JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

“We shudder to recall the times through which we have lived, the Recent Past, about which no one wants to think.” Tony Kushner – Homebody/Kabul

Tony Kushner’s 2001 play, Homebody/Kabul, is remarkable in many ways. It’s about Afghanistan but was written before 9/11. It’s a monologue delivered by a spinsterish woman, the Homebody, in her London flat (but could be anywhere) who is captivated by an out of date guidebook about Kabul. The Kushner line, about the Recent Past, was startlingly prescient given that he started writing the play in 1996, even before the US air strikes on Al Qaeda training camps. And though the play was first performed in December of 2001 after the Twin Towers attack, the playwright didn’t feel it was necessary to modify the text in order to make it more timely.

I saw it last weekend and was astonished as much by the production as by the writing. Like I do every week, I was digging for something interesting to see or do when I read a review in the Seattle Times. I hadn’t heard of this particular play but I thought it sounded interesting. I’ve been a Kushner fan since I saw his 1993 Pulitzer-winning Angels in America, Part One: The Millennium Approaches, but Homebody/Kabul promised a different dose of the provocative and political. The current Seattle production was only performed on Friday and Saturday nights and had a limited run. I tried several times to buy tickets but it was always sold out. I finally got tickets for Friday’s performance and was quick to discover the reason it was always sold out. The venue seats 18. This is a picture of the stage and the seating arrangement.

Surprise can be an important element in an art experience and add significantly to its impact. Think Michelangelo or Jackson Pollock, Rodin or Christo, Dostoevsky or Kafka, Shakespeare or Sophocles. This play is full of surprises – from the size and simplicity of the venue, to the sensational performance by Mary Ewald, to the clever history lesson read to the audience from an out of date guidebook with the audience sitting just a few feet from her “stage.”

This small Seattle production crystalized the elements I have come to think of as part of a true art experience – an original concept, a universal theme, quality material, and near perfect execution. The scale and intimacy at the New City Theater helped bring these elements into focus. It would have been wholly different in a New York theater. In a tiny theater like New City’s you can actually hear the audience breathing and the actress turning a page in the old guidebook. It becomes a sense experience as well as an intellectual one.

I can’t claim any expertise as a theater critic, but Homebody/Kabul reminded me of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead one of the first contemporary plays I was lucky enough to see. The dialogue (or monologue) is packed with clever language and a cadence that is almost a character by itself. My ear and my brain were in a near constant state of surprise.

I would happily go back to this production, but to take up one of the 36 seats on its last two nights would be denying someone else a great theater experience. Instead, I’m going to see Rapture, Blister, Burn, ACT Theater’s production of the Gina Gionfriddo comedy, about the evolution and fallout of the feminist movement. I’ve had enough of Afghanistan for a while, although Khalid Hosseini’s And The Mountains Echoed is sitting near the top of the stack of my must read books. I heard him read from it recently and it sounds like a worthy follow up to A Thousand Splendid Suns.

So many books (and plays), so little time.

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As a young Marine Corps student pilot I remember my instructor telling me, “Any fool can fly an airplane and I’m the living proof of that.” His self-deprecating point, of course, was that principles of flight are fairly simple and can be mastered with practice. I have no formal training in aircraft accident investigation, but with 30 years as a Marine Corps and Pan Am pilot here’s what I think happened with Asiana Airlines last week.

Last Saturday, on a clear day, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed into the seawall at San Francisco International Airport with three pilots in the cockpit.

I really like Asiana, but when an aircraft lands short of the runway the pilots are almost always at fault. I didn’t want to believe it. I struggled to find an explanation. I wanted to hear that there was a mechanical or electrical malfunction, but in my heart of hearts I knew that this kind of accident was all about what the pilots did or didn’t do. While the initial reports were still coming in I flashed back to the 2009 Air France 447 flight that plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean from it’s cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. It seems clear to me that the pilots in both cases had forgotten their earliest training on how to fly an airplane.

How could these accidents happen? How could three experienced Asiana “pilots” let an airplane fly itself and its 300 passengers into the SFO seawall? How could three experienced Air France pilots fail to identify a stall situation and allow their aircraft to fall 35,000’ into the ocean when there was ample evidence of what was happening and time to take corrective action? The explanation is one that is hard to accept. These pilots displayed an embarrassing ignorance of flight principles, lack of training, and manual, hands on flying skills.

