January 2023

Books read:

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
John Prine: One Song at a Time by Bruce Rits Gilbert
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

Trails walked:

Bierstadt Lake snowshoe from the ParknRide in RMNP (January 5th)
Barr Lake State Park north of Denver (January 12th)
Ranger-led snowshoe hike near Bear Lake in RMNP (January 17th)
Hogback Ridge near Boulder (January 26th)

Song(s) of the month – Have a Little Faith in Me and All the Lilacs in Ohio by John Hiatt

Scientist Spotlight – Scipione Riva-Rocci, blood pressure measurement

January Summary:

Well, it’s starting….the pills part of “ills, pills, and wills”. For the past 20 years, every time I’ve been asked by a doctor what medications I’m on, I’ve only listed one: Simvastatin for mild cholesterol. They were usually surprised that I was on only one maintenance medication; after all it’s the pharmaceutical companies’ job to get all of us on multiple profit making drugs by the time we say good bye to this world. But at my annual physical, my blood pressure was elevated. I’ve never had elevated blood pressure (that I know of), ever. So they re-did the test… five times….still high. I attributed it to the fact that our heat had gone out the night before so I didn’t get much sleep, plus I was fasting for my annual blood test. I came back the next week….blood pressure was still high. Crap. I came back the week after…still high. The doctor ruled out any underlying cause from the blood test results and his examination of me. So basically, my arteries are getting old. High blood pressure is no joke, it can impact your organs and kill you. So I agreed to taking the medication, which, according to the doctor, sort of rubberizes your solidified arteries to make them pump blood more easily. He even said many people take this medication as an age extender (like statins, metformin, and beta blockers). I talked a bit about this when I reviewed Lifespan in my February 2021 blog. In addition to the medication, the doctor talked about some non-medicinal supplements that may also help. So now there are two bottles of pills in my bathroom cabinet. Here’s hoping it stops there! But I won’t hold my breath, and I’ll keep exercising.

The month ended on a fun weekend trip to a very snowy Winter Park, Colorado. We met our daughter and her fiancé, along with a few of their friends. Neither my wife nor I are skiers so we were mainly up there to visit and to see someplace new. I find that as I age, my interest in traveling has waned, unless the travel involves family and friends. Although I didn't ski, I did test out my new snowshoes again, walking around behind the condo where we were staying. There was so much snow up there that the dogs were completely disappearing when they went off trail. My wife cooked up a storm for everyone as we feasted on posole, tacos, and red chile; perfect food for cold weather. By the way, how can you tell someone is a New Mexico food cook?....all their plastic containers are stained red.

For this first month of 2023 I read the two latest novels by one of our great living writers, a book about all the songs of one of my favorite singer-songwriters, and a non-fiction book about what life was like in East Germany during the Cold War. My rambling took me on a couple of snowshoe hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, a nice nature walk on a lake on the way to the airport, and on a slushy foothills walk in north Boulder. Enjoy!

Scientist Spotlight: Scipione Riva-Rocci, blood pressure measurement

The first method of measuring blood pressure always resulted in the patient's death. In 1711 the Reverend Stephen Hales inserted a glass tube into an artery of a horse and observed the rise and fall of blood in the tube. This was cool, but the horse always died. In 1856 J. Faivre recorded human blood pressure for the first time during a limb amputation. He inserts a U-shaped tube directly into the patient’s artery—umm, no thanks. Etienne Jules Marey, a French physician and Robert Ellis Dudgeon developed and refined the first sphygmograph to measure blood pressure non-invasively. But it was large and unwieldy. Finally in 1896 Scipione Riva-Rocci, an internist and pediatrician in Italy developed what was to become the standard cuff type device to measure blood pressure. His design consisted of "every-day objects such as an inkwell, some copper pipe, bicycle inner tubing and a quantity of mercury." Riva-Rocci never wanted to patent his invention. He wanted to share it with the world, and because of this, several important improvements were later achieved (such as the measurement of the diastolic (lower number) pressure. I think we can safely say that he was the inventor of the modern blood pressure measurement device.

There are two numbers given for your blood pressure. The upper number is called systolic and is the maximum pressure exerted on your arteries at the beat of your heart. The lower number is called diastolic and is the pressure exerted on your arteries in between heart beats. Interesting note on blood pressure...in the early 1970s, the general rule of thumb was that if your systolic (upper number) pressure was less than your age plus 100, then you were fine. But studies in the 50 years since have brought that number down to 120-130 no matter your age. Could these studies have been sponsored by pharmaceutical companies developing medicine for high blood pressure (aka hypertension)? Possibly. There seems to still be some disagreement in the medical profession on what really is the definition of high blood pressure, and that definition could change on a per patient basis. I feel like I need to do some more research in this area.

