August 2022

Books read:

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China by Julia Lovell
Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball by Stefan Kanfer
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer

Trails walked:

St.Vrain Mountain near Allenspark (Aug 4th)
Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park (Aug 9th)
Snow Lake and Thunder Pass in State Forest State Park (Aug 17th)
Hermann Gulch near Silver Plume (Aug 24th)

Song(s) of the month – Bruce Springsteen

Youngstown
American Land
Across the Border
Matamoros Banks
Wrecking Ball

Scientist Spotlight – Lise Meitner, Nuclear fission

August Summary:

The great author, Salmon Rushdie was brutally attacked this month by a knife-wielding religious extremist, 33 years after Iran’s Islamic leaders declared a fatwa to assassinate him in 1989. He barely survived the attack, and he sustained life altering injuries. After a decade of living under armed protection in the 90s, Rushdie shed his protectors in 2000 to embrace freedom and to interact with his fans. I’ve only read two of Rushdie’s books and they would both be on my list of greatest novels ever written (if I had such a list); Midnight’s Children and the controversial 1988 book, The Satanic Verses which is the book that sparked the fatwa. The religious leaders in Iran were incensed about his portrayal of Mohammed in the book (even though they likely never read it). The book is fiction by the way. In the aftermath of the fatwa there were several deaths at riots and from the assassination of the book’s Japanese translator and the attempted assassination of other translators. The only good news in all of this is that it has likely increased the readership of The Satanic Verses.

It's just another example of how extremism in all its various forms continues to attack freedom of speech and freedom in general. Between this story, and the Albuquerque story of Muslim assassinations by another Muslim you would think that Islam has the market on religious extremism, but you would be wrong. There continue to be murders and bombings by extremist Christians at abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood buildings worldwide long after the Spanish Inquisition. The recent violence in Israel and Palestine are the result of religious, political, and cultural extremism on both sides. Political extremists were responsible for the January 6th insurrection and certainly for some of the deadly riots in the 60s. We’ll never rid the world of extremism; it’s been around forever (and some would argue that extremism is necessary for change). But how do you address its negative aspects without reducing freedom of speech? I wish I had the answer. But it seems to me that reputable social and news media outlets have some responsibility here. It's a tough problem.

The author Toure wrote about this incident in The Grio recently: “It’s zealotry. It’s the willingness to kill over art. It’s the insistence on living in an old, dead world…. the fatwa came down from people who are hyperfocused on religion and enemies and piety and purity. They were so afraid of ideas that might challenge the mind that they believe certain ideas are worthy of death. They are so defensive, so repressive, and so vengeful that they have ordered the murder of an artist.”

This month my hiking took me to trails in and around Rocky Mountain National Park and to a popular hike along the I-70 corridor; all of them were spectacular because the month of August allows you to access the beauty of the mountains in pristine weather. I only got around to reading 3 books this month, mostly because two of them were around 500 pages; all were non-fiction. There were some ties that bound all three books even though one was a history of China, one a history of Cuba, and the other a biography of Lucille Ball.

Scientist Spotlight: Lise Meitner – Nuclear Fission

As we get closer to solving the nuclear fusion puzzle (which would be GREAT for helping to resolve climate change), I wondered about our current nuclear fission technology. In reading about it, I came upon this incredible woman. Praised by Albert Einstein as Germany’s Marie Curie (even though she was from Austria), Meitner was key in the discovery of nuclear fission. She was the first woman in Germany to become a professor of physics but then lost her position and had to flee the country in the 1930s due to Hitler’s anti-Jewish programs. She ended up in Sweden where she became a Swedish citizen. Her collaborator in the 1938 discovery of nuclear fission, Otto Hahn, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944. In hindsight, most scientists and historians believe her exclusion from this prize was a grave injustice. I’m sure Rosalind Franklin could relate.

Interested in math and science from a young age, she beat all the odds by getting her degree in Physics from the University of Vienna in 1905. From there she ended up under the tutelage of the great scientist Max Planck, who was against admitting woman to scientific positions but was impressed by her. Plus she bonded with Planck’s daughters with their mutual love of music. Meitner became a beloved professor and renowned scientist around the world and has many awards to her credit, even if she was always denied that Nobel Prize.

