October 2021

Books read:

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Weather by Jenny Offill
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

Trails walked:

Gem Lake and Balanced Rock near Estes Park, CO (October 15th)
Twin Sisters peak near Estes Park, CO (October 20th)
Wheeler Peak near Taos, NM (October 24th)

Song(s) of the month – 7 Songs by Josh Ritter:

Kathleen
Harrisburg
The Curse
To the Dogs or Whoever
The Temptation of Adam
New Lover
Thin Blue Flame

Scientist Spotlight – Ben Santer – Climate Scientist

October Summary: For the first couple of weeks of this month, I was called into full-time grandson babysitting duties due to illness. Of course, part of those two weeks I ended up getting sick also. Even though it was a tough way to start the fall season, I enjoyed bonding even more with our grandson; and when they are really sick they cuddle a LOT!

I suppose this could go into explaining the relatively short list of books and hikes for this month, but I can’t rule out the possibility that playoff baseball also had an impact. Even though baseball seems to be a dying sport, I still love it and the playoffs are normally filled with tension and excitement as every pitch and every play can make a difference in the outcome. The World Series is in progress as I write this. I don’t have a favorite team in the playoffs but was happy to see the Dodgers get eliminated. It doesn’t seem right to me that a team can buy its way to a championship; there are so many purchased All-Stars and likely Hall of Famers on the team that it’s really surprising they didn’t win it all, even with the injuries they suffered. I suppose baseball could use some reform in this area; although for many (but not all) young people, baseball needs complete reformation. The pace is too slow for today’s fast paced, "I want it NOW", lifestyle. Maybe that’s why I like it so much, and why I prefer novels to movies and hiking to running or skiing; the slow pace suits me.

The Atlanta Braves are in the Series and there has been some controversy about their fans doing "the chop" while chanting some sort of war chant. I think they all do it because it's fun for them and possibly intimidating for the opposition, not out of any disrespect. Some people find it offensive that a bunch of mainly white people are pretending to be holding a chopping tomahawk while chanting. Honestly, I've been annoyed by this gimmick for years (the Kansas City Chiefs use the same gesture) in much the same way I'm annoyed by "the wave" which was cute for one minute in history but is really old now. I have mixed feelings about the current ideology that is being termed "cancel culture." I certainly believe that our country's history has been white washed for years and that we need to do a better job of educating our youth in this area and telling the stories of those who were persecuted and abused during the growth of this country. But I also believe we need to see that times have changed significantly as we've become more aware and enlightened (well, most of us). Do we ban all Mark Twain books due to his liberal use of the "N" word? Do we ban Walt Whitman poems because he was a racist (like most white men were in his day)? Which statues do we tear down? All white men? There were some pretty brutal Native Americans back then also (not only to the white people but also to other Native tribal members). Life was generally brutal back then compared to now. Do my views on this topic even matter since I'm an old white guy? Can white people write about the black experience or vice versa? I thought David Simon did a pretty good job of depicting the black life in the hood in Baltimore, but did Spike Lee do a better job of depicting black life in New York City? I wish I knew how to "do the right thing." I'm not sure there is a "black and white" answer to all of this. I wish there was. Books and essays are being written about all this, so I'm not going to solve it in a one paragraph blog post. But I think that my reading has helped me to see the world in a more honest view, and that's all I can ask of myself for now.

I have to say that so far, I’ve enjoyed the beauty of Colorado more in the fall than I did the winter, spring, or summer. All of the seasons are beautiful up here, but this fall has been wonderful. The trees are blazing with color, the mountains have been dusted with snow, and the air is crisp and clear. I know that winter is coming but based on our experience last winter there will be many warm sunny days mixed in with the cold and windy winter storms. This month I've read a historical novel about the brutal Dominican Republic regime of Rafael Trujillo, a brilliant novel about how we worry about the future of our planet and the times we live in, and a book about our brain on music. My hiking has taken me to the eastern stretches of Rocky Mountain National Park and to the highest point in New Mexico. Enjoy this months' blog!

