Le Printemps

Le Printemps

Charles d'Orléans

Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie
Et s'est vêtu de broderie,
De soleil riant, clair et beau ...

Il n'y a bête ni oiseau
Qu'en son jargon ne chante ou crie.
Le temps a laissê son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie.

Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent en livrée jolie
Gouttes d'argent d'orfèvrerie;
Chacun s'habille de nouveau.
Le temps a laissé son manteau.

Troop Fourteen:Rainy Day Hike

On Saturday, March 24, a small but intrepid band of Fourteeners braved the rain to attend a hike. The weather was bad and would get worse as the day passed. Since so few had dared the weather, the acting Senior Patrol Leader decided to change the hike from Mount Tamalpais to the Presidio; this way, the hike could serve as a test for the rain-worthiness of each Scout's equipment. Most of us ditched our lunches in cars at the beginning of the hike, but some hungry Scouts were unwilling to abandon food, even for a few hours. We walked down Lovers' Lane to the waterline. Then we headed to Fort Point, where the waves were crashing against the rocks. At first it seemed that the fort was closed, and none of us had planned to buy entrance tickets, but Bruce McKleroy spoke with the attendant . The fort opened ten minutes later and the group explored the fort. I had not visited Fort Point since sophomore year in high school, and had forgotten how Spartan the living conditions had been. The struts of the Golden Gate Bridge loomed overhead like a red metallic spiderweb. We left too early for my taste - I suppose I shall return soon on a better day when I can take proper pictures. The Senior Patrol Leader then led us up the hill and along the Ridge Trail past Camp Rob, where one of the first place patrols camped a year or so ago. The Presidio is within the Scout district, so permits are much easier to obtain than for trips beyond (which, sadly, includes Pacifica, which has some nice trails). If anyone plans to camp there, prepare for wind, but even a night at Camp Rob would count as a night for Camping Merit Badge. Bruce McKleroy explained that only the military had access to the area of the Ridge Trail when the military controlled the Presidio. Now it is a pleasant hike, even though the yellow mud along it was extremely slippery. We passed Julius Kahn Playground, a locus for stories of childhood injuries, and returned to Broadway and Lyon before noon. The total distance covered was 6.7 miles, not too challenging for a patrol outing and a breeze for the Troop.

Review: The Hunger Games

Note (2/24/22): This has been edited to remove an offensive term. Saying what it was would negate the effect of the edit, and seeking to know what it was would prove the seeker more interested in finding offense than reading the remaining content.

Circumstances, related to the rainy conditions of Saturday's Scout hike resulted my double viewing of the film version of The Hunger Games. I do not regret watching it twice, since the Venn diagram of friends and acquaintances with whom I saw it did not overlap. The Hunger Games is a well-made film, and I would watch it again, although I probably would not buy the DVD. The transition from novel to film always entails simplification and externalization of details which books can present in an introspective manner. Although the Treaty of the Treason, in which the Capital set forth the terms of the Hunger Games, appears prominently in the film (an instance of cinematographic externalization), there is no mention of the "reward" that the winner of the Hunger Games earned for his or her District. In the book, the winning District receives extra rations to stave off malnutrition and starvation. Its omission makes the Capital's abuse of the districts more offensive, but also eliminates an obvious motivation for the Districts' complicity in this appalling ritual. The book uses third-person limited narration, and thus ignores the omnipresent cameras necessary for the viewing pleasure of the citizens of the Capital; the film never lets you forget about the cameras, in an attempt to condemn the audience in the theater as well as the Capital. It is a valiant attempt, but the freakish appearance of the Capital citizens, who look like the world's most fashion-challenged parade, compared to the normal (if rustic) dress of the residents of the Districts, creates to much visual dissonance to succeed. The depiction of the reaction of District 11 to a key moment in the movie seems heavy-handed; Rue, the female tribute from District 11, is described merely as dark-skinned in The Hunger Games, but her District is shown as the "black" district with one token white guy. Then the Peacekeepers (who are as ominous as the name suggests) bring out the water cannons. The racism in the world of the Hunger Games is an oblivious racism against all Districts, rather than one predicated on contemporary American racial fears.

