A deaf mutt

Daddy is a pure white mix of who knows what kind of dog who also happens to be deaf.  But it in no way spoils his fun as he's a huge fan of playing, people and pooches.  He's a lovely, friendly, playful dog.  On Sunday, we will be handing him over to his adopters who live in New Jersey.  Here's the story, taken from the PetFinder web site:

Daddy is a 10 month old Mix with silky soft (not wire), white hair and a story that will make you smile. A few weeks ago, a rescue worker was called and told by a woman that she had been watching a momma dog with small pups out alone in a field for several days. She said the momma was making shelter for the babies at night and bringing them food, but after several days, the good samaritian was very sure no one was coming back for these dogs. The rescue workers arrived and the dog was, obviously protective of the babies, but after some coaxing, they got the "mamma" to come to them. It was then that they found out that "Momma" was the "DADDY". In all our experience, we have never seen a Daddy dog stick by tiny puppies: feed them, protect them, love them. But, this guy did it all on his own. We may never know what happened to the mom, but somehow at just 3 weeks old....Daddy managed to keep all his little pups alive. I think of it as a tribute to all the good daddies in the world! Daddy is sweet and kind, he aims to please and gets along well with other dogs. He has experience with children as young as 2 years old and seem to adore them. His favorite things are to get hugs and be petted. He also does not mind car rides. There is one thing....after Daddy and his pups were rescued, he was brought to the vet where it was discovered that he is completely deaf. Daddy gets around just fine and can learn to follow hand signals. He sometimes startles when people come up on him unexpectedly, but he has never been aggressive...just surprised! Other than not being able to hear, Daddy shows no health problems and is ready to live a good, long life. Daddy is currently 45lbs.
Isn't it a great story?  Anyway, we have him for just this week.  He really is a super dog.  I believe his puppies are all spoken for too.  We wonder if he misses them or worries about them at all.  Below (left) is a photo that makes his coat look a bit creamy.  Below (right) he's in the field looking after the puppies.  He might have bits of Airedale and poodle as described in his profile, but I doubt it.



Supposedly, there is a correlation between a whte coat and deafness, although I wasn't able to establish the strength of that correlation. He isn't albino, although he does seem to exhibit partial albinism.  His irises are hazel but his eyelids and exposed bits of skin are all very pink.  He's got some blotches around his "undercarriage", so there's definitely pigment there.  He's a bit underweight but he's a good eater (including counter surfing if he can get away with it) so we expect him to catch up pretty quickly.  And he's extremely smart and trainable, with an excellent sense of smell.

Meanwhile, I went to see Philip Glass' opera Satyagraha ("truth force" in Sanskrit), the name by which Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent protest is known.  It's incredibly moving emotionally, which is amazing given that there are so few words that are actually translated.  The action is very slow and contemplative.  And of course the music is endlessly repetitive -- but I actually like that.  It really works.  Look up Satyagraha on YouTube if you're interested in seeing excerpts from it.

Last week we were in Seattle for the NABCs.  We had a super time, although the bridge was not quite as successful as we would have liked.  However, Kathy made life master (!) and we had a nice party for her -- that was a lot of fun.

A most sacrilegious murder

I've had murder on my mind quite a bit lately.  In the academic sense, of course, although I did dream I had murdered someone (unknown to me) a few nights ago.  That wasn't very pleasant.

But I've been listening to John Grisham's The Innocent Man and it is a harrowing true tale of injustice resulting from a murder which occurred in Oklahoma in 1982.  Two men were convicted of the rape and murder of a young woman, despite there being no physical evidence against them.  The little forensic evidence available did more to eliminate them from than to link them to the crime.  Nevertheless, it was used along with some other fabricated testimony to get a conviction.  One of them was 5 days from execution when a federal judge finally put a stop to all the nonsense (Oklahoma has the highest per-capita execution rate in the United States).  Soon after that, DNA evidence was analyzed which not only cleared them of all wrongdoing, but actually pointed the finger quite directly at another person who just happened to have been the last person seen with the victim, but whom the police had never considered a suspect.  The weird thing is that after their release the entire town, and especially the police and prosecutors, still believed them to be guilty.

The murder that I've been entertained by tonight was that of King Duncan inter alia by the dastardly Macbeth -- in this case in Verdi's masterpiece.  This was the Boston Lyric Opera at its finest.  I cannot remember such a good production of theirs, although I admit I don't go to many of them.  I went with Will to the Shubert Theater in Boston and we had a really pleasant evening of dinner, followed by a pre-performance lecture, followed by the opera.  The lecture, by Dr. Elizabeth Seitz, concentrated on the role of Lady Macbeth, demonstrating how her vocal part starts as confident and determined, passes through tentative, questioning, and ends rather sadly in the famous sleep-walking scene as completely unhinged.

The singers were outstandingly good.  Most of my recent opera outings have been either to the Met itself or to its HD broadcasts at local movie theaters.  While the Met talent may be more experienced and robust, there is a huge benefit as an audience member to being so much closer to the stage, which is really only practical at a smaller theater such as the Shubert.  And while, many rave about the HD broadcasts, they leave me a little cold.  There is nothing like live opera. 

