Day: January 9, 2023

The Glenstone Museum – Fears for declining years – Gambrill State Park – Is the clerkless society imminent? – Evening statistics

I went with EG and HG to Glenstone Museum in Potomac, which is unlike any other museum I have seen.  The museum consists of a 230-acre campus with a trail winding through it to various buildings devoted to displaying the works of art, all of which is contemporary.  It is a requirement that in order to exhibit in Glenstone, artists must first have exhibited at least 15 years in other museums.  Several of the large-scale sculptures are placed out of doors and the landscaping is every bit as elaborate as that of an English country estate in the age of Humphrey Repton.  A boardwalk goes over a meandering stream, crossing it several times, and the buildings themselves are works of art.  They include, for example, three stone-walled houses, with the stones intricately fitted to each other, and the Pavilions, a building of precast concrete sections that were poured at different seasons to produce color variation and which, although it is in fact a single building, has the appearance of several different buildings as one approaches it.  The Pavilions offers numerous vistas both of the interior courtyard, with its water garden, and of the outdoor riparian scenery, which is breath-taking even in winter.  The galleries are lavish with the amount of space they allot to each exhibited piece; several contain only two or three in a room.   It is the largest private contemporary art museum in the country.  We saw the museum to advantage yesterday, inasmuch as it was a bright sunlit day, so that the riotous profusion of pale straw-colored grasses had a slightly golden tinge when viewed from the panoramic window view in one of the gallery rooms.

And what of the works of art themselves?

“These consist largely of tantalizing abstractions:  an egg balanced on cone, an erg balanced on a bone, a hag balanced on a roan.” 

Such is S. J. Perelman’s facetious description of the wall decorations of a fashionable Manhattan jewelry store and, by extension, of the modern art scene in New York generally.  Some of the artworks in Glenstone are a bit like that:  obvious attempts to impress the viewer with the artist’s originality, but holding little intrinsic interest otherwise.  But others are much more impressive, including, housed in a separate gallery building , those by R. H. Quaytman, an artist of extraordinary range and power.  She is listed as an “abstract artist,” but that is really too reductive a label for her.  Her works are an intricate blend of realist and expressionistic techniques, and the results are riveting.  We were particularly delighted by a series of 22 panels ranged along the wall depicting the meeting of field and sky at the horizon (“Morning, Chapter 30”), with the tints of the sky varying from one panel to the next and ranging from pale bluish gray to deep indigo.  The room contained other works that were so completely unlike in style from the panel series and from each other that at first it was difficult for me to believe that they all came from the hand of the same artist. 

Afterwards we returned to EG’s and HG’s house, and had tea together.  Our conversation, though animated as usual, took a somewhat melancholy turn, touching upon how the efforts of modern medicine to prolong life has been something of a mixed blessing, resulting in numbers of people whose last years consist solely of pain or oblivion and who would ask for nothing better than to able to put a swift end to them.  EG and HG mentioned a neighbor who is 92, whose infirmities are increasing on an almost daily basis, and who awakes in the mornings with an emotion akin to despair in the knowledge that she must somehow or other endure another day; while I, of course, spoke and thought of my unfortunate mother, who has been in a semi-comatose state for years on end and who is now unable to recognize anyone or indeed to respond to external stimuli of any kind.  EG, HG, and myself are all active and alert; we enjoy our respective periods of retirement greatly; and yet we are each of us old enough to feel the presence of that specter of ill health, both physical and mental, hovering in the background, ready to pounce upon us at any given moment, and it is not surprising that we occasionally wonder what form it will take.  For my own part, I certainly do not desire to outlive my mental faculties. 