Romney's Run 2: Religious Rhetoric Run Rampant

As I was browsing the news this week, I noticed an Pew article that claimed Americans think there has been too much talk of religion in this election cycle. The sources for the article seem to have a rather limited view of the term "American," since it talks almost exclusively about supporters of Romney or Santorum. In short, Romney's supporters think that there has been too much rhetoric about religion, whle Santorum's supporters think that there has been too little. The difference between the two, it seems to me, is how far the individual supporter conflates religion and political ideology. Romney's membmership in the LDS is a stumbling block for many evangelical voters, but Romney's heretical tendencies (in the eyes of evangelicals) does not change the fact that the LDS is a powerful, monied, and socially conservative organization which evangelicals would otherwise love.

Even if Romney's views about the nature of the world are heterodox, Santorum's religious affiliations are also problematic. Perhaps Santorum does not feel quite as vehemently about non-Christians as the pastor with whom he recently associated. If, however, Santorum still desires the evangelical vote, a pastor who would rather expel those live in darkness than lead them to the light of Christ might not be the best companion in adversity. This is not a left-right matter: Obama, when he gets around to campaigning, should not associate himself with Louis Farrakhan. The subtext of this pastor's comments is racism, and there are plenty of non-white Evangelicals in the US who might be deterred from voting Republican a

The Illustrated Man

To call Bradbury a science fiction author is insufficient; it conveys an impression of fascination for technology which he lacks. Bradbury's prose contains a bucolic note, a nostalgia for a rural world long lost, one never known to the science fiction readers playing stick ball on the streets of New York. In this corpus, Mars is not so much a physical place as it is a metaphysical Faerie, and the fear, hatred, and misunderstanding of women by his male protagonists a reflection of an old-fashioned but stunted model of masculinity. The science takes a back seat to verbal magic.

The first story in The Illustrated Man, "The Veldt," is an effective evocation of the savagery in the infantile breast. "Kaleidoscope" suffers from the impotency of the characters (I hesitate to call them protagonists, since they do not and cannot effect any change.) "The Other Front" has some rhetorical power, but suffers from the attenuation of historical change - in this case, the elimination of Jim Crow. Perhaps this story would resonate more strongly for contemporary minorities. "The Highway" displays a nice prose style, but depends too much on the context of the era in which Bradbury wrote it. "The Man" displays the pros and cons of any mid-20th century story involving religion (always Midwest Christian, of course). The idea of the cosmic Christ is intriguing, but all writers who attempt it are too coy for the original audience and too obscure for the current audience. "The Long Rain," set on a Venus which serves as a complement to Bradburian Mars, is a depressing, if compelling, narrative, whose characters slowly decline in the fashion of military stories. "The Rocket Man" illustrates Bradbury's theme of emotional alienation, but may contain the truth of a sea widow's life. "The Last Night of the World" is a mood piece. "The Exiles" features a literal literary Mars. It shows Bradbury's use of Mars as The Other Place, an Aristotelian rather than Platonic externalization of censorship fears. "No Particular Night Or Morning" is the most extreme example of the theme of alienation - the protagonist cannot create emotional attachment to his past self or even what he has made. This ends as well as one might expect. "The Fox and the Forest" is a solid but not extraordinary fugitives-in-time tale, and does not cater to Bradbury's main strengths.

"The Visitor," once again set on Mars, this time a futuristic leper colony, shows the destructive impulse of forsaken men. The gynophobia of many of Bradbury's characters appears clearly here when the William's unusual talent becomes an analog for both food and sex and Williams himself is called "a wife," which means (in in-universe terms) he must be dominated and cannot be shared. "The Concrete Mixer" features an atypical Martian invasion, but I have yet to understand the theme. "Marionettes, Inc." is a fine horror story - I believe it was adapted for The Twilight Zone. "The City" is an effective Cold War-era horror story about revenge and death. The distance, however, is out of proportion to the theme, and might encourage the impression that science fiction writers have no sense of scale.

