Northwest Passage

Portland, Oregon



Floating above the eastern horizon, 60 miles distant, Mount Hood keeps watch over this city. As the day ages, the light from the sun going down in the west brings the crags and valleys of this mighty volcano into view.



It was sunny and warmish here, so we took a long afternoon walk, down by the wide Willamette River, where we saw bluebirds and a tiny black hummingbird with a bright red throat. In boats anchored offshore against the current, fishermen sought -- trout, chinook?

Large logs floated carelessly north, hazards for the boaters.

This is a city of big trees and lovely old houses. It's had one of the hottest real estate markets in the country the past few years, and recently was chosen as the best U.S. city in which to raise children. It's safe and friendly, a mostly informal place, it seems.

There as many beards here as in Berkeley, easily.



Most of Portland sits high above the river, up a steep incline. Near its downtown, OHSU (Oregon Health & Science University) covers a broad stretch of land. There are two large "aerial trams" running along cables from the riverbank up to university's hospitals.



Inside the tram, swinging high over the city, riders can see a panorama of the valley and the mountains beyond. You feel higher than you do riding in most ski lifts, and you are. Probably not the place for those afraid of heights.



This Saturday started quietly, with a soft fog coating the city. We had breakfast in a diner we like, (they sure serve big plates of hash browns up here) and then hung out with our sweet little nephew/grandson again. With his black hair and dark eyes, he is quite stunning.



The day ended with us gathered around his basket, watching him sleep. It may sound silly, but we all like to just gaze at him. It's amazing to see the perfection that we all start with, every feature arranged just so.



Baby James slept peacefully, opening his eyes now and again to see the smiling faces hovering over him, then settling again into slumber. I believe his parents have found a good place for him to grow up. This is a nice city to imagine living in.

People ask me what it is like to be a grandparent.

Beyond feeling old, I try to explain that there is a magnetic pull toward my grandson. It is a long drive here, especially with three young children in the car and no other adult to share the driving. I feel tense, my neck and shoulders hurt, as I navigate next to enormous truck-trailers, often three units per tractor. The hazards are immediate and all too obvious.

And the weather can turn violent in a flash. I remember the last time I drove from here to San Francisco, the same night James Kim and his family went missing after turning off from the route we were following. I couldn't forget about him as we traversed Grant's Pass.

I posted some of the official report about the family's ordeal on another of my many blogs. livejournal . I'll probably devote some space to summarizing this report in the future, because it is an instructive story for anyone who goes tgraveling in bad weather...

***

This is our third visit in three months, the second since baby James' birth. Driving here without a partner requires five days, four of which are spent largely on the road. Today was our one full day in Portland. By mid-day tomorrow, we'll be back on I-5 again, now heading south.

But it's worth every bit of it, just to see this little person enter the world and begin to develop. When I hold him and took into his tiny face, I know I am glimpsing a future that will occur without me, a time after I am gone. He should see the very late 21st century, while I am a product of the mid-20th century.

Maybe that is the main thing to say about how it feels to hold your tender grandson in your arms when he is six weeks old and you are over 3,000 weeks old is awe. Think about that -- I am 500 times as old as James is. So it feels like this: I have had my time, and now he will have his.

We will overlap for a while, and for me, that is a blessing. Later on, when he grows up, I hope he feels the same way about our overlap as I do. Gratitude.

-30-

Family Scrapbook

Portland, Oregon



Grandson James in his Mother's arms.



With Uncle Aidan.



With Aunt Julia.



With Uncle Dylan entering the mix...

***

So, the boys have upgraded from listening to Harry Potter books on tapes while pretending to go to sleep, to listening to David Sedaris short stories on tape for the same purpose.

His droll humor rolls around this hotel room; all lights are off, some street noise outside competes with Sedaris and what sounds like a muffled rock concert somewhere near campus.

Little nephew/grandson James is not quite as little as last month. Now he is wide-eyed and curious at each new face he sees. He smiles! He's six weeks old tonight.

It's time for baseball again! As signified by that little red insignia to the left, I am an official Major League Baseball blogger this year! Furthermore, I know of one baseball team executive (plus a number of real fans) who has actually read this blog.

The start of the Fantasy Baseball Season is normally one of my happiest times of year. Last year, it was wrecked by matters not worth going into, though those same circumstances led to the launch of this blog, without which Major League Baseball never could have found me to begin with.

So, every twist and turn has its purpose, even when you're left doing it alone out there in the wind.

My legendary Mud Lake Mafia, in the sense that they are so spectacularly unsuccessful as to constitute much more of a legend than a reality, will once again suit up in the Champs of Summer league. Expect regular updates on our roster as the season approaches.

