“He Neuer Makes His Walke Outright”

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The Knight in Chess

Of all the pieces on the chessboard, the most ancient is that queer duck, the knight. He is the only piece that can jump over other pieces—on his side or the enemy’s—to make a move or capture. His move can only be described as a four-square “L,” starting with one square left, right, up, or down—and then one square diagonally away from the starting point of the move. Or, look at the following illustration:

Possible Knight Moves

Just note that there could be other pieces on any of the squares that are “jumped over” and an enemy piece on the final square on which the knight lands. These are shown with green dots in the above illustration.

The following description of the knight in chess comes from Nicholas Breton’s The Chesse Play (1593):

The Knight is knowledge how to fight
against his Princes enimies,
He neuer makes his walke outright,
But leaps and skips, in wilie wise,
To take by sleight a traitrous foe,
Might slilie seek their ouerthrowe.

Over ther last several months, I have spent some time studying chess problems at Chess.Com. What I find particularly interesting is that, if the knight is in the vicinity, there is a good chance that the key move will be made by him, either checking the king or being sacrificed to allow for checkmates or winning piece grabs.

Tit for Tat

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Cumulus Clouds Over Los Angeles

In terms of the calendar, summer began on Thursday; but in terms of the actual weather, it began today with high humidity (76%), relatively high temperatures (around 80° Fahrenheit or 27° Celsius), and a parade of majestic cumulus clouds.

If I were to identify the “microseason” we are entering, I would say it is Mexican Monsoon Season, where we are the recipient of the northern edges of Mexico’s summer monsoons.

That’s a fair trade, I suppose, because the united States begins sending in late autumn its nortes, or “northers,” which wreak serious havoc along the Gulf Coast of Mexico. In November 1992, I have memories of two nasty northers which led to extensive flooding in both Campeche and Mérida. I remember wading to the Campeche bus station in knee-deep water to buy tickets for the next morning’s ADO first class bus to Mérida.

When the next morning dawned, I was surprised to see that most of the flooding had subsided considerably.

My Cities: Mérida

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On the Plaza Grande

The first place I went to outside the United States on my own was Yucatán in 1975. I have elsewhere described my feelings about landing in a strange tropical city at night. Something happened to me: I fell in love with the place and kept coming back, maybe eight or ten times in all. There was Calle 60, the Plaza Grande with its confidenciales, the 1901 Gran Hotel, Poc Chuc at the Restaurant Express, the refreshing fruit drinks at Jugos California, the nearness to hundreds of fascinating Maya ruins. And the Gulf of Mexico was only an hour away by bus.

Oh, it was hot and humid all right; but one learned to slow down and look out through the eyes of a lizard.

Calle 60 Street Corner Signs

Although Mérida is in Mexico, it is more of a Yucatec Maya city than a Mexican one. Most of the people are of Maya ancestry, and one frequently hears the Maya language spoken on the street. The city has fascinating museums of Maya civilization, art, and even music. You can find Mexican antojitos, but you are more likely to find Maya dishes like cochinita pibil, pavo en relleno negro, or pulpo en su tinta. You can even find hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza.

Lunch at Chaya Maya Near Parque Santa Lucia

Many of my favorite restaurants are gone, like Erik’s Mil Tortas, El Portico de Peregrino, and the Restaurant Express; but interesting new ones have opened up.

Even though the sidewalks are narrow amid the heavy auto traffic, Mérida is a great walking city. When I went last in January 2000, I walked so much that I got a horrible blister on my right foot and had to see a local doctor to clean it out and patch it up. I was in a little hotel (shown below) that was almost half a mile from the main square.

The Hotel Piazzetta at Parque de la Mejorada

When I checked out of the hotel to leave for the airport, the cute young daughter of the owner came out to the taxicab and gave me a friendly kiss. One remembers things like that in the long days, weeks, months, and years that follow.

