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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>
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<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">Oh yes Happy Birthday!
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">In about a month there's another
milestone of Glenn Gould's achievements. Our obvious pilgrimage is to
Toronto, but the cusp of October/November is the annual polar bear migration
through Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson Bay, and the train trip from Winnipeg --
2 1/2 days in each direction through the unimaginably vast wilderness -- was the
trip of the remarkable CBC radio documentary "The Idea of North."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">I took the trip. You should, too.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">And now for a new and sad reason.
While I would have wished that Glenn Gould were with us to celebrate his
78th birthday, if he had to leave us early, it has spared him something he never
suspected, and my trip never hinted at.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">These are likely the last years of
polar bears in the wild, our last chance to see the world's largest and most
successful land predator in the circumpolar niche in which it fit so perfectly.
In the '70s, the circumpolar nations imposed important restrictions on the ways
humans hunt polar bears, and for a few decades we believed this human
initiative had secured their place in the wild. That belief appears to have been
tragically naive and inaccurate. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">As the icecap melts and these
remarkable swimmers drown trying to make it to an ice cake miles beyond even
their stamina -- they'll eat anything, but hunting seals on the
icepack is their evolved specialty -- the next and final phase of polar
bears will be in our zoos. I admire our finer modern zoos. But we have
failed in our stewardship of the world's animals when there is no place left for
them but zoos.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">Here, in a translation by D.C.
Barranco, is what Rainer Maria Rilke saw and felt of a caged panther at
the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM>From seeing only bars,
his seeing is exhausted.<BR>It holds nothing, nothing
more.</EM></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3
face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM></EM></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM>To him, the world is
bars,<BR>100,000 bars, and behind the bars, nothing.</EM></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3
face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM></EM></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM>The lithe swinging of
his rhythmic, easy stride<BR>circles an inner hub -- a dance of
energy,<BR>‘round a central point.</EM></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3
face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM></EM></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM>Inside, a gigantic
Will stands stunned and numb.</EM></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3
face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM></EM></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM>Only, at times, the
curtains rise.</EM></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT
face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><STRONG><EM></EM></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Plantagenet Cherokee"><FONT size=3><STRONG><EM>Silently, a
vision enters,<BR>slips though the focused silence of his shoulders,<BR>reaches
his heart,<BR>and dies.</EM></STRONG> <BR></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">Even in a
panther's healthiest wild environment, it's unlikely, in a lifetime of
trying, that you'll ever see one -- the next day's pawprints are the best gift a
panther might give you. (Second best gift: skat.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">But at the end of the
wonderful train trip a month from now, you can (usually safely) be just a
meter from the snout of a male adolescent. They're waiting for the Bay
icepack to freeze, so they can hunt seals. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">When these quite brilliant
animals know they have no chance to catch you, they wrestle each other and
seem quite bored and uninterested in you.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">If you're foolish enough to give
them the slightest chance, you will, briefly, see an entirely different
polar bear. Inuit know that while they hunt the polar bear, the polar
bear thinks it's hunting Inuit, and most of the time the polar bear was
right.</FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">By all means, drag a child or
three along. This will thrust living witness of polar bears in the wild to
the end of our century.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">This invitation to take GG's train
ride has seemed very misleadingly downbeat and somber. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">For me, it was the Adventure of a
Lifetime, non-stop Thrills & Fun from the moment I boarded the train in
Toronto to the moment I returned to Toronto. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">And the human contact -- the part
of the Adventure Glenn Gould composed for "The Idea of North" -- well, you ain't
never been among such interesting, amazing human beings before, both the
Canadian locals, Euros and First Peoples, and travellers from every corner of
Earth. Bring every language you can limp along in, and prepare to learn entirely
new ones, and their entirely new alphabets.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">At the hardest places to
reach, you always find the most interesting people. You might find
yourself sitting next to -- well, Glenn Gould! Deep in the night I had the vivid
sensation of sitting next to him. We were both grinning from ear to ear, and he
was humming.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">At night on the return, I was
invited to ride in the engine, and when we approached an at-grade crossing,
the engineer told me to toot the horn.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">Happy Birthday!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4 face="Plantagenet Cherokee">Bob</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Der Panther</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe<BR>so müd geworden,
dass er nichts mehr hält.<BR>Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe<BR>und hinter
tausend Stäben keine Welt.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,<BR>der sich im
allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,<BR>ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,<BR>in
der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille<BR>sich lautlos
auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,<BR>geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille
-<BR>und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><BR><FONT size=3>-- Rainer Maria Rilke, 6.11.1902, Paris
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