December 2022
Books read:
- Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Earthsea: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin
- Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- New Mexico Triptych by Fray Angelico Chavez
- Sprague Lake from East Portal in Rocky Mt National Park (Dec 7th)
- Pella Crossing near Longmont (Dec 14th)
- Slide/Picuris/Klauer Loop near Taos, NM (Dec 19th)
- Taos Pueblo near Taos, NM (Dec 19th)
Song of the month – Life on Earth by Hurray for the Riff Raff
Scientist Spotlight – Omar Hurricane, Nuclear Fusion Physicist
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December Summary:
Another year in the books. It was a tough year. Besides the usual war, famine, pandemic, school shootings, political divisiveness, and climate crisis; on a personal level, I also lost my mother-in-law and my mother this year. But as the cycle of life always proves, good things happened also. There have been billions of dollars (some of it actually bi-partisan) allocated to fight climate change (in Chile, all actions to fight climate change are bipartisan). Extremist candidates mostly lost in the November elections (even though our political division remains). The one billionth covid vaccine was delivered to the world's poorer nations. Doctors in Canada can now prescribe national park passes to help heal people. There are now enough solar panels to surpass 1 Terawatt of electricity (we still have a ways to go to meet the current 25,000 Terawatts of worldwide demand however, but we'll get there). The first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court was sworn in. A major nuclear fusion milestone was reached. The US government returned land to Native Americans in Montana and in California. A bipartisan bill on gun control was passed (it's not nearly enough but it hasn't happened in a long time). There is now a Jane Goodall Barbie doll! A Lyme disease vaccine is in its final phase of development (2025 is the target availability date). Patagonia's founder donated his $3 billion business to fight climate change. Ukrainian war refugees are being helped by businesses and governments around the world. Scientists in Switzerland have developed transparent solar panels that can be used as windows. People in Iran and China are protesting for human rights.
Another year in the books. It was a tough year. Besides the usual war, famine, pandemic, school shootings, political divisiveness, and climate crisis; on a personal level, I also lost my mother-in-law and my mother this year. But as the cycle of life always proves, good things happened also. There have been billions of dollars (some of it actually bi-partisan) allocated to fight climate change (in Chile, all actions to fight climate change are bipartisan). Extremist candidates mostly lost in the November elections (even though our political division remains). The one billionth covid vaccine was delivered to the world's poorer nations. Doctors in Canada can now prescribe national park passes to help heal people. There are now enough solar panels to surpass 1 Terawatt of electricity (we still have a ways to go to meet the current 25,000 Terawatts of worldwide demand however, but we'll get there). The first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court was sworn in. A major nuclear fusion milestone was reached. The US government returned land to Native Americans in Montana and in California. A bipartisan bill on gun control was passed (it's not nearly enough but it hasn't happened in a long time). There is now a Jane Goodall Barbie doll! A Lyme disease vaccine is in its final phase of development (2025 is the target availability date). Patagonia's founder donated his $3 billion business to fight climate change. Ukrainian war refugees are being helped by businesses and governments around the world. Scientists in Switzerland have developed transparent solar panels that can be used as windows. People in Iran and China are protesting for human rights.
The world is full of good news, but it rarely gets reported because bad news sells and gets more clicks ("if it bleeds, it leads"). I was just reviewing the New York Times' best photos of 2022 and I'd say over 80% were depicting some tragedy (of which there were many). Two of the photos that struck me the most were one of a math notebook with a bullethole...it belonged to one of the school children killed in Uvalde, Texas; the other photo that got me was one that showed the daughter of new supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her mom's swearing in ceremony...a look of total happiness and pride.
How do we deal with the knowledge of so much tragedy and still keep our sanity? The HBO series The White Lotus sort of addresses this. One of the couples seems oblivious to the worlds' problems and maintains an air of happiness by not watching the news. Another couple seems always to be dour and unhappy because they care too much about what's happening in the world. Do we have to choose one or the other? I think it's important to be aware of tragedy in the world, but you have to offset that for your own mental health. How? Some ideas are to get involved in a cause, search for all the good news happening in the world (it's harder to find), and choose to act with kindness in your interactions with people. With very view exceptions, most people in the world want the same things: safety and security for themselves and their families, and then if those needs are satisifed, maybe some happiness too. But there are some powerful forces out there that want us to hate each other because it benefits their bottom line to perpetuate this hatred and fear. I thought about this after reading two of this month's books, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah and Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah. They both described how the countries' leaders (whether Apartheid in South Africa or German colonialists in Tanzania) specifically set out to pit the various black tribes against each other so that they could better control them and avoid having them rise up against them. I think it's a strategy that certain "news" stations use and certainly one that some politicians use in order to get re-elected. So don't buy into this ridiculous strategy. Don't hate someone just because they have a different political ideology. Don't hate someone because they seem different than you. All these differences are minor compared to our common desires for safety, security, and happiness.