While Macbeth (Daniel Sutin) and Lady Macbeth (Carter Scott) who between them carry most of the solo work (the opera also relies heavily on its chorus) were predictably excellent, I was actually very impressed Banquo (Darren Stokes) and, especially, Macduff (Richard Crawley) who have relatively minor roles.

The production was overall brilliant -- extremely imaginative designs, costumes, choreography.  Perhaps the most stunning aspect was the corpses hanging over the stage at the battles that begin and end the story.

The orchestra was excellent too, directed by (Englishman) David Angus.  Although I'd never previously seen the opera, I was already very familiar with the music from recordings and I was not disappointed in the orchestra.  I even know the 2nd clarinet, Karen Heninger, from gigs we've done together.  And, I was quite surprised to find that there was an instrument in the orchestra that I'd never seen before: the Cimbasso, a kind of tuba that looks a bit like a trombone.

I would heartily recommend this production to anyone who can get to it.  And I happen to think that Macbeth is actually one of Verdi's most entertaining operas.  The Verdi of 1846 was not quite so smooth as the when he wrote the big three from six or seven years later: Rigoletto/Trovatore/Traviata.  And definitely not as polished as the later operas of twenty or thirty years more experience.  But Macbeth is refreshing, invigorating and very direct.  The music is somewhat dark as befits its subject (plenty of bassoon and trombone stuff) but full of good tunes, with marvellous choral writing.

My personal interest in "the Scottish play" goes back almost as far as I can remember.  It was the first Shakespeare play that I learned and studied.  I think I can still do "Is this a dagger that I see before me?"  I've even been orienteering in the grounds of Cawdor castle (not very far from where the photograph at the top of the page was taken).  No doubt the real Macbeth got a bum rap at the hands of the bard, as did Richard III of England, but today his actual life signifies nothing. Yet the message of the play resonates whenever we hear of corruption and greed among the rich and powerful.

Perhaps Shakespeare's wisest line from the play, which applies to many aspects of life (take note, followers of famous people, and prosecutors and defenders of suspects in crime), is this: [Duncan]: "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.  He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust."

Robin's Rural Red Ride

Having been a BMW owner for the last 15 years or so, I had to struggle with myself not to buy another one.  They're wonderful cars to drive and the first 60,000 miles are true Fahrvergnügen. Then, as soon as the free maintenance and bumper-to-bumper warranty expire, little messages start to travel around the wires deciding which part gets to fail first. And of course the parts, which don't fit any other make of car and presumably have to be imported from Germany, are expensive.  And then there is the labor.  It's not just any old Joe Mechanic who can service such a beautiful machine.  No, these guys wear suits!

So, with some reluctance on my part, we went looking for a less costly alternative, probably Japanese but still maybe made here in the USA.  I don't spend a lot of time driving so a nice reliable car and, moreover, one that performs well in the snow and not too much of a gas guzzler, would be nice.  After quite a few test drives and much research on consumer reports, we hit upon the all-wheel drive Subaru Legacy.  And to cut a long story short, we bought 2012 model: a very pleasant shade of red.  I had traded in the BMW and was really very sad to leave it behind.  But I love the new Legacy!  I really do.  Not only have I actually visited the original Subaru (Fuji Heavy Industries) in Japan, but the Legacy is actually made here in Indiana.

The car is well-endowed, with navigation system, 3.6 litre 6-cylinder horizontally aligned engine , leather seats, all mod cons.  Even the gas mileage is decent (better than I was getting with the bimmer).  The audio has blue-tooth connectivity so that, theoretically, I can play stuff from my iPhone on the speakers.  I definitely can make phone calls hands-free through the speakers, although the voice recognition to make it truly hands-free either doesn't work, or is too hard for me to figure out.  I've since learned that there are some deliberate policy decisions which prevent certain things happening together, like voice recognition while the map is visible.  Or something like that.

The real Achilles heel of the car is the navigation system.  First, the good news.  It has the best voice that I've ever heard in a navigation system.  Really nicely done.  But after that things start going downhill a little.  The only time I've bought a factory-installed navigation system was in one of the BMWs, back in around 2000.  There were some minor problems, mainly with the accuracy of the maps, and little things like choosing non-optimum routes.  I figured that the state-of-the-art would really have improved in 12 years.

I was too optimistic.  You'd think that getting from our house to Sturbridge and back would pretty easy, right?  Not so fast.  As we were heading down I-290, we ran into a huge traffic jam which we later learned was the result of an accident.  I figured that with the navigation system, it would be easy to get off and go around it.  The manual says, press the "Dest" button and then touch Address, or whatever.  But Address wasn't sensitive (i.e was dark).  Eventually we found that double-clicking the button sometimes made the address on-screen button sensitive.  But then, actually entering the address was incredibly difficult and took several attempts.  By this time, we were pulled over on a side street so I got out my trusty iPhone.  It showed the way with no problem.  Its only drawback is that it doesn't give turn-by-turn directions audibly.  Both systems were in agreement about the first couple of turns.  Then they diverged.  We followed the car system.  It was wrong and we made a u-turn.  Then when we finally were approaching the ticket booths for I-90, the car system told us to go East instead of West (showing a route to the next exit and back).  We ignored it of course but making an error like that could easily cost 15 or 20 minutes.  On the way home, it wanted to take a bizarre out-of-the-way route, avoiding I-90 (no, it's not programmed to avoid tolls or anything like that).  I ignored it. 