Song(s) of the month: Bruce Springsteen

Most casual fans of Bruce Springsteen know about him mainly from his great songs and albums of the 1970s and 80s; his stadium anthems like Born to Run, Thunder Road, Glory Days, and Born in the USA. But only his most ardent fans (and my wife is one of his most ardent) have followed his career since then. He is still making meaningful music to this day as he’s entered his 70s. He’s always had a great sense of understanding human nature and his early songs perfectly embodied the hopes and desires of the working class and their (sometimes hopeless and sometimes hopeful) dreams of escape, freedom, and success. But you always knew that he would eventually expand his great talent into other areas of the human story. This probably started with his 1982 Nebraska album, but really came full force in The Ghost of Tom Joad album in 1995 where he addressed the immigration issue by juxtaposing it with the migration of the dust bowl survivors during the great depression. After 9/11 he wrote The Rising which may have been the best reflection of our society post 9/11 than any other art created during that time. From there he went on to create some of his greatest albums, including the underrated Devils and Dust album followed by the rousing We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions where he reinterpreted many of the great folk songs of the past. Wrecking Ball, in 2012, could well be his best album ever as it delves into the heart of America’s deepest problems and economic injustice after the Great Recession. And he’s created 3 more solid albums since then, along with his incredibly poignant Broadway show which my wife and I were lucky enough to have seen live (you can check it out on Netflix and I highly recommend it).

I decided to include some songs here which most casual fans may not know, but that show his songwriting brilliance. Also, if you ever have a chance, check out the great eight-part podcast with Springsteen and Barack Obama titled Renegades: Born in the USA where they discuss their lives, music, and enduring love of America—despite all its challenges.

Youngstown – From his 1995 Ghost of Tom Joad album, the song tells the tale of the rise and fall of Youngstown, Ohio, over several generations, from the discovery of iron ore in the early 1800s through the decline of the steel industry in the 1970s. From the Civil War where Youngstown made the cannonballs to the tanks and bombs they made for World War II and through the unnecessary wars of Korea and Vietnam that took the lives of Youngstown’s young. It’s a great history of how the Midwest has become a land of forgotten people and helps to explain the rise of Trumpism. The violin playing by Soozie Tyrell on the studio version gives the song its haunting resonance.

Here is the studio version with lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bevC_bP8ftQ

…and here is a great acoustic live version that he performed on Letterman in 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On1u4QhbkVA

American Land – From his great Wrecking Ball album this song tells the story of European immigrants’ overly optimistic view of how their lives will be forever changed for the positive when they emigrate to America. Their dreams of what it will be like clash with the reality they encounter. It’s a timeless song about the immigration story. I love this live version from the Live in Dublin show. The music is so uplifting and fun and it brilliantly disguises the reality of the immigrant story of the 1800s. Sample lyrics:

They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin

They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind

They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're still dying now

Their hands that built the country we're always trying to keep out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3yZRNPCBBs

Across the Border – Also from The Ghost of Tom Joad, this is a beautiful song about two lovers dreaming about meeting once again across the border. It perfectly describes the positive dreams and imagery of what an immigrant expects to see on the other side of the border combined with two people in love that will finally be reunited. Violins and harmonica seal the deal on this beautiful ballad. Key lyrics:

And in your arms 'neath open skies

I'll kiss the sorrow from your eyes

There across the border

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wartQgggGj8

Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt cover the song beautifully also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_AP8age7rE

Matamoros Banks – From 2005’s great Devils and Dust album, this song is considered by many to be the sequel to Across the Border. Where the previous song was about hope across the border, this sequel is the reality experienced by so many. As the song starts you are struck by the image of a body floating in the river….he didn’t make it across the border to see his love…one of the saddest songs set to the most beautiful music. I found this video that featured a live version of the song played to the image of an actual father and his 23-month-old child found drowned in the river on the Matamoros Banks across from Brownsville, TX in 2019. It's heart wrenching, but it’s reality, and Bruce wrote about this reality like nobody else. Get your tissues out because I couldn’t stop crying when I watched this video:

WARNING, the image is graphic and might be too much for some to take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDRbRtrN0nw