It was a fun reading month with a great memoir, a young adult fantasy novel, a terrific novel set in Africa that addressed so many issues, and a Pulitzer prize winning book of short stories. My hiking took me through snow in Rocky Mountain National Park, to a local wetlands walk, and to the Rio Grande Gorge in New Mexico. Enjoy!
Not to be confused with 2008’s Hurricane Omar, this Hurricane has been making the mainstream media interview circuit this month due to a major milestone achieved on December 5th at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. This achievement was finally getting to what’s called “ignition” using lasers to produce a nuclear fusion reaction. Scientists from around the world have been trying to solve the fusion problem for nearly 100 years. Like most physics, it’s not simple. You basically need to create the energy that is at the center of the sun, and reproduce it in a laboratory environment. Today’s nuclear reactors use fission (splitting atoms) as opposed to fusion (fusing atoms). Fission was an easier problem to solve, but as we know, it has some radioactive dangers associated with it. Fusion would be a much safer alternative, although there would still be some radioactive waste to deal with, albeit on a much smaller scale. Getting to a place where fusion could provide energy for us earthlings may take another hundred years, but hopefully this milestone will speed up the process because now that the science has been proven, work can go into the engineering to make it happen. It would be a game changer for climate change, because, other than the waste issues, this process could provide sufficient clean energy to cleanly power our planet (if it can power the sun, it should be able to turn on our lightbulbs…).
In addition to the laser approach used by Lawrence Livermore Labs, the French (along with a coalition of US, Chinese, and Russian entities among others) have been using superconducting magnets as part of the ITER project (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), although they have a long road ahead of them and have not reached the point of fusion that Lawrence Livermore Labs did, their method may end up being the more feasible one. Time will tell.
Omar Hurricane is just one of thousands of scientists working on this important problem. I decided to profile him mainly because of his cool name. I read a recent tweet with a tongue in cheek concern that anybody with the last name of Hurricane working on nuclear physics to change the world must really be an evil villain. This is funny, but most definitely not true. Hurricane is a pure physics geek who gets joy from solving complex problems. There is a local angle also as he received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Metro State University in Denver and was a research aid at NCAR in Boulder in the late 80s. He went on to earn a PhD in physics from UCLA and has been working as a Physicist & Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since the late 90s.
I really don’t know how close we are to commercializing fusion for our energy, but I do know one thing for sure: Once we see the fossil fuel companies starting to trash nuclear fusion, then we’ll know that we’re close to a solution!
Song of the month: Life on Earth by Hurray for the Riff Raff
I first wrote about Hurray for the Riff Raff in my April 2019 blog. Alynda Segarra performs as Hurray for the Riff Raff with rotating band members. I was pleasantly surprised to also see her appear in the brilliant David Simon series Treme, about post Katrina New Orleans. She's brilliant and I love her passion and her activism and especially her music.
In addition to the laser approach used by Lawrence Livermore Labs, the French (along with a coalition of US, Chinese, and Russian entities among others) have been using superconducting magnets as part of the ITER project (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), although they have a long road ahead of them and have not reached the point of fusion that Lawrence Livermore Labs did, their method may end up being the more feasible one. Time will tell.
Omar Hurricane is just one of thousands of scientists working on this important problem. I decided to profile him mainly because of his cool name. I read a recent tweet with a tongue in cheek concern that anybody with the last name of Hurricane working on nuclear physics to change the world must really be an evil villain. This is funny, but most definitely not true. Hurricane is a pure physics geek who gets joy from solving complex problems. There is a local angle also as he received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Metro State University in Denver and was a research aid at NCAR in Boulder in the late 80s. He went on to earn a PhD in physics from UCLA and has been working as a Physicist & Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since the late 90s.
I really don’t know how close we are to commercializing fusion for our energy, but I do know one thing for sure: Once we see the fossil fuel companies starting to trash nuclear fusion, then we’ll know that we’re close to a solution!