Scientist Spotlight: Ben Santer –

Centuries ago, some scientists would be threatened with harm or their lives for the science they discovered. Luckily we no longer live in those times….or do we? Ben Santer is a climate scientist who, after writing in the 1995 IPCC report that climate change is caused by humans, became a target for climate change deniers. His life and that of his family was threatened then and continues to be. That’s how powerful and nefarious the disinformation machine is. You see it now with covid vaccines and masking; and climate scientists continue to be besieged by nasty emails and phone calls to their universities asking for their removal or taking away their funding. Here’s a short 7-minute video of various climate scientists talking about these attacks on their credibility that seem to be part of the disinformation playbook (Ben Santer and Katherine Hayhoe show up in this video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ZS0mgIfs4

Ben Santer retired from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory this October, after nearly 30 years of groundbreaking work on establishing the fingerprints of human caused global warming. Like Katherine Hayhoe, my August 2021 Scientist Spotlight, Santer is not only a climate scientist, but also an excellent communicator. Santer holds a Ph.D. in Climatology from the University of East Anglia, England. After completion of his Ph.D. in 1987, he spent five years at the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, where he worked on the development and application of climate fingerprinting methods. In 1992, Santer joined LLNL’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison. Santer served as convening lead author of the climate-change detection and attribution chapter of the 1995 IPCC report. His awards include the Norbert Gerbier–MUMM International Award (1998), a MacArthur Fellowship (1998), the U.S. Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award (2002), a Distinguished Scientist Fellowship from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (2005), a Fellowship of the American Geophysical Union (2011), and membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2011).

Santer had this to say recently in a commentary he wrote for Yale Climate Connections: “I have one final lesson learned from the past 29 years. My time at LLNL taught me that scientific understanding is always under attack by powerful forces of unreason. Such attacks cause great harm. They must be opposed. Demonizing science and scientists is dangerous for our health and for the health of our planet. When ignorance and alternative facts are elevated in public discourse, it’s critically important for scientists to speak science to power. To declare in public what they’ve learned, how they’ve learned it, and why that understanding matters. Remaining silent is not an option when well tested science is presented as unsettled or incorrectly dismissed as a hoax. I’m proud of the fact that in my 29 years at LLNL, I defended LLNL’s technical work on climate fingerprinting, even when such defense was politically inconvenient. I did not hide. I did not remain silent. I stood behind IPCC findings of a “discernible human influence on global climate”. I stood behind LLNL’s findings of ubiquitous human fingerprints in the climate system.”

If you have a spare 35 minutes and would like to learn more technical details of human fingerprinting, watch this full interview with Ben Santer from 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrUYQhGzT8

Song(s) of the month: Josh Ritter –

I’ve had some Josh Ritter songs on my playlist for a few years, but I had never delved into his work until recently. He’s brilliant, and deep. I’ve read of comparisons to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits. All are valid comparisons. He writes thoughtful songs about love, war, history, and the future. I’ve not been to see him live yet, but if his live albums are any indication, his shows are great. Hopefully soon. There are so many words to his songs that I have no idea how he remembers them all (like Dylan I guess).

Mark Deming wrote of Ritter’s musical beginning as follows: “Born in Idaho, Ritter bought his first guitar after hearing the Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash classic "The Girl from the North Country." While attending college in Oberlin, Ohio, Ritter got his first taste of the music of Leonard Cohen and Gillian Welch; he instantly fell in love with their songs and dropped his neuroscience major in favor of the pursuit of music.”

Here are 7 songs of many that I find brilliant by Ritter, along with YouTube links to watch and listen:

Kathleen: A song about a girl. The narrator is in love with this girl who he only drives home after a party. Sample lyrics: Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied

https://youtu.be/2Wbqlok2GbE

Harrisburg: A pounding rhythmic beat with a story. Sample lyrics: Slipped like a shadow from the family he made/In a little white house by the woods/Dropped the kids at the mission, with a rose for the virgin/She knew he was gone for good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIG3WCGBGvQ

The Curse: A beautiful love song that would seem corny by anyone else. This puppet version video of the song is mesmerizing. Sample lyrics: He opens his eyes, falls in love at first sight/With the girl in the doorway/What beautiful lines, how full of life/After thousands of years what a face to wake up to

https://youtu.be/KXBI2_zH9Js

To the Dogs or Whoever: Fast paced song that seems to go through a who’s who of history while trying to figure out if this love is real or something fleeting. Sample lyrics: Joan never cared about the in-betweens/Combed her hair with a blade did the Maid of Orleans/Said Christ walked on water we can wade through the war/You don't need to tell me who the fire is for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rcUsFatXw4