One of the hardest things to do with it is to turn the darn thing off!  You'd think it would be incredibly easy to cancel navigation.  But apparently, the designers didn't think we'd want to do that.  You have to turn the whole system off before you can start over.

Fortunately, I didn't buy a GPS system because I need directions.  It's unusual that I do.  But every now and then, I'm going somewhere I haven't been before and so navigation that I don't have to break the law to use would be nice.  I mainly like these systems because I'm a map nut.  I love maps and anyone who loves maps presumably also loves the GPS system.  So, having a few errors doesn't bother me all that much.  It's more of a joke really.

But, if anyone at Subaru is actually reading this, then get off your zabuton and get the bugs out!

Katahdin

Looking towards South Peak and the Knife Edge (to the left)

Last weekend, Kim and I, with two friends Cheryl and Ginger, succeeded in our year-long goal: reach the summit of Katahdin (the "Mount" is superfluous although officially part of its name).  At 5267' (almost a mile high), Katahdin is the highest point in Maine and the 6th highest in New England.  It's also the second most prominent mountain in New England and third most prominent East of the Mississippi.  See my previous blog An Achievable Goal? for an explanation of prominence.

Being from Maine, Kim of course has a special reason to climb Katahdin and it was her goal, established last year, that we were fulfilling.  At the start of the year, I didn't think I would want to go all the way up myself.  But a funny thing happened on the way...  As Kim puts it, I got "summit fever" and became determined to get to the top.

What is it about these mountains that makes us want to climb them.  Mallory famously said of Everest "Because it's there."  And I think there is something in that.  A mountain as tough as Katahdin represents a challenge that we feel, to some extent, compelled to meet.  While there are probably more difficult trails in New Hampshire and elsewhere for that matter, what is unique about Katahdin is that there is no easy trail to the top.  All of the trails are difficult.  This contrasts with, say, Mt. Washington (6288') where there are some trails which are relatively easy.  There's also the auto road and the railroad to the summit!  But, if you want to stand on the summit of Katahdin, you must do it by your own not inconsiderable efforts.

I've written up the details of our hike here, but suffice it to say that our route requires just under 4000' of actual climbing and a total round trip of 11 miles. The hike took us 15 hours all told, including rest stops and a three-hour exodus in the dark. You can also see more photographs here and there is a video here.

Planning for the trip was considerable.  First, there were all of the training hikes, starting back in April and totaling 35000' of climbing and 110 miles for Kim and a little less than that for me.  Then the logistics of the hike itself: it's over six hours driving from our house to the parking area at the trail-head, but of course we needed to stay overnight both before and after the hike.  Then there's the little detail that only Maine residents can reserve parking spaces (there are only 35!) more than two weeks ahead of the day.  When Kim logged in at midnight two weeks ahead, there were three spaces available!  Then of course, there's the worry that the weather will turn out to be bad, or the mountain will be cloaked in clouds affording no views.  We would have rescheduled under those conditions.

So, it is with a great sense of achievement and relief that I write this.  The best time to climb Katahdin is when you're young and fit.  Three of our party are significantly past our sell-by date and that doesn't bode well for fast hiking. But we did it. And we also have a great sense of gratitude, especially to Percival Baxter, for whom the State Park containing Katahdin is named.  He was Governor of Maine 1921-25 and spent his life and fortune buying up the land around Katahdin.  Then he donated it all to the state together with an endowment to pay for its upkeep, requiring that it remain a wilderness in perpetuity.

As it turned out, the weather was absolutely perfect: cool and dry.  The only problem was that it was slightly too cool -- with patches of ice up on the summit (you can see the ice - rime to be precise - in the photo at the top).  Several trails were actually closed, making our chosen trail much more popular than it otherwise would have been.  But the views, and the feeling of elation at the top, were just incredible.  Unforgettable!

Robin, Ginger, Cheryl and Kim on top of the world

An achievable goal?

Well, I've had quite a problem with blogging this summer.  Some stories were too big to go in the blog, some were too insignificant.  Some I just couldn't describe appropriately.  There are several embryonic drafts in my folder.

Kim and I just got back late last night from our final training hike of 2011 - in preparation for the "biggie": Mt. Katahdin later this month.  Our goal yesterday was Mt. Monroe, a distinct peak on the shoulder of Mt. Washington and, as the name implies, part of the Presidential range.  At 5372', Monroe is the 4th highest mountain in the Northeastern US.  We had planned to summit Monroe then Eisenhower (4760') on our way back down which would have involved an extra 0.8 miles (in addition to the 9+ that we did) and another 300' of climb.  I was too exhausted, though, even for that.  I'm not sure why but the three-week layoff didn't help much.  More detail in my report on EveryTrail.

These hikes have to be planned quite carefully.  We need the right amount of distance and climb to fit into the training schedule.  This final training hike entailed (in practice) about 3650' of elevation gain and about 9 miles round-trip.  Katahdin (5267') will require about 3750' of elevation and more like 11 miles round-trip.  It will also require some scrambling over boulder fields and some challenging sections (but don't worry, we will not be attempting the knife edge).  So Monroe was excellent training for that.  We will also have to start very early in order to have as much light for the descent as possible, now that the days are getting shorter.  We'll probably be on the mountain for 12 hours or more.

