Eternity and permanence

Here’s some thoughts which capture the past 15 and more months. This is a good opportunity for me to mix legend, history, accomplishments, expectations and forecast into yet another long essay. My best form is long - be it verbal, written, illustrative, or even physically expositing. In a way, my life is an exposition and I'm hoping that it, too, is long.

Going on two years now my Mom died. More recently the moms of several of my friends have died. Most of these friends were younger, some more than a decade and then some, than me. Their moms all died within a reasonable actuarial lifetime for when they were born. I have friends and family who have lost someone outside of the reasonable. That's always just that - it's unreasonable and therefore hard to explain or fathom. The parents dying part is easier to understand because when one reaches a certain age one's parents will also be within an actuarial distance of their natural death. We grow up sort of knowing the life cycle - kid, youth, teenager, adult, middle-aged coot, old fart, nattering ancient and then death. We "know" this but until it happens to us, ourselves, each of us individually, then all it is, is book knowledge. Once you lose one or both of your parents, you are essentially the next in line to go. That's different than losing an aunt, uncle or grandparent, because you "knew" they would go and there was still plenty of room left in the real world of living people that you knew you weren't next in line. That changes with a parent dying.

It's odd, indeed, that it takes most of us our first 40, 50, or 60 years of life to realize fully and to actualize the feeling that we are finite creatures. We have a time on the planet and then it stops. It's sort of the "ah ha" moment for all of us who have pondered why we are here, which is probably most of the dead and living humans going back to the stone age. That's a lot of humans and a substantial portion of all their lives to come to grips with such a fundamental issue. Call it the conundrum of the sentient. If we didn't think about these things then we'd live a life of purpose and it would get blanked out suddenly - basically without a protest from us. So we're creatures who ponder and who take half a lifetime to come to grips with their own, well-known, completely temporary status.

We could go on and on along that thread, with stops at all the reminders of past lives which prevail well past the lifetime of those we remember. These would include even the generations of progeny if that individual had any. All this serves as a form of "permanent" presence. Sometimes it fades. Who can place more than one or two Mesopotamians, if that. And, yet, there were score thousands of them and they created a written language complete with legends of the creation and succession, and music and arts and all that jazz. That number of humans and their contributions are around, still, but fading as it's so long ago in our history - virtually at the beginning. We'll never know the artists who drew the horses in those caves in France some five times further back than the Samarrans who first created writing.

We can learn to know Johannes Gutenberg, the German who invented movable type, and therefore the guy who basically created the means for us to actually know dead people - through reading about them or reading their writings. All of us, that is, not just Jesuit monks transcribing or ancient Jews, Muslims or Hindis or any others writing what were personal accounts of a reality.

Confusing isn't it. What we can know about our past and all the dead people, and who we can learn this from. Do we have a good idea of Jesus from all the journals capturing his life many years (or decades or centuries) after his life? Maybe, maybe not. Do we have a good idea of someone like Henry VIII or Mahatma Gandhi? Yes, because there are many more personal accounts of their lives from others and many self-described documents they have written. Will my kids have a better view into me and who I was after I'm dead than I do of my Mom now that she's dead. More likely than any other possibility. My Mom left not only personal memories and much written correspondence, but also a significant number of photographs and other kinds of illustrative documentation as well as many, many artifacts. My kids will have that and audio and video and art and kinetic creations and influences I've had in other areas all to remind them of me. Is this permanence? No, but it is a generational transition and it's getting tighter and tighter with each successive generation of humans on the planet. Since Samaran days - if you use the standard actuarial definition of a generation - 20 years - there have been about 300 human generations. Since the French cave people drawing days, there have been about 1,000 generations. That's really a small number in a long-term plot of data points.

Has each successive generation become more learned and more deeply intimate with the workings of the previous generation. I think so. I think we can now collectively piece together a huge number of lives of individuals who have now been dead for many generations. That's a very positive thing to me because it says that as a society of sentient creatures we are always getting better at remembering where we came from and who we came from and what it is that those who created us were doing and why they were doing it.

Does any of this mean that I can pick up the phone and call my Mom and just talk? No. But it does mean that I can read through my Mom's life again using the many cues she's left and perhaps find yet another hidden treasure or secret in an oft-read passage. The more I study, remember and learn, the more random things connect and the more the picture becomes whole.