Song(s) of the month: Have a Little Faith in Me and All the Lilacs in Ohio by John Hiatt

I’ve been a casual fan of Hiatt’s for many years and even saw him in concert as part of a group of songwriters that included Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett. Hiatt has been making music for nearly 50 years. His first hit was in 1974, a song called Sure as I’m Sitting Here that he wrote for Three Dog Night. He’s moved in and out of genres from Heartland rock to blues rock to folk rock to country and to Americana. The two songs I selected for this month were recorded nearly 35 years apart and it goes to show that Hiatt’s talent remains after so many years of songwriting. I remember listening to him describe his writing process once. He said the words and music don’t come to him in an unseen wave of art like it does to some artists. He said he works hard to make songs and it’s all the hours of writing and playing that finally result in a song. Well, he’s still working hard!

Have a Little Faith in Me: His most famous (and most covered) song is Have a Little Faith in Me from 1987’s great Bring the Family album. It’s the song that I have used for years to help calm things down when my wife and I have a disagreement (of which there have been a few over our 41 years of marriage). I remember singing the song to my wife while on a long hike in Germany where it seemed we might be lost on many occasions and she was getting a bit irritated and worried...Have a Little Faith in Me. It was the first song he wrote following his sobriety from drugs and alcohol in the 80s. From the wiki page for the song: “Hiatt's original attempt at recording the song took place at a friend's studio and included a larger instrument accompaniment. However, the recording was plagued by technical issues. The morning after, Hiatt was informed that his estranged wife had committed suicide. Hiatt attributes the technical problems with the original recording as a sign that the song was not meant to be heard that way, and he eventually released the song with a much simpler piano accompaniment.” From the beginning the song is one of the greatest love songs ever written:

When the road gets dark
And you can no longer see
Just let my love throw a spark
And have a little faith in me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aYxMuLb3h8

All the Lilacs in Ohio: I discovered All the Lilacs in Ohio the other day on Amazon Music and wondered why I’d never heard this John Hiatt song. Well, it’s because it’s a new one, from his 2021 collaboration with the great steel guitarist Jerry Douglas. I thought to myself, wow, he’s still making great music and great love songs! It’s a song about a fleeting romantic moment that has been lost in reality but remembered in song. It starts out with Douglas' smooth slide guitar, then the bass, guitar, and fiddle kick in, and it takes off from there. A really musically uplifting song...and it's springtime and you're just a boy. Sample lyrics:

So you pin her handkerchief to clean white linen sheets
And you unmake your bed and crawl in
You imagine her there and you're tangled in her hair
And she smells like flowers again
And it's springtime and you are just a boy
And all the lilacs in Ohio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEBVevAr1cQ

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy – I rarely get this excited about starting a book, but it’s been 16 years since the last Cormac McCarthy novel! That was The Road, one of the most incredible dystopian novels ever written. For nearly every McCarthy novel you can say “one of the most incredible [insert genre] novels ever written” and you wouldn’t be wrong. He has been blessed with what very few writers in history have been blessed with…an otherworldly ability to tell a story. I’ve not yet read all of his novels, but the ones I have read (including the two I review this month) are all great: All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian, and The Road. His work is challenging to read; the reader must participate in unraveling the unquoted dialog and the sometimes obscure and hidden meanings. You can’t (I guess I should really say I can’t) read his work with any distractions and you (I) have to give it your (my) full attention. The Passenger is no exception. I’m really not sure how to describe this novel…let’s see, some of the topics include: a mysterious sunken airplane with a missing passenger, salvage scuba diving, mathematics, physics, quantum mechanics, philosophy, schizophrenia, nuclear weapons, incest, Vietnam, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, the mafia, and the food of New Orleans…..just to name a few.

