Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • The World As We Know It

      “… and anyhow travel is over, like one’s books and the rest of civilization” – Rose Macaulay

      This Macaulay quote, plucked from the extraordinary Erik Larson book The Splendid and the Vile, was from a letter that she wrote to a friend after her London flat was destroyed in 1941 during one of the many attacks the city suffered, wiping out all of her books and personal belongings accumulated over her lifetime to that point. I found this particular quote profound because in many ways I feel that way about 2020, when the idea of travel and any semblance of civilized discourse seems illusive at best. It shines as a reminder that others have been in far worse places than we’re in now, and this too shall pass. The war eventually ended and some level of civilization returned. Macaulay went on to travel extensively, writing some best sellers along the way.

      Of course, I can’t just read a quote like that and not look into the source, and Macaulay doesn’t disappoint. I’ve added her to the list of authors I need to invest more time with once the stack of books has reached a respectable level of completion. For now, here are a couple of quotes from Dame Rose Macaulay that particularly resonated for me:

      “It wasn’t really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went home to bed.” – Rose Macaulay, Dangerous Ages

      “Life, for all its agonies…is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing…and whatever is to come after it — we shall not have this life again.” – Rose Macaulay

      I suppose the takeaway from each of the three quotes is familiar ground for readers of this blog. The world as we know it will continue to change, and so must we. Savor the dance to the last note. Savor youth while you have it and the moments always. And in the darkest days, remind yourself that the world will be there for you when you’re ready or able to venture out into it once again.

    • Social Media Fasting

      For all the madness in the world, it feels both quiet and ordinary most days. Until you pick up your phone and read the stream of toxic opinion and rage tweets anyway. In an attempt to dial down the craziness I deleted the Twitter app three days ago and find it a refreshing non-factor. There’s a lot I like about Twitter, but a lot I can do without too. Blog posts are automatically tweeted out, but ironically I don’t even see my own posts.

      This isn’t a post bashing Twitter or Facebook. I enjoy the experience of being on each. Instead I’m reflecting on fasting now and then. A friend of mine is doing intermittent fasting and lost twenty pounds. With social media fasting you don’t lose anything. Instead you gain time back in your life for substance and meaning. Time for reflection and deeper conversation. Time to read the books that stack up resentfully waiting for you to put down your damned phone. Time to think. Time to be.

      I lived without Facebook for the first three months of 2020 and felt I didn’t miss much of anything save a few pictures and an endless stream of opinion posts. I’ve dabbled in opinion posts and find the upswell of indignation they generate a complete waste of time and energy. So rather than fight the urge to contradict the inane ramblings of a zealot I simply delete the entire post and wish people Happy Birthday! and leave it at that. With the election coming in the United States it may be a good time to step away from Facebook once again. With significant life events happening I’m holding out for the time being.

      Twitter on the other hand is an attractive rut you just can’t seem to crawl out of. I’ve followed authors and thought leaders of substance and gain the experience and wisdom they offer. But Twitter is set up in such a way that you also become subjected to seeing posts or suggestions that person you’re following likes or comments on that you may have no interest in pursuing. It’s clickbait on steroids. The rut quickly becomes a rathole. I don’t want to hang out in either ruts or ratholes, thank you.

      In omitting or limiting Twitter and Facebook time you open up thinking time. Outdoors time. Get things done time. Mask-to-mask time. Thinking time. Experience time. Learning time. And generally more time in your life time. That seems to me a fair trade for the very real information you might glean from each platform. And so I fast.

    • Seeing Stars

      “The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.” – John Milton

      One side effect of the wildfires in the West are the clouds of wispy smoke high up in the atmosphere turning the days an overcast grey. At night the stars are obscured by this wispy smoke, the remnants of trees and homes and life disrupted 3000 miles away masking the stars above us. I’m reminded of how much I measure the night by the stars above. Companions lost in the haze. I believe that if this doesn’t convince people of climate change what will? But the stars aren’t the only ones lost in the haze. I’m often surprised at what people will believe, but the larger tragedy is what people will make people believe to raise their own status. Even at the cost of the quality of life for all current and future inhabitants of this planet.

      “Little by little,
      You will turn into stars.”
      – Hafiz, Skinning Your Knees on God

      We’re all connected beings on this planet, and we’re all connected matter in the universe. The universe is part of us, and someday we’ll once again be a part of it. We’re all swimming about in this dance of energy and light and Faith. This interconnectedness is lost on too many people concerned more about us versus them. What impacts the west coast impacts the east coast in another way. Borders are manmade creations that betray the interconnectedness of all of us. These are the rules we’ve established in this game, but the universe knows that it’s all just a game.