I know it's a ridiculous concern, but I worry about these things so here it is: One of the things I ponder about when I die is what will anyone left who cares do with the tons of stuff which reflects who I was. The gigabytes of writings and images and music and sound I've created. The thousands of hard copy drawings and photographs and written poems and personal letters I've kept. The record and cassette and CD and MP3 collection which represents my library of interests in the music arts. In the old days, when my grandparents were all alive, people transfered the previous generation's holdings in shoe boxes because there just wasn't that much captured. A few newspaper clippings, a telegram or letter or birth announcement or something like that. A bunch of unorganized movie reels and custom-cut 45 rpm recordings (Talk to Santa Claus) and faded photograph after faded photograph. In just two generations, that shoe box has taken on gargantuan proportions. Not only that, there's the added thrill (or risk) of having such a collection and having it be unaccessible. "Here's my Dad's artwork, but no one can read the CD - it's too old a technology," or something like that.

We've arrived at a point in the generational history where these elements of life now nearly outpace our cultural capabilities of dealing with them. Both sociologically, personally, and technologically. And, if you did take those gigabytes of digital art and turn them into fantastic-quality color hard-copies, what would you do with that collection anyway? As I said, it's a conundrum. We've arrived at this point and we're still groping with what it means and how to deal with it. I guess it's cool that I'm on the point - that's a great place to be while watching society evolve, but it's also not the right place to be if you want a definitive solution to a question which is nagging you.

I suppose I should be starting up my own television station and broadcasting all this stuff out into space. It might not even matter if anyone here on Earth could catch any of the transmissions since the whole purpose then would be to emit these electromagnetic waves of my art out into space where they would continue to emanate into perpetuity - or at least the perpetuity we're aware of today.


Mount Rainier as seen from the pier of my blue-grass musician friend’s cabin at Silver Lake, Pierce County.

End of long-rambling thought on eternity. Beginning of new rambling thought on 4 years in Seattle.

Busy, busy, busy. That would characterize my life of late. Adam has graduated from the University of Washington (dean's list all 6 quarters he was there, dean's list at Montana State University the four semesters he was at that school) and is now lingering around home. He's got some plans which may include graduate school but for the time being he's enjoying having mostly free time. Katherine's taken a job at Harborview Medical Center (the premier trauma center for the Northwest) and has three 12-hour overnight shifts where she monitors - via TV screens - the various individuals in the intensive care unit. It's a demanding job but she's enjoying it and it does take her mind off the perpetual issues associated with the family farms, for which she's the accountant, bookkeeper and exchequer. That mostly means the three of us are coming and going at all odd hours of the day and all odd days of the week.

Me, y'all already know that I've dived deep into the world of local government advocacy. I've been elected as an official of my local neighborhood association (Morgan Junction Community Association - <http://morganjunction.org>). I've been added to the board of directors of Feet First, a well-known and very active Puget Sound pedestrian advocacy organization <http://feetfirst.info>. I've also been appointed to the Seattle city Pedestrian Master Plan Advisory Group <http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/pm_pmpag.htm>. Somewhat independently, I've been advocating a walking trails network in this section of the city <http://westseattlewalks.org>. West Seattle is about one-fifth of the city's population and is somewhat isolated from the rest of the city because it's a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water - the Sound on the west, Elliott Bay on the north and northeast, and the Duwamish River on the east. The southern end of this peninsula extends into the southern suburbs of Seattle. We're linked to the rest of the city through three bridges, all of which are subject to closures - two are draw-bridges, one is a high span. Because of the unique geographic isolation, West Seattle has evolved as both an elemental component of the city's neighborhoods and as a relatively unique "small town inside the city." Other city neighborhoods are either better linked because of geography or have insufficient critical mass to evolve into sub-cities. What this means is that all of us 100-plus thousand Seattle citizens who reside in West Seattle have a rather unique view of our 'hood. It's both a city neighborhood and a distinct and separate "city."