Bobby Western is the protagonist of the story. He’s a salvage scuba diver who we first meet at the start of the novel while he’s searching for survivors of a plane that went down in the Gulf of Mexico. He’s a tortured soul whose father was one of the key scientists in the development of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. His younger sister, Alicia, was a genius math prodigy whose suicide some years previous seems to be the main source of his torture (the first page of the book, before chapter 1 hauntingly describes a hunter discovering her body hanging in the trees on Christmas day). As Will Cathcart in Literary Hub put it, “Bobby and Alicia Western are surrounded by hilarious misanthropes—real and irreal in a world that seems to be both closing in and slipping away.” Bobby has a group of eclectic friends with whom he shares meals, drinks, and has fascinating conversations. These conversations alone are worth your time reading this book; it’s a skill McCarthy has honed over his career and is likely the reason so many of his novels have successfully been adapted to the big screen. Bobby has suspicions about the nature of the plane crash and conducts some of his own investigations. This leads to his interrogation by some mysterious, possibly government agents which eventually leads to his assets being seized by the IRS. The book jumps around in time, including conversations his sister would have with these weird creatures that may have been invented by her as part of her schizophrenia (or were they aliens?). One of these creatures is dwarf-like with flippers for hands whom she calls The Thalidomide Kid....yeah, like that.

McCarthy had fun with words throughout the novel. Two (of many) examples: How did you know which room it was? Easy. Room 4-C. I foresaw it…..and….(about nuclear weapons design) after the math comes the aftermath. Nicolas Mancusi of Time Magazine perhaps described this book best: “From the initial mystery of a missing person, the novel explodes outward like an atomic chain reaction to the very face of God, at the intersection of mathematics and faith. ... Is this sounding like a lot? It is. The Passenger also happens to be something of a masterpiece, an unsolvable equation left up on the blackboard for the bold to puzzle over ...”

I enjoyed every minute I spent reading this strange, and gripping novel. Here are some lines:

It had snowed lightly in the night and her frozen hair was gold and crystalline and her eyes were frozen cold and hard as stones.

…Oiler shone his light down the aircraft aisle. The people sitting in their seats, their hair floating. Their mouths open, their eyes devoid of speculation.

His father’s trade was the design and fabrication of enormous bombs for the purpose of incinerating whole citiesful of innocent people as they slept in their beds.

Fathers are always forgiven. In the end they are forgiven. Had it been women who dragged the world through these horrors there would be a bounty on them.

One nurse told me that the guys who stepped on land mines you would think they would bleed to death with their legs blown off like that but that the blast cauterized the stumps. That’s handy, aint it?

Vertebrae in his neck were always giving him trouble and every time he beat me his neck would ache for days. I told him that it was probably a legacy from having been hanged in a previous incarnation but as you can imagine he failed to see the humor in that.

You cant get a decent cheeseburger in a clean restaurant. Once they start sweeping the floor and washing the dishes with soap it’s pretty much over.

(Hiroshima survivors): They simply thought that the world had ended. It hardly even occurred to them that it had anything to do with the war. They carried their skin bundled up in their arms before them like wash that it not drag in the rubble and ash and they passed one another mindlessly on their mindless journeyings over the smoking afterground, the sighted no better served than the blind.

But I will tell you Squire that having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood.

The loss of a great beauty can bring an entire nation to its knees. Nothing else can do that. Helen. Or Marilyn.

He said the last time he went looking for you it was somewhere in California and you got him drunk and got him in a fight and got him in jail and when he finally got home six days later he was missing two teeth and had the clap.

We dont move through the days, Squire. They move through us.

If someone said to you that you had thrown your life away over a woman what would you say? Well thrown.

In the coming night he thought that men would band together in the hills. Feeding their small fires with the deeds and the covenants and the poetry of their fathers. Documents they’d no gift to read in a cold to loot men of their souls.

Everyone is born with the faculty to see the miraculous. You have to choose not to.

History is a collection of paper. A few fading recollections. After a while what is not written never happened.

Dont be afraid, she would say. Most frightening of words.

Bierstadt Lake snowshoe in Rocky Mountain National Park – I hiked to Bierstadt Lake from a different trailhead back in May of 2021 as part of an 8-mile loop. I remember then that even in early May snowshoes would have made the hike so much easier. Luckily, I received some snowshoes from my son for Christmas and I brought them along this time. I started today’s hike from the Park and Ride lot along Bear Lake Road, and I needed snowshoes from the outset; the park probably had over 5 feet of snow up here just from the previous storm. There were only two other cars when I arrived (in the summer this huge parking lot is full of cars catching park shuttles to various stops). The hike is mostly uphill, around 900 feet in a mile and a half. There are great views along the way and the trail is fairly easy to follow thanks to colored tags attached to trees. It also helped that a couple of others preceded me this morning and broke trail. Once at the lake I decided to walk around it and take photos from the shore. It was a nice day with temperatures in the 30s and a fairly moderate wind that was only noticeable at the lake (the trees provided a good wind break on the way there). It was a total of only 4 miles today but with snowshoes on it felt more like 8 miles. A good workout. I saw a couple of other snowshoers on this trail so it was quiet most of the day (except for the wind in the trees).