We should be clear about one thing; these jumbo, long haul airplanes, flown by flag carrier airlines on international routes are the purview of senior pilots. They are the most sought after flying jobs. It takes seniority to get them and they pay more than the slots on smaller aircraft. All of the pilots involved in these two accidents were high time aviators, even though one or more of them may have been new to the particular model of airplane. Nevertheless, an airplane is an airplane and flying principles are transferable. No commercial pilot is released from training and given command authority without training on the aircraft model, passing a check ride in a simulator and undergoing a minimum number of hours of supervised line experience. In fact, the pilot “flying” the Asiana jet was in that supervised stage of training at the time of the accident. The Check Pilot was in the cockpit monitoring the approach.

Aircraft are complicated engineering achievements but flying them today is not much different that it was 75 years ago. Automation has brought autopilots, auto throttles, flight directors, Category II and III auto-land systems, stall and ground proximity warning systems, and computerized displays, but every airplane including the Boeing 777ER (Asiana) and the Airbus 330-203 (Air France) has an altimeter, an airspeed indicator, a rate of climb indicator, an artificial horizon AND the aforementioned stall warning system, and every pilot learns how to fly and to evaluate an aircraft’s attitude and performance using these instruments (without automation).

One of the first things a pilot in training learns is what happens when an aircraft stalls. He or she also learns how to identify a stall, how to prevent it, and what steps to take if, for some reason, it happens anyway. An aircraft stalls because there is not enough air flowing over the wings to provide the lift that keeps it in the air. In the simplest terms when an aircraft stalls it stops flying and starts falling. That is exactly what happened in the Asiana and Air France accidents, and in both cases the pilots failed to identify the stall or correct appropriately.

The details of these flight failures are different and there were unforeseen factors affecting both but in both cases the pilots failed to identify the problem and take corrective action in a timely manner. Senior pilots don’t get paid those big bucks for sitting on their butts at 35,000’ for 11 hours. They get paid for addressing unusual or emergency situations, identifying the problem, making good decisions, and taking corrective action. I personally disliked flying across the ocean because those long flights had only one takeoff and landing. I opted to be based in Berlin and fly within Europe where we made six takeoffs and landing every day. It’s not easy to stay proficient when you only see six or seven landings a month and share them with a co-pilot.

On the Air France flight from Rio to Paris in 2009 Flight #447 lost its airspeed indication and the autopilot disengaged as a result. That’s what is supposed to happen when the airspeed indicator fails. It’s alarming and infrequent but it can be identified and dealt with. The airspeed indicator gets its inputs from a pitot system that measures airflow and pressure differential that is correlated and sent to the airspeed indicator. That pitot device is heated to prevent freezing but it is not uncommon for the heater to fail with a corresponding failure of the airspeed indicator. It’s an adrenaline pumping situation, but all pilots in training are schooled on this emergency there are recommended procedures for dealing with it – keep the wings level, stabilize the power, and maintain altitude until the situation can be fully evaluated. It can take a couple of minutes to figure it out, but it should be part of every pilot’s training. In no case should the pilot rely solely on one instrument like the airspeed indicator. The Air France pilots did just that and for some reason, still unknown, pulled back on the stick and started a climb that led to a stall. Then exacerbating the situation he continued to pull back on the stick which maintained the stall condition all the way to the water. 228 people died needlessly.

The Asiana crew’s malfeasance was even more egregious although there were fewer fatalities. Even when an aircraft is automated the pilot’s role is to monitor all conditions in and out of the cockpit. The basic skill involved is called scanning. It means that the pilot’s eyes are always scanning the instruments for indications of anything out of the ordinary. This is true at all altitudes but critical on takeoff and landing. The unaccounted for factor last Saturday was that the glide slope of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) was not operating, so the aircraft could not make an automated (coupled) approach. This is not uncommon and it was a beautiful clear day. All the aircraft approaching Runway 28 were making visual approaches but had centerline guidance and radar monitoring. Other aids were also available to help the pilots. Published approach charts, carried by the pilots, provided a profile of the approach with recommended altitudes at specific distances from the runway. For some unexplained reason the Asiana pilots were negligent and failed to monitor either airspeed (40 knots below the target) or altitude (significantly below the recommended profile) on final approach and stalled out just before hitting the seawall 1000’ short of the runway threshold. The NTSB investigators reported that the crew identified their dangerous situation 9 seconds before impact and called for a “go around” but it was too late. The throttles, set to auto-throttle mode, were at idle and unable to spool up in time. Like the Air France crew, the pilot in command’s response was to pull back on the controls when he was already too low and too slow, which aggravated the stall condition. Three people died. Both of these accidents were 100% preventable.

