Author: David Gorsline

Yosemite National Park and Mono Basin: 3

One of the best ways to get around Yosemite National Park, I quickly figured out, is to hop one of the shuttle buses that work the valley. Shuttle to your trailhead, walk a circuit or a straight line, and get back to your car at the central parking area on another shuttle. This plan is not without pitfalls, however, as I learned.

Saturday afternoon, after climbing to Columbia Rock in the morning, my plan was to use the El Capitan shuttle to its stop at the bridge over the Merced, hike the western loop of the Valley Floor Trail, then catch the El Cap shuttle at the picnic area and return to my rental vehicle. Now the Valley shuttle (the green route) runs into the evening, serving the campgrounds, the lodge, and suchlike; but the El Cap shuttle (the burgundy route) only runs until 18:00. No problem, I was on the trail by 14:45, the loop was about 6 miles on mostly level ground (rated moderate by Ranger Mates only for its length), I should be back to catch the last shuttle easily.

As soon as I left the shuttle stop, I discovered a hard truth about hiking in the park: the park doesn’t believe in trail blazes, and it’s not too keen on lots of wayfinding signs. I missed the trail I wanted to follow and was immediately backtracking along the road. (I’d like to turn the PATC loose in this park.)

Confidential to the man of the couple who asked me for directions to Half Dome on this same road: in casual conversation with a stranger, to make a point about gender roles, it’s best to avoid references to the Jaycee Dugard abduction case.

I found the trail I was looking for and started moving. It turns out that the Valley Floor Trail is not a good choice for a sunny July afternoon. It touches the very busy roads at too many points, and is generally too full of people. What is nice about the trail is that it’s nearly flat and smooth—the trail is worn-out pavement in a few places.

I was still making good time, looking to make the turn at the Pohono Bridge at sometime after 4. In the section leading to the bridge, the trail crosses the southside road, fords some braided streams, then skims along the Merced. I crossed the road and promptly found myself off trail; maybe I was disconcerted by the huge idling bus I had to walk around at the road crossing. But since I could keep the river on my right and the road on my left, I figured a little bushwhacking wouldn’t kill me.

a ford too farIt was then that I came to the ford. Lots of late snowmelt means good waterfall action into July, and it also means that the ford was two to three feet of fast-moving water. At first, I wasn’t sure where I was; it took a consult with my compass and several looks at the map to realize that the teensy blue line on the map was this dangerous-looking pour of water.

One of my survival skills is having a reasonable assessment of what I can do. I was just not ready to make this crossing, not by myself (where were the crowds now?), so I started backtracking. With the bushwhacking and the pondering, I had lost a lot of time, and I didn’t see a way to continue the loop. I would have to return the way I came, along some well-traveled trail.

My other survival skill is stubbornness. I got back to the southside road, and realized that I could still make the loop and the 18:00 shuttle if I beat feet along the road to the Pohono Bridge.

I made the turn at the bridge and started the return along the north side of the valley. Have I mentioned how profligate the scenery is around here? There you are, walking along, then there’s a break in the canopy and WHOMMP! there’s El Capitan looking at you.

I got to the northside road… and no picnic area. So I crossed the road and continued east. Lovely meadows, but no picnic area. Well, the last mile is always the longest, right? Somewhere just shy of 18:00 I realized that I had misread trail and map again, and that I had overshot the picnic area. I calculated that I could turn around and make a westward dash for the picnic area and the last El Cap shuttle, or I could continue east to Camp 4 where I could catch a Valley shuttle at the westernmost point of its route. After hiking 6 miles (and a climb in the morning), I wasn’t ready to outrun a bus. So I headed for Camp 4, adding another 2 miles or so to the walk. Total time for the open-jaw walk: approx. 3:30.

saved!A busman’s holiday: waiting for the bus to arrive.

I did pause long enough to look at what I keyed out as a female Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheuticus melanocephalus).