Wrecking Ball – The last song on his 2012 album of the same name, it was originally written as a goodbye to Giants stadium which was scheduled for demolition in New Jersey in 2010, but is also a metaphor for finding a way to reset your life. After all the songs of desperation on this album, it ends with a bit of angry hope. To me, the wrecking ball is about tearing up your old life of pain and dissatisfaction and looking to build the life you want. But you have to hold on to that anger in order to tear that old life down. There is so much to this song that they could probably teach a course on it in college. I like this live version from the Isle of Wight in 2012 as it captures the musical nuances along with the energy of the song. Sample lyrics:

Now, when all this steel and these stories

Drift away to rust

And all our youth and beauty

Has been given to the dust

When the game has been decided

And we're burnin’ down the clock

And all our little victories and glories

Have turned into parking lots

When your best hopes and desires

Are scattered to the wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnhH97RMIb8

St. Vrain Mountain – Another peak visible from our backyard, this mountain straddles the border between Rocky Mountain National Park and the Indian Peaks Wilderness. As a matter of fact the Rocky Mountain National Park boundary cuts right through the top of this mountain. The mountain is named after Ceran St. Vrain, a mid-1800s fur trader who established posts in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. St. Vrain’s father fled France during the French Revolution and settled in St. Louis where he married and where Ceran was born. Ceran learned to speak Spanish so that he could establish a trading route between what was then Mexican Territory and St. Louis. Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site near La Junta, CO was established by St. Vrain along with George and Charles Bent. Charles Bent became the first governor of New Mexico after the Mexican American war and was later murdered during the Taos Revolt in 1847. St. Vrain gathered a force of 300 soldiers and mountain men to squash the revolt. Hundreds were killed (I haven’t studied this revolt yet, so I reserve judgement on who were the good guys vs the bad guys, but revolts following territorial acquisition by force are not unusual and many times warranted). St. Vrain went on to establish the first English language newspaper in the territory, The Santa Fe Gazette; and he also established a flour mill in Mora, NM in 1864 which has undergone recent renovations and thankfully survived the recent Hermit Peak fire.

Back to the hike. It turned out to be a great day containing epic views and cool animal sightings. My daughter-in-law (DIL) and I started out at the trailhead just outside of Allenspark, CO. There were around 10 cars already at the tiny trailhead so we had to park along the road. Most folks had started very early and we saw them all hiking down as we were going up. We ended up all by ourselves on the peak which is always a nice surprise in Colorado. The trail is around 4.5 miles of constant uphill, with a very steep last half mile over tundra and large rocks. Once out of the trees, the views are incredible, and from the top you have the Indian Peaks stretching out to the south and Rocky Mountain National Park to the north and west. As we began our ascent of the last half mile we looked below us in a meadow with some ponds and spotted two big bull moose probably a couple of hundred yards away (needed binoculars to confirm they were males). We explored a bit up top and walked west to get a better view of the ominous Elk’s Tooth formation. We had great views of Finch and Pear lakes below which are both on my list of future hikes. After exploring we hunkered down in one of the wind breaks to eat lunch and marvel at all the huge bugs and butterflies flying around up here.

Heading back down was much easier and we eventually encountered a dusky grouse protecting her young. Nearing the trailhead, DIL spotted a black bear about 20 yards away in the woods. It stared at us for a bit, and eventually figured we weren’t a threat and so it continued munching on berries and probably mushrooms because we saw LOTS of mushrooms on this hike. We watched it for a while and headed back to the car with a bit more energy. Another great day in the mountains.

Bear! Great spot by DIL

Dusky Grouse

Ginormous mushroom

Great floral view of Longs Peak

Bull moose far below us

We skirted the border of Rocky Mountain National Park

DIL having lunch with a view

Epic views

It was a long slog up a bunch of rocks to the top

Nice views above the tree line

Lots of wildflowers

Lots of aspens near the trailhead

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China by Julia Lovell – Who better to write this story than a professor of Modern Chinese History who is fluent in Mandarin and who lives in China for part of the year? I’ve heard of the Opium Wars but knew very little about them other than casually reading about opium dens in various novels and non-fiction books. The time periods of these wars were 1839-1842 which ended in the Treaty of Nanjing; and 1856-1860 which ended with the Treaty of Beijing. One of the end results of these wars was Great Britain ending up with sovereignty over Hong Kong (at least until 1997).

