JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· September 16, 2015

Fall Arts… or How To Cope With The Coming Rains

Last week The Seattle Times published its Fall Arts insert, a quarterly listing of “Critics’ Picks And Calendars To Help You Plan The Season.” – a compilation of book and author readings, classical music, comedy, dance, pop music, theater, and visual arts events coming to town in the next three months. The most surprising thing about it for Surviving Seattle readers is the incredible number of things going on as winter approaches. With the weather closing in there are plenty of ways to “survive” the darkening skies.

Years ago I wrote a short story about a bachelor San Francisco attorney who lived near the turn of the 20th century. A solitary and serious writer, he loved books but thought there was no point in adding to the immense inventory that lined the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For years he wrote steadily and stealthily never attempting to publish. When he finished one book he placed it on a shelf in the closet and started another. After his death his work was discovered and he was celebrated as a literary genius of the James Joyce caliber.

I understand how my fictional alter-ego felt, and I’m reminded of those feelings whenever I visit Elliott Bay, Powell’s, or Third Place Books. Last weekend, after reading Fall Arts the feeling was refreshed as I counted over 200 author readings between September 9 and November 16. Yes, some of the writers are reading more than once, but the mind boggles at the thought that there could be that many published writers hawking their work locally. Not only was the list long but I was surprised to find that I only recognized a handful of the names. There are some big ones headed our way – Jonathan Franzen, Elizabeth Gilbert, Erica Jong, Richard Blanco (poet laureate), Colum McCann, Robert Reich, and Gloria Steinem – but there were close to 200 writers, poets, and playwrights I’d never heard of. It’s well known that the literary life is alive and well in Seattle but so are the other arts.

I counted 61 classical music and 15 ballet and modern dance venues. Seattle Opera, Seattle Symphony, Northwest Sinfonietta, the Tacoma, Federal Way, Auburn, Bremerton and Edmonds symphonies, Pacific Northwest Ballet, UW World Dance Series, Velocity Dance Center and On The Boards offer loads of opportunities for serious music, and dance aficionados. If that isn’t enough, Seattle is home to one of the most creative and original theater scenes in the country. There is something for every taste from Shakespeare to Book of Mormon. The 5^th Avenue Theater has found a niche for musicals that aspire to Broadway runs and in the last few years it has hosted the world premieres of Light on the Piazza, Memphis, and Something Rotten, Broadway hits all. Seattle Rep and ACT Theater have showcased works by August Wilson, Tom Stoppard, David Hare, and Tracy Letts plus countless new works by lesser known playwrights. Bartlett Sher, the former Artistic Director of Intiman Theater, has moved on to Broadway where he won Tony Awards for South Pacific and Light in the Piazza and earned a 2015 nomination for his revival of The King and I. He moved on to bigger things but left a legacy of artistic innovation and integrity that keeps us all on the edges of our seats.

So, with Fall Arts as a guide, I’m starting to check the Weekend section of The Seattle Times for what’s new for the coming week. Many times I’ve gone to Elliot Bay Book Company or Third Place Books to hear a writer I’ve never heard of read from his or her new book just because the blurb in the paper sounded interesting. I plan to keep it up. It’s rarely a disappointment. New books and other arts experiences freshen the mind – and besides, it’s dry inside..

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Categories : Books, Theater

Posted by jdbernard743

· September 8, 2015

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The Glass Is Still Half Full… but

The weather turned south about ten days ago. After a hot, dry, sunny summer it suddenly changed to cool, wet and overcast. Conventional wisdom tells us Labor Day marks the end of summer even though the equinox doesn’t come around until later in the month. It signals the seasonal change. I realize that because of the minimal snow pack from last winter and the long dry summer we need the rain, but, selfishly, I hate to see the end of summer. The sun is late rising now and low in the south in the early evening. The fall rains will be arriving soon.

With luck we will get some more beautiful days but we’re in the transition zone. It’s mental as much as atmospheric. Instead of planning bike rides a week in advance we have to be spontaneous and take them when we can. Instead of looking for restaurants with outside seating we look for those with warm welcoming interiors. Instead of local produce and chilled salads we begin to think of pasta and chili. Outdoor concerts are dicey propositions now and we’ve started checking out the fall movies and new releases at Elliot Bay Books. I have a good friend who begins to lament the end of the weekend on Saturday night, and though that’s too extreme for me I do feel wistful as Labor Day passes and winter edges into consciousness.