Life and Mushrooms

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Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

In the last year of his life, Count Leo Tolstoy was subjected to unusual stresses. He was frequently ill with fevers, stomach ailments, constipation, and colds. His long-time marriage to Sofia Andreyevna was characterized by hysteria and mutual recriminations. Finally, his estate at Yasnaya Polyanka was constantly besieged with friends, relatives, petitioners, crackpots, and celebrity hounds. Yet, in his Diaries, he managed to keep his eyes on the main topics, as this entry on May 1, 1910, the last year of his life attests::

One of the main causes of suicides in the European world is the false teaching of the Christian Church about heaven and hell. People don’t believe in heaven and hell, but all the same the idea that life should be either heaven or hell is so firmly fixed in their heads that it doesn’t permit of a rational understanding of life as it is—namely neither heaven nor hell, but struggle, unceasing struggle, unceasing because life consists only of struggle; only not a Darwinian struggle of creatures and individuals, but a struggle of spiritual forces against their bodily restrictions. Life is a struggle of the soul against the body. If life is understood in this way, suicide is impossible, unnecessary and senseless. The good is only to be found in life. I seek the good; how then could I leave this life in order to attain the good? I seek mushrooms. Mushrooms are only to be found in the forest. How then can I leave the forest in order to find mushrooms?

Coporaque

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Poster Celebrating the 185th Anniversary of the Town

Now that I am retired and living on a fixed income, I like to remember some of the places I’ve been that impressed me. I spent only one night and part of two days in Coporaque, Peru near the north rim of Colca Canyon, but I wound up liking it more than Machu Picchu.

The area is split betweeen three ethnic groups: the Cabanas, the Kollawas (Collaguas), and the Ccaccatapay. The Canyon at its deepest point 3,400 meters or over 11,000 feet , almost twice the depth of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Curiously, it’s not even the deepest canyon in Peru: nearby Cotahuasi Canyon wins that honor.

What comes to mind when I remember my visit to the area is that it is surrounded by volcanoes, one of which—Sabancaya—is in a permanent state of eruption. The terracing for agriculture goes back to the Incas.

Agriculture Terraces Going Back to the Incas

I wouldn’t mind going back to Colca Canyon, even though its 11,000-foot altitude requires that I chew coca leaves to avoid keeling over. En route to the canyon, we went over a mountain pass at Patapampas where the altitude was over 15,000 feet (4,572 meters). As I stepped out of the van to check out the view, I started to fall flat on my face, but was prevented from doing so by our Peruvian guide.

The Little Ice Age in Holland

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Skating on the Ice in Holland

One of the exhibits I saw at the Getty Center last week was a collection of drawings depicting cold weather in Holland during the 17th century. According to the Getty website:

In the 17th century, frigid winters and unusually cool summers blanketed northern Europe in what became known as the Little Ice Age. Dutch artists depicted this persistent global cooling in scenes of daily activities like ice skating and fishing. Highlighting human vulnerability and resilience in the face of a changing climate, these works offer opportunities to reflect on our current environmental crises. This exhibition features works by Hendrick Avercamp and other Dutch artists of the 1600s.

It was during this Little Ice Age that the Greenland colony of Scandinavian and Icelandic colonists was abandoned at some point between 1350 and 1400.

Dutchmen Playing Ice Hockey

I have always been fond of Dutch art, and that was only reinforced when Martine and I visited Amsterdam more than twenty years ago. Uniquely, it seems, Dutch painting elevated the humdrum to the level of high art in the works of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, Bosch, and Bruegel.

As I looked at all the drawings of the Dutch enjoying themselves in what looked like wickedly cold weather, I wondered if the global warming that the news media talks about is a permanent feature, or just another of earth’s mysterious centuries-long cycles that we don’t understand. Not that we shouldn’t do everything in our power from making it worse than it is, but it does make one think.