What struck me most was the utter confusion on both sides. China was in the final century of the Qing Dynasty which began in the 1600s (after taking over the Ming Dynasty). The Qings where native Manchurians and were trying to rule a majority Han Chinese, among several other tribal entities in addition to dealing with the Taiping Rebellion around the same time. Great Britain was dealing with political divisions and with rebellion in India (among other issues). Communication from Great Britain to Canton (where the wars were centered) took months, as did communication from the Qing emperor in Beijing. So, in most cases the conflicts and peace talks were taking place among men on both sides who didn’t always know what their leaders really wanted. It was chaos on both sides. Add to that the fact that China at this time was so far behind the Western world in military technology that the battles were just massacres.

But the real intrigue was the use of opium as trade by Great Britain. They were growing the poppies in Afghanistan, India, and Bengal (now Bangladesh) and trading it to China (illegally) for tea and silk. This had been going on throughout the 1700s and exploded around 1820. The social impact to China was huge, and a large percentage of their population was becoming addicted and lethargic. There were many attempts by the emperor to ban the drug, but too much money was being made for so long to actually end the trade. Finally, in 1839, Lin Zexu was sent by the emperor to Canton where he burned millions of dollars’ worth of the drug. This ostensibly was the spark (literally) that started the war. After the British destroyed most of the forts along the Pearl River, the Chinese agreed to an end to the war, ceding Hong Kong along with money and additional trading ports. However, the merchants in many of these ports weren’t welcoming to the British (obviously) which broke the treaty’s agreements, leading to the 2nd war in the late 1850s. More wipe outs of Chinese forts ensued, along with the destruction of the Summer Palace of the Emperor near Beijing. Then another treaty, with even more concessions to Great Britain.

Lovell spends the last part of the book tying these wars to the way Chinese nationalism and communism started using this time period to justify hatred of Western imperialism and capitalism. History books in China up until the 1920s depicted the Opium Wars as a small conflict, but Chiang Kai-shek in the 20s and Mao Zedong in the 40s and 50s saw that Opium War conflict as a way to strengthen their ideals and to turn the people against the West.

There is so much information in this book that it’s impossible to convey all the nuances in this post. But China is going to play a large role in our future so it might be a good idea to get familiar with this country that has reinvented itself many times over its history. I plan to read more about it, including Lovell’s book about the Great Wall.

Hallett Peak - Well it was the last hike of the season for DIL because school/work started the next day, so we made it an epic one. You knew we were in for a special day when we spotted both a male and female moose on the drive in. After two trips around the Bear Lake parking lot, we finally nabbed a spot (this is the busiest parking lot in the park so when you arrive at 10am like we did, you’re lucky to get a spot). Backup would have been to take the shuttle from the park and ride lot. Temperatures were in the lower 70s which is pretty warm for this elevation of over 9,000 feet. We quickly moved past the swarms of people admiring the view from Bear Lake where we stopped to check out a view of where we were headed. Once on the Flattop Mountain trail the crowds disappeared. There were a few folks making the trek to Flattop Mountain, and even fewer headed to Hallett Peak. My GPS clocked 10.6 miles and 3,400 feet of elevation gain today, so it’s a great workout. Flattop Mountain has tremendous views towards the western and eastern portions of the park. It’s on a ridge so you feel like you’re on top of the world. I did this hike in August of last year and it will probably be on my regular rotation as it is just so beautiful. Here’s what I wrote about it in my August 2021 blog: “The peak is named after William Hallett, a cattle rancher, mining engineer, and climber in the late 1800s who established the first mountaineering organization in Colorado. Well before William Hallett arrived, the Arapaho and Ute Indians traveled across the park using several east-west routes such as Trail Ridge, Forest Canyon, Fall River and this one - Flattop Mountain, to reach traditional hunting grounds on the Great Plains. According to Rocky Mountain National Park: A History, The Arapaho Indians called the Flattop Mountain corridor ‘The Big Trail’.”