I first wrote about Hurray for the Riff Raff in my April 2019 blog. Alynda Segarra performs as Hurray for the Riff Raff with rotating band members. I was pleasantly surprised to also see her appear in the brilliant David Simon series Treme, about post Katrina New Orleans. She's brilliant and I love her passion and her activism and especially her music.
Life on Earth is the title track to her 8th album. The album is great and tackles topics like immigration (Precious Cargo), recovery from trauma (Saga), and plants (Rhododendron). Segarra said the album is about hardship, suffering, but also about beauty. She talks about how hard it is to be a human and that we should experience the beauty of earth while we're here. “After four years of being so intensely glued to the news and every disgrace to humanity,” Segarra says, “it just felt like, ‘This is not how we’re going to build a new world. I need to find joy'....What I was taught is the honorable thing to do as a musician is to reflect the times, and these are the times.”
For me, the title track is a nod to humanity and the beauty of this earth. Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1vdcJuURv4
The two main characters are Hamza, a young African with a hidden past who has joined the German African army, called the Schutztruppe Askaris; and Afiya, a young girl abandoned by her parents and raised by an abusive family. As their stories unfold individually, their lives finally intersect. It’s the storytelling and intermix of real history and the fictional accounts of the characters that makes this such an interesting book to read. Our history books recounting the World Wars make little to no mention of those wars’ impacts on the lives of the Africans being forced to live under empires at war with each other. There is so much to learn!
Here are some lines:
That was how that part of the world was at the time. Every bit of it belonged to Europeans, at least on a map: British East Africa, Deutsch-Ostafrika, Africa Oriental Portuguesa, Congo Belge.
...slaughtering and being slaughtered by armies of people they knew nothing about: Punjabis and Sikhs, Fanti and Akan and Hausa and Yoruba, Kongo and Luba, all mercenaries who fought the Europeans’ wars for them, the Germans with their Schutztruppe, the British with their King’s African Rifles and the Royal West African Frontier Force and their Indian troops, the Belgians with their Force Publique.
Every disease you could name was to be found in Zanzibar, including sin and disappointment.
The British officer told the pastor that an influenza epidemic was raging over the land and across the world and that thousands had already perished. There was chaos in Germany, which had banished the Kaiser and declared itself a republic. There was chaos and war in Russia after the revolution which murdered the Tsar and his entire family. The whole world was in turmoil, he said.
He brought neither past joy nor future promise, just a sorry tale of abjection to add to hers when she might have looked forward to some relief from her own.
The pious ones don’t approve of anything festive during the holy month. They want us all to suffer and starve and rub our foreheads raw with prayers.
The part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union became the German Democratic Republic. The GDR was highly active in colonial politics, and along with other Soviet East European allies provided sanctuary, training and arms to insurrectionist liberation movements in many parts of Africa.
Other than the cold, it was a pretty day. Very quiet, even at Sprague Lake. I sat and watched a buck and two does nibbling on vegetation for bit and enjoyed the many viewpoints along the way. It was a short, 5-mile hike overall, but the snow made it seem longer, plus I did take my time to enjoy the day, stopping several times, happy to be able to do this kind of thing on a regular basis. I’m really lucky.
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| View from near the trailhead |
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| Luckily someone broke the trail ahead of me |
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| Cool tree with roots in the snow |
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| Cloud covered mountains in the distance |
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| Ranger cabin as I entered RMNP |
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| Closeup of the mountains |
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| Boulder imitating mountain |
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| Sprague Lake with a rock making its way across |
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| Sprague Lake |
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| Lots of options |
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| Big Buck |
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| Nice clouds over the foothills near the trailhead |
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| Sun lighting up the clouds (or the UFO in "Nope"?) |
A Wizard of Earthsea was the book (and eventually series) that first won Le Guin notoriety. She followed it up with The Left Hand of Darkness which I reviewed in May of 2020. Published in 1968, Earthsea was written for young adults, but like many great books in that genre, it’s just as enjoyable for us old adults too (see Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Looking for Alaska). I think that only Le Guin could publish a teen coming of age fantasy book (Earthsea) one year and follow it up the next year with a book exploring themes of gender and sexuality on a fictional planet where humans have no fixed sex (The Left Hand of Darkness).
She has won eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-two Locus Awards. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014 she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In other words, her work is brilliant.