So that's twice in as many hikes that I've missed the secondary peak (Kim got the earlier one) but it doesn't help my chances at the "48" club**.  But then I never aspired to belonging to that club anyway.  Kim isn't sure yet - she has 19 now (would have been 20 with Eisenhower) and might want to complete the other 29.

But I think I've adopted a new goal, one slightly less onerous: the eight 5000 footers of New England.  After Katahdin (fingers crossed), I will only have two to "bag": Mt Washington (which at 6288' is hard but probably no harder than Katahdin) and Mt. Adams which was planned for our Presidential range hike seven years ago but which I couldn't manage due to lack of fitness (again it was only 300' to the top but wobbly legs aren't good for climbing mountains).

But these lists of peaks have a big flaw.  They are based on a completely arbitrary value for minimum prominence: 200 ft.  Prominence is defined thus:

The prominence of a peak is the height of the peak’s summit above the lowest contour line encircling it and no higher summit.
It is in some ways a better indication than the actual elevation of the summit to the amount of climb necessary to get to the top.  This is because the starting point for an ascent is often one of the cols (or saddles) around the base of the mountain. When mountains are listed by prominence, many peaks are relegated beyond the practical limits of the list -- all of the Presidential range, for instance.  Of course, listing peaks with no prominence requirements at all would be an impossibility -- the number of peaks approaches infinity as the prominence threshold gets smaller and smaller.

There is an entire web site devoted to lists of prominence throughout the world.  In New Hampshire, for instance, there are 14 peaks with prominence greater than 2000'.  And we've climbed slightly more than half of these: Carter Dome, Lafayette, Kinsman, Moosilauke*, Carrigain*, Osceola*, Kearsage, Monadnock (*I'm taking credit here for some that Kim only has climbed).  There are 12 in Vermont, of which we have climbed only one (Ascutney).  There are 16 in Maine of which we haven't climbed any - yet, although we've been close (Bigelow's Avery Peak - West Peak).   Katahdin will be the biggie: over 4000' of prominence.  And this list makes it more important to climb Massachusetts' own Mt. Greylock: the only mountain in Southern New England with 2000' of prominence. 

I'm even looking at the lists for the British Isles.  I note that Paul and I have climbed #67 Croaghaun with 688m (2257') of prominence (this page has a great photograph) and #112 Cadair Idris (608m, 1994'). which comes just after Ben Loyal (which I would like to climb one day as we didn't have time on our last visit to Sutherland).

So, perhaps a realistic goal is to climb all of the peaks in New Hampshire and Massachusetts with at least 2000' of prominence.  Only seven to go.  Many of the Maine peaks are simply too far out of the way to be practical.

** people who have climbed all 48 of New Hampshire's 4000'-plus mountains.

The North Downs

Part of the following was originally penned back in April. My apologies for finishing it so late.

The view from Chartham Downs

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!  My niece Mia and I went for a ride this morning along the narrow lanes on the edge of the North Downs here in Kent.  Our primary goal was to hear/see a skylark, or if we were very lucky, an early cuckoo.  We were disappointed in that goal but what a wonderful outing we had.  We saw a chiffchaff, magpies, lots of wood pigeons, a goldfinch, a huge and curious fox, a peacock and several pheasants, rooks, etc.  The bluebells were out in force, carpeting the woods. 

Later, we visited Denge wood, although the birds there had gone quiet during the mid-morning.

The next day Mia was again interested in bird-watching and running, although she's way too fast for me!  This time we drove up to Stodmarsh and although we didn't see anything very spectacular, it was another beautiful, quiet morning. Unfortunately, it was again too quiet: no sound of skylarks or cuckoos.  The photo above was taken from one of the hides.  So peaceful as the swan glided from left to right.

The North Downs have, I would say, been a significant factor in my life.  Stretching from Guildford in the West (although, in a sense, the Downs could be said to extend all the way to Salisbury plain) to Dover (and the English Channel) in the East, they form a crescent which brings them quite close in to London.  The Canterbury pilgrims used the downs for several reasons ("The Pilgrims' Way"): firstly for navigation -- it's easier to follow the ridge line of a range of hills.  This must have been especially important in the early days of the pilgrimage (the end of the 12th century) when usage had not yet resulted in easily followed tracks.  Second, they were perhaps a little less likely to be ambushed by footpads since the had the advantage of visibility and height.  Third, the soil (based on chalk) is porous and so wet patches do not develop that would slow passage -- in contrast to the "Wealden" clay just to the South.  As the pilgrims reached the edge of the valley of the Stour (Chilham), they would turn left and leave the downs, passing through Chartham into Canterbury.

I remember many wonderful day trips from London notably to Box Hill and Leith Hill from which the view was always tremendous.  And two great men, Charles Darwin and Ralph Vaughan Williams were united, not only by the intertwining of their families, but in making their homes on the North slope of the Downs -- Darwin at Downe House in Orpington and Vaughan Williams at Leith Hill Place near Dorking.  I remember these hills too as the domain of the Chalk Hill Blue, a lovely if unassuming butterfly.  Whether or not they are still there, I know not.  Perhaps that should be my next nature quest for the North Downs.