The hike to the top is a constant uphill with occasional views of Longs Peak. There are also nice viewpoints where you can see Dream Lake and Emerald Lake far below you. These lakes are fed by Tyndall Glacier which we walked above on our way to Hallett. Once above the tree line, the views are expansive and breathtaking (literally and figuratively). As you reach the top of Flattop you are pretty tired and that last 500 feet in half a mile to the top of Hallett seems daunting. But it’s not as difficult as it looks. We had the summit to ourselves for a while until these two young guys from Kentucky joined us (we think they were a little upset that we passed them coming up the trail…hehe). They were nice kids from a rural area of Kentucky and were exploring Wyoming and Colorado. After eating lunch with this tremendous view, we headed back. But before heading down the trail I wanted to head towards the North Inlet/Tonahutu junction so I could peer down into the canyon that contains Odessa Lake, one of the prettiest in the park. Also, because I had heard the story of a couple in their 50s/60s who tried to ice pick their way down this couloir earlier this summer but fell and sustained serious injuries. A bunch of rescue personnel and campers came to their aid and saved them. You can read about the story here.

While peering down into this canyon with a great view of Odessa Lake, we spotted a little fox who was happily parading around his recent successful hunt. He had a juvenile marmot in his mouth and just trotted right by us looking for a place to eat (preferably with a nice view). Here’s some video:

The hike back down to the car was easy but hard on the legs after a long and great day hiking in this treasure of a national park. It was a good way for DIL to end her official summertime off.

Expansive views just above tree line (Bierstadt and Sprague lakes far below)

Trail leading to a view of the ubiquitous Longs Peak

Emerald Lake below

DIL and I near the top

That pointy thing is Hallett Peak with Tyndall glacier below

Marmot enjoying the views

Me enjoying the views (and trying not to fall)

We made it to Flattop, now just need to make it to that peak

Lake Granby and Grand Lake to the west

View from the top of Tyndall Glacier

DIL approaching the peak

View east from the peak

DIL exploring up top

Views to the north

PB&J with a view

That 'on top of the world' feeling

Odessa Lake far below

Heading back down

Back at Bear Lake..that pointy peak is where we were

Ball of Fire by Stefan Kanfer – When I was a kid growing up in the 60s our family watched I Love Lucy reruns on TV. I think most kids growing up in the 60s watched these reruns because their parents had probably watched the original run of this groundbreaking comedy in the 50s when it was by far the number one show on television. You can still watch them on the TV Land channel. Although there were only 6 seasons, they created a total of 180 episodes (that’s an average of 30 episodes a season, far more than what you get on your favorite streaming channels today which is typically 8 or 10 episodes per season). I had recently watched ‘Being the Ricardos’ starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem which mainly focused on the period of time when the series was just beginning, and its future threatened by the House Unamerican Activities Committee. It’s a good movie and Nicole Kidman was surprisingly great as Lucy. But the movie made me want to know more about this groundbreaking woman. I had heard of this biography, so I picked up a paperback version from bookshop.org (a great place to buy physical books because they support local bookshops). There were no digital copies available at any of the libraries I use.

What a life this woman had led prior to (and after) making it bigtime with the I Love Lucy show. She was 40 years old with 22 years of acting experience behind her when the show started in 1951 and she continued acting and producing for 30 more years after the show ended in 1957. She was born in Jamestown, NY to a telephone lineman and stay at home mom (which nearly all moms were in 1911). Her father’s job took them from New York to Montana to Detroit and to NJ, but unfortunately for the family he died of typhoid when Lucy was only 3 years old. She ended up being raised by a combination of people, including her grandparents, her mom, and then her stepdad’s parents. It seems that all this shuffling around as she was very young instilled an insecurity in her that followed her all her life.

She started modeling in New York City at the age of 18 and eventually left for Hollywood to try and make it in the movies. She was able to get some chorus girl parts and eventually found starring and support roles in B level movies. This provided her with enough money to move her mother, brother, and cousin to California as a support system. She dated a bit but was so focused on her career that she never put much effort into it. However, when she met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940 it was love at first site and they married that same year. From the first year their marriage was a roller coaster ride. He saw other women and drank too much while she focused on her career. Somehow this dysfunctional marriage lasted nearly 20 years, two children, the birth and death of the I Love Lucy show, and the creation of the largest Hollywood studio in its day, Desilu productions. The details of these 20 years reads like a made in Hollywood drama that it was.