This week Surviving Seattle began the transition and notched two new discoveries – a sensational restaurant and an indie film that shows why that genre is so important and artful.

Brian Clevenger is a local boy and the chef/owner of Vendemmia in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood. At 30 years old he’s been around – starting in home town Anacortes where he made gallons of chowder as a teenager, to culinary school in Seattle, a year at a Michelin two star restaurant near Lyon, a stint at Delfina in San Francisco and two with Ethan Stowell at Tavolata and Staple and Fancy. It’s clear he knows what he’s doing. With a minimalist décor and small open kitchen, he opened Vendemmia in April and there is already a planned expansion with a roof garden where Brian will grow half of the restaurants produce.

Thanks to Seattle Times’ food writer Providence Cicero we chose the Chef’s Table (counter, actually) where service is limited to 4 people. Seated at the end of the counter where we could watch the food preparation and talk to Brian, it was a memorable dining experience. He and his staff were relaxed but attentive – talking us through the various courses as they were delivered. With paired wines to accompany them, we tasted a few small appetizers followed by roasted baby beets with razor thin slices of pear, grilled salmon, charred shoestring Walla Walla green beans, a simple spaghetti with tomato sauce, beef tartar with grilled bread rounds, black cod with leeks, and a panna cotta with grilled peaches – all at a very reasonable price. The night of our visit was Brian’s 63rd day without a break. Despite the long hours and lack of rest he was fresh and personable but looking forward to Labor Day when the restaurant would be closed for the holiday.

One of our dining companions has a health issue that calls for a complicated dietary regimen. She called Brian a few days before our reservation to ask if he could accommodate her diet and he told her it wouldn’t be a problem. With one or two exceptions our meal was built around those restrictions and the result was both impressive and delicious.

The Chef’s Table is now booked nearly a month in advance. Word is spreading that this is something special.

So, too, is the new film Learning to Drive, an indie jewel based on Katha Pollit’s real life experience as a New York woman who takes driving lessons from a foreign teacher after her male partner dumps her and forces her to become more self reliant. Patricia Clarkson, in the lead role, has been one of my favorite actors since her performances in The Station Agent and Good Night and Good Luck. The Sikh cab driver/teacher is played by Sir Ben Kingsley and the two are perfectly matched as social and cultural opposites. The highly strung, privileged, upper-class white woman and the unflappable Sikh professor now in political exile and working as a New York cab driver/driving instructor.

The film is alternately touching and funny with lessons learned on both sides. It’s a keeper.

The seasonal transition is in progress, but I’m not giving up on summer yet. The glass is still half full, and with luck we will have a few more weeks of mixed good days and bad – something like the stock market of late. Hopefully it won’t be that volatile, but it will highlight the change of seasons. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet but she’s warming up.

Categories : Food/Restaurants

Posted by jdbernard743

· September 2, 2015

· 1 Comment

The Next Big One…

Last weekend’s wind and rainstorm, the most damaging in Seattle’s history, turned this blog in on itself. Surviving Seattle, from the beginning has been about activities that help me “survive” Seattle’s weather, but it was never about “survival.” Today’s post is different.

This is a picture of my friend Trish Quinn’s home on Saturday when the wind felled trees, took down power lines, and closed roads.

By the looks of it Trish got off easy. The tree was removed and there was no serious damage to the house, but by the end of the day Saturday there were two deaths from falling trees and almost half a million people were without power. 911 operators were overwhelmed and the streets and Interstate were gridlocked with fallen trees, scattered debris, and failed traffic lights.

After two hours of watching the wind whip leaves and branches from the huge cottonwoods in Log Boom Park next door, we lost power at our condo about 10 a.m. Because power losses in our neighborhood are not unusual, I naively imagined other normally quiet areas nearby would still be operating. Not so. When we drove – very slowly – to Les Schwab Tire to have new tires installed we discovered all the businesses in that neighborhood were shut down too.