The South Downs too have been if anything an even bigger influence in my youth.  I will tackle them in a future blog.  And I know just where to look for the Chalk Hill Blue in the South Downs :)

A summer of hiking

Looking West from Mt. Abraham towards Saddleback

Another successful hike last Saturday, this time to the summit of Mt. Abraham (Maine) [4037'] with a total of 2950' gain in elevation and about 9 miles round trip.  The majority of the elevation gain was accomplished in the last mile and a quarter of the fire warden's trail so the climb was pretty steep.  See EveryTrail for more details on the climb (with profile).  This time, we only took Puga and Cindy as the "junior" dogs were not really up to it.

We began our training this year with Mt. Wachusett in late April, I think.  That was about 900' elevation gain and only about 3 miles round trip.  We've successively done harder and harder climbs since then (although we gave our legs a rest a couple of weeks ago with Mt. Kearsage South).  I've missed a couple of hikes, but Kim has been on every one.

These days as I'm struggling up the trails to such lofty peaks, I marvel at my sheer insanity seven years ago when I volunteered to go on a two day hike in the Presidential range.  Our plan was to start up the Caps Ridge trail (2720' elevation gain), summit Mt. Jefferson (5716') then go on to bag Mt. Adams before staying overnight at the Madison Springs Hut.  Then on up Mt. Madison the following day.  It was a long time (forever?) since I had done such a demanding hike and, although I had trained assiduously on the stairmaster ahead of time, I had done very little real hiking in preparation.  I must have been mad!

The ascent of Mt. Jefferson, while quite scary at times, went without a hitch.  But by the time we had struggled over to the foot of Mt. Adams, my legs were done.  And I mean done.  So, Kim and I skipped Mt. Adams (sorry!) and made sure we got to the hut in time for dinner.  After dinner, we went on a nature walk and took in the unadulterated night sky.  The following day, we climbed Mt. Madison and had the most unbelievable views.  While the descent might might have seemed easier, my knees could hardly move for the next couple of weeks.

Fast forward to 2011.  Our plan is to conquer Mt. Katahdin later this summer.  It stands at 5268' but with approximately 4000' (ugh!) of elevation gain.  It's one tough mountain by all accounts.

Until this last hike of Mt. Abraham, I was seriously doubting if I could do it.  But now, I know I can and am determined to make all the training worthwhile.  I just hope that the weather is good because I hate hiking on slippery rocks.

Looking North to Sugarloaf and the Bigelow Range beyond

Pirates of the Caribbean

Part four of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, or rather the first part of the second trilogy, is called On Stranger Tides.  Strange they were.  Will and I went to see it last evening (in 3D) at the IMAX theater at Boston Common.  I thought it was pretty good.  Not great -- you don't expect Pirates movies to be great -- but decent and a welcome change from the dreadful third episode.  It has a new director, Rob Marshall, and unceremoniously dumps Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley.  But overall, the quality of acting has improved dramatically with the reigning British Bad Guy: Ian McShane.  Penélope Cruz really was good too although in her case, it's more the mascara than acting skills that prevail.  Much as I love Geoffrey Rush for his excellent acting skills, he is definitely not suited to play the one-legged pirate.  I enjoyed the mermaids, with their wondrous tails and powerful swimming strokes, although of course the movie was careful not to show any other parts of their anatomy!

The plot was definitely ridiculous but it at least held the story together.  Normally I avoid reading the Boston Globe reviews before a movie.  Their reviews are always completely hopeless in my opinion.  Nevertheless, Ty Burr pretty much nailed it this time (I read it after seeing it).  My only complaint is that he only mentioned Ian McShane in passing -- he deserved much more credit.

Spring, Graduations, Concerts, Travels, etc.

So much stuff to catch up on - what an incredibly busy time of year this is!

Kim's lilacs in full bloom

This evening was the first of our Symphony Pro Musica concerts "Spanish Serenade".  And since I wrote that, not only have we had the second concert, but the review of the second concert and the remainder of a week.  One of composers ("The Happy Slaves" overture) was the then 13-yr-old Arriaga from Bilbao, who died when he was still only 19.  I found an excellent book  on the web, which helped me to understand why the eponymous slaves of his opera were happy.  Unfortunately, the book online doesn't allow us to see some critical pages.  All in all, it was a fantastic concert and I personally had a great write-up in the review.

A branch of our dogwood

Now, we are getting ready for Miranda's graduation party and then graduation itself.  We are looking forward to a fine weekend (but I don't think we're going to get it).  The mosquitoes are out in force these days but that's only to be expected.  But what I think has really been different this years is that everything has happened at once.  Magnolias, redbuds, dogwoods, lilacs, apples, cherries, everything out at pretty much the same time.  The toll on us hay-fever sufferers has been heavy.

Redbuds outside the office in Waltham

Meanwhile, we've been doing some hiking, including a hike up Mts. Percival and Morgan just new Squam lake in New Hampshire.  The views were breathtaking.

Did I mention that Jimmy got adopted?  He seems very happy -- we've heard quite a bit from his family.

More on other vernal observations, including my trip to England at a later time.

A walk in the woods

No, this is not a reference to Bill Bryson's interesting book on the Appalachian trail (AT).  Speaking of which, our bridge friend Bob McCaw is out hiking the AT again (!).  You can keep track of his progress with his Trail Journal.

View Estabrook Woods in a larger map.