View back to the parking lot from the trailhead

Lots of snow

Nice views as you rise up

A walk in the snow covered woods

Bierstadt Lake from the eastern shore

Close up of the mountains

Looks cold up there

My snowshoe tracks

Bierstadt Lake from the western shore

Interesting light on this shot from the northern edge of the lake

Snow egg?

Snowy owl?

Last look back on my way down

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy –
Stella Maris was written as a sort of coda, or finale, to The Passenger. Some critics say it should have just been included within The Passenger as one large novel. I found it to be a terrific way to help me sort out the first novel while reading perhaps the greatest 200 pages of dialog ever written. In Dwight Garner’s New York Times’ review of the book he said, “Stella Maris is… best read while you are still buzzing from the previous book (The Passenger). Its themes are dark ones, and yet it brings you home, like the piano coda at the end of Layla.”

Stella Maris is the name of the psychiatric hospital where 20-year-old Alicia Western (sister of Bobby Western, protagonist in The Passenger) is residing. She checked into the hospital carrying only a toothbrush and $40,000 in cash which she tried to give away to the receptionist. The entire book is an interview between her and her psychiatrist. Alicia is a math savant with a photographic memory and a biting wit. She’s had previous therapists try to save her from her hallucinations and her suicidal tendencies, but it seems all of them have given up, likely because she is too smart and witty for them. However, Dr. Cohen seems up for the task; although not at her intellectual level (nobody is), he is thoughtful, honest, patient, and asks good questions. She sees this and respects it, so she gives of her time. They proceed throughout their dialog to search for answers to Alicia’s problems. Although redemption is never found, the conversation is a snapshot of her brief and extraordinary life. Alicia is the daughter of one of the key scientists that developed the atom bomb, sister to a brother nearly as smart and tortured as she is, but not quite so in either case. There is a sort of incestual underpinning between brother and sister that never quite reaches fruition, but helps to explain the loneliness experienced by each of them. In one section of the conversation, Alicia describes to Dr. Cohen why she decided not to drown herself in Lake Tahoe. She graphically goes into the scientific and biological aspects of the pain and panic it would cause, eventually believing that only setting yourself on fire would be a more painful suicide. Dark, I know, but…it’s Cormac McCarthy…

Will Cathcart (Not the Meta executive, but the American writer/journalist living in Tbilisi, Georgia) from Literary Hub: “It is a gift. Cormac McCarthy is leaving something behind. The soon-to-be nonagenarian knows that (The Passenger) and its follow-up coda, Stella Maris, could be his final offerings. Like a fretful father, there is so much he wants to say before he goes. So he attempts to cram the theory of existence into a single novel.” Cathcart’s great article on Cormac McCarthy’s influence is well worth a read if you want to really get a good feel for what McCarthy’s current and past novels can provide. Read it HERE.

Here are some of the many great lines from this 200 page dialog:

It was where they sent Rosemary Kennedy. After her father had her brains scooped out.

If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be? It would be this: The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.

The spiritual nature of reality has been the principal preoccupation of mankind since forever and it’s not going away anytime soon. The notion that everything is just stuff doesnt seem to do it for us.

- Have you had many counselors try to seduce you?
- I think seduce might be a somewhat fanciful description of their efforts.
- Have any tried to rape you?
- Yes. One.
- What did you do?
- I told him that my brother would come to kill him. That he could count his life in hours.

I just sat there and started playing Bach’s Chaconne. The D Minor? I cant remember. Such a raw, haunting piece. He’d composed it for his wife who’d died while he was away. But I couldnt finish it. Why not? Because I just started crying. I started crying and I couldnt stop.

- what quantum mechanics ultimately describes is the universe.
- Well. I suppose one could say that.
- I suppose one could. One just did.

I suppose you want to know if he felt guilty about building the bomb. He didnt. But he’s dead. And my brother is brain-dead and I’m in the nuthouse.

anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It’s up there with fire and language. It’s at least number three and it may be number one. We just dont know yet. But we will.