On Sunday morning, still without power, I called our favorite espresso joint, Caffe Ladro, and was thrilled to hear they had power. At 9:00 when we arrived, having negotiated 7 miles of roads without traffic lights this is what the pastry case looked like:

The 6:00 a.m. pastry delivery sold out by 8:00 because everyone without power was looking for the same thing – breakfast and a clean well-lighted place to read the Sunday paper. We were lucky enough to get the last Danish in the case and those 16 oz. lattes were sensational. The hungry hoards kept coming but missed out on the goodies.

Relatively speaking, we were lucky; our power came back on at 10:00 Sunday morning, but we were still without cable, Internet or telephone until sometime Monday. According to the Seattle Times there there were still 60,000 homes in the area without power on Monday evening.

If we had some relatively minor cleanup to do at our place it was a blessing. Five miles away in Lynnwood this was the situation:

On a weather-related note, the July 20, 2015 issue of The New Yorker featured an article about “The Really Big One” a predicted earthquake that will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. Scary stuff, and it was the primary topic of media hype until Donald Trump started bloviating about Mexican rapists. So much for real news.

The Seattle area is no stranger to wind and rainstorms. They normally begin in November, not August, but power outages are not uncommon. So, what to make of these facts – this was the hottest driest summer on record and the biggest windstorm in history came in August? They suggest to me that something odd is happening to the weather, and I’m not alone. Climate change is in the air, no pun intended, and on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Do we believe it’s real? Apparently not.

According to Scientific American, “In 2014, the vast majority (87 percent) of scientists said that human activity is driving global warming, and yet only half the American public ascribed to that view though 77 percent of scientists said climate change is a very serious problem. In comparison only 33 percent of the general public said it was a very serious problem in 2013.” That the split exists is common knowledge, but why? It seems the majority of Americans would rather align their scientific views with their political ideology of choice than accept what the majority scientific view.

Are we surprised? For the most part these parochial naysayers are the same people who believe God created humans 10,000 years ago, a view that hasn’t changed much in 30 years. According to a 2014 Gallup Poll, 42% of Americans believe in a Creationist perspective – that God created human life as we know it somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. According to the same Gallup survey the remaining 58% believe in some kind of evolutionary explanation for the origin of human life.

I’m currently reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a book that postulates we are in the midst of the next major extinction event. Dinosaurs and glaciers are gone and we could be next? Kolbert makes a convincing argument that the change is upon us.

Possible extinction may account for my intolerance of climate change deniers and Creationists with their heads in 10,000 years of sand. Whatever the truth is about The Big One, wind and rainstorms, evolution, and The Sixth Extinction I suggest we all do what we already should have done – buy a bunch of flashlights, a battery powered transistor radio, and an emergency kit for the next time the lights go out, the roads buckle, and the china cabinet falls over. The power might stay off for weeks.

Good luck.

Categories : Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· August 28, 2015

· 1 Comment

Holding These Truths…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

Paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution

Just what truths are “self-evident”? What are the “unalienable rights”? Are all men really “created equal”?

In 1942, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, public outrage, suspicion and hysteria led President Roosevelt to issue an Executive Order that resulted in the internment (imprisonment) of all Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast of the United States. They were removed from their homes; allowed one suitcase each, forfeited their property, and relocated to camps in the interior of the country. 62% of them were American citizens.

Earlier this month M and I saw Jeanne Sakata’s play Hold These Truths at ACT Theater. This one act monologue tells the story of Gordon Hirabayashi a University of Washington senior who defied the order, saw his family relocated to an internment camp, and spent a year in federal prison for disobeying the government order. Hirabayashi, who died in 2012, took his case to the US Supreme Court in 1943 but lost the appeal. After the war, he earned his PhD in sociology and taught overseas, in Beirut, Cairo, and Calgary, until his retirement when he returned to Seattle. Nevertheless, he didn’t give up the legal fight and in 1987 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned his conviction when it was shown that the government had withheld evidence in the earlier Supreme Court case.