Today I went with LM and others in Gambrill State Park, where I had not been for several months.  We had another fine day, going first along the Red Maple Trail and the Catoctin Trail, then going along the greater part of the Yellow Poplar Trail and stopping at the North Frederick Overlook.  This overlook is one of the best to see the city of Frederick from above, as well as the isolated peak of Sugarloaf Mountain to its south.  A rather amusing incident occurred during the meandering path of the Upper Yellow Poplar Loop.  While waiting at a junction I encountered another hiker who went on; then, after I regrouped with the others and went forward again, I met this same hiker coming in the opposite direction and looking anxious.  “Am I going in the right direction?” he asked me, as we approached each other.  “I overtook this group of hikers some minutes ago and now it looks like they’re coming towards me.”  I assured him that he had not gotten turned around; the illusion was created by the fact that the trail bends frequently and uses many switchbacks, so that it could easily appear to someone a hundred feet or so above one such turn that he had reversed his direction.   

A rather amusing article in my AARP magazine was devoted to the plight of the “overworked consumer.”  Businesses are using clerks and cashiers to a lesser degree than they have done in the past, for obvious economic reasons.  Not only do they have to pay fewer people for checking customers out, but transactions tend to be swifter.  A customer has little temptation to linger over the counter if there is no one to talk to.  On the other hand, customers (and older customers in particular) are less familiar than clerks to be familiar with bar code locations and the machines themselves can be slower than a register operated by an efficient clerk.  I actually prefer the self-checkout option myself; I like to be able to arrange the packaging of my shopping bags, which I can safely say I do somewhat more efficiently than the majority of clerks.  I well remember one shopping experience, when I purchased six items that clerk proceeded to store in four plastic bags.  It is a little less of a problem now, ever since Virginia started charging for plastic bags; before that occurred I would have to thrust my reusable shopping bags practically under the clerk’s nose in order not to be overwhelmed with plastic bags that I didn’t need and didn’t want.  I suspect that while personal service in grocery stores and fast-food restaurants will not die out entirely, it will become much less frequent.  No doubt younger generations will look back with wonder upon footage showing stores in which customers hand over cash or credit cards to an actual, breathing person.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 674,692,946; # of deaths worldwide:  6,758,403; # of cases U.S.: 104,111,747; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,132,254..

Hiking around Harpers Ferry – McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe – Lockdown in Pyongyang – Evening statistics

On Tuesday I went with the Vigorous Hikers to do a circuit of over 15 miles along the battle area surrounding Harpers Ferry, beginning with Bolivar Heights, then going through the town, over the Potomac, ascending Maryland Heights via a back way, and having lunch at Stone Fort.  From there we descended back to town and took the trail along the Shenandoah that eventually leads to the Visitor Center and returned to the parking area by going over Bolivar Heights again.  It is a splendid hike, especially as Tuesday proved to be the first fine day we’ve had for nearly a week, and it gives a vivid impression of the various forces during the Civil War that besieged the unfortunate city of Harpers Ferry, which to this day has never recovered its former importance since that conflict.  Before the war it was a commercial city of considerable importance, but it was invaded multiple times, passing sometimes into the hands of the Union army and sometimes into the hands of the Confederate army, eventually destroying most of its resources; so that it is now a tiny town with a population of well under 500, and whose economy rests principally upon tourism.

It rained incessantly on the following day and I scarcely ventured out at all, passing the time by perusing a book that I had long intended to read, Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe.  I had begun this effort with considerable good will, for I had heard much about its premise, which is a promising one.  An untenured English professor named Henry Mulcahy has received a letter of dismissal from the college President, Maynard Hoar.  Mulcahy is a good scholar but has notable defects as an instructor (failing to turn in attendance records, occasionally missing out on appointments with his tutorial students, etc.), so that his dismissal does not seem misplaced.  However, he hits upon the scheme of accusing himself, quite falsely, of having been a member of the Communist party, which thereby enables his sympathizers to claim that he is being discharged on account of political discrimination as they lobby for his reinstatement.  It is an intriguing theme, with numerous opportunities to satirize the pretentiousness, political correctness, and staff infighting that are prominent features of American college campuses to this day, and I was looking forward to reading the novel with great enjoyment.