The next great war wont arrive until everyone who remembers the last one is dead.

The U-235 for the Little Boy bomb that leveled Hiroshima was carried to Santa Fe on the train a few pounds at a time in a briefcase by an army officer in a business suit. When they had sixty-four kilos they were good.

(My parents) thought I was weird but it had never occurred to them to take me to a doctor about it. Maybe they were afraid they wouldnt get me back. Or that they would. Anyway, that was the beginning of my life among the shrinks.

it shouldnt come as a surprise to find that people in rubber rooms have a worldview at odds with that of the people who put them there.

there seems to be a ceiling to well-being. My guess is that you can only be so happy. While there seems to be no floor to sorrow.

(on her photographic memory) Everything in my life is a part of my life. I dont have the luxury of forgetting things. I was probably eight or nine before I realized that things went away. When people said that they didnt remember I thought it meant that they just didnt want to talk about it. Where I live things dont go away. Everything that has happened is pretty much still here.

Do you believe in an afterlife? I dont believe in this one.

Why do some dreams wake you? They think you’ve had enough?

The unconscious is simply a machine for operating an animal. What else could it be? Most of what we do is unconscious. Turning chores over to the conscious mind is a risky business.

no one has considered the numbers—even few as they might be—of women who were stoned to death for being bright…That I havent wound up chained to a cellar wall or burned at the stake is not a testament to our ascending civility but to our ascending skepticism. If we still believed in witches we’d still be burning them.

Did you ever talk to your brother about the Archatron? Yes. I did. What did he say? He said he thought straitjackets came in a one-size-fits-all but that he wasnt sure and it could be that there was a small, medium, and large and that he’d have to look it up.

A friend once told me that those who choose a love that can never be fulfilled will be hounded by a rage that can never be extinguished…I know that you can make a good case that all of human sorrow is grounded in injustice. And that sorrow is what is left when rage is expended and found to be impotent.

…he wasnt afraid of heights…What was he afraid of? Depths.

I just wanted to see if you’d trot out your pharmaceuticals. Lithium of course always comes last because it’s not patentable. You cant turn a buck with a thing like that.

I’d wrap myself in the blanket at night against the cold and watch the bones take shape beneath my skin and I would pray that I might see the truth of the world before I died.

Barr Lake State Park north of Denver – I’m always looking for hiking destinations on the way to and from the airport and on this day, after dropping my wife off, I headed over to Barr Lake State Park which is just north of the E470 toll road that takes you to the airport. There is a nine mile loop around the lake, but a one mile portion of it on the west end was closed due to nesting bald eagles. So I just meandered for around 6 total miles out and back from the visitor center to the southwest part of the lake. I saw so many eagles. There is a permanent pair of bald eagles that nest here every year but there were others that I saw including what I believe was a golden eagle, several geese, of course, and lots of ducks. I also wandered by some deer out foraging on this day, so it was a great wildlife hike right in the middle of Brighton, Colorado which is just north of Denver.

Barr Lake was named for one of the civil engineers that designed the railroad that passes by the lake. Originally, this area was a wallow for bison, elk, and pronghorn. Farmers took advantage of the low-lying area in the late 1800s and early 1900s by channeling more water from the South Platte and creating a dam. The state park was established in 1977. There are no longer any buffalo, elk, nor pronghorn here but there is still lots of wildlife to enjoy. The best part of the walk was watching a pair of bald eagles playing with each other in the air. Unfortunately, the birds were too far out of range for my little cell phone camera to pick up. I only saw 2 other people on this walk, and they were both carrying huge telephoto cameras which is what you’d need to truly capture these raptors.

Informative sign near the parking lot

Nice boardwalks throughout the park

Distant views of the Rockies over the frozen lake

Lots of interesting deadwood along the shore; perfect for perching eagles

Various side trails you can opt to take

Cool root system on this tree

SO many deer

Inlet to the lake channeled from the South Platte

Lots of cover for wildlife

Nice sunset behind the cottonwoods

Sun shining on the cottonwoods by the shore

Looks so desolate

Final view of the Rockies before getting dark

John Prine: One Song at a Time by Bruce Rits Gilbert – After those two Cormac McCarthy books I really needed to read something lighter. Back in my April 2020 blog I featured John Prine in my songs of the month section. It was pretty emotional for me as John had died from Covid that month. I knew for a fact that there are other diehard John Prine fans out there because I saw them the many times I went to see him in concert. Well, one of them wrote a book in the summer of 2020 from the perspective of a big fan and it’s a pretty darned good book. After John’s death my family shared our favorite John Prine lines from all of his incredible songs; the author of this book did something similar with his family – they played every album of his and sat around talking about it afterwards. That’s what a guy like John Prine does to you. His songwriting talks to the everyday person. I highly recommend this book to any John Prine fan out there, and if you’re not a fan, you will be by the end of it.