Automation has made flying safer, smoother, and more efficient. GPS has made navigation easy and If the airport is so equipped it has made it possible to land an airplane in zero visibility conditions. But, it takes experienced eyes to monitor what is happening and recognize deviations from normal. The 777ER and the Airbus 330-203 are remarkable aircraft. As the crash at SFO demonstrated, survival is possible in some situations because of improved structural engineering, safer less flammable materials and the professionalism and training of the cabin crew.

I wrote a blog in April celebrating the professionalism at Asiana. I have crossed the Pacific six times in the last two years on Asiana. Each time the experience was above average for airline travel in this age. I was stunned when I watched the SFO accident happening live on CNN.

There will be a lot of speculation about why these two accidents happened. When I was hired at Pan Am most of pilots were trained in the military and had high levels of quality flight experience. That is not true today and certainly not true at foreign airlines. There is speculation that cultural factors may have played a role in the Asiana crash. Was there reluctance on the part of the co-pilot or check pilot to correct the pilot who was flying the airplane? Was face saving a factor? I don’t know the answer to these questions.

Those with long memories might remember a similar but non-fatal accident in 1968 when a Japan Airlines DC-8 made an unintentional water landing short of the same runway (28L) in San Francisco. It was another case of pilot inattention and basic cockpit scanning. The JAL Captain Kohei Asoh took full responsibility for the mishap, responding to the NTSB investigator’s question about how he managed to land 2 ½ miles short of the runway by saying “As you Americans say, I fucked up.” His honesty and acceptance of responsibility has since been dubbed the Asoh Defense. Captain Asoh was demoted to First Officer and after additional training resumed flying for JAL until his retirement.

Much has changed since Captain Asoh pancaked in SF Bay. Aircraft systems are more complex and flight regimes more automated. Not only does the initial and recurrent training of pilots need to focus on the new technologies and automation but these accidents remind us that basic flying skills like cockpit instrument scanning, cross-checking, cockpit communication, and stall recovery procedures need to be refreshed. The stall warning in the Air France 447 accident went off 75 times before the plane hit the water. The pilots’ response to that warning should have been automatic – lower the nose and add power to regain flying speed.

In the end, when there is a problem, training is the key to its solution. The problem may surprise us in the moment, but the solution should be readily available in the memory and experience bank from its rehearsal in simulator training situations. We are all human and imperfect. We all make mistakes, but these accidents remind us that there are ways to prevent them from happening again. I believe the changes will be implemented. The airlines are all on heightened alert at the moment. I hope they don’t let the moment slip away.

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Things keep appearing on my plate; unexpected things that suck me in. Books are the prime offenders, because I’m always thinking about what to read next. The list is long but constantly in flux because “what’s next” keeps changing. New books scoot to the head of the line because of a review or a friend’s recommendation, and old friends in the bookcase jump out and demand rereading. Last week the new book was The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter (more on that later), and earlier this spring a conversation with the novelist Alexander Maksik led me to reread three novels by James Salter. The list grows at both ends. The new one jumps the line and the old one gets tacked on to its tail. I’m usually reading two or three things at the same time – hardcover, Kindle, and paperback. It depends on where I am, where I’m going, and how much space I have. It’s exciting and frustrating at the same time, but I’m always ready to rearrange the list and move on to a new chapter – so to speak.

Part of the fun of writing this blog is digging through the sources looking for interesting events, plays, films, readings or exhibits to write about. Last Friday I saw an ad in the Weekend section of the Seattle Times for The Financial Lives of the Poets. It’s a catchy title. I’d seen it before but it hadn’t worked its way to the surface of my consciousness. I knew it was a novel but the ad was for a play with the same title.