Yreka Blues

Roughly at the halfway point between San Francisco and Portland is Yreka, a town whose name looks like it may have been the last one available when its founding fathers got the place organized. Even the businesses look to have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to locate a name for their stores. The big supermarket, for example, which is called Price Less Foods.

Of course, we are north of Balls Ferry, Hooker Lake Road, and Gas Point, here in this broad flat that is a gateway into the land of Lewis & Clark. The Oregon state government offers a map of the route taken by the explorers on its official website.

The Oregon Trail serves as young North America’s version of Asia’s ancient Silk Route.

We’ve stopped for the night at Motel 6, where a room costs roughly 7 times that much nowadays. Still, a pretty good deal, and I like the fact that kids are free. I actually think kids should always be free, because no employer pays you more than the next guy just because you happen to have a kid.

That would be un-American-like, right? A penalty against all of those who have not burdened the planet with offspring, further straining resources and diverting massive amounts of taxes for schools, playgrounds, and so on – money that might otherwise be refunded to childless citizens for whatever use they wished to make of it.

This, at least, is how I imagine the line of reasoning to go.

Not that I am unsympathetic to people who see children as baggage. It’s part of the social fabric that we now have a familiar type – the type who hates kids. In this way, we desert our own future. We never were going to be part of the future, anyway, but our kids will, which is why people have kids, so that people would have a future on this planet.

If the future doesn’t matter to us, then why would we do things like recycling, preserving resources, protecting wildlife, finding sustainable ways to grow food and utilize energy? Why not just live for the moment?

The current class divide in America between the super-rich and the rest of us has grown so large that only a generation ago, if you predicted this, you would have been branded an idiot.

On the road again...

Bags are packed, cooler is filled, plenty of CDs in the car. We've got warm shoes, scarves and mittens; art supplies, iPods, and stuffy kittens. There's gas in the tank, and fluid in the window washers.

So, in a few hours, it's off to Portland we go. North out of the foggy/sunny Bay Area, out into the Valley to pick up I-5, then straight as an arrow up the coast, around one side of massive Mount Shasta, and down into the green-forested plains of Oregon. Up and over mountain passes and past small towns and cities.

Well after sundown, we'll stop for the night, maybe around Ashton or Roseville. They'll be hot food and video games, heated motel rooms, and icicles on the car in the morning, as we resume our journey to see our little grandson and nephew, James, now about six weeks old. Plus his Mom and Dad.

I admit to sometimes feeling restless being tied to an office day after day; and in past years, I've rarely taken breaks. But, now, as I approach a milestone birthday later this spring, I'm cognizant more than ever that time waits for no man and no woman, and I better grab chances when they present themselves to me.

It is an exciting time in Silicon Valley; we all feel the boom all around us, pushing us to experiment, innovate, and explore new ideas. I'm in a highly stimulated state, intellectually.

But a short break may help me to consolidate some of wild ideas that have been visiting me into some sort of coherent plan for the future. My three excited little travel mates will be asking when will we get there, of course; and I'll answer to not forget to smell the roses -- or at least enjoy looking at snow-capped mountains along the way.

Who knows, maybe by Monday WeirDudes might have a new movie for release? You never can tell.

-30-

Baseball and Philosophy

It's around the corner. All over the Sunbelt, professional baseball players are reporting to spring training.

But, first, some context. In college, I explored Philosophy as my major. I did not read particularly deeply but everything quickly boiled down to two huge voices in my head -- Descartes vs. Berkeley. Of course, the dialectical materialists (Hegel, Marx and Engels) also eventually (and inevitably) had their way with me.

Descartes was a rationalist, and the founder of one of my favorites subjects -- analytic geometry -- which is a bridge between algebra and geometry, and which helped lead to the creation of calculus (one of my least favorite subjects). Descartes, it can be argued, helped stimulate the line of western thought that was ready to help exploit the emergence of the computer in our time, the most rationalist of times. Descartes is best known for his statement: "I think, therefore I am," which you have to admit, is a cool sound bite, if ever there were one.

But for me, there was another philosopher, George Berkeley, who was much more in line with my own way of thinking. Berkeley (pronounced BARK-LAY) was one of three famous eighteenth century British Empiricists, along with John Locke and David Hume. While I struggled with the latter two, Berkeley grabbed my soul with his famous phrase, esse is percipi, or, "to be is to be perceived."



Thus, he was an empirical idealist who believed that nothing actually existed unless a mind existed that perceived it to exist. He believed that matter does not exist. Actually, I suspect he was a maniac, because he argued that physical objects were composed of ideas, i.e., mental projections.

I fell in love with Berkeley when he offered the following proposition (according to my memory): "If a tree fell in a forest, but no one was around to see, hear, touch or smell that tree, how could its existence be certain to have occurred?" He was therefore the father of subjective idealism.

