Thinking about Bill Walton

I loved watching college basketball games on TV when Bill Walton was on the broadcast team. Not only did he educate me about basketball games, he also educated me about life. That's just how his mind worked. Even if I wasn't terribly interested in the particular game being broadcast, if Bill was on the air I was glued to the screen.

Now, of course, there is no more Pac-12 conference, and as a result I haven't paid much attention to college basketball in a while.

And, worse, now Bill Walton isn't around anymore.

Here's a wonderful article about another side of Bill Walton's life: Bill Walton remembered by Grateful Dead members: ‘Biggest Deadhead in the world’.

It's easy to remember when I saw Bill Walton at shows. It happened at least half a dozen times in my life. Of course, you never needed much assistance to see him, he stood out when he stood up. It was always interesting that he wasn't just sitting in some special VIP area or backstage with the band (though he did those things too); he also just loved coming out into the audience and being with the rest of us.

As Bill the Drummer says, "That was a happy place for him".

Great backpacking essay

Death of the Hiker is a wonderful essay published recently by Leyton Cassidy, who I've never read before.

It's about backpacking. More specifically, it's about a backpacking trip gone wrong. In a foreign country. In the Alps. On a trail you've never been on before. In a rainstorm. In the dark. Alone.

I've definitely had some of those experiences. I've been on backpacking trips gone wrong, on trails I've never been on before, in a rainstorm.

Happily, though, I've never been alone. I've thought about whether I would ever go backpacking alone. I've thought about it on-and-off over the 50+ years of my life during which I've gone backpacking. I've never gone backpacking alone, although curiously the older I get, the more likely I think it might be, as the people that I regularly go backpacking with get older themselves, and slowly, one by one, withdraw from the hiking group that I belong to.

Leaving only us stalwarts^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlunatics.

Cassidy's trip ends well, with some important lessons: did you tell anyone where you went? have you discussed, considered, rehearsed what you would do if the trip went wrong?

She says:

So how did I get here? Ignoring the weather forecast with a damp, useless map from some random, unvetted travel company? Why did my brain block out the risks? Why had there not been even a tremor of doubt through the fantasies of being some new Walt Whitman-Cheryl Strayed hybrid?

Nowadays I think a lot about things and how they go wrong.

It's actually my job; my company pays me a lot of money to sit around and think about how things could fail.

I'm better at thinking about how computer programs could fail, than at thinking about how backpacking trips could fail.

But practice is crucial in this sort of thinking, so I'm glad to take some time out of my day and think about how backpacking trips could go wrong.

The Searcher: a very short review

I've been a great fan of Tana French for many years, but recently I had not been keeping up with her latest work. Then rather unexpectedly I re-discovered her and picked up The Searcher.

And immediately I was transported back into her world, and how glad I am to be reading her work again!

The Searcher is different in various ways from her previous work. It's much more rural, set in an utterly quiet place somewhere in west Ireland, perhaps County Mayo or County Galway, as opposed to much of her earlier work which was set in and around Dublin.

And it's different in another way: it features an expat Yankee named Cal Hooper, recently relocated to Ireland after retiring from active police work in Chicago.

And my oh my is Cal a fish out of water! A lot of the joy of the book is just following along with Cal as he learns about a different place and a different culture.

On sunny days they go back to the desk, but sunny days are getting scarcer as September runs itself down. More and more often, rain whips the house, and wind packs sodden eaves at the bases of walls and hedges. The squirrels are in hoarding frenzy. Mart announces that this means a bastard of a winter ahead, and provides dramatic accounts of years when the townland was cut off for weeks and people froze to death in their own homes, although Cal fails to be properly impressed. "I'm used to Chicago," he reminds Mart. "We don't call it cold until our eyelashes freeze."

"Different kind of cold," Mart informs him. "This one's sneaky. You wouldn't feel it coming, not till it's got you."

[ An aside: I don't think I'd ever heard the word "townland" before. ]

Now, don't get me wrong! This is a Tana French novel, so there's a crime, and there is an investigator, and there are various people in and around the event who each have their own stories, their own agendas, their own perspectives to reveal. And there's suspense, and conflict, and drama all around.

And, too, as every Tana French novel does, The Searcher has shocking plot twists, and races against time, and setbacks and simple human mistakes, and everything you've come to expect from her.

And just like the Irish country cold weather, you won't feel it coming, not till it's got you.

But if you're like me, you'll be plenty happy enough just to be riding along in her world, listening to the conversations, gazing at the landscape, and finding that you're fascinated by each page and can't wait to turn to the next page.

As long as she keeps writing books, I promise not to wait so long before reading her next ones.

Back to grey clouds, at least for now.

Locally-focused web site The Alameda Post reports: City Halts Climate Experiment: University of Washington cloud brightening experiment on hold while Alameda investigates impact

The City of Alameda has instructed the University of Washington (UW) to halt the cloud brightening experiment that it was conducting in partnership with the USS Hornet Sea, Air, & Space Museum.

Honestly it seems like a big to-do about nothing, the article seems to describe a bureaucratic snafu about whether such-and-such a permit is required.

My wife can tell you all about the joys of trying to figure out from the City of Alameda whether or not such-and-such a permit is required.

The joys of small town living, even in an urban area like this.

Oh, well. After all, it wouldn't be "May Gray" or "June Gloom" without the gray morning clouds that we so routinely experience here.

We'll have to wait a little longer for our clouds to become brighter, it appears.