The Temptation of Adam: A song about love, The Bomb, and World War III. Adam is probably also meant to be Atom. Sample lyrics: I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I./Would we ever really care the world had ended/You could hold me here forever like you're holding me tonight/I look at that great big red button and I'm tempted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4wtNGR4Nnk

New Lover: Brutally honest tale of recovering from a deep old love, with a bit of Dylan’s Positively 4th Street sentimentality thrown in, such as these lines: But if you're sad and you are lonesome and you've got nobody true/I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me happy too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwFPq8EItko

Thin Blue Flame: Considered his masterpiece by some, this song is full of poetry and apocalyptic imagery. Sample lyrics: Borders soft with refugees/Streets swimming with amputees/It's a Bible or a bullet they put over your heart/It's getting harder and harder to tell them apart/Days are nights and the nights are long/Beating hearts blossom into walking bombs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1iMPd1Y0o

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez –

How did I not know about this incredible novel? How did I not know the true story of the Mirabal sisters? In 1999 (five years after the novel was published) the United Nations named November 25th as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. They chose that date because on that date in 1960 three of the Mirabal sisters and their driver were brutally murdered by the dictatorial government of the Rafael Trujillo-led Dominican Republic. They were returning from visiting their husbands who were in jail as political prisoners and the ambush was made to look like an accident on a steep mountain road.

Julia Alvarez was the perfect author for this novel. She is Dominican and her father was in the underground movement against the Trujillo government; a government that tortured and killed civilians…up to 50,000 killed or missing by some estimates. The international community, including the US, did little to stop him mainly because of the paranoid red scare at the time, including what was happening in Cuba. Alvarez was also the perfect author because she knew the people of the Dominican Republic and she’s wonderful at describing them. She wrote the book as a novel and “invented” the background stories of the sisters (based on historical evidence). The surviving sister, Dede, says that the novel perfectly captured the spirit of her sisters.

It’s a story of a family, typical of the middle class in the Dominican Republic at the time, who must decide if they are to get involved in political revolution; that decision could cost them their livelihood or their lives, they were aware. Not all family members made that decision. It’s a fascinating look into what causes some people to act on their beliefs and others not to; and how being surrounded by injustice sometimes throws you into acting even when you really have no desire. It’s a great story and I learned a lot about a time and place in history in which most people outside of the Dominican Republic were never aware. How many stories like this are taking place around the world even today?

Here are some lines from the book I found interesting:

A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn’t want to be the only one left to tell their story.

…their only son had died a week after he was born. And just three years ago, Maria Teresa was born a girl instead of a boy.

When we got to school that fall, we were issued new history textbooks with a picture of you-know-who embossed on the cover so even a blind person could tell who the lies were all about.

Instantly, I feel ashamed of myself. I see now how easily it happens. You give in on little things, and soon you’re serving in his government, marching in his parades, sleeping in his bed.

It was unfair, I wasn’t letting him become a man. But I stood firm. I’d rather have him stay alive, a boy forever, than be a man dead in the ground.

All at once, I lost my home, my husband, my son, my peace of mind. But after a couple of weeks living at Mama’s, I got used to the sorrows heaped upon my heart.

…we are raising savages with all our new theories about talking, not spanking. Fighting tyrants and meanwhile creating little ones.

I have to admit the more time I spend with them, the less I care what they’ve done or where they come from. What matters is the quality of a person. What someone is inside themselves.

I am sitting up in my bunk, writing my last entry in the space left, and sobbing in the quiet way you learn in prison so you don’t add to anyone else’s grief.

Once she asked me, “How do you stay so trim?” Her eyes ran over my figure in an appraising way. “Prison,” I said flatly. She didn’t mention my figure again.

“The nightmare is over, Dede. Look at what the girls have done.” He gestures expansively. He means the free elections, bad presidents now put in power properly, not by army tanks.