Until then I hadn’t paid much attention to the Book-It Theater either. It’s a quiet little local secret. I thought it was just another small theater company in a town with more that 20 venues and associated theater companies, but last weekend I discovered that it was formed 24 years ago as an artist collective to adapt works of fiction for the stage. It’s a genius idea and over its life Book-It has adapted more than 90 full-length novels for theater productions. The Financial Lives of Poets is its latest adaptation and it is sensational. It’s a quirky story about a guy whose life is coming undone. He’s losing his job, wife, house, and mind all at the same time. If it doesn’t sound funny you need to read the book or see the play to find out why it is.

I don’t have the space to give you Jess Walter’s full bio, but he lives in Spokane, is a working journalist, has written six novels and several short story collections, won an Edgar Allen Poe Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and recently published a novel called Beautiful Ruins that the NY Times called “a high-wire feat of bravura storytelling.”

My Book-It Theater experience makes me realize I was only scratching the surface of the Seattle arts and culture scene when I started writing about Surviving Seattle. I had no understanding of how wide and deep the scene was and how committed Seattle is to supporting its art, music, and theater communities. The truth is that at the time I was more worried about surviving the coming cold and rain than focused on the depth and variety of ways to deal with it.

I’m not given to depression, but I might have a slight case of SAD (Sunlight Affective Disorder) when the winter fog and drizzle settles in around my ears. Still – a 12-ounce double latte usually kicks it up and lets a little light in. In addition to new books, films, plays, music and the like I’m always on the lookout for the perfect espresso drink. It’s no secret that Seattle is Mecca for caffeine aficionados and the minor decorative art of coffee design. I’m not talking about Starbucks. Among connoisseurs, the brands that rise to the surface are names like Diva, Caffe Ladro, Vivace, Uptown Espresso, Monorail Espresso, Caffe Vita, and Herkimer Coffee – yes, Herkimer Coffee.

Herkimer is another local secret. I don’t know the derivation of the name. I’m quite sure they didn’t hire a marketing guru to brand the product, but it’s my latest coffee find and current favorite. Ladro is a close second, but Herkimer lattes have that strong, dark, smooth, rich taste I search for. Like most of the others Herkimer is a roaster as well as a retail provider. I always believe that where they care enough to make art part of the experience the coffee will be good. Here is last week’s latte.

Herkimer has only two retail locations at the moment – on Greenwood Avenue in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood and University Way at the north end of the U District. A third location is under construction on Dexter close to the exploding South Lake Union biotech and IT development. The outlets are fitted out in industrial-chic – polished concrete floors, blond wood table tops with zinc trim, and good lighting. It’s a great workspace and seems to be popular with the laptop off-site IT crowd.

Those are my three discoveries of the week – The Financial Lives of the Poets, Book-It Theater, and Herkimer Coffee. There’s a hamburger blog cooking but I’m told groups of three are better remembered, so burgers will be on the grill in a future post.

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In 1954 the United States Supreme Court literally opened the door for people of color to attend the same public schools as their white peers. In 1964 Congress further acted against discrimination by opening doors to the workplace, public accommodation, and voter registration. In 1965 it followed up by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the fourth volume of his biography of LBJ, (The Passage of Power) Robert Caro describes in detail how Johnson, following the assassination of JFK, moved an ossified, entrenched Congress dominated by segregationist Southern Democrats to pass his Great Society package, reform the tax code, and, most significantly, push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This week, two documentary films at the Seattle International Film Festival brought the Civil Rights Act back into focus for me. Although neither of the films addresses the legislation directly they do so obliquely. The films are Venus and Serena; a film about tennis’ Williams sisters and Anita, a look back at Anita Hill’s testimony in the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court.

For those of us who were present during the civil rights era of the 1960’s and 70’s this is important territory to revisit and a reminder that though we have made monumental progress and can now proudly celebrate the election of an African-American President, issues of race and gender are still front and center in America’s dialogue with itself.

These films are about race and gender. None of the featured players is a groundbreaker in the sense that Jackie Robinson was in major league baseball. Althea Gibson broke the color barrier in women’s tennis in the mid-1950’s and Arthur Ashe did it on the men’s side in 1965. And, Clarence Thomas was not the first African-American Supreme Court nominee or appointee. Thurgood Marshall holds that distinction with his appointment to the court in 1965. But, the stories and the films tell intense and relevant stories about significant historical eras and events. The Williams sisters journey from a California ghetto to Wimbledon is a rags to riches family drama full of twists and turns that is still being played out on the world stage, and Anita Hill’s calm reflections on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings show us a woman of thoughtful integrity speaking truth to power whose life was changed because she stood up for what she believed and believed that Thomas did not meet the high standards for appointment to the Supreme Court. She came forward to testify because she believed that her testimony was important for the nation.

