August 19, 2005 While in Seattle I took the opportunity to enjoy the artistry of both virtuoso violinist John Pilskog and flute expert Zarthoui "Zart" Dombourian, as they joined forces with other fine musicians to play the music of Wagner's Ring Cycle for the Seattle Opera. I took in the dress rehearsal of Siegfried, in whose story I thought I saw ample evidence of where J.R.R. Tolkien got a good deal of his inspiration for his own saga.

Zart & I first met in 1965, at GPGC in Lake Charles, LA during our first summer there. One year senior to us was Jeff Eby, now Zart's husband. Jeff & I rendezvoused to chat during both of Siegfried's intermissions; Zart snuck out to join us two and also Julienne, the older of their two beautiful musical prodigy daughters (Joycelyn, the younger, was off at music camp). Zart & Jeff & I had all made it to the GPGC reunion a fortnight earlier, but Zart had had to leave after but a day, to attend Ring rehearsals, and Jeff had been obliged to depart simultaneously, to see to his elderly father in Lafayette, so I had the pleasant task of offering in Seattle a few further details from events they had missed in Lake Charles.

I spoke to them of those of our former teachers and mentors who made it to the conclave, in particular of Dr. George Middleton, GPGC's director since (nearly) its inception. We "gifties" owe an immense debt to "Uncle Middy" for making GPGC what it is: a haven for gifted children who espouse idealism, who believe that "a man's reach SHOULD exceed his grasp" (as should a woman's). When asked at the reunion why he went to all the trouble to establish & perpetuate the program, Dr. M. answered simply that he hoped that, by teaching promising students the value of intellectual freedom, perhaps as those students grew they would help to safeguard the freedoms that we in this country take for granted, and make it more difficult for tyranny to establish itself here.

I spoke with Jeff & Zart of excellent deliberations I had shared with Jim Sebenius (who specializes in negotiations at Harvard's Business School) on his challenges in an academia that shows a "physics envy" for "hard science," and discounts all else however valuable as mere "anecdotal" evidence; of bavardage with Robert Assaf, who runs a translation company in Paris, and who brought an excellent Barolo for our oenophilic pleasure; of trading equine tales with David Gallaspy, who with his wife raises horses in an out-of-the-way corner of Tennessee, David emphasizing (to my great pleasure & agreement) that communicating with a horse requires a human to temporary drop humanness, and look at things from the horse's perspective; of the ever-ebullient Junior Abraham, and of how Susan Steeg (who brought along her partner Sarah, and their dogs) retains her uncanny ability to make most anyone feel promptly at ease in her presence.

We spoke as well of many others, and I concluded with a mention that, after GPGC's current students had finished their final orchestral, choral, and dramatic performances, all the alumni had joined our younger cohort on stage to sing "To Dream the Impossible Dream," which was inaugurated as GPGC's theme song almost immediately after Man of La Mancha won several Tonys in 1965. Robert Assaf commented on how there was nary a dry eye in the house as we sang, and I concluded that this was so for the very excellent reason that that song expresses for all of us that determination to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield that GPGC long ago instilled into us.

"Miles to Go" has long been "our" poem, and its title the title of our yearbook, and that image of a long, hard road ahead came immediately to my mind a scant six weeks later when "Nawlins" finally took the hit that it had so long evaded. I remembered the now-disrupted families that I knew from there; I prayed for Dr. Louis Sanders, an emergency room physician in N.O. whom I had so recently reminisced with; and I gave thanks that we 'gifties" had been granted the gift of meeting just before this tragedy, that we might offer mutual aid & comfort in its aftermath.

It was in Siegfried's aftermath, in August, that I proceeded to my annual Bastyr gig, followed closely thereafter by a departure for Maui, and a rendezvous with Sarada Von Sonn & Dr. Carmen Frigerio, at a retreat center where an image of Lono welcomed us to a retreat that we co-conducted with Ram Dass. Having not met Ram Dass before, I was pleased to see that he holds to his own impossible dreams, and is as relentless in his private devotion to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, as he is in his public avowals of Babaji. It was great fun on the last evening to share a stage with Ram Dass, and let the conversation flow where it would (and did).