No, my title refers to a four-mile walk we did in Estabrook Woods (see map). Kim had asked me to plan a four-mile walk and when we got back to the car the GPS was showing 4.00 miles!  Total luck of course. Especially as the track shown here claims to be 4.33 miles. Strange -- it may be something to do with the conversion between formats.  My entire lifetime has been spent marveling at the way computer people (myself excepted, obviously) care nothing about the error bounds of measurements.  So, a point on the map is presumed to be exact, even though that makes the track appear jagged.  And if you look carefully, you'll notice that our return up the main track appears about 10m to the right of the way we came down it.  And also that the car had dropped a couple of hundred feet since we set out.  This should all be handled properly by the software, but of course it isn't.

But the dogs don't care about the precision of the GPS either.  They had a wonderful time, especially Jimmy who met some new friends (and tried to go home with them).  There was still snow on the ground and of course some wet patches to negotiate, but all in all a beautiful day.  We could feel virtuous when we got back.

Switching tack now... I've never been a fan of the humble parsnip.  I've always loved its relative the carrot but there's something about the taste of parsnips that disagrees with me.  But the good news is that I'm getting over it.  Like so many veggies, parsnips are health-giving in several ways.  Did you know that parsnips and carrots are part of a large family of flowers, the Apiaceae (also known as the Umbellifers), which contains many of the herbs with which we are so familiar?  However, it also includes the hemlock (that's to say Socrates' C.O.D., rather than the North American tree).

While this winter started out with lots of snow and while our garden in the backyard has had a blanket of snow all winter long, it turns out that we've ended (assuming no more, April Fools day notwithstanding) with just over 80", far short the record, set in the year (1995-6) Ella and David decided to try a New England winter for a change, of 108".  I'm expecting that in a day or two, we'll again be able to see the vegetable garden.

Spring

Spring is here, also known as mud season.  We spent a lot of time out with the dogs this weekend.  Today we met up in a field with Spenser (a previous foster dog we called Cooper), his two big brothers (Phineas and Boo) and his parents Brad and Michelle.  Jimmy (on right in photo above) and Spenser (left) got along very well.  Jimmy also got along with about 40 other mainly large dogs.  At one point, he set off into the woods with a new friend.  I had to go and get him back.  We also took all four dogs to Greenough.  Yesterday, Jimmy went with us to the Cummings School in Grafton to romp around their 5-acre fenced in field (about 10 other dogs were there).  It's truly amazing how well all the dogs get along.  These dogs are mostly strangers to each other and you might expect a lot of aggro.  There's none.  There's some doggie roughhousing but that's the extent of it.

On Saturday evening, we went out to see the full moon rise over the Concord River and discovered an American Woodcock looking for a mate.  It was a little too dark to see clearly but we could hear them quite distinctly.  I didn't realize they'd be here so early but one of my Carlisle birding friends assures me that early March is normal.

On a related theme, the phoebes are back.  I was in the office all week with meetings so they might have been around earlier in the week, but I didn't see them.  It always makes me happy to see them back.

Miranda has flown the coop so to speak.  She's gone to Arizona to do a week of rural vet services on an Indian reservation and the following two weeks will be in New Mexico doing a rotation at a vet clinic.  Then she's off to treat horses in Mexico.

Lots of chest-beating re: Nuclear power this week in the wake of the Japan tragedy.  Many people seem to have missed the point that it was the tsunami rather than the earthquake itself which knocked out the electrical pumps.  Yes, nuclear power can be dangerous (we already knew that, didn't we?).  And yes it's not easy to clean up afterwards.  It's also questionable whether it's much cheaper than burning fossil fuels.  But it is somewhat more renewable as an energy source than fossil fuels and it seems to me that we should be willing to pay to build more nuclear power stations, with as much safety built in as we can manage.  Or let's bite the bullet and do something about truly renewable energy sources.  Otherwise, we're going to be in a pickle in a few years time.

A horse with no name

I'm surprised.  I was quite sure that the stuff that other people like to put on roast beef sandwiches was hoarseradish and the name of the tree from which we get conkers the hoarse chestnut.  I thought the use of the spelling horse was just a lazy Americanism.  But Kew gardens spells the name of the tree aesculus hippocastanum as the horse chestnut (and in any case, note the specific part of the binomial name: hippo-castanum: horse-chestnut).  I was sure that the name came from the word hoarse, as in shouting oneself hoarse, used in the sense of not sweet.  But I'm wrong.  Still there are a few miscreants like myself who add the extra "a" in the name.  And what about this: what is small, red and whispers?  a hoarse radish.

Today was unseasonably warm (51F, 10.5C) and this generated a high sublimation vapor pressure (crystals of ice in snow passing directly into the vapor phase, without passing through water).  And this in turn generated quite a fog.  But it was a welcome break from the cold weather.  Now, instead of having a tunnel two feet wide and three and one half feet tall, through which we passed to get to our front door, the snow banks are not much more than 18" with plenty horizontal space to pass through.

This handsome chap, left, is Jimmy who we are fostering at present.  He comes from the same rescue organization in Tennessee that Puga comes from.  He's friendly and very affectionate.  Sometimes his presence is a little too much for our smaller dogs but he generally means well.