This was the author’s first book, written in his 60s. He also started a band and writing and singing songs in his 50s. You know he’s a good guy just by taking a look at his webpage where he’s posing with his grandkid. For the book, he went through every John Prine album (not including the compilations nor most of the live albums) and discussed every song on each album. The book took me a while to read because I found myself listening to nearly every song after each of his descriptions. It was a joyful reading and listening experience. Here’s a few lines from the book that I enjoyed:

…this is a fan book. It’s nothing more or less than a review of John Prine’s music, written and curated by one John Prine fan, culled from reviews and opinions from 1970 to 2020, along with some of John’s own thoughts about his music.

The story that led to (John Prine’s first album) has a few main characters. Among them: Dave Prine, Roger Ebert, Steve Goodman, and Kris Kristofferson.

Roger Ebert was a movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1970…he stumbled upon his first John Prine show (at the Fifth Peg). In his review of the show, Ebert explains: “He starts slow. But after a song or two, even the drunks in the room begin to listen to his lyrics. And then he has you.” After that review, John said that he never again played to an empty seat in the Fifth Peg.

Kris Kristofferson arrived late at the club that night and did not catch John’s show. So in the early morning hours, John got back on stage and played a brief set, including “Sam Stone,” “Hello in There,” “Paradise,” “Donald and Lydia,” and “Illegal Smile.” Kris was so taken with John and his music that he instantly bought John a beer and asked him to get back on stage to play the same set again, song for song. (Shortly afterwards) Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records had offered John a record contract.

…because (Steve Goodman) was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 20 years old, Steve lived life with a sense of urgency. And enthusiasm. It was his enthusiastic promotion of John Prine that led to John’s “audition” in front of Kris Kristofferson.

Rolling Stone, in its 2020 ranking of the 500 best albums of all time, ranked John Prine (his self titled first album) as the 149th best album ever, saying that John’s “closest parallel isn’t another songwriter, it’s Mark Twain.”

In his acceptance speech for the PEN New England Song lyrics Award in 2016, John said: “I can’t help but think about a couple of my high school English teachers that are rolling in their graves.”

In the mid-1980s—well after (his song Dear Abby) was released—a writer sent a letter to “Dear Abby” complaining that his stomach made noises every time he kissed his girlfriend. He signed his letter: “Noisemaker.” Abby did not get the joke. She answered his letter earnestly, suggesting that he get professional help.

John says this about (his song) Common Sense: “This was my Bicentennial tribute to that other great American patriot, Tom Paine. It’s a song about the American dream only existing in the hearts and minds of immigrants until they live here long enough for democracy to make them cold, cynical, and indifferent.”

The New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich wrote this about Prine’s song Unwed Fathers: “It’s a song about an unplanned pregnancy in which no one is absolved, exactly, but no one is blamed. That’s one of Prine’s most extraordinary moves. He is not uninterested in accountability (people make mistakes and of course those missteps should be recognized), but he is not sold on punishment, either.

George Strait’s decision to cover “I Just Want to Dance With You” turned out to be life saving for John Prine. Almost literally. John said that his share of the royalties from Strait’s version of the song paid for substantial medical bills related to his cancer treatments in 1998.

John co-wrote (Take a Look at My Heart) with John Mellencamp, and Bruce Springsteen added backing vocals.

Per Paul Zollo, “’Angel from Montgomery’ is one of the most powerful examples of what’s now known as a ‘John Prine song.’” And what is a “John Prine song? Well, as Talia Schlanger says in her 2018 World Café interview with John, it’s a song by a man who is “warm and funny,” “writes with humor and heart,” and “cares about people and their smallest details.”