The I Love Lucy show was groundbreaking for its use of cameras, its female lead, and for the first TV show to depict pregnancy (before then you couldn’t even say the word pregnant on TV). Even though their marriage was tumultuous, they made good business partners. He had a good feel for producing and she knew when a script was good. Their production company went on to produce The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek.

Lucille Ball was notoriously difficult to work with. She was very hard on her coworkers. Even Vivian Vance who played Ethel in the iconic series once said, “If this show's a success then I'm going to learn to love that bi+ch.” Several actors, directors, and technicians quit her various shows due to her treatment of them. Even her two children had negative things to say about their upbringing, from the fighting to the neglect. Much of this treatment of others is likely traced to her insecurity and her desire to always be successful, which she never fully felt she achieved outside of the 6-year run of I Love Lucy.

The last sections of the book focus on her ups and downs following the show. Positives like adding Star Trek and Mission: Impossible to their production studio. Negatives like her waning performance in later movies and television shows. She eventually married Gary Morton with whom she stayed until her death in 1989 due to an aortic rupture. In the final chapter the author writes about her legacy which included honors such as Five Primetime Emmy wins, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Women in Film Crystal Award, induction into the Television Hall of Fame, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors, and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. And I would add to that the love of her audience. People still love Lucy all around the world.

Snow Lake and Thunder Pass – I’ve been wanting to explore more of the trails along the Poudre River and CO14 between Fort Collins and Walden. Last year while in this area, I searched for the source of the Colorado River at the end of Long Draw Road and wrote about it in my September 2021 blog. It’s a beautiful drive from my home along the foothills west of Loveland and then along the CO14 highway through the rugged canyon carved by the Poudre River, but the drive is a bit over 2 hours, so it’s a commitment. Much of the area along the highway here was burned during the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, which was the largest in Colorado history, so there were lots of burned and downed trees along the drive.

Today’s hike started at the American Lakes trailhead parking area which is reached after a 1.5-mile bumpy road off of the CO14. Luckily the fire didn’t reach this section of the forest, so it was lush and green, especially so after some big rains the previous two days. I hear that it’s common to see moose in this area, but I saw none on this day. Just deer, marmots, and pikas. But the scenery more than made up for not spotting any moose. The trail is a steady uphill through trees and meadows, with sounds of the Michigan River following the trail all the way to the lakes. At just over a mile, you reach the intersection of the Michigan Ditch which was started in the early 1900s to reroute water 5 miles to the Poudre River and then east to Ft. Collins rather than its natural watershed which would drain north to the North Platte River through Wyoming (I wonder how Wyoming feels about this…). One of today’s goals was to reach Snow Lake which is the source of the Michigan River. At 3 miles from the parking lot I reached the tree line and then it was another half mile to American Lakes which is really one long shallow lake with a thin connector in the middle that makes it look like two lakes. These lakes are in a beautiful green valley surrounded by mountains. It’s stunning. I climbed the steep quarter mile from here to Snow Lake which is your typically beautiful Colorado alpine lake, built into an amphitheater with the Nokhu Crags and Static Peak hovering above. I think that Snow and American Lakes used to be called Michigan Lakes (hence the Michigan River source). I’m not sure why or when the name changed (maybe the same time French fries were being retitled freedom fries...).

After hanging out at Snow Lake a bit I headed back to American Lakes and then went south to Thunder Pass which is on the NW border of Rocky Mountain National Park. The views from this ridge are tremendous (I walked west about a quarter mile up a ridge for even better views where I ate my lunch). I would have to say that the beauty of this area is hard to surpass. I really enjoyed oohing and ahhing all through my 10 plus miles and 2,100 feet of elevation gain. After lunch I headed back to the car for the long, but beautiful, drive home.

Michigan Ditch and its service road about a mile into the hike

Green meadows and rounded peaks were the theme of the day

Snow lake is up in that amphitheater in the upper right

American Lakes

Snow Lake

From Snow Lake I'll hike to that low green ridge in the center

One last shot of American Lakes from the trail up to Snow Lake

Thunder Pass at the border of RMNP

My view from lunch on the ridge

Views south towards RMNP

Green ridges and peaks

Artsy shot

How green is my valley? Very.

Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer - Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian and Professor of History and Latin American Studies at New York University. This wonderful book won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History. Ferrer was a toddler when her parents fled Cuba in 1963 in the wake of the 1959 revolution and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. With a PhD in history, her personal history, and her literary knack of writing about history, it’s no wonder the book was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

I didn’t have a reading plan for this month, but it certainly seems like it. The Opium Wars helped to clarify China’s distrust of The West and how propaganda and rebranding of history was used to create a communist China. The story of Lucille Ball and her battle with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, along with her marriage to a Cuban refugee provided a personal viewpoint of the geopolitics. And now this terrific and very readable history of Cuba helped me to understand not only Cuba’s history, but United States’ history in ways I was never taught in school.

She begins her story the way many books on US History begin; with Christopher Columbus’ voyage to ‘The New World’. Even though Columbus never set foot in what is today the United States, he DID set foot in Cuba. And by doing so decimated the native population while turning Cuba into a Spanish colony through the end of the 19th century (other than a brief rule by the British in the 1700s). Cuba was a huge slave trading port and has their own painful history of slavery, with sugar plantations instead of cotton plantations. And the Spanish American war in which Teddy Roosevelt was a hero takes on a whole other level of understanding once you know that Cuban revolutionaries had already basically won their independence before the Americans arrived to take credit. That event is basically what ends up explaining the success of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959 and the 50-year success of his socialist ideals. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis the following year helped to solidify Castro's standing in Cuba. A very similar story of Western greed is what Mao Zedong used to create communist China. But these are just the main pivot points. In between all these events there are incredible stories to be told, like the story of a US Senator from Rhode Island, James DeWolf, in the 1800s who was a slave trader and murdered an African woman by tying her to a chair, “and then he hoisted her overboard to her death”; there was the power of the US Mafia (and Frank Sinatra’s involvement) in Cuba during the prohibition and through the 1950s; and the interesting relationship between Che Guevara and Fidel Castro throughout the revolution.

Here are some lines:

From the author’s preface: This book is … a product of more than thirty years of work and of a lifetime of shifting perspectives between the country where I was born and the country where I made my life.

During the American Revolution, Cubans raised funds in support of Washington’s army, and soldiers from Cuba fought against the British in North America and the Caribbean.

In February 1519, another expedition left Cuba for Yucatán. Its leader was Hernán Cortés, who had aspirations to wealth greater than what Cuba offered… he landed his forces, claimed Mexico for Spain, and began his march into the heart of the Aztec empire.

The great quantities of precious minerals in Mexico and Peru, and the existence in both places of massive Native empires capable of providing the labor to mine them, soon transformed Spain into the wealthiest and most powerful place on earth. And the discovery of the Gulf Stream that guided the treasure ships to Spain turned Havana into the “Key to the New World.”

Voyages directly from Africa to Cuba did not begin until 1526, when two ships arrived from the West African coast with 115 captives…by the first decade of the seventeenth century, Africans would represent almost half of Havana’s population.

In the eighteenth century, Havana was the third largest city in the New World (after Lima and Mexico City) and larger than any city in Britain’s thirteen North American colonies.

US ships sailing to Angola could buy Africans for about $70 and then sell them in Cuba for almost $1,200.

By the mid-1870s, almost 125,000 Chinese had landed in Cuba. Tricked or kidnapped in Macao, Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, and elsewhere, they were transported to Cuba, often on US-owned ships, and bound for eight years to work on Cuban plantations.

at 9:40 p.m. on Tuesday, February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor, killing at least 260 US sailors. To this day, Spaniards and Cubans believe that the United States planned the explosion themselves as a pretext for declaring war on Spain and making themselves masters of Cuba. Americans blamed Spain from the outset.

Many members of the segregated US Negro Leagues loved playing baseball in Cuba for reasons beyond the weather. They could play all their games in first-rate, integrated stadiums, in a beautiful, fascinating city, and not have to suffer the humiliations they were subject to in Jim Crow–era United States.