"Zero Hour" is a tale of children's sight where adults are blind. It is a warm and fuzzy tale with a cold underbelly. "The Rocket" is a bittersweet story of a father's love for his family and the sacrifice of his greatest dream. The last story in the collection, "The Illustrated Man," did not engage me - it is a rather weak framing device for stories that are considerably better and more effective.

Nerd Nite #23: The Squid Boddhisattva

Last night, I went to Nerd Nite #23 at the Rickshaw Stop. The features were brain chemistry, Humboldt squid, and piracy (although I did not stay for the last).  I followed the brain chemistry talk fairly well - certainly the conclusions made sense to me, although I did start out with a bias against the mixture of Buddhist terms and neuropsychology. East and West, never the twain shall meet! It's the same feeling I get whenever scientists talk about the "God particle" - one shouldn't mix scientific and religious terms without precise definition (a precision which both chemistry and theology demand).

The second talk, on Humboldt squid, was my favorite. At this point, I should remind the audience of three things: first, that Humboldt squid are not giant squid; second, that Humboldt squid are named after the Humboldt current, not Humboldt county; third, Humboldt squid are not made into calamari. The cute marine biologist spoke about the "squid invasion," which has extended to Canadian waters from Mexican shores, and whether the squid were marauders or colonists (the difference is the presence of squid babies). Researching the answer proved challenging, since to find anything in the middle of the ocean, much less watery translucent squid eggs, is nearly impossible. Unlike some Nerd Nite presentations, this one left me with a few questions I want to e-mail to the researcher, such as the following: since bear-borne salmon guts are an important source of nitrogen for inland forests, do bear-borne squid (who have already eaten the salmon the bears would have) have the same nitrogen-movement impact as bear-borne salmon?

Martin Buber's Bagel

 Those who know me well know that I have long had a fascination with clusivity, a highly useful grammatical feature. The two types of clusivity are inclusive and exclusive; which only appear in the first person and the non-singular grammatical numbers - or so I thought until recently. The first person inclusive means "I and you (but not other people)," whereas the first person exclusive means "I and someone else (but not you)." Thus, a Hawaiian translation of the title of Martin Buber's theological treatise I and Thou would be Kaua (first person inclusive dual) rather than Maua (first person exclusive dual). The logic of clusivity suggests a rigid limitation to the plural and whatever other non-singular forms a language may contain; clusivity by its nature is "I and X".

Language, however, is not logical; if it were, Zamenhof would not have needed to invent Esperanto. Clusivity distinctions is the standard for Polynesian languages, but formerly I had thought it well-behaved. Samoan is an ergative Polynesian language, a standard-bearer among linguists for its phonological transparency. Samoan has several form for each pronoun, but only a few concern us. The exclusive dual has forms ma and maua, while the inclusive dual has forms ta and taua (these forms are cognate with Hawaiian maua and kaua). The -ua component of taua and maua is related transparently to the common Polynesian word lua "two," so if one wanted to create a singular inclusive, the form ta would be an appropriate choice, but what would it mean? In Samoan, the first person singular inclusive is used when the subject ("I") has an emotional involvement in the verb.

Now let us apply this distinction to Martin Buber and a delicious lox bagel. If someone else saw Buber eating a bagel and heard Buber say "We (inclusive) are eating a bagel," the other person might think that Buber was sharing his bagel with God. If God can do all things, surely he can share lunch with one of his favorite theologian! If, however, Buber was aware that he alone was consuming the bagel, the dual pronoun acquires a different meaning. The bagel would be in the third person ("he/she/it"), and therefore cannot be the "X" of "I and X." The pronoun does not mask a reflexive; Buber is not eating himself! The first person inclusive singular indicates emotional involvement in the verb. Perhaps he was very hungry from thinking profound thoughts prior to devouring the bagel; perhaps this is the best (or worst) bagel he has ever eaten.