Alas!  Mary McMarthy is not much of a novelist.  The greater part of the events that unfold during the narration are told as back story, at tedious length.  This tendency towards flat abstraction is carried to a startling extreme in the last chapter, in which Mulcahy and Hoar have a final confrontation.  It is a moment that could have held considerable dramatic impact, but the emotional intensity is drained out of it by McCarthy’s perverse decision to relate it at second hand, not showing the confrontation itself but having Hoar summarize it afterwards to a member of his staff. 

In addition, McCarthy does not handle dialogue well.  Every single remark that each of the characters makes is swathed in several complex sentences of exposition, making it impossible to get any sensation of the give-and-take of an ordinary conversation or any vivid impression of the persons carrying on their interchanges with one another. 

It is regrettable.  The novel should have been a good one.  It does, in fact, have the makings of being the basis of an entertaining movie, once a skillful screenwriter condenses some of the wordier speeches and omits the extraneous parts of the narrative.  The concept of many of the episodes is quite inventive.  One chapter, for instance, focuses on a conference on modern poetry sponsored by the college, to which several poets across the country are invited.  In the hands of an exuberant satirist it could have been riotously funny.  (It is a little surprising, in fact, that conferences of this nature have not been satirized more often.)  But it is not, despite some sharp observations about the eccentricities of the conference guests and the strain it puts on the members of the faculty who have the misfortune to host them.  The visiting poets and the faculty members alike are shadows, wraiths.  And, remarkably for a novel whose setting is a college campus, students make hardly any appearance at all.  Science departments, social science departments, student athletic competitions, and dormitories are likewise omitted.  All in all, it makes for fairly dull reading:  the ingredients are all excellent, but the dish is not worth eating. 

North Korea has ordered a five-day lockdown of Pyongyang for an unspecified “respiratory Illness.”   We have no clue as to what this illness might be.  None at all.  Of course not.

It can’t possibly be COVID, since, as we all know, no new cases were reported after July 29, 2022 and the North Korean government declared victory over the ailment this past August.  Kim Jong-Un has said so himself, and who would venture to contradict him?  Nobody in North Korea, certainly.  And,  it appears, the WHO is equally spineless, and with far less excuse, considering it is not in Kim Jong-Un’s power to execute any of its members; the organization will not even speculate on the extent to which the disease has progressed there.

At one point Pyongyang did report 4.77 million cases of fever, out of a population of 25 million, nearly 20% in all.  About the death toll it maintained a discreet silence.  It clearly is impossible to obtain reliable statistics from that country.  The likelihood is that COVID is running rampant throughout the populace, particularly since the North Koreans have a high rate of malnutrition and virtually no medical system to speak of.  Officially, Peru has the highest COVID death rate, which has claimed nearly 6½% of its population.  It seems likely that North Korea’s figures are similarly high.  But whether the disease has killed 1% of the North Koreans or 2% or 5% or 10% – no one knows.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 674,207,917; # of deaths worldwide:  6,753,733; # of cases U.S.: 104,047,866; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,131,369.

Sherman Gap/Shawl Gap hike – Exploring paths near Difficult Run – The lengthy process of trail creation – More convictions of various 1/6/2021 rioters – Seeming immunity of Donald Trump – COVID following the path of influenza – Transgender pronouns – Evening statistics

Yesterday I led the Wanderbirds up Sherman Gap, along the ridgeline of Massanutten, and go down Shawl Gap.  It was the first truly strenuous hike I’ve done since the beginning of the year, and my lack of practice told:  going up Sherman Gap felt more difficult than I had remembered.  Still, I made up there in reasonable time.  I had been anticipating the hike to be something of a washout, for the day was greatly overcast and rain was in the forecast.  Happily, outside of brief showers, the rain held off until the mid-afternoon, after we had completed the hike and our customarily partying at the end of it, and the other hikers said that they enjoyed themselves.  This hike was a carpool hike – that is, we drove to the trailhead instead of using a bus; the club will not be chartering a bus for the entire quarter, due to the low turnout on our bus trips since we resumed them in July.