Most of the characters in Earthsea are dark-skinned individuals, in comparison to the white characters found in most fantasy and science fiction. She explained this, saying: "most people in the world aren't white. Why in the future would we assume they are?" Le Guin suggested the term "social science fiction" for some of her writing.
This first book in the series of 6 (a double trilogy!) follows the story of Ged, who was born with special powers. Like Harry Potter, he was shipped off to a school for wizards where he honed his skills and developed friends and enemies. I have to imagine that JK Rowling had this story in the back of her mind while writing Harry Potter. Upon leaving school Ged embarks on an adventure throughout the island nations of Earthsea. It’s filled with exciting events from dragon slaying to ocean storms to confronting evil. It was a fun read and I plan to read the entire series eventually.
Here are some lines:
To hear, one must be silent
Ged stood still a while, like one who has received great news, and must enlarge his spirit to receive it.
in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.
“Do you hold with those who think the world is all landless sea beyond the Outer Reaches, or with those who imagine other Archipelagos or vast undiscovered lands on the other face of the world?”
The area is beautiful with several ponds along St. Vrain Creek. A gravel company took over the area in 1975 and mined it for gravel until 1992 when it was donated by Frontier Materials to Boulder County. It became open space in 1996. After the 2013 flood, the county decided to not clean up the sediment at Webster Pond and instead turn it into a wetlands area to attract migrating waterfowl. The decision was a success and thousands of birds stop here on their annual migrations.
It was a chilly 28 degree day with a slight breeze, but I bundled up and walked all 4 miles of trails in this pretty area. Unfortunately cloud cover hid what is likely a spectacular view of Longs Peak, but that's just another reason to come visit again. There were 6 other walkers and one runner on this week day. I saw lots of birds, including a great blue heron and I saw lots of evidence of beavers. After my hike I read that the eight beavers in this area were relocated to Caribou Ranch in 2019 to prevent flooding of the newly created wetlands area. This is just one of so many beautiful outdoor spaces available to folks here in Boulder County and beyond.
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| One of several ponds along the walk |
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| Great blue heron, hunting |
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| Typical path view |
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| Nice pond views |
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| Loved this gnarly cottonwood |
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| Cottonwood pointing the way toward the Flatirons |
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| Evidence of beaver activity |
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| Water and ice |
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| Ice and water |
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| A poorly designed slide? |
As Apartheid ended, the struggles of black and colored people in South Africa continued. Poverty and crime were rampant and as Noah entered his teen years he became involved in petty crime in order to make money (mainly CD music pirating and petty theft). He has some interesting commentary on crime in the ghettos and the distinctions between hardened, violent criminals and poor people who commit crime to survive.
Throughout his fascinating story, the constant in his life was his mother who is a force of nature. She worked hard to provide a life for her son (mainly away from an absent father and eventually with an abusive step father). The last few pages where he describes the violence perpetrated on his mom by this step father are heart pounding.
My daughter is right, everyone should read this book in order to better understand the nuances of racism, crime, and the history of South Africa. And since Noah is a comedian, in spite of the subject matter, the book has some hilarious moments. Here are some lines:
The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all.
Then apartheid fell, Mandela walked free, and black South Africa went to war with itself.
I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car.
Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By “adopt” I mean it was forced on us.
The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called the Bloodless Revolution. It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets.
There were mixed kids in South Africa nine months after the first Dutch boats hit the beach in Table Bay. Just like in America, the colonists here had their way with the native women, as colonists so often do.
Nearly one million people lived in Soweto. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them were black—and then there was me. I was famous in my neighborhood just because of the color of my skin. I was so unique people would give directions using me as a landmark. “The house on Makhalima Street. At the corner you’ll see a light-skinned boy. Take a right there.”
My mom was an expert at cracking open a chicken bone and getting out every last bit of marrow inside. We didn’t eat chickens. We obliterated them. Our family was an archaeologist’s nightmare. We left no bones behind.
Racism is not logical. Consider this: Chinese people were classified as black in South Africa. Japanese people were labeled as white. The reason for this was that the South African government wanted to establish good relations with the Japanese in order to import their fancy cars and electronics.
I’d walk through the house on the way to my room and say, “Hey, Mom” without glancing up. She’d say, “No, Trevor! You look at me. You acknowledge me. Show me that I exist to you, because the way you treat me is the way you will treat your woman. Women like to be noticed. Come and acknowledge me and let me know that you see me. Don’t just see me when you need something.”
