or implemented by an executive. The advice is this: simply refuse to comply with it.

History has proven that a group of committed people who refuse to comply with what they perceive to be unjust authority can have monumental effects in the long run. Of course you must be prepared to face consequences in the short run, at the cost of your liberty and treasure, and even your life perhaps, but if many people refuse to comply then virtually nothing can stop them in achieving a goal down the road.

In this case, the perceived tyranny is that women will be denied access to birth control. Thus the method of refusing to comply is simple. If you are a woman affected by this, then find a way to get access to birth control despite this horrible law. If you are not directly affected, then find a way to help the affected women get their birth control.  This will surely bring the system to its knees, if everyone did this.