Taste and Tongues

Taste and Tongues

Methinks I shall have to make two adjustments to my lifestyle.

My wife, ever concerned about my general knowledge and my health, has recently sent me two e-mails with research that may suggest how to stave off dementia. I wondered for a while which was her motive, but since it seems logical to think that if I were sliding into dementia I would be the least likely person to notice, I guess she was passing on the information for my general information. At least I hope so.

The research suggested two ways to postpone the dementia that sometimes comes with advanced age. Not that I am there yet ( I mean advanced in age) but I would like to get there sometime.

It seems one way is to function in several languages.

I definitely have slid back in that respect. In California I used English and Spanish routinely in my everyday life. Here in Seattle there has been little need for Spanish other than the infrequent occasions when a monolingual English-speaking friend who has monolingual Spanish-speaking contacts in Latin America, copies me e-mails to translate or my wife forwards an item from a Spanish-language source on the internet. Even our household use for Spanish as a means for my wife and me to communicate secretly when the kids were present is no longer necessary or effective since they no longer live at home and, as we later discovered, as kids they had long been able to figure out what we used to think was secret communication anyway.

The other preventive mental health measure I need to take is to increase my intake of wine to one glass a day. My current dosage is far less than that, unless beer can be included as part of such a healthy regimen.

Looks like I shall have to add these routines to the pleasantly limited choreography of my current retiree lifestyle.

If only I could recapture those few days when both chores came packaged together on a cruise on which the sommelier giving a course on wine appreciation spoke Spanish and the wine was served at dinner by a Spanish-speaking señorita.


As they toast in Spanish:
¡ Salúd !

Chuckanut Drive, WA

Driving the 90 miles or so back to Seattle from Bellingham, just south of the Canadian Border, I usually take the fast Interstate Freeway. But this sunny, languid Sunday called for a more leisurely trip along the Pacific Northwest Coast.


The name Fairhaven conjures up a quiet old seafaring town, and that is just the impression one gets driving the country-like roads that curve unhurriedly through the residential areas of this old quarter of Bellingham before joining the coastal highway known as Chuckanut Drive.



For 21 miles, this two lane road follows the coastline, clinging to the face of the Chuckanut Mountain as it descends steeply into Puget Sound. It winds between huge granite rocks and towering cedars.


The trees frame magnificent views of the blue waters of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. One might catch sight of an eagle soaring high above or a cruise ship heading for Alaska. There are numerous places to stop and admire the view and catch glimpses of the railroad track far below. The train ride along that track, from Seattle to Vancouver is itself spectacular.

The Emigrant's Dilemma

When you immigrate into a foreign country and you put your roots down there, you are sometimes caught in a dilemma. I am firmly of the opinion that when one has emigrated from a country, that person should not think of himself or herself as keeping one foot in the old country and the other in the new.

With the easy flow of information across the globe, if one has relatives or friends in the old country, it’s likely one will be well aware of conditions there. When the economic, political or cultural situation there seems to be headed in the wrong direction, what does the expat do? Do you offer your insights in the many ways now available: e-mail letters to the Editor of the online local newspapers, blogs, social networks?

Or are you now an outsider, who should not be meddling in affairs that are no longer your own?

For many years I steered clear of making any public comment on the state of affairs of my native country, although I was keenly aware of it sliding into deeper and deeper problems.

That country has now become mired in numerous serious problems with no solutions in sight and I have found myself writing letters and comments to local newspapers. Because some of my contacts there feel uneasy about this I have deferred to their sensibilties and I often ask for a pseudonym to be used if my letters are published. I would rather not, but there again is another dilemma: I stand by my opinions and I am comfortable with being identified as their author, but then again I don’t have to live there so I am spared any fallout, unlikely as that is.

At times I question whether I should get involved at all.

What would you do, if you were an expat?

Bavarian Festival in Leavenworth

Our son took four generations of his family to Leavenworth to celebrate Mothers' Day. A Maypole Dance, Bavarian folk music and street dancing greeted us on our arrival there. A wonderful day was capped with German food for lunch and even a touch of winter as we drove through Steven's Pass at an elevation of 4,000 feet on the way home.