In America, the history of racism is taught like this: “There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.” It was the same for us. “Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let’s move on.”
If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet—tweets, Facebook posts, lists—you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year.
After checking out the confluence we found the start of the Picuris trail to take us back up to the rim. This trail has evidently been used by natives for centuries as a way down from the rim to the river. I've read that there are petroglyphs to be found, but we didn't see any on this day, likely due to the fact that we were climbing 700 feet in snow (at least that's my excuse). The views as you rise in elevation are spectacular. Once on the rim we took the Klauer trail back to the car. The Klauer trail is part of a series of trails up on the rim called the Rift Valley trails used by mountain bikers, hikers, and horseback riders. It was two and a half miles along the rim back to the trailhead for a total of 5 plus miles on this nice, crisp, cool day in beautiful northern New Mexico.
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| Start of the trail along the old road to the river |
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| The Rio Pueblo carved this canyon |
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| Rio Pueblo below |
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| Sun peaking above the rim |
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| Daughter walking through reeds along the river |
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| Icy falls on the Rio Pueblo near the confluence with the Rio Grande |
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| Icy falls |
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| The confluence (Rio Grande in the background) |
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| Even the Rio Grande had ice |
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| Daughter in her natural element |
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| I have no idea what Xmas Chile Water is, but I'm pretty sure you'll only find it in New Mexico |
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| Making our way back up to the rim on the Picuris Trail |
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| Sweeping view of the Rio Grande |
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| Views of the canyon with mountains in the background |
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| Back up on the rim, about 2 miles south of our car |
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| More sweeping views |
There are nine short stories, all with fascinating characters and story lines. Although I enjoyed all of them immensely, the last one, titled The Third and Final Continent was my favorite. It told the story of a Bengali man who traveled to England with little money in order to receive his education. He then emigrates to the US for work. Part of his story involves a room he rents from an eclectic 103 year old woman in Boston who was obsessed with the recent moon landing in 1969 (I guess for someone born in 1866 that had to be otherworldly). The author based the main character on the exploits of her father as a young man.
Here are some lines:
I would never have to eat rationed food, or obey curfews, or watch riots from my rooftop, or hide neighbors in water tanks to prevent them from being shot, as she and my father had.
He wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Das were a bad match, just as he and his wife were. Perhaps they, too, had little in common apart from three children and a decade of their lives.
Believe me, don't believe me. My life is composed of such griefs you cannot even dream them.
He had never seen her cry before, had never seen such sadness in her eyes. She didn't turn away or try to stop the tears; instead she looked strangely at peace.
Mrs. Croft was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.
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| The rebuilt San Geronimo church |
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| Church courtyard |
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| North building with mountain background |
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| South building |
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| North building closeup |
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| Old San Geronimo church bell tower and cemetery |
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| Native ornos, or ovens where they still cook their food |
A triptych is defined as a set of three associated artistic, literary, or musical works intended to be appreciated together. Hence the three stories in this collection. All three stories depict ordinary people caught up in mystical/religious situations. In the first story, titled The Angel's New Wings, an old man who for several years had been carving wooden figures for the local church's Christmas nativity scene was repairing the wooden wings on an angel when it suddenly disappeared from his hands and flew off. The old wood carver goes on an adventure through the town trying to find the angel. The adventure ends with his mysterious death. The second story is titled The Penitente Thief and tells the tale of two friends over three different Easter weekends. The two are part of a group of penitentes (those who flog themselves and walk a path similar to that of Jesus as he carried the cross while being whipped). Both men are also thieves who experience mysterious events in which they believe they are walking with the actual Jesus. Everyone in town believes it's just the alcohol talking. Eventually the two end up dying at the hands of the townsfolk after one steals a horse, while Jesus looks on without pity on the thieves. The final story was my favorite and was about a hunched-back old woman who helped harvest flowers each May for the Festival of the Virgin Mary. She gets lost in a storm and ends up being saved by a mysterious man in a cabin who finds out her life story. He is the first person to whom she has told her story. Part of that story is her sorrow at never being chosen to carry flowers during the Festival of the Virgin Mary due to her hunched back. He takes her back to town (on a donkey of course) where he convinces the people to let her lead the flower festival. Her dreams came true. Years later she dies and now tourists come to her grave every May to see the flowers blooming only there and nowhere else nearby.
Until next month, happy reading and rambling!