Today’s hike was rather different:  I went with WN to escort various representatives from the Park Service and the surveying company employed by them along the route on the east side of Difficult Run, which goes along the direction of the original Georgetown Pike Road and which, as it turns out, I had never before visited myself.  I was aware, in a vague sort of way, that walking in that area was possible, since when going on the Difficult Run Trail in Great Falls National Park I would frequently see various people wandering about on the other bank of the stream.  The path there is an unofficial trail, but it is obvious that some sort of trail maintenance has been done.  It was easy to follow and there was little undergrowth.  We examined potential sites for establishing a footbridge (even if only a temporary one) over Difficult Run to link this footpath with the network of trails in Great Falls and traced the route up to the point where Townston Road forms a T-intersection with Georgetown Pike.  If such a link could be established, it would substantially reduce the gap on the Potomac Heritage Trail between Difficult Run and Scott’s Run.  From Towlston, moreover, it may be possible to bypass Madeira, where obtaining an easement is less likely than in other areas. 

One of the Park Service representatives cautioned us against expecting swift results, however willing the county, state, and federal agencies might be.  Even if converting this unofficial trail into one that it is a recognized park trail were to be approved tomorrow, it might be as long as ten years before it actually came to pass.  Studies would have to be done about environmental impact (on trees, Difficult Run and the little streams in its watershed, property boundaries, among other factors), cost estimates would have to be made, the appropriate funds would have to be allocated, and so on.  All of which made me appreciate how the trails which we take for granted – including, of course, the Appalachian Trail itself – were conceived and brought into existence by people who sometimes never lived long enough to tread upon them themselves and whose efforts were devoted solely for the recreation of future generations.

Joseph Hackett of Sarasota, Florida; Roberto Minuta of Prosper, Texas; David Moerschel of Punta Gorda, Florida; and Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, Arizona, members of the Oath Keepers, were all convicted today of seditious conspiracy in the role they played during the riot of January 6, 2021.  They have not yet been sentenced, but some amount of jail time is all but certain; the charge has a maximum penalty of twenty years.  In addition, Richard “Bigo” Barnett, the man who obtained his 15 minutes of fame by proudly displaying his feet propped up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk during that same event, has been convicted of on all eight counts in his indictment, including felony charges of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding.  He will be sentenced some time in May.

At an earlier juncture news such as this would have delighted me, but by now it is merely a source of irritation. Yes, these people participated in the attempt to overturn the results of a national election and have been duly convicted of it.  Well and good; but why are no charges being brought against the chief perpetrator, i.e., Donald Trump?  More than two years have elapsed since this treasonous assault he has orchestrated; not one, but two special investigating committees have certified that he is guilty; and yet no charges have been brought against him and, it appears, never will be.  More than this, he has announced some time ago his intentions of running for President in the 2024 election and I should not be in the least surprised, even while being somewhat dismayed, if the Republican Party flocked to his leadership as eagerly as the Jews of the 17^th century flocked to that of the false Messiah Sabbatai Zvi.

I have been predicting that COVID will eventually subside into a status not dissimilar to that of influenza, and that prediction now is on the verge of becoming true.  The FDA has recommended that people receive an annual vaccine against the disease, just as we do now with flu; and we seem to be on the road to accepting COVID as a fact of life that has to be provided against and mitigated by periodic vaccines, just as this nation did with flu after the great epidemic of 1918.