The geography is incredible. Roughly 4-1/2 miles north-to-south and roughly 2-1/2 miles east-to-west with two main ridges running the length of the north-south dimension. The peninsula has the city's highest elevations (520 feet) and an aggregate shoreline (Sound-Bay-River) which is more than the total of all other neighborhoods combined. We have two of the city's finest and most visited parks (Alki Beach and Lincoln Park) and we have a huge collection of Civilian Conservation Corps/Works Progress Administration staircases linking pedestrians to streets which differ in grade by as much as a hundred feet. All of this gives West Seattle residents an incredible plethora of views - city, harbor, Cascade Mountains, Olympic Mountains, Mts. Rainier and Baker and Glacier Peak (three of the local volcanos), and the Sound, Bay and River. That, coupled with the five different business districts spread throughout the peninsula make this a near-perfect location for walks, hikes, and bike rides.

I was a member of the Bicycle Master Plan group several years ago and that plan is now in the implementation phase. Lanes are being painted on streets, maps are being published and - in general - the cyclists are "reasonably" pleased with what the city is doing with their planning efforts. I was part of that and even before the Pedestrian Master Plan program got underway was already working with the other neighborhood associations here in West Seattle to actively involve locals in the charting, mapping and assessing of the various ways the locals walk around this area. The walking trails program is now going on three years and I've become the de facto "director" or "coordinator." This has enabled me to meet and talk with hundreds and hundreds of individuals and groups, pulling together ideas, concepts, practices and creating a system of trails which link the entire peninsula to itself via view-routes and short-cuts (using the staircases). The project has gained incredible traction and we've distributed several hundred of the prototype maps so far this year at street festivals and the Sunday Farmers Market here.

I've also joined a new group, formed earlier this Summer, called Sustainable West Seattle <http://sustainablewestseattle.org>. It's a group of citizens who are intent on reducing our carbon footprint and in growing local and sustainable lifestyles and in encouraging local businesses. Because our Mayor has been spearheading a drive toward carbon-neutral cities, this new group has also gained an unnaturally early prominence in local government activities designed to encourage a more green Seattle.

I've been able to bring decades of project management experience, graphic, writing and general public affairs skills and an apparent unsatisfied appetite for activism to all these projects. In many ways I view this as my payback to society for allowing me to have a career for 30 years of my life which was an ever-changing exploration of the world and universe around me. I was well paid and well supplied in my NASA days - all by you - the United States taxpayer. All those years of on-the-job learning and all those years of getting the best equipment, software and expert advice are now being applied locally to help improve and evolve the Puget Sound area in ways which will - hopefully - create an even more alluring place to live and work and play. That's by way of saying all this advocacy effort is true volunteer work - I'm paid only by the satisfaction I get when something I've done is good and helps the community along.

Of course, the other good thing is that through all these activities I've met hundreds of new people, more than a few of whom have become good friends. It's rare that I'm somewhere in town or in another neighborhood and I don't see someone I know. It's a good feeling to have moved here only four years ago and feel that not only have I taken root in this town but that the town has welcomed and accepted me for the outgoing, energetic activist I am. And, yes, to answer the obvious question, I've been on local TV several times and am in the local papers relatively often. I suppose the measure of this is a google lookup on my nickname (chas redmond) which returns page after page of references to Seattle. Before moving here, the same google lookup would have returned page after page of references to NASA or Macintosh (Apple Computers).

So, that has become my new "day" job. I've further expanded my night job by exceeding my wildest expectations with respect to the local music scene. Not satisfied with the one band I've been recording, coaching and managing (<http://slagsband.com>, I've been recording a blue grass/folk group down in one of the area's historic small towns, Orting, and have been recording and helping coach (as well as occasionally drumming) for another band in yet another neighborhood. The blue grass group is somewhat interesting because it's headed up by my high school best buddy - Kip Keers, who was coincidentally my first year of college roommate. His dad was a Navy commander and moved to the Northwest to be the commander of the Bremerton Navy Base. I met up with Kip again when I was out here in 1969 for advanced infantry training at Fort Lewis. I used to weekend in Seattle and hang around with Kip, his sister and their friends. When I got out of the Army in 1971, I moved here and worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as a copy editor and started hanging around with them again. When the Boeing bust of the early '70s caused "the last person in Seattle to turn out the lights," I moved back East and only kept up with Kip via a third, mutual, friend who also lived on the East Coast.