      That hazy smoke above is matter that was once energy in the form of trees and grass and wildlife. Eventually the fires will burn out and the skies will clear again. The stars will come out and shine brightly. The universe is constantly in motion and will reset once more. The smoky remains of forests and lives forever altered will eventually be absorbed and convert to fuel and substance and energy once more. Will we remember the fires and the hazy days? Will we make meaningful change while there’s still time? The universe doesn’t care, but we should.

    • Rising Up in Sterner Days

      Well, it’s 9/11 once again. And judging from the animation on both sides of the political spectrum, we aren’t as unified as perhaps we should be as we stare down a pandemic. I have friends who chafe at wearing a mask, friends who chafe at Black and/or Blue lives mattering, friends who despise the current President, friends who go on boat parades and friends that despise the boat paraders. I struggle internally with some of these friend’s beliefs, but they’re friends just the same.

      This speech by Winston Churchill is famous for the never give in bit, but to me the most powerful words are the final words. I recommend reading it in its entirety – its not that long – and reflect on what kind of leaders we want for our own country in these sterner days.

      “Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived. ” – Winston Churchill

      Churchill said these words during the Battle of Britain, as his country stood against Hitler and fascism. I wonder what he’d say to us should he look around at our discord? The pandemic is a challenge, but as a nation shouldn’t we rise up together to face it, as we once did in the days after 9/11? I should think so.

    • Over and Over

      “To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.” – Heraclitus

      Heraclitus seems to be trending on the blog, coming up a couple of times in the last 24 hours of writing. Purely coincidence, but then again maybe there’s something in the September air. The days grow shorter, the air cooler, and the last of the harvest has begun. And yet we’re still in a pandemic, just as we were in the heat of summer and the early spring days when it all seemed uncertain. And many of us are still working from home day-by-day, chipping away at our jobs in the new normal, never quite feeling that way. My daughter began her senior year of college in the basement where she used to play with legos and costumes. I know she’d rather be amongst her peers on campus, and want it for her.

      Reading about the Battle of Britain in Erik Larson’s book helps me appreciate the relative ease with which we live through a global crisis compared to our grandparents and great-grandparents. We’re asked to work from home and wear a mask to avoid getting sick? Perhaps a moment of inconvenience in “living your best life”? Think about the souls being bombed from above night-after-night, wondering if this was the bombing that launched the expected German invasion. Looking at the full moon not in wonder but with dread for the illumination it offered to the enemy. No, wearing a mask doesn’t seem all that controversial in the big scheme of things.

      “History never repeats itself, but it rhymes.” – Mark Twain

      The funny thing about reading about fascists is seeing traits inherent in some world leaders of today. Critical errors made because of a character flaw changed the course of history then, and do so today as well. We just haven’t lived that history yet. But you can see the ripples that are building into waves in extremism and with climate change. Will we check the progress of the ripples or let them build into waves that wash over all of us? Appeasement didn’t work out well for Europe in the 1930’s. What are we tolerating now that will come back to bite us if unchecked?

      I suppose I should stick with the original themes of this blog, but seeing the same things over and over again gets frustrating. Sometimes you need to raise your voice and lend a hand to advance what is right. There will be moments of enlightened observation to come, but it ought to be balanced with a willingness to stand up and be counted. We can’t let the chorus of the ignorant drown out the voices of the informed. If that sounds like arrogance and elitism, well, let’s talk through our differences. There isn’t as large a gap as some might lead you to believe.

    • Collapsing the Space Between Us

      “Walkers pass tight lipped, eyes averted
      Only dogs tugging on leashes want to collapse the space between us”
      – Ken Burns, In the Social Distance

      A couple of days ago I had the audacity to post an opinion on Facebook and immediately faced the crush of for and against dialog that’s lasted far longer than the typical family picture flurry of activity. And those were friends, family and acquaintances, not anonymous Twitter trolls. But that’s the world we live in right now – divisive and reactionary. And yet we’re all basically the same people with a few differences of opinion.

      Ken Burns wrote a poem that describes the time we’re living in, and read it on a NY Times podcast. You can find the transcript here. This bit about collapsing the space between us got me thinking about a guy we met hiking on the Carter Dome last weekend. Or rather, we met his year old retriever Emma, who was way ahead of me on the list of 48 4000 footers. I’ve completed 10 since I started re-tracking this year. She’s completed 40! Her owner was an older gentleman, I’d place him at 70, but he was incredibly fit from hiking all the time. He mentioned that his last dog hiked Mount Adams 65 times!

      It occurred to me that I never learned his opinion on politics, nor he mine. Just people talking longer than they might have otherwise because of the dynamo swirling about us. Sure there was hiking in common, but really Emma was the bridge between us. When we parted her exuberance was the part that remained on my mind, apparently still, for there remains a glow of joy when I think about her rolling in the dirt. The world could use more dogs collapsing the space between us, and less media driving us apart.

    • The Seven Daughters of Atlas

      “Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
      Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.”
      – Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall

      Orion and Taurus, the hunter and the hunted, have a long-standing adversarial relationship in the skies above us. If the Hyades are the face of Taurus turned towards Orion, the “body” of Taurus is a cluster of stars known as the Pleiades or the less magical M45. Looking up well before the dawn this morning they took my breath away. I carefully ran into a dark house for my binoculars for a closer look. While Mars and Venus and the Waning Gibbous moon setting in the west dominated the sky, the Pleiades drew most of my attention this morning.

      The Pleiades cluster has many names across the globe, but my favorite is the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters, all daughters of Atlas, dance in place, forever hunted by Orion (but just out of reach!) as their father holds up the heavens. I have but a sketchy knowledge of Greek mythology and rely heavily on Wikipedia and Google to help me out (the Tennyson above and the Hesiod poem below were both posted originally on Wikipedia). But the cluster was familiar to me, having always been there waiting for me to pay more attention.

      “And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,
      when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion
      and plunge into the misty deep
      and all the gusty winds are raging,
      then do not keep your ship on the wine-dark sea
      but, as I bid you, remember to work the land.”
      – Hesiod, Works and Days 618–623

      This poem serves as a warning, for in late October and November when Pleiades is seen setting in the western sky it signals that winter is coming, and with it storms. Get your ships off the ocean and work the land instead. It’s September of course, but there have been plenty of storms already in 2020. And more change is in the air as the days grow shorter and we pivot towards Autumn. Our lives are nothing but change, no matter how much we sometimes wish to just dance in place forever like the Seven Sisters. But that’s not our fate.

      Pleiades reminded me that I need to get up earlier more often, for the brilliance of the sky above is wasted on me in my sleeping ignorance. The magic hour between 3 and 4 AM seems to be the time with the most to see, but how rare it is for me to be outside at that hour to witness it! I feel like an overnight passage or a night awake on a summit are required in the near future. Sleep is essential, but the stars silently dance without you while you’re blissfully dozing. Like Orion, those Seven Sisters are just out of reach for me, but I swear they flirt back at a fellow Taurus. And stir my imagination.

    • A Virtual Visit to Kópakonan

      There’s a statue standing on the rocks at the edge of the tidal range in the remote and sparsely populated town of Mikladalur in the Faroe Islands. It depicts a Kópakonan, or a “seal woman”, who would shed her seal skin to walk amongst the humans on land. When she wanted to return to the sea she would don her seal skin and transform back into a seal once again. A selkie is a shape shifter, which appears over and over again in mythology (Wolfman comes to mind). There’s a mythical ability to transform from animal to human and back again know as therianthropy that runs across cultures, and selkies or Kópakonan are a particularly fascinating form for those of us who feel most alive in the sea (there is a story of Kópakonan that you can find recorded in multiple languages here).

      Mikladalur is on the island of Kalsoy (which features another stunning destination, the Kallur Lighthouse). The Faroe Islands are explorer’s dream, and for those of us who explore wild places near the ocean, this is just about everything you could want in one place. Want to visit Mikladalur but find yourself locked down in a pandemic? This video gives you a lovely 4K view of what you might see. I must admit, watching the video I was ready to book a flight to the Faroe Islands today before I recalled that we aren’t going anywhere for awhile. It does serve to remind me that I’m a creature of the north, and while the tropics are lovely, there is so much to see above 30 degrees latitude.

      The statue was erected in 2014, but already has the green patina of an older statue. Living next to the sea has that effect I suppose. I can feel a patina developing on my own skin when I spend enough time near the sea (and there’s never enough time by the sea). Kópakonan also has the desired effect of being a siren call for those of us who follows whispers in the wind. Sure, Boston is a short drive away and is jammed full of statues, but the Faroe Islands are a destination for other reasons, and Kópakonan is just an attractive object framed by the stunning backdrop of the rugged island Kunoy and the frigid North Atlantic that calls for Kópakonan’s to come home once again. Why be drawn to such an isolated place to see a statue when you can just watch a video? As George Mallory would say, “Because it’s there.”

    • Prominence

      “Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Lately I’ve been contemplating prominence. It started with Little Haystack Mountain, an impressive 4760 foot summit, relegated to the role of supporting actor due to its prominence of only 79 feet from nearby Mount Lincoln (5089/180). Or consider poor North Carter Mountain, 4531 feet tall but an almost embarrassing 59 feet of prominence from its cousin Middle Carter Mountain, which by comparison is 4610 feet with a prominence of 720 feet. North Carter didn’t even have a cairn or USGS marker designating its summit. I walked right by it until called back by a savvier hiking friend with a GPS tracker.

      If all this seems like a lot of numbers, well, I’m with you. To me a summit – no matter how prominent it may be – is a worthy accomplishment and very much worth celebration. With both Little Haystack and North Carter I lingered with friends to savor the moment before considering the next destination. Prominent or not, both summits took a fair amount of energy to reach and deserved their moment of appreciation. My mind danced as joyfully on Little Haystack as it did on Lincoln. Perhaps more so because in reaching it the world opens up around you. Why negate the accomplishment because of prominence?

      We live in a world where prominence is everything. How many followers do you have? How many likes did you get on your last post? What school did you attend? What was your class rank? How quickly did you reach a C-level position? Who did you marry? Where do you live? What kind of car do you drive? Where do you go on holiday? It seems that no matter how high your personal summit, it doesn’t matter unless you’ve achieved some measure of prominence. Of course its mostly nonsense that churns away in our own brain, perhaps fueled by co-conspirators like a parent or spouse who wants the best for you, if only for bragging rights at the next cocktail party (remember those?). Your prominence is your identity to some others.

      But not all others. Some celebrate your personal summit and ignore your prominence. Those are the people you want in your life, not the posers who skip right past the lesser summits to check in where there’s status. The trick is knowing who to celebrate with, and who to ignore as you focus on your climb. I sometimes shake my head at people who leapfrogged over others to reach VP titles or collect Board of Director positions like some magnets of places they’ve been. Prominence is a game really, and the question is who do you want to play the game with? How much is enough? Who is a true friend and who is an acquaintance who pays lip service and then quickly moves on to the next summit?

      Our worst critics are often ourselves. All those questions above? How many do we ask ourselves as we compare our own prominence to that of others we know? If achievement is associated with height, comparison is associated with prominence. But comparison is a fools game that negates your achievements when stacked up next to others. Skate your lane and stop worrying about what others are achieving. Focus on what matters. Celebrate each day and each accomplishment, no matter how prominent it may be. And by all means keep climbing and stretching your limitations. Be supportive of others as they make their own climb. Give and receive support on this epic slog. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you.

    • Discovering The Photographer’s Ephemeris

      Every now and then I discover something that makes my heart flutter a bit in excitement. There is a flutter happening now that goes beyond the first cup of coffee. For I’ve discovered an app called The Photographer’s Ephemeris. And I wonder where has my mind been all these years that I’d completely miss out on something so incredibly useful for those of us who chase the light.

      Followers of this blog know of my relationship with the early morning light – that magical time between nautical start and sunrise known as civil start. On the flip side of the day, this magical time is known as civil end (sounds a lot like 2020). For years I’ve known the wonder in this time, but I didn’t put a name on it. The combined more-than-a-passing recreational interests in astronomy and photography led me to learn more about the three phases of light in the dawn and at twilight. The Photographer’s Ephemeris handily charts out these phases on a timeline at the bottom of the app. But where it becomes really exciting is with the lines indicating where the sunrise will be and where it is now. It also offers a line showing where the moon will rise. And of course you get the same effect on the western side of the satellite image showing where the sunset will be, where it is now and where the moon will set.

      The word ephemeris is derived from ephemeral and the Greek ephēmero, or something that last for a short time. Each phase of the dawn or twilight is brief and fleeting, just as life itself is. An ephemeris is a method of tracking and predicting this ephemeral information that pivots above us. Making sense of the information falls on us. An ephemeris is usually associated with astrology and the position of the planets at the moment you were born. Or with astronomy and knowing the position of the stars now. Its handy information if you want to know where Mars and the moon are in relation to each other (dancing together last night), or if you believe in such things, why you don’t get along with your coworker.

      Ultimately, information offers a measure of predictability and understanding in our lives. I had a general understanding of where the sun might rise or set, and likewise a general idea of where the moon might be on a given night. But there’s something powerful about having the information readily available on a phone app. A thrill of expectation, but also a measure of control about where you might position yourself for that epic sunset or moonrise picture. It also saves me from looking out the window on those mornings by the bay when simply looking at the time of nautical start the night before would give me all the information I needed beforehand.

      I’m sure professional photographers have known about this app for years, but its new to me and perhaps to you too. I see The Photographer’s Ephemeris quickly rising to the top of my most-used apps. For it answers many of the celestial questions I geek out about in one handy place. And isn’t that the point of an app anyway?