North Beach

There's a reason why Seattle is called the "Emerald City": the frequent rain not only nourishes the trees but keeps them washed and free of dust and the residue of air pollution. Across from my house on a lovely Spring day, like today, the variety of trees turns the forest into a collage of different shapes, textures and shades of green.

Less than a five minute drive from home is North Beach, which borders the Puget Sound. Access to this beach by motor vehicles is controlled, so there are never many cars there at any time, and in mid-afternoon, in mid-week, we had the beach, the little lighthouse and the expanse of wild nature preserve adjoining it almost all to ourselves, except for a couple of adults and small children.

Driftwood, gnarled and bleached, washed up onto the beach, presents an ever-changing exhibition of sculptures.




Even Mount Rainier's snow-covered craggy flanks can be seen in the distance, if you look closely.

A Bavarian Town in Washington

Our son's Mothers' Day treat was a three hour drive over the Cascades Mountain Range to Leavenworth. Leavenworth was an old logging town in the mountains that was transformed into a full scale replica of a town in Bavaria, Germany when the logging industry was phased out.

The drive there prepares you for the fantasy of being in Germany.


For much of the way the highway closely follows the Snohomish River into a very Alpine-looking valley with glimpses of bare, rugged, snow capped peaks, passing through tiny towns with names like Goldbar, Sultan, Startup and Index, past meadows then cutting through thick pine forests clinging to steep valley walls, winding all the way up to the ski resort at Stevens Pass at 4,061 feet (1,238m), where the slopes were still covered with snow.

For much of the way the river is just a few feet from the road and presents an ever-changing spectacle: sometimes churning along over boulders in foaming cataracts


sometimes as a still pool lingering under trees or meandering slowly around little islands of gravel.


Front Street, the main street in Leavenworth, was filled with visitors and mingling with them were local residents decked out in lederhosen and Bavarian skirts and blouses





The sound of an Oompah band filled the air and built up expectations for the Maypole Dance to come.


The Maypole Dance in the main square was delightful.




Over a hearty German meal at a Bavarian style restaurant


amid murals of Rothenberg, Regensberg and other old Bavarian towns we toasted the three generations of mothers in our party.

Thunder in a Clear Sky

Thunder in a Clear Sky

There was no mistaking it. That distinctive rumble of four mighty synchronized "Cyclone" radial engines increasing in intensity until it was directly, low, over my house this fine Spring Sunday, causing it to vibrate. Completely different from the usual whine of the engines of the jets throttling back as they make their final approach to Boeing Field just a few miles south of my house. I rushed to my front window, just in time to get a glimpse of the ancient B-17 lumbering overhead.


At that moment my memory raced back more than sixty years to the warplanes that sometimes flew low past my childhood home in Trinidad during World War II on their way to Waller Field, a US base there at the the time. My eldest brother was an ardent model airplane maker and with him I would look at the Popular Mechanics or Flying magazines to identify the fighters and bombers or as he laboriously made scaled drawings, based on whatever pictures were available then, for the models of the planes he used to make.

I got my camera ready. I knew it would be back because at this time of year, leading up to Memorial Day, that restored B-17 is based for a while at Boeing Field where the public is offered 20 minute rides in it over Seattle.

As I waited eagerly for the drone that would indicate its approach, I reflected on what a different significance that sound had for millions in World War II. Known as the "Flying Fortress", it was then one of the most lethal weapons. B-17's dropped 640,000 tons of bombs on Germany (Wikipedia). They carpet bombed cities in Germany. Their gunners shot numberless German fighters out of the skies. Accounts of Flying Fortresses returning to their bases damaged to an extent that it seemed impossible they could fly have become legendary.

Who know what missions this very B-17 now taking tourists for rides had flown? What did it leave below in its wake in World War II? It seemed so innocuous as it flew so low and slowly over my roof as I took this picture, a curiosity, a relic, now