In North Dakota one bill was proposed and rejected on Friday, which mandated people affiliated with schools or institutions receiving public funding having to pay a $1,500 fine for using gender pronouns other than those assigned at birth for themselves or others.  Many in the state’s senate judiciary committee that voted down the bill noted that they agreed with the bill’s intention to limit transgender rights, but they felt that the bill was poorly written and difficult to enforce.  My own feeling is that, while I have no wish to limit the rights of people of ambiguous sexuality, I object to such pronouns as a grammarian.  Gender is an essential part of most Indo-European languages; this attempt to disguise the fact that people have a gender assigned to them at birth can only lead to mass confusion and obfuscation, all of the sake of suiting the tender sensibilities of a very small portion of the population at large, and at the expense of everyone else. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 673,478,488; # of deaths worldwide:  6,747,959; # of cases U.S.: 103,888,296; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,129,145.

A DC hike – Race relations then and now – Declining rates of COVID – Evening statistics

The return of the sun has brought about a lightening of mood – that, as well as an 18-mile hike with RS, starting from the Martin Luther King monument and skirting about the Kennedy Center, Glover-Archibold Park, the Cathedral, the Normanstone Trail, Dumbarton Oaks Park, Dupont Circle, the Kennedy Center again, and Roosevelt Island.  Every time I go on ventures of this sort into DC, I discover something new.  In this case I saw the Gandhi sculpture for the first time (although I have heard of it before) and the Dewi Saraswati statue, a relatively recent addition (it came to DC in 2013) in front of the Indonesian embassy.  I was puzzled by its location, since Indonesia is predominantly a Muslim country, but it turns out that the statue came from Bali, the archpelago’s largest island with a Hindu majority.   It was breezy but not blustery like yesterday and the skies were bright blue in contrast to the dull grey of the day before.

There will be more to come tomorrow, when RS and I will lead several others in a circuit from the MLK memorial in our annual commemoration of Martin Luther King.  It was very pleasant to see African-Americans, Asian-Americans, whites, Hispanics, and so on, mingling together on the streets, in restaurants, in stores, on the Metro, and so on, in a manner that would have been much less common even as little as half a century earlier.  However, there is a way to go.  When I was in Iceland this past summer, I overheard one American tourist remark that for the first time in his life he was unaware of being black. It will take a long time yet for us to reach that stage.

There are, perhaps, less personal reasons for rejoicing as well.  COVID is easing worldwide with a weekly 23% decrease in cases and 13% drop in deaths.  There is one exception: mainland China, where the virus emerged three years ago and where reliable data are simply impossible to obtain.  Wonderful to relate, the WHO itself has actually requested China to supply them with information that is verifiable; and such a request and its implied criticism, though timid and tentative and far less censorious than the Chinese medical officials deserve, is yet better than nothing.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 671,340,707; # of deaths worldwide:  6,730,405; # of cases U.S.: 103,577,391; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,125,541.  The numbers are not misprints, as one might think in comparing them with yesterday’s statistics:  there were indeed only 2 COVID deaths in the U.S. today.

On the Bull Run/Occoquan Trail – College admissions scandal – The mouse that roared:  the WHO criticizes China (for once) – Abortion pills become easier to obtain – Kevin McCarthy still failing to become Speaker – Evening statistics

The mild weather continues.  Yesterday I went with the Vigorous Hikers on the Bull Run/Occoquan Trail, a there-and-back between the Kincheloe Soccer Field and the southern terminus at Fountainhead.  At times rain fell, but so lightly that one scarcely noticed it.  We had lunch at the lake towards the end of the entrance road at Fountainhead.  The dam, which is about ½ mile from the boating area, had been opened recently in a manner that led to flooding, but there were little signs of damage where we had lunch.  At the end of the hike I encountered GP and BH.  They had come down with COVID a few weeks ago – which of course in GP’s case is no trifling matter, since he is now well into his 90s – but they both have since recovered and have immediately taken back to the trails again. 