Back in Mariposa in the evening, many of the eateries roll the sidewalks up by 21:00, but I had a fine dinner at The Butterfly Cafe. This place can even make a house salad interesting.

Contemporary American Theater Festival 2011

been here a whilePlays at this year’s CATF are dominated by grim themes of black-white race relations, with the concomitant issues of money, power, and social class. In four out of the five shows (none of them conventional musicals), someone at one time or another will break into song, and at least in one case, we in the audience are encouraged to join in.

The strongest production this year is Sam Shepard’s masterful new piece from 2009, the two-hander Ages of the Moon. On the front porch of a country cottage in Kentucky, two old friends sitting begin the play with a comic passage of Lum and Abner-style non sequitur; they run a series of emotional changes through silly bickering and a slapstick fight into the sharing of grievous loss, experiencing a kind of “functional pain.” The wakeup moment mid-act recalls duck hunting and a ceiling fan—don’t ask. Let’s just say that Sean McArdle earns his program credit. Festival veteran Anderson Matthews (Ames) is well matched with John Ottavino (Byron), each of them showing a range of autumnal colors of the heart. D .M. Woods’ subtle changes of light are stunning.

The play by the festival’s other heavy-hitter playwright, Race by David Mamet, is less successful. Mamet’s signature dialectic of interruption and contradiction is at work in this tight 75-minute script, but perhaps—perhaps—the script is too tight. Clues (props, costume changes) to the unfolding chronology of the piece’s three scenes are lacking; it’s only once we get home that we work out that the play has taken place over several days, at a minimum. And we’re left wondering why super-rich Charles Strickland has retained such an under-resourced law firm, one that apparently consists of two partners and an associate, with nary a Della Street nor Gertie in evidence to screen telephone calls. (Thanks to my Official Theater Companion for helping me work this out.)

Crystal A. Dickinson, the associate Susan in Race, does better as the giddy Billie in Tracy Thorne’s song-infused We Are Here. Unfortunately, the production’s static stage pictures and rushed pace undo Thorne’s exploration of a mother’s grief over the untimely loss of her child. Kyle Bradstreet’s From Prague demands much of our credulity. As rumpled academic Samuel, John Lescault misreads signals and commits an infidelity that entails life-ending consequences through a contrived chain of coincidences.

OTC and I left the festival on a stronger note, The Insurgents by Lucy Thurber. It’s an intriguing piece, albeit flawed. Sally (the got-game Cassie Beck) returns to her broken Massachusetts mill town home after failing to complete college, funded by an athletic scholarship. She becomes obsessed with the failures in other American cities: in a good passage she talks of visiting Detroit and New Orleans, places where “people walk around like it’s their fault.” Inspired by writings by and about American millennial insurrectionists of the 19th and 20th centuries—Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and Timothy McVeigh (Cary Donaldson in a hoodie, looking like a bearded Mark Zuckerberg)—Sally progresses from an uncertain yearning to right wrongs to an even more unfocused rage. Hence the problem with the play: though we understand Sally’s urge for vengeance, it’s evident that anything violent she might do will be small-scale. The theatrical space she inhabits doesn’t extend beyond her own shabby kitchen and her broken-down family.

  • Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W.Va.
  • From Prague, by Kyle Bradstreet, directed by Ed Herendeen
  • Race, by David Mamet, directed by Ed Herendeen
  • Ages of the Moon, by Sam Shepard, directed by Ed Herendeen
  • We Are Here, by Tracy Thorne, directed by Lucie Tiberghien
  • The Insurgents, by Lucy Thurber, directed by Lear Debessonet

Leta and I found an intershow meal at the congenial Mellow Moods Cafe and Juice Bar on German Street.

Yosemite National Park and Mono Basin: 2

Saturday was the day set aside for some serious walking and climbing, and I made good on that plan. I followed, after a fashion, two moderate hikes scouted by Ranger Vickie Mates.

two roads divergedBut first I made the drive up Merced Canyon from Mariposa to the park entrance, following CA 140 along the south side of the canyon. The sight of the abandoned bed of a one-lane road running along the north side of the canyon is somewhat disconcerting. Sections of the old road are crumbling and overgrown after perhaps a mere half-century’s disuse.