Fidel ended what became arguably his most famous speech with certainly his most famous line: “Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.” The judge sentenced him to fifteen years in prison. It was the outcome he had expected...In jail, reading about FDR’s New Deal, he allowed himself to be surprised: “Given the character, the mentality, the history of the people of the United States, Roosevelt actually did some wonderful things, and some of his countrymen have never forgiven him for doing them.”

Titled “A Program of Covert Action against the Castro Regime,” the project was approved by President Eisenhower at a March 17, 1960, meeting of his National Security Council. The policy expressly aimed “to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the US.”

(Bay of Pigs) Over the course of seventy-two hours, a US-sponsored invasion of Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro was revealed as “one of those rare events in history—a perfect failure.”… Less than seventy-two hours after their landing, they were defeated—114 of them killed in battle, 1,189 captured by Castro’s forces. And again the same question rears its head: How had the United States failed as badly, as blindly as it did?... In the end, most assessments placed the lion’s share of the blame on the CIA.

Che Guevara, the Argentine doctor who had joined Fidel Castro’s revolution in Mexico, followed it to the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, to Havana to serve as minister of industry and president of the National Bank, and eventually to far corners of the world to spur other Cuban revolutions.

Angola had been home to a significant number of the men and women forcibly taken to Cuba in chains more than a century earlier. Cuban troops—many of them descended from those nineteenth-century Angolan captives—would now return to Africa to fight against the army of apartheid South Africa.

Many years later, when Mandela died in 2013, Fidel Castro was too sick to travel to the funeral. As then president of Cuba, Raúl Castro attended and sat in the platform party. Also present was the second-term US president, Barack Obama, who stunned the world by casually and warmly shaking Castro’s hand. No US president had publicly recognized a Cuban president since before Obama was born…. But to his advisors he said there was no question that he would greet Castro. “The Cubans,” he said, “were on the right side of apartheid. We were on the wrong side.”

In all aspects of life, Cubans lived the collapse of the Soviet Union with every cell in their being. The daily consumption of calories dropped on average by a third.

After 1999, a key factor was the Cuban state’s relationship with newly elected Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, who was soon providing Cuba with much of the oil it needed

Obama stated the obvious: Washington’s Cuba policy had never worked; there was no logical reason to continue it. He also broadcast his willingness to enter into bilateral talks with Cuba—without any preconditions. Perhaps for that reason, Obama was immensely popular in Cuba from the start.

At the end of Obama’s second term—and still today—the US prison on Cuban soil remains open. A combination of Republican hostility, hesitation on Obama’s part, the unwillingness of states to take detainees, Defense and Pentagon opposition—in short, Washington—derailed the new president’s promise to close Gitmo.

Hermann Gulch – I’ve heard a lot about this hike. Son and daughter-in-law have done it many times and it is a very popular hike since it’s an easy one-hour drive west of Denver along I-70 and it has all you want in a summer hike in the Rockies: a creek, a workout, forest giving way to alpine tundra, waterfalls, wildflowers, and alpine lakes. Plus, it’s part of the nationwide Continental Divide Trail that stretches 3,100 miles through five states along the backbone of the Rockies. There were probably 20 cars already in the huge parking lot at the trailhead on this weekday morning. But even though I saw several hikers (and trail runners), I still had plenty of solitude…especially when I hiked a mile or so past Hermann Lake. The trail to the lake is a steady uphill, climbing around 1,700 feet in just over 3 miles. The lake is pretty, but not spectacular. The best part of the hike comes in the mile plus after the lake as you make your way towards the amphitheater of rocks containing the aptly named Citadel. There were only 2 other hikers past the lake for some reason, but that was fine with me. Lots of marmots and pikas up here and the views of the valley (gulch) stretching eastward is very green with waterfalls, creeks, and ponds. I had my lunch here in this beautiful amphitheater and then headed back, but I decided to take a short half mile plus detour along Jones Pass Trail in order to get a glimpse to the north into Wood Creek Valley and Urad Reservoir. I’d like to explore this area sometime as it’s a successful reclamation story between the Climax Molybdenum Company (Henderson Mine), the City of Golden and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW). I enjoyed the view for a bit and then headed back down to the car, stopping every now and then to marvel at the variety and quantity of mushrooms on this hike. I wish I knew the good ones from the bad ones!