This seems bizarre, but there may be hints to its origin in other Austronesian languages such as Malay. When I was examining a basic Malay phrase book, I found an interesting phenomenon; a sentence which I would have translated as "I see you" was rendered as "We (inclusive) see" - kita, which contains -ta. The object of the sentence, in other words, had been incorporated into the subject. The verb "to see," however, is a transitive verb and therefore requires an object that is seen. The other sentence of this type which caught my attention was "We (inclusive) love," which meant "I love you." From this sentence it appears that the inclusive forms indicate emotional content if they accompany a transitive verb. This is odd but comprehensible from an Anglophone perspective. Apparently, the singular use of the inclusive has stripped away the plurality of the concept and left only the emotional core, a Star Sapphire of pronouns.

Pinnacles Trip

On March 4 and 5, the troop traveled to Pinnacles National Monument, which it had not visited for more than twenty years. The Scoutmaster could not attend, so Beck Diefenbach and I were the uniformed leaders. We left the city early, since the trip to Pinnacles National Monument was far away compared to other trail heads. The campsite lay between a broad parking lot and stream well-hidden by vegetation, so no hiking was required.

When we had struck camp and eaten lunch, we went up to Bear Gulch Day Use Area to meet the rock climbing instructors who would help us in the afternoon. Alas, we disembarked too early and therefore hiked up to the proper site. After the climbing instructors had given a brief orientation, they handed off the climbing gear to the Scouts. We hiked the Moses Spring Trail and Bear Gulch Cave trail, where the instructors split the Scouts into two groups. The less experienced Scouts went to the closer and easier climbing site, while the more ambitious went to a wall above Bear Gulch Reservoir. Some of the Scouts had climbed before and were naturals, one so much so that I compared him a spider monkey (apparently so did my colleague), while others were new to the sport but willing to challenge themselves - one of the latter group accomplished the highest-rated ascent of the day. The Scouts were having an enormous amount of fun, but soon it was time to leave and return to camp.

 
The campfire that night was short but lively.  The requisite skits and yells were done by food groups rather than patrols,  since there were not enough members of some patrols to sustain a skit. Each patrol within a food group received the full amount of points for the group, rather than the insane proportional distribution system briefly used during my Scout career. The skits were short, but I have to give credit for an effort to include as many of the group as possible within the skit. The Troop Staff began the acclimatization of the younger Scouts to the traditions of summer camp and Royaneh by teaching Gazalla. My contribution, The Chickens Get Into The Tomatos, was more frivolous, and the timing of the round was off. That round sometimes works and sometimes does not. The campfire closed rather early. Some Scouts went to their tents, but others remained around the fire for another hour. I told them about the importance of Venus, which was shining brightly that night, and regaled them with the story of how Orion ended up in the night sky.

On Sunday morning we woke up early; some of the Scouts woke up especially early and exercised. The energy of teenagers never ceases to amaze me. On a lighter note, one of the fathers who had set up his tent under a tree discovered that the quail roosting in the tree for the night had expelled their waste upon it. When I saw this, I was glad that I had moved my sleeping bag out from under the same tree!

After a short and inspirational Scout's Own, we traveled to the trail head for the Old Pinnacles Trail. There was a portable latrine, but I was worried (unnecessarily, as it turned out) about the possibilities for changing into uniform for traveling back to San Francisco. We hiked along West Fork Chalone Creek to Balconies Cave, where the trail passes through the cave. We ascended through the cave – the Scouts loved it! When I visited the caves many years ago, I had descended through the cave rather than ascended. It was a slippery experience, especially with the backpacks of the time, which were nowhere near as compact as those of today. Fortunately, all the Scouts helped each other with the backpacks. There were a few wet spots in the cave this time, but nothing that adequate footwear could not handle. When we had almost reached the end of the cave, one of the Scouts, who had experience climbing, could not stay away from the walls. Perhaps he has some gecko in his ancestry!

Here are some more photos taken by my colleague, Beck Diefenbach:

We exited the cave and walked beneath the Balconies Cliff, a massive rock formation with a vertical green channels from the spring rains. Several Scouts spotted people, tiny in perspective, perched upon the rocks above the caves through which we had come. They must have climbed there. One Scout expressed a desire to live atop the rock, while others made the morbid jokes so typical of youth and Classicists. The walk back to the cars felt much longer than the way in, but dreams of In N Out spurred the tired troop onward!