However, not completely disused: the road jumps to the north side of the canyon (via a pair of temporary truss bridges) to get around a quite impressive rock slide. Between the signalized waits to traverse this section of the canyon and Monday’s trip up and down CA 270, I realized that driving through a damaged canyon is California’s answer to the Outer Banks’ wait for the impromptu ferry boat that crosses a new hurricane-opened inlet.

worth the walkBut back to the hiking. From the main parking area south of the visitor center, I took the “El Cap” shuttle bus to Camp 4 and the head of the trail that climbs to Upper Yosemite Falls. Following Ranger Mates’ advice, I climbed 1000 feet to some very nice vistas of the falls at Columbia Rock, then pushed on to one more look about a hundred feet higher. But I knew I would not have the juice to make it to the top. Lots of company on this trail: I heard a lot of German spoken. On the return descent, the slippery sand worn from the granite steps made me glad I’d brought my stick. I spotted a few White-Throated Swifts (Aeronautes saxatalis) in the valley. 3:30 up and down.

parasiteAlong this trail and elsewhere I found examples of paintbrush (Castilleja sp.), a hemiparasite of plant roots now placed in the broomrape family. The green leaves shading to red at the distal end should have been a clue that I was not dealing with a conventional wildflower.

gray squirrel 1gray squirrel 2These rather tame squirrels in the park are an unexpected ID mystery. The pale “shrug” and non-bushy tail don’t match any of the candidate species I see in the field guides, but I suspect I’m dealing with nothing more exotic than a Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus).

Yosemite National Park and Mono Basin: 1

on the way upAfter a midday drive from Sacramento, I put in a 2-hour round trip climb to Sentinel Dome summit, using scouting reports like this one from Jason and Katie Loomis. I had originally planned the complete loop around the dome, with the side trip to Taft Point, but I got started later than I planned and I didn’t want to force myself in unfamiliar country at elevation. From the parking area on Glacier Point Road, it’s but a 400 foot ascent.

scoping the areaThe nearly bare summit (8122 feet [2476 m]) nevertheless supports quite a bit of life — several wildflowers, including Mountain Pride (Penstemon newberryi); a succulent shrub that provides cover for the rather tame ground squirrels; an unidentified butterfly having a bask; and a couple of Common Ravens (Corvus corax).

nice viewA handful of people on the trail and at the top, like me, enjoying the extravagant views.

Mens sana in corpore sano

crispOn my way up and down J Street (so you know I wasn’t in downtown D.C.) to visit Mom I passed this charming brick and terra cotta edifice, which turns out to be the Sacramento Turn Verein, now a German language and culture society.

sound mind sound bodyRiding the wave of German immigration in the mid 19th century, the American Turnerbund movement established athletic clubs in Cincinnati; Philadelphia; Columbus, Ohio; and elsewhere. It had its roots in a nationalistic yet democratic student movement in the early 1800’s, founded by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.

Jahn’s nationalistic spirit contributed to his role as a promoter of “patriotic gymnastics,” recognized as a strong force in Prussia’s liberation. The gymnastic exercises that he introduced were intended to infuse his students with a patriotic love of freedom that would make them capable of bearing arms for their country, in the name of war of liberation.

American Turners opposed slavery and served in the Union Army in the U.S. Civil War.

Most foul

Via Botany Photo of the Day, Basilio Aristidis Kotsias makes the case that Claudius could indeed have poisoned King Hamlet by instilling henbane into his ear. And yet,

There are other explanations that fit the crime in question….. Finally, there exists the possibility that everything related to the apparition of the ghost on the platform before the castle of Elsinore was a product of Shakespeare’s fantasy, as well as the death of the melancholic prince, wounded by the poisoned sword (with what venom?) that Laertes held. If this were true, our interpretation would result in pure fiction.