Hooking back up with Kip a few years ago, I started slow but soon learned that he and a bunch of his current friends visit a cabin he's got on one of the hundreds of small lakes around here for an overnight or two-day blue grass/folk jam. I brought my digital recording gear to one of those about two years ago and - as we say - the rest is history. I've acquired several more friends now, down in Orting (close to Mt. Rainier and one of the old outfitting towns for when mining was a big operation around here). In some ways it's a great circle route. When I was laid off at the P-I in the Fall of 1971, I went on unemployment for several months until that ran out. Then, with not many belongings and not much chance of getting a job (things were really desperate in those days here), I moved back East. I felt that my love affair with the Northwest and Seattle was abruptly ended through no action on my part. I've had a longing to pick that love affair up again and moving here in 2003 was the beginning of that second-time-around love affair. Hooking up with my friend Kip was sort of the icing on that cake. Meeting a rich variety of new friends and getting involved in the music scene was sort of like than candles on a birthday cake.

I bought a set of drums in 1998 while in DC and had been practicing at home while working at NASA and biking DC. Moving out here meant that I could focus a bit more on the drumming and have yet another group, of which I am the drummer, be part of my drumming life. We don't have a name yet for the group, but it's a bass player who lives really close to me and a lead guitar player who used to work close to me but lives not that far away (about 20 minutes by car). We get together about once a month for a three-hour jam. The last time we did this, playing a variety of covers and original material, we all three remarked that we've actually got a sound which is worth listening to. That was the seventh jam we've had and it's probably not that far outside the norm that bands take a while to "gel." We have fun, make some really good music and continue to just play for ourselves. At some point we may decide we want to play in public, but for now it's just free time for all of us to noodle around. My drumming has been getting - obviously - better - practice, practice, practice. But, each musician has not only their own instrument, but their own style and i've noted that my drumming is quite different from others and has a "sound" of its own. This is through no design but through the natural evolution of trying to find the rhythm and back beat of the music and keeping that going.

Next year will bring two trips back East for me and my family. The first is in May when Leif, now 30, and Lowrie, his sweetheart, get married. The second is my Mom's side of the family beach reunion along the southeast coast of North Carolina - Wrightsville Beach (Wilmington, where I was born). That's two more incredible opportunities for me and Katherine and Adam to explore North America. In case any of you haven't heard - I don't fly anymore. I refuse to play the Homeland Security game and refuse to be treated like a criminal by my own country. Consequently it will be a very, very cold day in Hell when I go through an airport security scan and remove my shoes just to sit like a sardine in some aluminum can flying at 30,000 feet over the country. The great news, though, is that I get to see North America on back roads, at street level, with the chance of stopping at any time to examine interesting things and to see parks and wilderness areas and small towns and unique sights. The loss of time is irrelevant compared to the advantages of seeing and learning new things. A trip across the US takes four days if one does it non-stop. Pre Gulf War oil prices put the cost of such a journey at about $100 per day per one or two persons and about $130 per day for three persons - including gas, meals and a place to stay the night. The new price of petrol will up that cost by probably 50 percent which means about $160 per day. A reasonable crossing takes five or six days, averaging about 550 miles a day. That breaks down to about $2000 for a round-trip for three people, not counting the cost of staying at the other end. It is more expensive than flying and does take more time, but the rewards in places found, in things observed, in routes discovered, is well worth the time and money (plus, I'm not treated like a terrorist by my own government while I'm doing it). As a retired Fed who's had secret clearances and as an honorably discharged ex-Army soldier, I don't think I could be more insulted and offended than by what is happening now in this country to its citizens. I chose the route which leaves me outside that insulting circle and irrespective of the cost in time and money, find it not only the proper response, but one which brings incredible additional advantages. Plus, I've got a lifetime's experience exploring the planet at that level and a goal of being on every secondary road in North America. A goal I'm dangerously close to fulfilling, thank goodness there's Canada and all those northern roads left.