Ranger-led snowshoe hike near Bear Lake in RMNP – One of the many great programs offered by the National Park Service are these ranger-led snowshoe hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park. They are offered on the east side of the park near Bear Lake (beginner only) and on the west side near Grand Lake (both beginner and intermediate). And they’re free! You just need to rent or bring your own snowshoes. So 15 of us met up with a ranger and two volunteer rangers for around a 2 mile snowshoe around and over Bear Lake to Nymph Lake. It was a perfect day, with no wind, light snowfall, temps in the upper 20s and perfect snow conditions. Not only do they answer all your questions about the mechanics of snowshoeing, but they provided a really interesting commentary on the plants and animals of the park in winter (the lead ranger carried bag of different animal pelts which helped with his descriptions). One interesting fact I learned was that snowshoe hares will eat meat! It's just a little rabbit! As we came across animal tracks, the ranger would describe the animal and its winter habits. It was a very enjoyable afternoon in the park, and I learned a bit more about snowshoeing and about the animals in the winter here in this spectacularly beautiful park. I’d say that the highlight for me was reaching an overlook of Bear Lake from above it on the northwest side, which is a vantage point I’d not seen in my previous ventures up here. We saw a few cross country skiers and snowshoers, but for the Bear Lake area this day had very few visitors. In the summer and even winter weekends it’s tough to find a spot to park, but I’d say the lot was maybe 10% full today!

An avalanche beacon sign near the trailhead

Snowshoe hare tracks on my snowshoe hike

View of Hallett Peak from on top of frozen Bear Lake

Sun straining through the cold clouds

Intrepid Ranger Steve breaking trail across the lake

Ranger Steve interpretive talk

View from Nymph lake after we climbed the off trail hill from Bear Lake

View above Bear Lake from the west

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder – After Germany was defeated in World War II, the country was separated into four different occupation zones; each controlled by one of the major allied forces (USA, UK, France, and the Soviet Union). The eventual goal was to create a new, post-war, self-sufficient Germany. The Soviet Union had other plans, which eventually led to the creation of two separate countries: Soviet controlled (aka communist) German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the western-allied Federal German Republic (FRG). It stayed this way for 40 years, from 1949 to 1989.

The secret police in East Germany (GDR) were nicknamed the Stasi, and they became notorious worldwide for their spying activities, not only of their enemies but also of their own people. There have been some great novels (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) and movies (The Lives of Others) about the Stasi; and this nonfiction book from Anna Funder is just as gripping as those stories, but in this case they are all real stories from those that survived this dark period of time. The book was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2004 for the best English language nonfiction book. Funder’s credentials are impressive: primary school in Melbourne and Paris; studied at the University of Melbourne and the Freie Universität of Berlin, with a BA and Law Degree (LLB). Master of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney. She worked as an international lawyer in human rights, constitutional law and treaty negotiation until she started writing full time in the 90s. She speaks fluent French and German (in addition to her native English language). Whew!

For the book she found several fascinating characters who were either spied on by the Stasi or were working for the Stasi. She found all these people by integrating herself into German society, visiting museums and talking to those who run them, and by placing ads in the newspaper. She conducted her interviews from the mid-90s (just a few years after the wall came down) through the early 2000s. She took a three-year break from the interviews while her mother suffered and died from an unexpected illness back in Australia. The stories are gripping. There is Miriam Weber who, at age 16 tried to escape over the Berlin Wall, but was caught and put in jail and then under surveillance. Later, her husband was arrested and died mysteriously in prison (the Stasi claimed it was suicide, but Miriam knew better by this point). There is Frau Paul whose child was born in East Germany days before the wall went up-- the baby needed intensive care so she took him to West Germany for care, but became separated from him for the first 5 years of his life because of the wall – she eventually had to make a real life Sophie’s Choice decision. Julia Behrend was a young talent with a gift for languages but because of her relationship with an Italian man (a Westerner), she was put under surveillance and was never allowed to study or get a job. Klaus Jentzsch was known as the Mick Jagger of East Germany; he became the author’s drinking buddy while she was gathering information for the book. Hagen Koch was a young 21-year-old cartographer that helped chart out the location for the Berlin Wall. And Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler was East Germany’s radio voice of propaganda, who still angrily rails about western imperialism (he could probably get a gig at Fox News).

The stories are so incredible, but they tie with all that I’ve read and watched about how life was in that strange country for the 40 years after the war and until the Soviet Union collapsed. Here are some lines:

In its forty years, the Stasi, generated the equivalent of all records in German history since the middle ages.

“Look,” he said, “they are just Germans who had Communism for forty years and went backwards, and all they want now is the money to have big TV sets and holidays in Majorca like everyone else. It was an experiment and it failed.”