Gem Lake and Balanced Rock –

A crisp 36-degree sunny day for this fall hike so it was puffy jacket, gloves, and beanie weather. Gem Lake is a very popular trail that is officially in Rocky Mountain National Park, but you don’t have to pass any entrance station to get to the trailhead which is located on the outskirts of Estes Park. It’s 1.7 miles and 1,000 feet of elevation gain to Gem Lake so it’s not a walk in the park, but there are LOTS of people on this trail which is understandable given its proximity to town and the incredible views you have on the short walk. Great views of Longs Peak and Estes Park greet you at nearly every turn. The lake itself is tiny (more of a large pond) and is bordered by granite cliffs at nearly 9,000 feet elevation. It’s tough to get a photo without any people in it, but I think I managed one quickly while I had the chance. There are many more beautiful lakes in RMNP so don’t have high expectations for this one (it’s really the views on the way up that make it a great hike). Luckily this wasn’t my final destination as I was headed for Balanced Rock, another 2 miles further. The walk to Balanced Rock was more of an up and down walk through the forest with occasional views of the snow-capped Mummy Range to the west. Balanced Rock looked exactly what you’d expect. In Arizona there are many balanced rock formations, even in the big city of Phoenix, but it was nice to see this in the middle of the mountains in Colorado, a sort of friendly reminder of my Arizona hiking days. After trying in vain to get a photo of the rock with a better background, I stopped for lunch and then headed back to the trailhead. A nice 8 mile walk after a two week break from hiking due to babysitting duties and a stomach virus.

Mid October was a bit late for leaf peeping, although there were a few aspens still changing. By the way, Google Maps doesn’t have correct directions for the trailhead. The actual trailhead is called Lumpy Ridge Trailhead, and this is what you should enter for directions. Entering Gem Lake Trailhead takes you to a neighborhood road called Chasm Drive and there are signs everywhere saying things like “GPS is wrong, go back ½ mile to Lumpy Ridge”. I’m sure the homeowners here are tired of lost tourists circling around their neighborhood looking for the trail.

Informative sign at the trailhead

A few trees still changing color

Nice views of Longs Peak on the way up

Gem Lake partially frozen

Tree art or tree porn?

Trail art - fighting dragons?

Trail art

Views of the Mummy Range on the way to Balanced Rock

Balanced Rock

Nice views above the rock

Balanced Rock from below

Lunch Spot

Gem Lake on the way back

Great views on the way back to the car

Views

Sun bore a hole in this rock?

Picasso Rock

Color and views

I took this on a drive through the park after my hike

Weather by Jenny Offill –

Weather was named by the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and other publications as one of the best books of 2020, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. I had reviewed Offill’s Dept. of Speculation in my July 2020 blog and was amazed by how it was written and how interesting it was to read it. So I had to read another one by this brilliant author and I was just as enthralled. The writing style is similar, a story pieced together, using disparate ideas, paragraphs, quotes, emails, etc. I think that the way she writes is to organize her myriad thoughts on index cards and then organize those cards into some sort of order and in some incredible way, they end up telling a story. These incredible sentences and paragraphs could stand on their own as famous quotes or ideas.

Weather tells the story of Lizzie, a college librarian who realizes the world is in crisis with climate change but has so many things to deal with that she can’t fall into desperation and apathy (even though she has read all the prepper manuals on how to deal with disaster). Her husband and child have needs, her recovering drug addict brother just had a baby and is flailing, and she has been tasked with answering fan email for a climate podcast. As Jake Cline in the Washington Post said in his review of the book: “Weather is too sharp a book to allow for pessimism or apathy. There is simply too much to be done, and there are too many people to care for and about, the novel argues, to not work through our deepest fears and fight our way past this crisis.”

It's incredible and frightening and hopeful and funny and brilliant. Here are some lines:

There is a heroic tower of folded things on the table. I spot my favorite shirt, my least depressing underwear. I go into the bedroom and change into them. Now I am a brand-new person.

Ten blocks. I’m walking too fast, pulling Eli along with me. Wrong living, I know, I know, but it’s a long line at the office if he’s late.

It’s a slow day today so I help her set up for class. Cushions for the strong, chairs for the weak. “You should stay,” she always tells me, but I never do. Not sure where to sit.

A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person. He was just a kid, so I let it go. And now, years, later, I probably only think of it, I don’t know, once or twice a day…

..the mail has been skewing evangelical lately. Lots of questions about the Rapture mixed in with the ones about wind turbines and carbon taxes.

…there is powdered bee pollen in it too and this allegedly protects the drinker from all manner of ruinous things.

I remind myself (as I often do) never to become so addicted to drugs or alcohol that I’m not allowed to use them.

She gave us a formula: suffering = pain + resistance

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “you are mad, you are not like us.”