I've recently been appreciating more than ever the music from Handel's oratorio "Solomon".  In addition to the wonderful chorus From the censer curling rise (the piece which has the fun bassoon part which earned yours truly a compliment from the Lord Major of London, Sir Gilbert Inglefield, 43 years ago), there is a wealth of marvelous music.  The poetry of the libretto is so good that it is hard to believe that we aren't 100% sure who wrote it.  It's generally held to be by Newburgh Hamilton who wrote several of Handel's other libretti.  Take this verse of Solomon's for instance which is beautifully set by the composer:

What though I trace each herb and flow'r,
That drink the morning dew,
Did I not own Jehovah's pow'r,
How vain were all I knew. Of course you might find it surprising that I should find this so good given my views on religion and science.  But this describes the essence of the problem that Charles Darwin, who began life as a devout believer, faced as he readied his manuscript for publication.  It is easier to deal with, as Darwin ultimately did, by abandoning the image (for Jehovah) of a white-bearded old guy directing the lives of everyone on earth and replacing it with the concept of  the wonders of the natural world and marvels of evolution.

Isn't the grammar just great?  Whether this is a present or past subjunctive, I'm not quite sure.  But it fits so perfectly.  Incidentally, it drives me nuts that most people (especially on this side of the pond) don't know how to form a conditional and pluperfect subjunctive.  For instance I hear sort of thing all time this: if I would have looked down the street, I would not be here in this hospital (instead of: if I had looked down the street, etc.).

Here's another very poetic aria, again sung by Solomon who must have had quite a generous libido (he had 700 wives and 300 concubines) as he suggests to his queen that they go out for a little alfresco tête à tête*:

Haste, haste to the cedar grove,
Where fragrant spices bloom,
And am'rous turtles love,
Beneath the pleasing gloom.

While tinkling down the hill,
Avoiding hateful day,
The little murm'ring rill
In whispers glides away. The turtles here are of course turtle doves, birds rather than reptiles [and yes I do know that birds are reptiles, cladistically speaking], a common mistranslation of the bible.

* it's also quite possible that in this section he is suggesting to the Queen that they travel to Lebanon for a little vacation -- but in that case, why the hurry?

High Speed Rail

It's easy to get distracted with Wikipedia.  Today's article on Battersea Bridge in London ended up with me watching videos of high speed trains like this video of the record run between Paris and London (in 2 hr, 3 mins) at the impressive speed of around 200 mph.  Much more impressive is the following where the TGV set a new world speed record for a "conventional" train at 574.8kph (357.16mph): TGV record breaking run.

The world's fastest train of any type is an experimental "maglev" train (magnetic levitation) in Japan of just over 360 mph.  I have to say that, impressive as all of this undoubtedly is, they were talking about maglev trains and how they would revolutionize travel around 40 years ago.  There is still no maglev train in regular service anywhere.

But the big disappointment of course is here in the United States.  Just take a look at this table of high speed rail networks (by this definition, a high speed rail line operates at greater than 250 kph (just under 160 mph).  China is by far the leader, with Spain a somewhat distant second.  The United Kingdom is a distant 13th and the United States holds on to its 7th place only by relaxing the speed criterion to include the Acela which has a top speed of 240 kph (150 mph).  But the Acela doesn't really live up to its billed speed.

The Eurostar has a scheduled non-stop journey time of 2h 15m between London and Paris for a distance of 492 km (an average speed of 219 kph).  The Acela achieves a scheduled time of 2h 48m for the 362 km between Washington and New York (average speed: 129 kph).  Indeed the only sections of the track which are cleared for top speed work (240 kph) are in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  However, between New Haven and New York, the speeds are so low that the Boston/New York trip is even slower on average than the Washington/New York.  So, as you can see the Acela is a high-speed train in name only.

Unfortunately, the governments of the United States have been very short-sighted in transportation policy.  They have consistently squandered the opportunity to increase the gasoline tax which would have had two very positive outcomes: greater fuel efficiency (the market would have demanded more efficient designs many years ago); and money for building alternative infrastructure to help us out when the oil runs out.  When gas gets to $10 a gallon, we are going to find it very expensive to get, say, from New York to Chicago.  The corresponding European, Japanese or Chinese business person will have a much easier time getting from Berlin to Madrid, Tokyo to Osaka, or Beijing to Shanghai!

It was hard to decide which blog to put this in: Railroads or Letter from Europa.  But, I hope you found it interesting.

Life in the freezer

We're experiencing an unusually cold, snowy winter here in the Boston area, the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) since 1995-96.  The last few nights have been down in the low digits, or even below 0F (yes, we still use Fahrenheit here).  The snow is piling up everywhere and there is nowhere to put it.  Every few days we seem to get more.  Tomorrow, we may have to miss orchestra rehearsal on account of yet more snow.  We'll see.

Speaking of which, I am enjoying preparing this concert very much.  Two outstanding pieces: Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto (with George Li as soloist) and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. I have written the program notes and I will be giving talks before the two concerts.  Our two soloists are outstanding and with all the extra players, the orchestra is sounding really good.  We didn't have to miss the rehearsal although the weather was not good and then overnight we got another 8 to 9" of snow.  The snow is piled high outside and we have no more room.  Let's hope we don't get too much more.

The temperature outdoors has actually warmed up quite a bit and that's helped a lot.  The house just couldn't keep warm the last few days (something's up - I suspect a need to bleed the pipes).