Cole Porter in Japanese

Is it an opera or a musical? Anthony Tommasini offers a distinction that might settle the argument discussion that Leta and I regularly have:

Both genres seek to combine words and music in dynamic, felicitous and, to invoke that all-purpose term, artistic ways. But in opera, music is the driving force; in musical theater, words come first.

This explains why for centuries opera-goers have revered works written in languages they do not speak. Though supertitles have revolutionized the art form, many buffs grew up without this innovation and loved opera anyway.

On the radio: 6

Stacey asked me to do a voiceover for the first part of Jason Beaubien’s three-part report on the harrowing journey that Central American migrants make across Mexico, so they can then cross (illegally) into the United States to find family and work. I voiced the worker Hector Valdez, who is remarkably low-key about the prospect of being kidnapped by gangsters; he’s introduced at 2:00. And who’s that we hear near the end of segment? Stacey herself!

The entire series is worth a listen (part two, part three), as well as Beaubien’s reporter’s notebook post:

I’d dozed off on what the local media have dubbed “the Highway of Death.” I jerk awake and immediately feel for my backpack on the floor of the bus. My bag is still there.

The bus has come to a sudden stop and several young men are coming up the front stairs. A few weeks earlier, hijackers, allegedly from the Zetas cartel, had been boarding buses on this road, pulling off migrants, bashing their heads in with blunt instruments and dumping them in mass graves.

The young men are yelling and for a second I’m trying to make out what language it is. This often happens to me when I’m traveling. I wake up on an airplane, I look up from a cup of coffee in a restaurant and I have no idea where I am.

It’s Spanish. They’re speaking Spanish and they’re selling snacks. Everything is OK. I fumble in my pocket for some coins to buy one of the sandwiches wrapped in foil that they promise are very hot and very tasty.

A milestone: 4

Five years of A Honey of an Anklet:

  • 2006: We drove out to the Eastern Shore yesterday to say goodbye to Marlie…
  • 2007: Katherine Ellison looks at today’s carbon offset market.
  • 2008: Henry Phillips received a patent for his screwdriver and screws on this day in 1936…
  • 2009: The last play in August Wilson’s cycle of Pittsburgh plays, Radio Golf, is set in 1997…
  • 2010: Just a quick snap to mark my completion of the Fairfax Cross County Trail.

Old Times

Director Michael Kahn and his cast give a cool, clean, faithful reading of Harold Pinter’s enigmatic exploration of memory and friendship. The intermission changeover of the set from the sitting room to the bedroom, specified in the script, serves to disrupt the momentum of the piece; the perfunctory second act (30 minutes, if that) feels as if the narrative arc has fallen off the table.

But this mounting, admirably, makes the story both more transparent and more opaque to me compared to the last time I saw a production. (It couldn’t have anything to do with the intervening twenty years, could it?) Steven Culp’s amiable Deeley is a bit shambling; Tracy Lynn Middendorf is languid in pink satin as Kate; Holly Twyford’s brittle Anna makes us wish that she had known as much fun as a young girl in London as she claims to have.

  • Old Times, by Harold Pinter, directed by Michael Kahn, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington

Selby decoded

Nothing too hard to figure out, but I found it interesting as a bit of antique technology.

The machines finally stopped and [Lucy] told the children to sit right there and she emptied the machines then sat back on the bench and waited to use the extractor. While she waited a woman came in with a cart of clothes and asked if she could use the extractor, the one in her laundromat across the way broke down. The woman in charge told her she would have to wait until all her people were finished, that she couldnt let people from other buildings come in here and use her extractor until her people were finished and she didnt know if theyd be finished in time, it was getting late and there were a awful lot of people waiting and she had to close soon.

—Hubert Selby, Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn (1957), pp. 260-261

There are several online definitions of extractor that fit the specific sense of a laundry machine more advanced than a wringer, among them Infoplease’s “a centrifuge for spinning wet laundry so as to remove excess water”.