The play is riveting. Ryun Yu, the actor playing Hirabayashi, held our attention for over an hour with a monologue that was by turns touching, angry, funny, and physically demanding. The play is an interesting and troubling look back at a wrong-headed government decision that led to four years of incarceration for 120,000 Japanese-Americans, but the questions it raises continue to be timely as we struggle to address today’s immigrant and refugee issues, Guantanamo Bay imprisonment, Muslim extremists, and over zealous NSA operatives.

These are three of my grandchildren. Today they live on the hill overlooking Diamond Head in Honolulu. In 1942 they, and their parents, would have forfeited their home, and been sent to an internment (concentration) camp somewhere in the desert of California or Nevada.

Yesterday, the bloviating Donald Trump told an audience in Iowa that as President he would round up all the illegal, murderous, raping, drug-addled, thieving, slacker “Mexicans” and ship them back where they came from. Never mind that there are 11,000,000 of “them” or that most cross border immigrants are fleeing repressive regimes in countries other than Mexico. But The Donald is eager to build a fence (that Mexico will somehow magically pay for) to keep the next wave of rapacious Mexicans on their side so that we real Americans can enjoy our “unalienable Rights” without any woggish brown-skinned interference. This is not an immigration strategy; it’s plain old racist demagoguery.

The world is not the same as it was in 1942. In many ways it is “better” but in other ways it is clearly worse. Population migration has become a global problem, Mr. Trump. What do you even know about immigration? Let’s stop the race-baiting, xenophobic naval gazing and look around. The wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Mali, and Central African Republic have produced a tsunami of immigrants and refugees. In April the Italian government rescued 4000 migrants in one 48-hour period and the tiny Greek island of Lesvos saw the arrival of 55,000 refugees from the Middle East via Turkey in the first seven month of this year. Germany anticipates 800,000 asylum-seeking refugees in 2015. 150,000 have crossed the border into Hungary this year and ABC News reported tonight that 340,000 Middle East refugees have arrived in Europe. According to the United Nations High Commission on refugees, Jordan has taken in 1.4 million refugees and Turkey an estimated 1.9 million all fleeing the ravages of the Syrian and Iraq wars.This is not just an American problem. We aren’t going to fix the problem if we don’t acknowledge that it is our shared responsibility as global citizens to seek humane solutions.The US Constitution is an aspirational document. The founders were dreamers but imperfect men. They imagined a country full of goodness and free of repression though some were slave owners and most regarded women as unworthy of the vote. We’ve come a long way since then.

I doubt that America will see another government action like the one that sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps in 1942, but racial and ethnic profiling, hate crime and the demonizing of groups continues to exist. Sheriff Joe Arpaio persists in flaunting federal court mandates in his relentless pursuit of Hispanics, and since 9/11 Muslims are being singled out and persecuted for nothing more than adhering to their own dress code. I continue to believe that we can do better. In spite of bilious demagoguery by self-promoting politicians the majority of Americans view the country’s founding principles as aspirational guidelines and the Bill of Rights as the best single expression of a government’s responsibility.

Marilynn and I share 12 grandchildren, 5 of whom are children of color. These two are Ben and Lucie. A year ago one of Lucie’s classmates challenged her to explain “where” she was from. When Lucie failed to understand the question the classmate told her she was not a real American, that she was from India, not America.

Children can be cruel, but cruelty and prejudice are learned. We can do better. Let’s do away with our racial, ethnic, immigrant and refugee prejudices. We Hold These Truths!!!

I am reminded of the lyrics of the song You’ve Got To Be Taught from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific:

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear, you’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught
To be afraid of people
Whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Categories : Politics, Theater, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· August 22, 2015

· No Comments

Living On The (L)edge

There is something scary, suspenseful and mesmerizing about mountain climbing. It has the power to grab the attention of people who wouldn’t even begin to consider participating in the sport. Climbing stories, fiction and non-fiction, have a compelling quality with all the suspense of a John LeCarre thriller. There’s Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna that tells the story of the first conquest of an 8000-meter peak by a team of French climbers and James Salter’s fictional Solo Faces that contrasts the purity of climbing with the tugs of ordinary life. Then, every spring the media breathlessly reports on climbers attempting the summit of Mt. Everest. Last year’s earthquake added yet another dangerous and catastrophic dimension to the appeal. Mountain climbing is not for everyone, but the stories are.