I've never been a huge fan of fiction and what fiction I read tends to be adventure, mystery, and that sort of thing.  I'm behind in reading many of the "classics", although in recent years I've read some non-English classics like Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and the Count of Monte Cristo.  And, while the Aubrey/Maturin canon isn't exactly one of the classics, Patrick O'Brian's prose style is exceptionally good, especially for an adventure writer.

But nothing had really prepared me for Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.  Well, I'd seen the mini-series and the recent movie and liked them a lot.  So I knew that the story and the characters were interesting.  But as I got started listening to the CDs (read by none other than Jeremy Irons), it dawned on me that this was writing of a type I'd never known.  It's not that he uses long words or short words or any other particular type of words.  It's just that the way they're put together is simply brilliant.  I imagined that he probably wrote the book very slowly, spending long periods of time finding just the right word.  Au contraire!  He wrote the book, by any standards a lengthy novel, in less than six months.

I didn't know much about him, although it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's read the book or seen it on the screen that he went to Oxford, Hertford College in fact.  He was also gay, in the modern sense, at least during his time at Oxford.  Nevertheless, he ended up marrying (for a year anyway) another Evelyn (a woman) and again later to Laura, this time more permanently and with two children.  All this didn't stop him creating perhaps his most colorful character in the book, Anthony (or Antoine) Blanche, as an over-the-top pansy (his word). 

Yet the book, which I had initially thought was a literary condemnation of Catholicism turns out to be just the opposite.  He himself converted when he was in his late twenties (about fifteen years before writing the book) and was not in the least critical of the church.  And whereas I had assumed that it was largely autobiographical, and indeed I'm still sure that it is, he and Charles clearly have very different opinions about the Catholic church.

Now, it's back to Mahler and Beethoven for me: a pleasure but requiring inspiration which doesn't always come easily.

Freedom of speech

The NFL playoffs are back on and New England (at home) is scheduled to play the New York Jets on Sunday at 4:30pm after earning a bye for the first week and home-field advantage throughout.  In fact, the Patriots are favorites to win the Superbowl this year, having won 14 of 16 games, including the last eight.  One of those was a 45-3 drubbing of the Jets just over a month ago.  So you'd expect that the Jets would be quietly and respectfully planning their revenge.  But no, this is the land of free speech, where everyone has the right to put their foot in their mouth.  From the head coach on down, they are trash-talking the Patriots, targeting especially Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback ever to have played the game (and I've seen some good ones before!).

But all this is protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, perhaps the most sweeping and liberating piece of legislation ever.  You don't find too many people opposed to that!  Not so, its successor, the second amendment.  It is surely one of the most controversial pieces of legislation.  What did the framers actually mean?  Did they really want to allow everyone to go about their business "packing"?  We have no way way of asking them – the Supreme Court must study the words, perhaps making allowance for the different manner of construction of legal language from then to now and make their decisions based on that.  Unfortunately, when you combine the first and second amendments of the constitution, and extrapolate quite a bit, it gives anyone the right to disagree with political figures (including bystanders) by firing an automatic weapon at them, as happened last week in Arizona.

At the time the constitution was drafted, the state of the art was the musket, a large (the barrel alone was three to four feet long) and inherently non-concealable piece of weaponry which took about 20 seconds for a well-trained musketeer to load and fire.  Today's Glock 19, the gun used by the assailant, can empty the standard 15-round clip in less than 15 seconds!  In Arizona, anyone who is 21 years or older can walk into a gun store and, after a quick check that he or she isn't a convicted felon or known lunatic, can walk out with a gun that can legally be concealed and taken into most buildings (not schools and certain other places).  No permit is required.  Amazing!  The surprising thing really is that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often!  Much has been made of the intensity of the political rhetoric coming from the most recently unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidate.  Just take a look at the map she created (since removed from her own web site) with Giffords' name and district, among others, clearly marked with a bulls eye.

Meanwhile, closer to home, a long-term violent criminal who had been released on parole in 2008, while serving three (!) concurrent life sentences, shot and killed a Woburn police officer (who was shortly due to retire) while in the execution of an armed robbery of a jewelery store on December 26th, 2010. The fact that this felon was also killed during the exchange was not a lot of comfort to the family of the police officer, nor to the people and government of Massachusetts.  Questions of how come this scumbag was released on parole have been answered by a commission set up by the governor.  Guess what!  It turns out to have been a software error!  Middlesex county was not informed of the hearing at all (they had opposed parole three years earlier) and Suffolk county (ditto) was given an incorrect description of the crimes committed so were also absent from the hearing.  Didn't anyone on the parole board stop to wonder why the D.A.'s office in these two counties seemed to have lost interest in the intervening three years?  In any case, nine people have been fired so maybe cock-ups (as we Brits would put it) like this may be less likely to occur in the future.

We are currently without a working TV, our 10-year-old plasma TV having gone (literally) puff! last week.  In its day, the Sony TV was pretty much unique and very expensive.  In the intervening years, Sony has stopped making plasma TVs but there are many plasma and LCD units to choose from at a fraction of the old price.  And the quality, power-consumption, longevity, etc. have all improved dramatically.  And additionally, these new units all have new features like 3D, internet connectivity, etc.  It's amazing.  So it didn't seem worth fixing the old one.  Hopefully, we'll have the replacement before the Patriots play on Sunday!