That's sort of the abridged version of what's been happening with me since I left the DC area nearly four years ago. What do I miss: I miss the deep dish pizzas from Armands. I miss the Veteran's Day long-weekend trips to Montreal (only 10 hours from DC via I-81 and the St. Lawrence Seaway highway). I no longer miss the hot, humid, languid days of Summer along the Potomac and have come to appreciate the nearly-always pleasant and liveable weather Puget Sound offers. I love fog and this area has no end of fog, including fog rolling uphill at over 10 miles per hour. Our house sits at the top of a hill whose bottom is Puget Sound (Lincoln Park). On certain evenings in the Spring or Fall, the fog literally rolls uphill at nearly breakneck speed and we all run outside to get washed by it. An amazing experience. But, you have to love fog. I've come home at night from events in the city and crossed over the West Seattle bridge and gotten past the first ridge on the peninsula to find fog so thick you could not see the next street light. I used to think I missed the lightning storms of Summer and Fall in the Chesapeake Bay area, but we've had our fair share of Summer thunderstorms and lightning here so that item dropped off the "missing it" list a couple years ago.

Of course, I miss all my friends and the family members I could literally drop in on when I lived in DC. That's somewhat accommodated by my new friends and the fact that my brothers and I always did live far, far from each other and communicate mostly by phone or email anyway. I've stayed in touch by phone with a remarkable number of my DC friends and am really happy about that. Email and letters can be personal and are somewhat more lasting than a visit or a phone call. But a visit or a phone call actually involve "touching" in more ways than can be imagined. I get inside the place of the person I'm talking to on the phone. I imagine myself in their home or office or outside somewhere. I hear their voice and it's the same as if I were actually there (well, sort of, modern phone technology still has a long long way to go). Plus, talking or visiting means that the topics are pretty much random and the conversation is real. Email or letters are more of a one-way communication - I say, you say, I say back, etc. So, count me in as one of those people who wants to hear your voice in person (or by phone) and who would rather "talk" than IM or email. Not that I don't send gigabytes of email back and forth anyway - that's my nature, like I said at the top, I like long.

You've heard from me, and barring events beyond my control, you'll be hearing from me over the next several decades. To say I've evolved is sort of admitting the obvious. I can't sit still and it appears that I can't do anything but I'm not wanting to do more things. Physically I'm in great health, but I'd remind everyone that what you do to your body as a young person will come back to haunt you in your later years. Every bone I've ever broken (left tibia, left ulna, skull (three times), every body part which has ever been pierced or cut (both feet, both hands, both lower arms, chest, back, neck), every nerve which has been cut (left forefinger, left palm area, left and right foot arch), every ligament or tendon which has been pulled (both outside ankles, both inside knees, left side neck), all these damaged parts remind their owner that they were at one time "hurt." I'm sixty and the exuberances of my teens and young adulthood are now being brought back home in the form of aches or sharp painful reminders. Certainly not all the time, but at such odd moments that one feels like the body is getting it's "payback" time. Moral of the story - if you're still young, treat your body well as it has to last a lifetime. I still exercise nearly every day with long hikes (5 to 8 miles around the city). This year has been so busy that I've been reduced to walking since I can guarantee my return within a max of usually three hours. Last year and the Seattle years before that, I was less busy with my "day" jobs and had more time to bike. For me, a bike ride should be open-ended which means if I can't guarantee about five hours then I am only biking to say I'm biking. I can't just roam and explore and be time-independent. This year has been busy enough that biking so far has been one of those time items I couldn't serve. I'm not a bike commuter, I'm a bike explorer. But, a foot explorer covers less territory but covers it at a greater level of scrutiny. I can get into either of these modes of exploration - this has been the year of the foot-on-pavement. Still five-foot, nine-inches (been standing up more straight of late), and still 140 pounds of basically skinny build - still an ectomorph. And I still keep late hours and get up early, but I do get enough of the right kind of sleep to stay healthy and maintain my Technicolor passion with dreams. I'm continually amused at the plots and landscapes my alter-ego comes up with to resolve the day issues and basically keep me entertained in my sleep. I sleep when I'm tired, to be sure, but more often than not, I sleep to see what my other self is up to.

View from my studio during a recent raging sunset evening. Seattle’s such a fine place to live and sights like this are one reason.

Cheers.