I was never a serious climber but last week I was drawn to a new mountaineering film about to open in local theaters. I immediately thought of my neighbor, Ron. He might enjoy it too. It was a shared interest. The film is called Meru and chronicles the 2011 ascent of that Indian peak by way of the the Shark’s Fin route, considered one of the hardest in the world. The film is in theaters now and will take your breath away.

My friend and neighbor, Ron Thomson, is an extraordinary guy. He’s 85 now. In 2006 he suffered a stroke that limited the strength and dexterity on his left side, and earlier this year he had shoulder surgery to address an old injury caused when he was caught in an avalanche, and while he was recovering from that his Achilles tendon snapped. But Ron is nothing if not tough. In 2005 just before his stroke, at age 75, he rode his bike from Seattle to Leavenworth over Stevens Pass, and later when the stroke compromised his balance he bought himself a three wheel recumbent bike so he could still take long rides along the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish trails. Until this spring he was the caregiver for his beautiful long time companion, Marie, but when her dementia dictated more intense supervision he moved her to a place where she had closer supervision. Today, in spite of his physical setbacks and losses he’s still positive. He’s quite a guy and I’m proud to have him as a neighbor.

But, there is more to Ron’s story: In the 1950’s and 60’s a number of accomplished British rock climbers migrated to Canada in search of bigger mountains and new challenges. Ron Thomson was one of them. He grew up in Manchester but honed his climbing skills on the sandstone and slate walls of North Wales. In 1956 he found his way to Canada and the rock cliffs of the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary.

The British climbers were known for their aversion to self-promotion and their emphasis on style, preferring a minimal reliance on protection and an emphasis on skill. According to Chic Scott the author of Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering, Ron and his climbing partner, Brian Greenwood, set the standard of the day with their ascent of the Belfry on Yamnuska with Greenwood later commenting that Ron was a much better climber than he was but not as ambitious.

This face, on the right, is one of Belfry’s 5.10 pitches on Yamnuska. This one is named, Easy Street. I don’t quite get it but that’s what it’s called.

Yesterday, Ron, Marilynn and I went to see the climbing film. It chronicles the 2011 ascent of Mt. Meru by Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk. The Shark’s Fin route up the 20,700′ peak had never been successfully climbed. Anker tried it in 2003 but failed. Anker, Chin, and Ozturk tried again in 2008 but after 20 days on the mountain, including four stormy days on a ledge, they turned back 100’ short of the summit. The current film tells the story of their first attempt, their lives on and off the mountain, and their decision to return to Meru for one more try in 2011. The film is in theaters now and I guarantee it will take your breath away.

The elite climbing community is a small one. I’ve always been fascinated by their exploits. Through six degrees of separation I’m connected to this team by way of an old friend. In May 2001 Daniel Duane, the son of a close friend, profiled Conrad Anker, widely regarded as the world’s greatest living climber, in Outside Magazine. About the same time he wrote another article for Men’s Journal about Jimmy Chin. In that article he examined Jimmy’s climb of a difficult California peak, previously thought unclimbed. Dan’s research and an old picture revealed that his father and climber/photographer Galen Rowell had made the climb in 1988 and Dan ended up retitling the article My Father’s Mountain. It’s a touching father-son story made all the better by the author’s surprise discovery that his own father had accomplished a difficult first ascent. It’s a reminder that we often fail to see the character and accomplishments of those closest to us.

Marilynn and I shared a lovely afternoon with Ron. I think he enjoyed it as well. He has a book about the history of Canadian climbing that he wants to show us. I’ve seen references to his climbing accomplishments online so I’m anxious to see what the book has to say about him.

This is the card his daughter Hilary sent him on his 85th birthday (April Fools Day). The picture was taken in the 1950’s. He’s quite a guy.

As I write this I’m aware that today’s Surviving Seattle post is about different kinds of survival. Writing the blog helps me survive my aversion to the weather, and a restless spirit, but on the climb Conrad, Jimmy, and Renan are living on the (l)edge in a real life and death battle, while Ron is coping with age and a body that once enabled him to live close to the edge like the climbers in the film. Survival means different things to each of us.

Categories : Film/Television, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure