Travel is not what it once was.
No headlines there. But now and then something comes along to remind us of what once was.
Today I ran across two menus and accompanying wine lists from one of my flights from England. In November 1993 according to the menus. I suspect it was the return trip after taking a Concorde flight from Portland to London.
Both appear to be dinner menus. And that is certainly possible. The flight would have come in two segments -- with a break in Newark.
The courses are enough to inform you the food is from another era. Before passengers became health-obsessed, and airline executives heard only the voices of their accountants.
Nuts. Appetizers. Salad. Entree. Fruit and Cheese. Dessert. International Coffee.
The type of meal that would be served at LA Tante Claire. Formerly one of my favorite London eateries. RIP.
Do you doubt that airplane food could ever be good? Just listen to the choice of entrees.
Choice center cut of salmon steak grilled to perfection and enhanced by lobster dill butter.
Grilled Lamb. Tender lamb chops topped with maître d'hôtel butter.
Chicken Forestière. Baked breast of free-range chicken served with a medley of forest mushrooms.
Steamed Maine lobster served chilled on a bed of romaine lettuce.
And that is just the first menu. The other menu offers monkfish, veal, duck, and chicken.
These days, I frequently fly internationally between The States and Mexico. I have never been offered anything similar to these meals. At best, I get a salad with some very suspect slices of meat topping it. Or a sandwich.
I am not certain when airline meals went from memorable dining to forgettable snacks. However, at some point, I started packing my own meals. With china, linen, crystal, silverware, and four course meals.
It was my way of entertaining myself on long trips. On my regular routes, the flight attendants who knew me would bring me special treats from the galley.
Of course, that all ended with the increased security following the Islamic terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC.
The first to go was the silverware. Even though the airline provided me with knives and forks just as lethal. Then, in what could only be described as insanity, the china and crystal could not make it through security. On the bogus claim they could be used as weapons.
What was I going to do? Threaten to smash the Wedgwood or crack the Waterford? Causing horror amongst my fellow passengers?
My current travel kit consists of two linen napkins, an unbreakable Corelware plate, Carr's water crackers, 3 year old Tillamook extra sharp cheddar cheese, Boar's Head pepperoni, and a sliced honeycrisp apple.
It may not be as classy as my ginger-lime-kumquat chicken over wild rice, but it better reflects our age of lowered expectations.
At least, it frees me from eating another of those questionable sandwiches on my flight to Manzanillo.
I have been pondering a new adventure.
My train trip last week to Olympia reminded me how much I enjoy train travel. There is something about the leisurely pace of not only getting from one place to another, but also watching life unfold outside my window.
My favorite time of day is the early morning. Especially in rural areas. As the heartland of all that is good about America awakens for a day of honest labor.
OK. I know I know that version is more Hallmark than reality. But there is a grain of truth in the vision. And I like to find it as often as I can.
So, here are my thoughts. Subject to a lot of revision.
My house preparation is far from done. Even after extending my stay to 9 December, I will need to return for the month of January. If all goes well, I will return to Mexico for trips to Oaxaca and Chiapas in February.
When Melaque starts heating up, I am considering heading north again to spend two months on Amtrak. With stops in cities where I have friends I have not seen recently.
On my next trip, I may even take a test run between Los Angeles and Salem to see how I like spending the night in one of Amtrak's sleeper rooms.
The down side is price. That two-day trip costs $200 more than a first class ticket on Alaska Airlines between Portland and Manzanillo.
We shall see. May is still months away. Knowing my recent mind moods, I may be off on another trip to Asia before the train thoughts solidify.
But this map is certainly filled with temptations.
I met him when I went to work at SAIF in 1989.
We will call him Paul. Not his real name. You will soon see why.
He was one of those young guys everybody liked in college. Men wanted to be his best friend. Women wanted him to be their husband. Our own Russell Crowe.
And he was an audacious attorney. Well-spoken. Quick-witted. Smart. His clients loved him as their champion. His opponents feared his tread.
But life was not kind to him. His wife left, and then divorced, him. He left our law firm for another. That did not last long. He tried solo practice. That went even worse.
Through it all, I was his friend. But he eventually pushed me away, as well. In the end, he lost his license to practice law. And drifted.
His name is Paul. He is an alcoholic.
I thought about him all the way through Flight -- Denzel Washington's current film.
The story is similar. Heroic professional acting bravely to save lives.
In Denzel's case, a commercial pilot who calmly lands an airliner under next to impossible circumstances -- saving most of the lives on board. And does it while under the influence of both booze and cocaine.
This is a tale of an addict. A guy whose skills as a pilot are so great that he can mask the fact that his life is out of control. As much as that airplane diving uncontrollably to the ground.
And anyone who knows an addict knows the rest of this story. There are moments of recovery where the booze is tossed out of the house. To be followed by tough circumstances where the addict seeks solace in the numbing force of alcohol.
Even though the story is familiar, this one is well told. A bit boring at points where Denzel sinks into the depths of his addiction. And the film seems to lose its own rhythm.
And the ending is just a bit too American. Too convenient.
But the climax pits the addict against his addiction in a real and well sat up moral choice. One I did not see coming, but also had the feel of inevitability about it.
Flight -- a triple pun title about the airliner crash, the addict's descent into desperation, and his attempt to flee from the choices he must make -- is a film that reminds me of the Pauls in our own lives.
And how their flight is their own. We can merely be there to help them through some of the crashes.
I am back in Salem. Once again at the task of clearing out the house.
After almost a full month, I have only one room notched on my pistol grip. But it was the big room. My office that had morphed into a sarcophagus of paper and nostaligia.
Monday I started on what should be an easy task. Boxing up the legal files from my decade of private practice. Once boxed, the files will become food for a shredder truck.
Those cabinets are filled with some of the best stories of my life. Some I had completely forgotten until I looked through the files.
Murders. Divorces. Personal injuries. Legal and medical malpractice cases. And thousands of every-day legal problems my clients faced during my 10 years as a legal general practioner.
None of them avalable for public tales -- because everything in those files belongs to the people who came to me with ther issues. Secrets and confidences that will soon belong to an industrial cross-cut shredder.
I was surprised to look down the list of names I represented throughtout the 1980s. I hate to admit it. But I could not remember most of the names. And the faces are mainly just blurs. People who shared some of the most intense moments of their lives are simply erased from my hard drive.
The files did remind me, though, that the work I did was worthwhile. While it was happening, I was the champion of my clients. Using my knowledge to help them work through the American legal system. Often representing clients who "respectable" people would never encounter.
But that part of my life is done. The files are nothing more than snapshots that serve no further purpose.
And, like all of us, no matter how dramatic our moments may be, they will soon shuffle off into oblivion.
Pity Tony Kushner.
How does a screenwriter tell a tale of Lincoln's life while escaping the gravitational tug of hagiography?
That was Kushner's brief in writing the script for Spielberg's Lincoln. And he succeeded. Sorta.
The film is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius Abraham Lincoln. Her book focused on Lincoln's political skills with his cabinet during the four years of his presidency.
But even that palette was too broad for a film. 900 pages too much.
After a few false starts, Kushner tells us who Lincoln is through the two months the House of Representatives debated the enactment of the political cornerstone of the Lincoln administration -- the Thirteenth Amendment that outlawed slavery throughout the United States.
It turns out to be a brilliant choice. We get to see Lincoln as a great strategist -- a man willing to compromise (and perhaps commit political bribery) for a moral end. As a raconteur who could turn conflict into agreement with a folk story. And yet a father and husband who cared deeply for his family.
Americans are now commemorating the 150th anniversary of its civil war. A period of history that has been encased in national amber. But, when it was happening, there was no guarantee how the war would win or when.
The script bravely lets Lincoln explain why the Thirteenth Amendment was necessary. Why the Emancipation Proclamation may not have withstood legal scrutiny.
And even though Lincoln wanted to see the end of slavery, he was not above using the debate as a means to bring an early end to the Civil War (a tactic that failed) or to mislead the Democrat opponents of the amendment (with a lawyerly response concerning the prospects of peace without passing the amendment).
What the script brings us is politics in its barest forms. Where Radical Republicans set aside their goal of full equality for legal equality. Where conservative Republicans pass up peace possibilities to favor abolition. Where Democrats use every tactic available to defame the president.
Even though all of that sounds anachronistic enough to be out of this morning's newspaper, it does only because the current American political gridlock is merely an echo of earlier periods of political dispute.
The film compresses events and gives lines to characters who never spoke them. But the film is as accurate as any of Shakespeare's historical plays. Fiction always serves current political agendas to some degree.
The greatest kudo for the film is that it does not flinch from Lincoln's concern about whether the two races could live side by side in peace. He had doubts. Stemming partly from his belief that the white race was superior to the black. But he was willing to take the risk.
After putting Lincoln into a very realistic environment, his death unravels the mood. As he lies on his deathbed in the Peterson House, he looks as if he has just been taken off the cross. Dying for our national sin of slavery.
Even with that martyr ending, the film is well worth seeing.
Perhaps seeing more than once -- with its complex storyline and beautiful cinematography.
When I ran for the legislature in 1988, I was convinced I had a fighting chance for the endorsement of the Oregon Education Association.
Oregon Republicans had a long tradition of supporting public education (in all of its forms). And I had made education reform a personal project -- even before I had decided to run for the legislature.
And I had a trump card. Literally.
I was the only candidate in the race who was a card-carrying union member. In the summer between my first and second year of law school, I pulled veneer on the dry belt at Roseburg Lumber Company.
Oregon is a closed shop state. And Roseburg Lumber was a union shop. To work there, I was required to join local 2949 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.
Unions were part of my background. My father had been a member of the Teamsters. A union with a bit more clout than my wood shop clan.
But it was a union. I was a member. And I had the chops to show it.
When I walked into the PAC committee meeting, I was greeted by a pleasant surprise. The attorney for the group was a friend from law school. The stars were lining up in my favor.
I launched into my presentation about education reform, the importance of making K-12 a budget priority, and laid my card on the table. No one was interested in the card.
In fact, no one was interested in my reform package. The only questions the PAC board members asked were about job benefits for teachers.
I admire teachers. We give them a very difficult task in teaching our children to be critical-thinking citizens of the republic.
But I saw none of that concern in the PAC endorsement meeting. In fact, I cannot recall the word "student" being mentioned once.
That meeting was far too representative of the other PAC meetings during the election. Somewhere the interests of the community seemed to wander away from the special interests.
And now that I look at the union card I slapped on the table, I am glad no one picked it up. It shows that I was a member of the union, but that I had withdrawn in 1977.
Perhaps in more ways than the card would indicate.
I love humor.
Several years ago, I was standing in Waldenbooks. That lets you know how long ago it was. For you young people Waldenbooks was a book store. Ask your parents what a book is.
I was thumbing through a collection of Gary Larson Far Side cartoons. Softly chuckling while turning the pages.
Gary Larson had long been one of my favorite humorists. Each panel was enough to make me smile.
I then flipped to the cartoon at the top of this post. The laughter started deep and exploded. In public. I must have laughed for a full minute.
Larson is the master of the phantom panel cartoon. The joke is not in the drawn panel. But in the panel we imagine in our mind. And this one was perfect.
It is still my favorite Gary Larson cartoon.
My former girl friend Linda had her own favorite. As Kurt Vonnegut would say: here it is.
Any analysis would simply be gilding the lily. It is either funny to you -- or it is not.
After sixty years of entertaining those around me (well, I thought it was "entertaining"), I continue to be surprised at what people find to be (and not to be) funny.
And I am not talking about cultural differences.
When I presented legal updates for our company, the reaction to most jokes was predictable. An immediate reaction from a few hearty souls. Two beats later, more laughs. Two more beats, general laughter. But nearly a quarter of the audience sat there more bemused than amused.
I was not the variable. The other two presenters had similar experiences.
But enough of this analysis. Let me pass along a news story.
The Korean Central News Agency (the official mouth of the mad-manocracy of North Korea) reports that archaeologists in Pyongyang have recently reconfirmed the existence of a unicorn's lair.
And that one of the lair's unicorns was ridden by the ancient Korean King Tongmyong,
founder of a kingdom which ruled parts of China and the Korean peninsula
from the the 3rd century BC to 7th century AD.
OK. Stop rolling your eyes. You are simply being culturally insensitive. Everyone knows we are not talking about the obviously mythical horse with a horn in the middle of its head that lives only in the minds of American 13-year old girls. How ethnocentric can you be?
"Unicorn" is the wrong word. What the Korean archaeologists (practitioners, I am certain, of the scientific method) have confirmed is the existence of a Qilin lair. As you can see, from this photograph, the Qilin is a real animal.
And can be seen throughout North Korea. Along with happy, well-fed peasants. Led by the sexy genius of the universe.
As long as there is a North Korea, none of us will lack for material.
Note -- If history is any guide, I will receive a note from the Larson people asking me to remove the cartoons from this post. Enjoy them while you can.