William Singer, a self-labeled “college admissions consultant,” has been convicted of bribing coaches and rigging examination results to obtain admission for the children of his well-placed clients, who include various financiers in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and New York City.  Using staged photographs and resumes filled with nonexistent accolades, a girl who’d never played soccer competitively found herself at UCLA on its nationally ranked soccer team; the daughter of actress Lori Loughlin was admitted to USC as a recruited coxswain on the basis of a posed photograph on a rowing machine; and the son of a Los Angeles businessman won a spot at USC after his father photographed him posing in water polo gear in the family pool, then paid a graphic designer to impose the boy’s image in a shot of an actual match.  Singer has been sentenced to pay a fine of $10 million to the Federal government and to serve 3½ years in prison.  In addition, prosecuting attorneys are leveling charges against 53 of his clients for obtaining admission for elite colleges for their sons and daughters to the detriment of thousands of other more qualified applicants.

That is all very well as far as it goes, but it does not address the root of the problem:  namely, the colleges themselves.  Singer himself outlined the issue when he described how he came to develop his scams in the first place.  Students, as he said, could enter various elite universities via the “front door”:  studying hard and pursuing an interest in sports, the arts, or other extra-curricular activities.  But of course there are many applicants for every entrance opening, and there are no guarantees that any student, however qualified, can obtain admission to the college of his or her choice.  And here matters become more murky.  Wealthy and influential families have created a “back door” for their children:  i.e., a massive donation to a university endowment.  Even that measure, however, does not absolutely guarantee admission for their progeny who happen to be unentitled to such placement.  So Singer created what he called a “side door” by cultivating relationships with coaches and other athletic officials willing to sell him admission spots earmarked for recruited athletes into colleges such as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, USC, and UCLA, among others  ease with which colleges allow themselves to be bribed, and the ever-increasing corruption associated with college student athletic programs, will cause scandals such as these to become commonplace.  We urgently need reform in our collegiate system.

The WHO has done something truly astounding today:  it has actually criticized China.  We have seen in the past that the WHO has been shamefully subservient to that country, minimizing its responsibility for the emergence of COVID in the first place and even bolstering its fallacious claim to Taiwan by suppressing any references to the latter as an independent nation.  But today the WHO has stated that the Chinese medical authorities are lying about the extent of the infections and deaths from COVID – the WHO has actually said “under-representing” instead of “lying,” but everyone knows what they mean – and has gone so far as to endorse, although in very muted terms, the precautions other countries are taking concerning travelers from China entering their borders.  No doubt even these timid censures will draw upon them the wrath of the Xi Jinping administration, so that the WHO’s venturing even this far borders on the miraculous. 

Right-to-lifers are now going to have to adjust to a new regulation enforced by the FDA that enables access to abortion pills to pharmacies and from them to their patrons.  Women can now get a prescription for the pills via a telehealth consultation with a health professional, and then receive the pills through the mail, at any rate in states where this is permitted by law.  This development will make the enforcement of anti-abortion laws much more difficult, even in the most Draconian of states.  Thus if a woman in Texas desires to obtain an abortion, there is nothing to prevent her from obtaining an online consultation and then contacting relatives in, for example, California to pick up the prescription at a pharmacy in their area and then sending it to her.  Obviously that does not resolve the issue entirely – doubtless there remain many women who may not have the necessary contacts to bring about such an outcome – but it does mean that our home-grown ayatollahs must be pulling their hair out in despair at this reduction over their control of women’s wombs.

Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday failed to secure the Speakership on the House’s sixth vote, the third vote of the day.  It is the first time in over a century that the House has required more than one vote to select a Speaker.  McCarthy needs 218 votes, but there are 20 representatives within the Republican party who have declined to vote in his favor, first voting for Jim Jordan and then, when it became apparent that Jordan was a non-starter, voting for Byron Donalds.  Trump has endorsed McCarthy as Speaker, which leads one to hope that he may not obtain the position after all.  As many are discovering, Trump’s endorsements are now beginning to become liabilities rather than assets.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 666,386,672; # of deaths worldwide: 6,703,047; # of cases U.S.:  102,852,514; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,119,624.