South Pacific in the North Pacific?

In the Broadway musical “South Pacific,” one of the main characters laments his inability to declare his love for the young, South Pacific island girl with whom he has been sleeping at night. Lieutenant Cable sings out that:

You’ve got to be carefully taught to hate and fear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught from year to year.
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it is too late -
Before you are six, or seven, or eight -
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

In the song, Cable is lamenting his own upbringing that led him to be unable to experience the joy he knows is fully within his grasp, if only he could let go of his prejudices and relate to his mistress on more than a purely physical level.

Coming from a relatively liberal household, I always found it strange when I heard people in women’s studies departments, minority rights groups, and other such organizations screaming and protesting about how prevalent discrimination is. I’d never seen it, and I was pretty sure that they’d never seen it either. I mean, where are all of these people who teach their young children to hate like this? Aside from the occasional Fred Phelps or other extremist, I thought those people just weren’t around anymore.

This past weekend, my brother and I looked after our young sister-in-law, who is in elementary school. As we were driving with her down the highway, my brother commented on the license plate on a vehicle in front of us (always seizing on an opportunity to try to teach her something) and pointed out to our young sister-in-law that it was from ‘Alberta.’ I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she knew that Alberta was in Canada, but then pointed out that she didn’t like Canadians.

Filled with curiosity, my brother asked why she didn’t like Canadians, she said that Canadians were the world’s second-worst drivers - beaten out only by “Orientals.” That statement met my brother and I with a heavy silence for a few minutes. Not only does our sister-in-law know nothing about driving (she’s still in a car-seat, for crying out loud!), but she doesn’t even know what an “Oriental” is. She asked my brother and I (both white-as-white-can-be boys from the Central Plains) if we were “Orientals.”

Now I’m left wondering just how carefully taught she was.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Ostensibly with a title like this, I ought to be discussing something to do with Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison. However much I like Rex Harrison, this brief vignette concerning my recent activities has nothing to do with him. Rather, the words of the title sum up my feelings regarding my first real venture out into the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

A week past, my brother and I accompanied one of my brother’s friends on a “leisurely” walk through the woods. That’s how my brother described it to me, anyhow - “leisurely.” When he proposed getting me out into the wilderness, he suggested that we go walk on this small trail that circles a nearby lake. What he neglected to mention was that the lake was found near the top of a mountain, and was only accessible via an eight-mile, up-mountain hike over loose gravel and ice, with thirty foot drops off one side of the trail. I almost think the eight miles coming down were worse than the eight going up.

When we started out, it was barely light outside, and when we finished the hike, it was almost time for dinner. When I went to bed that night, I was fairly sure that I was in more physical pain than I’d ever been in before. I had to reassess that thought when I woke up the next morning, and I had plenty of time to reassess it since it took me the better part of a half-hour to manage to figure out how to get out of my bed. Isn’t somebody supposed to warn me that I’m going to go into some kind of stiffened posture overnight? Sigh.

Despite the grueling pace my brother set and the searing sensations in every muscle below my waist, once we got up near the tree-line, some nice vistas opened up exposing a view that I would have liked to stop to savor for a short while. I’m not sure the hike was worth the view, but to save everyone else the trouble of having to claw their way up a steep mountainside for five hours to see it, I’ve provided one of my pictures here.

This picture was taken on one of those vistas, looking toward the West (I think). Don't let the picture fool you, the lowest area you can see on the picture is still about halfway up the mountain. I apologize for the low-quality image. I normally shoot at a 1600 x 1200 digitial resolution, and shrinking it down caused a number of compression artifacts I didn't care enough to fix.