When it comes to tennis it is indisputable that the Williams sisters have raised the level of play on the women’s tour over the past 15 years. Venus, the older of the two, was the first to win a Grand Slam event and though plagued by health problems and injuries in recent years has continued to be an attractive and gracious person on and off the court. Sister Serena surpassed her sister in number of Grand Slam wins a few years ago and is unquestionably the most dominant figure in women’s tennis today – possibly the best woman player of all time. Her power and tenacity are legendary, but like some other champions (Conners and McEnroe come to mind) her take-no-prisoners approach has an ugly downside. She’s a snarky loser and not quite believable as a gracious winner. As a humorous aside in the film, Serena acknowledges her behavioral problems and blames a dark alter-ego she calls Taquande who takes over her persona. At least she has a sense of humor about it, although the referees and line-judges may not share the joke.

The dark side of the Williams sisters story is not Serena’s bad behavior; it’s their father, Richard, their first coach and the one who charted and managed their careers. He is greedy, devious, authoritarian, confrontational, racist, and, to me, thoroughly despicable. There is plenty of footage to document all of Richard’s flaws, but his daughters continue to honor and respect him which contributes to and promotes Richard’s claim that “it’s them against us.” It’s hard to watch but it’s part of the story.

On the other hand, Anita Hill, volunteering to testify comes under attack by 14 white US Senators, as if her character and credibility were the issue not Thomas’. She never faltered under the withering character attack during several days of testimony on the Thomas nomination. She was direct, forthright, and calm as she answered every question the Judiciary Committee asked, no matter how accusatory or demeaning. Everyone agrees that one of the principals – either Thomas or Hill – lied under oath. It was a classic case of “he said, she said” and no one but the two of them knows the the truth. In the end, the Judiciary Committee rejected Anita Hill’s testimony and declined to call four other witnesses who offered to testify about other instances of Thomas’ sexual harassment.

Was Clarence Thomas the most qualified candidate for the position of Associate Justice to the Supreme Court? The consensus is that he was not. In his 22 years as an Associate Justice he has rarely asked questions of counsel during oral argument, has a exhibited a worldview driven by revenge against “liberal elites” and has promoted a judicial philosophy that is more radically conservative than any in history. This Justice, whose education and career were supported and advanced by affirmative action now rejects the policy and believes that it hurts people of color because it places them in situations where they are doomed to fail. Self-assessment?

Imagine what a difference it would have made if George H.W. Bush, a middle of the road Republican President, had put forward a like-minded nominee instead of Thomas. In the last 22 years Thomas has been the most conservative of the 9 justices and the unswerving lynch-pin in conservative 5-4 decisions during his tenure. Ironically, many of those decisons have aided conservatives in rolling back the gains of LBJ’s Great Society and the Civil Rights Act. What would American jurisprudence look like today if a moderate had been elevated to the court in Thomas’ place. It’s difficult to know but it would surely be different.

Anita Hill left her tenured position at the University of Oklahoma Law School in 1997 and is now a Fellow at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

The most personally provocative question raised by these films is not about the subjects but the intensity of my feelings about the villans. Is there a racist component to my dislike of Richard, Clarence and Serena? I have such negative feelings about both men and I find myself consistently rooting for Serena’s opponents. I don’t want to believe that there’s a racist component but I have to acknowledge that there may be. I hope that this awareness might at least help offset whatever unconscious prejudice is at work.

The Seattle International Film Festival is one of the largest and most widely attended events of its kind. I’m particularly attracted to the documentaries that may or may not come to theaters during the rest of the year. These two films, Venus and Serena and Anita, by respected filmmakers, were good entertainment but also help remind me of important social changes and personalities in my lifetime. Last night I was turned away from a sold out showing of Terms and Conditions May Apply another documentary at SIFF. This one is about the dark side of “free” services and the continuing disappearance of online privacy. It’s about what happens to your privacy when you check that little box that says “I Agree” at the bottom of the Facebook, Twitter or other internet sites. It’s a must see but it looks like I’ll have to wait until it comes around in general release. Got to keep showing up; there’s good stuff out there.

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