“A Song on the End of the World”

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Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

Born in Lithuania, but known primarily as a Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz is perhaps my favorite Eastern European poet of the 20th century. In 1980, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here is one of my favorites among his works, written in Warsaw in 1944:

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

On Doubling Down

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The Term comes from Blackjack

If winning is everything, it is important not to ever appear to be a loser. In reporting about politics, one often hears about someone “doubling down.” What that usually means is that one takes a position and sticks with it come hell or high water.

Probably the best example is Donald Trump who after four years still claims that he won the 2020 election, and that the Democrats and Joe Biden cheated him out of the presidency.

The term comes from the card game Blackjack. According to Technopedia:

Double down in blackjack is an option where you add an extra bet, equal to the initial one, and you only receive one extra card in the hand.

This feature is available in most blackjack games and is required for optimal strategy. However, it can be a risky move since you stand to lose more money in the hand. That is why it is very important to know when to do it.

Eric Cartman

Other than Trump, the person on television most associated with the practice of doubling down on almost every issue is Eric Cartman on the cartoon show “South Park” Typically, he will take a wrong-headed stance and hold to it until he fails openly and utterly.

This type of behavior is associated with a fear of making mistakes. The fact that we are human means that we will often make mistakes. It is far better to own up to them and learn from them than to double down on a dubious position. As writer Neil Gaiman wrote:

hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.

IIn my life, I have always distrusted people who always claimed to be right. That’s just one of a thousand reasons I would never vote for Trump or any of his ilk.

An Architectural Marvel

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The Getty Center in Los Angeles

In general, I am not a big fan of contemporary architecture. I get tired of giant rectangles constructed of steel and glass. Ever since it opened its doors in 1997, I have come to love the Getty Center. (I also love the Getty Villa in Malibu, but I’ll save that for another time.)

Architect Richard Meier spent thirteen years designing the center, with the kind of attention to detail used to site ancient Egyptian or Meso-American temples. For instance, some of the buildings on the campus are oriented north/south. Others parallel the line of the I-405 freeway, which is 22.5° degrees off the north/south axis—which is exactly one-half of 90° and one-fourth of 180°.

The buildings are faced with blocks of travertine from Italy or aluminum tiles, both of which are 30 inches square (or 76.2 centimeters). Below is a close-up of one of the highly textured travertine walls:

Travertine Blocks Forming Getty Center Outer Wall

When I open the front door of my apartment in the morning to pick up my copy of the Los Angeles Times, I can actually see the Getty Center atop its hill some 4.5 miles (7.24 kilometers) as the crow flies. For more info about the Center’s design, click here.

In the Shadow of (Male) Genius

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French Sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

The 19th century was not a good time for a female artist of genius to enter the orbit of an older male genius. Can one ever escape that orbit? The above photo was taken of Camille Claudel at the age of nineteen, when she started working in Auguste Rodin’s sculpture studio.

Now there is no doubt that Rodin was one of the greatest sculptors who ever lived. I visited his museum on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris over twenty years ago. In fact, there was a whole room dedicated to the work of his young protegée.

But she deserved more. Today, I visited the Getty Center, where there was a traveling exhibit of Camille Claudel’s sculpture. Seen by itself, it was nothing short of amazing.

“The Age of Maturity” (1902)

There is something particularly poignant about Claudel’s female nudes. I was particularly struck by the pleading figures such as the nude in “The Age of Maturity” (above). Another impressive nude appears below:

“Wounded Niobid” (1907)

There was also something wounded about poor Camille. Around the time of the above sculpture, she appeared to be suffering from mental illness. In fact, in 1913, her younger brother, the famous French author Paul Claudel, had her committed to an insane asylum, where she lived out the last thirty years of her life. Was she in fact mentally ill? Some say yes and some say no. In any case, it is a tragedy considering what a great artist she was.

In 1988, a film of her life called Camille Claudel was made in France by Bruno Nuytten, starring the lovely Isabelle Adjani as Camille. When I first saw it years ago, that was the first time I had heard of her. Now, with this exhibit at the Getty Center, I think she is one of the all time greatest sculptors whose work I have ever seen.