…if climate departure happens in New York when predicted, Eli and Iris could--- “Do you really think you can protect them? In 2047?” Sylvia asks. I look at her. Because until this moment, I did, I did somehow think this. She orders another drink. “Then become rich, very, very rich,”….

He has a slight accent and I wonder if he comes from some distant country where librarians are held in high esteem.

It is important to be on the alert for “the decisive moment,” says the man next to me who is talking to his date. I agree. The only difference is that he is talking about twentieth-century photography and I am talking about twenty-first-century everything.

“What are your most useful skills?” “People think I’m funny, I know how to tell a story in a brisk, winning way. I try not to go on much about my discarded ambitions or how I hate hippies and the rich.”

She told me her plan is to drive to the clinic at the university four hours away. People come from much farther, from miles and miles away, so many that when you get there, there is a lottery system to see who gets to have their pain taken away. America is the name of this place where you can win big.

We avoid each other now. Ever since I told her I would not listen to her hate.

I asked her once what I could do, how I could (get my son ready for climate change impact). It would be good if he had some skills, she said. And of course, no children.

Twin Sisters Peak –

I can see Twin Sisters peaks from my backyard and have been wanting to climb them. A cool, crisp, and breezy October day provided the perfect opportunity. It was 37 degrees as I headed up the trail at around 10:30am. There hadn’t been any storms recently, so I didn’t need micro spikes as there were only very short sections of ice. It’s uphill the entire way, starting at around 9,100 feet and ending at around 11,400 feet in 3.5 miles each way. The first 3 miles are through lodgepole pine forest with occasional views of Long’s Peak popping up between the trees (actually at around 1.5 miles you get a very clear view as you pass through a rockslide area – this would be a great place to turn around if you want a shorter hike). The trail winds its way in and out of the National Park boundary in this obviously annexed central-eastern portion of the park just east of Lily Lake. At the 3-mile mark you emerge from the trees and the views become ever greater as you rise in elevation. The wind started kicking up now without the trees to protect me. The trail through the tundra here is very easy to follow as the path has been well worn. At around 3.4 miles I reached a saddle and a weather station. From here to the tallest peak, it was a short scramble and some bouldering to get to the top. The wind was howling up here. Not enough to knock me over, but enough to make my time up here very short. There were three other people on top, so I didn’t have it to myself, but at least it wasn’t crowded. And the views of Longs Peak are stupendous! Views in every direction are great, but this is the best view I’ve had of Longs. I honestly couldn’t tell which of the other peaks was the other twin sister (it’s not obvious from the various reports I’ve read). So, I satisfied myself with being on the highest point in the immediate vicinity. The walk back to my car was easy and quick.

The hike begins on an old jeep road

Informative sign

Some nice views of Meeker, Longs, and Lady Washington peaks on the way up

Nice views to the west

Trail art - human made petrified wood?

Above the tree line in the tundra the trail was still easy to follow

Tundra, forest, views

Weather station

Rock Scramble to get to the peak on the left

Perfect views of Meeker, Longs, and Lady Washington Peaks

Artsy black and white shot

Views to the west from on top

Panorama from on top

Me up top just long enough to snap a few photos before freezing

Views

Close up

Trail art with a view

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks –

I’ve always wondered why it is that music seems so much more important to some people than others. It’s always been important to me and many times it lifts me when nothing else can. Sometimes when I’m (badly) playing my guitar or even just listening to some of my favorite songs, I can drift off into a space that feels special and a bit euphoric. This book didn’t really answer why some are more moved than others by music, but it provides some hints.

Selected as one of the best books of 2007 by The Washington Post, Musicophilia describes the many ways in which music can positively and negatively impact the human brain. Sacks was a British neurologist, naturalist, science historian, and writer. He was most famous for his book Awakenings which was adapted into an award-winning movie with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. Awakenings was about Sacks’ work in helping patients come out of a coma in which they had been in for many years due to an encephalitis epidemic.

In Musicophilia Sacks describes how music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something (advertising) or remind us of pleasant (or unpleasant) memories from our past and can lift us out of depression. Music seems to occupy more (and different) areas of our brain which explains why people dealing with various neurological conditions like amnesia, Parkinson’s, and dementia are able to use and appreciate music when language or memory doesn’t seem to come to them. Various case studies are presented like the man who was struck by lightening and became a pianist even though he had no musical inclinations before this; and children with Williams Syndrome whose IQs were around 60 but were able to memorize and play thousands of songs with perfection; and the man whose memory only lasts 7 seconds for all things except music.