“Now I thought: you have only four more steps, just RUN before they get you. But here…was a trip wire.” Sirens went off, wailing. The western sentry huts shone searchlights to find her, and to prevent the easterners from shooting her. The eastern guards took her away…

Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existence.

She is brave and strong and broken all at once.

In the Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2,000 citizens, and in Stalin’s USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5,830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every 63 people.

The denunciations against Mielke began as soon as he lost power—and how could they not, his people being trained to the highest level in denunciation.

…there is no parallel in history where, almost overnight, the offices of a secret service have gone from being so feared they are barely mentionable, to being a museum…

From here to Vladivostok this was Communism’s gift to the built environment—linoleum and grey cement, asbestos and prefabricated concrete and, always, long long corridors with all-purpose rooms. Behind these doors anything could be happening: interrogations, imprisonment, examinations, education, administration, hiding out from nuclear catastrophe or, in this case, propaganda.

Herr von Schnitzler can switch from one view to another with frightening ease. I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted.

“…you see the mistakes of one system—the surveillance—and the mistakes of the other—the inequality—but there’s nothing you could have done in the one, and nothing you can do now about the other.”

He looks straight at me, smiling his lopsided smile like a gangster, or an angel.

There were many bunkers in the GDR, for the Stasi to save themselves in and repopulate the earth—if they remembered to take any women with them.

In August 1961, a fresh Stasi recruit named Hagen Koch walked the streets of Berlin with a tin of paint and a brush, and painted the line where the Wall would go. He was twenty-one years old…

Disloyalty was calibrated in the minutest of signs: the antenna turned to receive western television, the red flag not hung out on May Day

God could see inside you to reckon whether your faith was enough to save you. The Stasi could see inside your life too, only they had a lot more sons on earth to help.

…the people living in this zone (in 1949) had to switch from being (rhetorically, at the very least) Nazis one day to being Communists and brothers with their former enemies the next.

History was so quickly remade, and so successfully, that it can truly be said that the easterners did not feel then, and do not feel now, that they were the same Germans as those responsible for Hitler’s regime. This sleight of history must rank as one of the most extraordinary innocence maneuvers of the century.

On the night of Sunday 12 August 1961 the East German army rolled out barbed wire along the streets bordering the eastern sector, and stationed sentries at regular intervals. At daylight people woke to find themselves cut off from relatives, from work, from school…

(after the wall came down) many of the Stasi found work in insurance, telemarketing and real estate. None of these businesses existed in the GDR. But the Stasi were, in effect, trained for them, schooled in the art of convincing people to do things against their own self-interest.

The GDR imported North Vietnamese “socialist brothers” as workers, and treated them badly. They lived in camps and were bussed to work in factories each day so as to avoid contact with the locals.

The prisoner would be barefoot, yoked into position. The ridges would bite into the soles of his feet. Then water dripped from a pipe hanging through the ceiling, onto his head. Eventually, the prisoner would be in such pain that he would lose consciousness, and his head would slump. It would hit the water in the bucket in front of him and he would either revive into pain again, or drown.

Joke told by her "Mick Jagger of the GDR" friend: The USA, the Soviet Union and the GDR want to raise the Titanic. The USA wants the jewels presumed to be in the safe, the Soviets are after the state-of-the-art technology; and the GDR…..the GDR wants the band that played as it went down.

Hogback Ridge near Boulder - The day's forecast in the mountains was for upper 20s and 30 mph winds, so I stayed closer to home and hiked one of the many great trails in the foothills near Boulder. I started the hike at the Foothills Trailhead which is just east of the 36 highway a bit north of the intersection with Broadway Road. The Foothills North trail takes you west underneath the highway for half a mile to its intersection with the Hogback Ridge loop. The loop is around 2 miles long with great views of the plains and the Flatirons by Boulder. It was sunny and in the upper 30s, so the trail was a mix of ice, snow, and mud. I used microspikes for most of the hike for traction. When I completed the loop, instead of heading back to the car I decided to head south to the Four Mile Creek Trailhead making it around a four mile day (so, you know, Four Mile Creek Trailhead); I had hiked south from this trailhead to Wonderland Lake last April and wanted to complete the connection from the Foothills Trailhead. This part of Boulder is really nice. Much less congestion, nice views, and great access to the trail system. A really nice walk with a bit of a workout as it climbs 900 feet in about a mile and a half.