From Maui to the Big Island, and the Green Lake, and Hapuna Beach, and Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, and Christal & Sevyn, and, of course, the Kilauea volcano. The whole Hawaii trip was magical, with repeated pueo (Hawaiian owl) sightings and nene geese milling about at the Halema'uma'u crater, but the pièce de resistance was as always the red lava flows that we hiked a round-trip of six hours to view. Having never witnessed this wonder before, Sarada & Carmen had their breath taken away (literally, in those spots where we got too close to the sulfuric acid cloud); both vowed to return to what was for them once but a dream.

Yet another dream, of Hawaiian sovereignty, now seems closer than ever. Seemingly rendered impossible after the sordid "American merchants' coup d'état" that overthrew the last ruling Hawaiian monarch a century back, the Hawaiian people are finally getting some redress. Serendipitously, shortly after I heard this news I ran across the following poem by Elikura Chihuailof, who is one of the Mapuche people of South America. The Mapuche, never conquered by the Incas, the Spaniards, or the governments of Chile and Argentina, use the word nehuen (pronounced nu-when) for the life force (what India calls prana, and china, qi). The sky is sacred to the Mapuche, and so also the color blue, which for the Mapuche represents nehuen:

I would like to turn towards not just the memory
of my People (Mapuche),
but also the memory of those people
around the world from the depths of their cultures,
that have provided us with the knowledge that
the human being is One alone,
looking at its internal and external universe
from different perspectives.
In this duality it inhabits us and we inhabit it.
To look at People that have allowed us to think
about our condition,
which contain the same uncertain search for
freedom and equality sustained in the constant question:
Can the being aim one day to reach
that true sense of - Blue
towards the life of all cultures, of all People.


An impossible dream, that one day humanity will extend liberty, equality, and fraternity to all cultures, all People? Perhaps - but one that we dreamers will continue to dream ...

August 3, 2005 An action-packed fortnight included two worthwhile movies in Houston, Mystic India & March of the Penguins, the latter being a documentary on the 110 km walk that the Antarctic's emperor penguins take in mating season to their mating grounds. Having laid eggs, the females carefully transfer them to the males before walking 110 km back to the feeding grounds to replenish. The males then tend the eggs by balancing them on their feet, keeping them from freezing in temperatures of -60 deg C and winds of up to 160 km per hour, standing for 125 days without eating, huddling together in a large ever-moving mass to keep warm. Somehow, enough parents and eggs survive to keep the species going. I left feeling profound thanks that my own life as a human is so much easier.

From Texas to British Colombia, and the Hollyhock retreat center (www.hollyhock.ca), which features monkshood, datura, and foxglove in its gardens, and spectacular vistas from its perch on the shores of Cortes Island. The greatest fun I had while there was with a sea otter, who enjoys interacting with visitors to Hollyhock's beach - when I met him he was seated on a rock eating a crustacean. During his meal he jumped off the rock & swam playfully around my legs a couple of times before swimming off to hunt for more food. As synchronicity would have it, what did I find, back in Vancouver during an overnight stay with Dr. Launette Rieb & family, but two heirloom sea otter pelts, one male & one female, inherited from the Haida family of Launette's husband Michael.

On Orcas, a sweet visit with the Clancys that included a visit with a couple of "4-person Doug firs" (i.e. Douglas firs big enough around that it takes four people holding outstretched hands to encircle them) in Moran State Park, and a family game of Pictionary which Kimmie & Willie, the two Clancy teenagers, won in a landslide.

In Seattle, the ever-educational David Oathout brought me further up to date on the relative collectibility of 45s & 33 1/3s records vs 78s, and the paucity of extant Florence Foster Jenkins recordings; and related the tale of how Sidney Bechet would cover his saxophone with a cloth to prevent his competitors from seeing his fingerings. Bechet persistently refused to record his music, to prevent his competitors from learning his riffs.

The biggest news of late July came from Lake Charles, Louisiana, and the first real reunion of attendees of the Governor's Program for Gifted Children. I entered GPGC in 1965, and spent four transformative summers there. The reunion was a veritable eye-opener, whose implications I will report on as I digest them ...

Link to News of the Past