There are some negative aspects to music such as catchy tunes (or earworms/brainworms) that get stuck in our head for an annoyingly long time, and how some people have nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day, and even some people who suffer a condition called amusia who hear music as a noisy clattering of pots and pans. The brain is an amazing organ, and this book just adds to that impression. Here are a few notes from the book that I found interesting:

Pinker (and others) feel that our musical powers—some of them, at least—are made possible by using, or recruiting, or coopting brain systems that have already developed for other purposes. This might go with the fact that there is no single “music center” in the human brain, but the involvement of a dozen scattered networks, throughout the brain.

Half of us are plugged into iPods, immersed in day long concerts of our own choosing, virtually oblivious to the environment—and for those who are not plugged in there is nonstop music, unavoidable and often of deafening intensity, in restaurants, bars, shops, and gyms. This barrage of music puts a certain strain on our exquisitely sensitive auditory systems, which cannot be overloaded without dire consequences. One such consequence is the ever-increasing prevalence of serious hearing loss, even among young people, and particularly among musicians. Another is the omnipresence of annoyingly catchy tunes, the brainworms that arrive unbidden and leave only in their own time—catchy tunes that may, in fact, be no more than advertisements for toothpaste but are, neurologically, completely irresistible.

…what is beyond dispute is the effect of intensive early musical training on the young, plastic brain.

..some studies estimate that about 50 percent of children born blind or blinded in infancy have absolute pitch.

For students who had begun musical training between ages 4 and 5 approximately 60% of the Chinese (tonal language) students met the criterion for absolute pitch, while only about 14% of the US (nontonal language) speakers met the criterion.

One’s ear, one’s cochlea, cannot improve as one gets older, but as Jacob L. clearly demonstrated, the brain itself can improve its ability to make use of whatever auditory information it has.

One sixty-seven-year-old man, aphasic (unable to speak) for eighteen months—he could only produce meaningless grunts, and had received three months of speech therapy without effect—started to produce words two days after beginning melodic intonation therapy; in two weeks, he had an effective vocabulary of a hundred words and at six weeks, he could carry on” short, meaningful conversations.”

Anthony Storr, in his excellent book Music and the Mind, stresses that in all societies, a primary function of the music is collective and communal, to bring and bind people together. People sing together and dance together in every culture, and one can imagine them having done so around the first fires, a hundred thousand years ago. This primal role of music is to some extent lost today, when we have a special class of composers and performers, with the rest of us often reduced to passive listening. We have to go to a concert or a church or a musical festival to reexperience music as a social activity, to recapture the collective excitement and bonding of music. In such situations, music is a communal experience and there seems to be in some sense an actual binding or “marriage” of nervous systems.

…music is the only faculty that is not altered by the dream environment…

Wheeler Peak –

We were able to enjoy another long weekend in Taos, NM to visit daughter and her boyfriend. It was a great weekend and one of the "highlights" was hiking to the highest point in New Mexico. Wheeler Peak, at 13,167 feet, lies near Taos Ski Valley and is part of the Sangre de Christo Mountains which is the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. I’ve seen lots of bumper stickers in Taos that say "TAOS is a four-letter word for STEEP." That’s no joke! I think it was meant for the ski valley which has notoriously steep ski slopes, but that also goes for most of the trails around here. The Wheeler Peak trail climbs around 3,000 feet in 4 miles and the last mile climbs 1,300 feet. Daughter and boyfriend had no problems on the hike, but I had to stop a few times to catch my breath. We finished the entire hike in under 5 hours, so I was happy enough with that (I won’t say anything about daughter and boyfriend completing the entire hike in under 4 hours the week before….). The wind on top was howling and knocking me down at times and kept my face well frozen for a bit. But it was all worth the effort as the views from up top are terrific. I had to use micro spikes to navigate the many stretches of ice on the trail even though my hiking partners saw no need (youth!). Just as I was basking in my glory of completing a tough hike, some friends of daughter and boyfriend showed up after completing a 12-mile, 6,000-foot gain off-trail hike near Wheeler Peak. These people are beasts! The only good news is that they did seem pretty tired….