***

Back to baseball. I've always wondered about the times that you achieve a home run, but no one who knows you witnesses this event. Did it really happen? Or any of life's other moments?

Do we need a witness? (Happy Valentine's Night.)
-30-

Happy Awareness Day

So, here's a problem. We live in such an over-commercialized, over-hyped society that something that ought to be a light-hearted, playful opportunity, like Valentine's Day, has become a time of disappointment for all but a lucky few.

Why are they lucky? Because they are in a relationship that is working for both parties at this moment, and they can spend an evening together at a fancy restaurant, reconfirming their commitment to each other; or snuggled up at home before the TV, or whatever.

As for the rest of the adult population, random single people or unhappily married people, Valentine's is far more likely to be a vaguely depressing night, a reminder of what we do not have in our lives, compared to the romantic myths that dictate what we should be experiencing.

So, what exactly is the right way to express your "love" for somebody, when it somehow is more than just friendship or family or obligatory symbolism? Why not eschew this capitalistic excuse to push fattening products, like chocolate candy, on each other, as much as possible. But to the extent that that strategy doesn't work, emotionally, we should strive to use this holiday as an opportunity to tell those we care about just how we feel.

In other words, it is an opportunity to be loving without any expectation of entitlement. Just purely expressive and emotional. Original art is an option.

Thus, Julia and I sent our hearts out to all who stop by this tiny little blog site.

The most radical thing we ever do is express our feelings for each other. It is safer, of course, to continue to keep to yourself whatever feelings you once had for that other person that you have not yet been able to resolve or those equally toxic hopeful feelings for someone new, not yet expressed.

To take a chance and tell somebody how you honestly feel might be, finally, a true gift, for both of you.

-30-

Home Turf

You do not have to be a sports fan to appreciate this:

Home Team Advantage . Scientists have figured out how to measure the testosterone in male players before and after playing games on their home turf as opposed to on the road. Their conclusion: Men play much better at home because they are much like dogs defending their territory!

This news competes with last week's big science story that women respond to the smell of men's sweat by becoming measurably aroused.

As if all of this were not enough for a curious mind, did you see that chimpanzees apparently had their own Stone Age?

It's almost too much for someone who believes humans are a superior species to handle. After all, the combined weight of ants on earth is greater than the combined weight of all of us humans. How, you ask, can that possibly be?

So many disappointments for the king (and queen) of beasts. Every guy who fancies himself the great seducer probably only benefited from forgetting to take a shower, or shave (another turn-on women cannot help but respond to is unshaved whiskers.)

Now, I do have to except most women from this analysis, but only because as one of my female friends told me recently, "It's probably easier for me to 'get lucky' -- if I wanted to -- than it is for you men."

Of course, she is right, and as every woman except those with the dimmest lights in their attic eventually figure out, it isn't all that hard to get laid, at any age, if that's what you want.

There is, however, one piece of sweetly hopeful news among the recent discoveries flooding our websites for that slender slice of romanticism that resides inside our battered hearts. You may have missed it, but that skeleton couple discovered in an eternally loving embrace were quite near the place where Shakespeare set his classic story, Romeo and Juliet.

-30-

Sunday Morning Coming Down*

Spring-like weather greeted us today, after many days and nights of rain.

I decided to take a long walk, and up near Mission Street, this morning, and I came upon a happy couple, bathing in a street puddle.



My neighbor is planting vegetables and herbs in the backyard. She knows a lot about gardening, it seems. I told her I really have been savoring fresh basil and cilantro lately.



Why, I can't to cook even the simplest meal without using one or the other.

This is just a simple post for now. The light stays with us longer now, so when the kids got here, we got some basketball time together. I'm starting to be able to let the doors and windows stay open more often.

Now it is Sunday night, a school night. The kids' lunches are mostly ready to go, their homework is done, a lamb roast is in the oven. Courtesy of Netflix, we have Casablanca to watch this night.

It is one of Dylan's favorite movies; he cracks up at the one-liners that helped make the film a classic. It is the one overtly romantic movie I can think of among his favorites. His main interest is the interplay between the Germans and Vichy French, of course, as well as the atmosphere surrounding World War II.

It is such a classic love story; as we all know, romance has its many tragic elements. Living with a broken heart is one of life's terrible risks. Sacrificing for a greater cause can be an even larger opportunity for the romantic inside many of us.

Thus, in my view, the political Left is the most emotional ideology of them all. Utopian, egalitarian, idealistic.

Combining love and politics yields an almost toxic high. That is the story of more Sixties activists than will ever be told. Many of us still think we might be able to make a difference. Whether that is a tragic flaw will have to be left to the authors of our epitaphs...




*Johnny Cash

-30-