August 2023

Books read:

Paradise Falls: A Deadly Secret, a Cover-Up, and the Women Who Forged the Modern Environmental Movement by Keith O’Brien
So Far from God by Ana Castillo
In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd
The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs by Greil Marcus
Running With Sherman by Christopher McDougall

Trails walked:

Rabbit Ears Peak and Dumont Lake in Routt National Forest near Steamboat Springs (August 4th)
Forest Lakes in the James Peak Wilderness near Rollinsville (August 8th)
Isabelle Glacier in Brainard Lake Recreation area near Ward (August 17th)
Frozen Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park (August 22nd)
Tombstone Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park (August 29th)

Song(s) of the month – Songs from: The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs by Greil Marcus

Shake Some Action by The Flamin' Groovies
Transmission by Joy Division
In the Still of the Night by The Five Satins
All I Could Do Was Cry by Etta James...and by Beyoncé
Crying, Waiting, Hoping by Buddy Holly
Money (That's What I Want) by Barrett Strong...and The Beatles
Money Changes Everything by The Brains...and Cyndi Lauper
This Magic Moment by The Drifters...and Lou Reed
Guitar Drag by Christian Marclay
To Know Him is to Love Him by The Teddy Bears...and Amy Winehouse

Scientist Spotlight – Emile Berliner, gramophone record inventor

August Summary:

The first weekend of the month my wife and I were able to spend a few days in Steamboat Springs with our daughter and her fiancé. There were never any steamboats up here; it was named because one of the hot springs in the area used to send out a whistling noise which reminded one of the founders of a steamboat whistle. We love exploring all of what Colorado has to offer. There are three ways to get to Steamboat Springs from Longmont. You can drive around Rocky Mountain National Park to the south via I-70 and US40, you can drive north of RMNP via Colorado 14 or you can drive through RMNP via Trail Ridge Road. If you need cell phone coverage while driving, the southern route is best, but the downside is you are dealing with the ridiculous traffic on I-70. This is the route we chose on the way there because my wife needed cell phone coverage that day. But we drove back on the northern route through Colorado 14 and it was a great drive. Hardly any traffic, other than the occasional moose on the highway (I wouldn't take this drive at night). Steamboat Springs was a great town. It's more popular in the winter as most Colorado ski towns are, but there were still quite a few visitors in August. It seems to be very family friendly with lots of activities for the kids. The downtown area has lots of restaurants and shopping and there are outdoor adventures in every direction. One of my hikes this month was in this area with my daugther.

When I saw the devastation caused by this month's fire on Maui I couldn't help but think of that terrifying day on December 30th of 2021 when I received a phone call from our son saying he was driving through a fire near his home on his way to our house. That was the Marshall Fire which saw 100mph winds drive a fire through neighborhoods in Superior and Louisville, CO. The two fires are eerily similar: dry conditions and high winds creating a fire that devastated homes. But there is one difference that I'm still struggling to understand. Miraculously only two people lost their lives in the Marshall Fire, whereas over 115 (and counting) lost their lives in the Maui fire. A similar number of homes and buildings were destroyed, but so many more lost their lives in Maui. Why? I'm sure there will be studies comparing these fires. I suppose there are some obvious reasons you can look at: Homes along the Front Range are generally built further apart than those homes in Lahaina. In Lahaina they build homes to withstand rain and wind, but not fire. Due to the holidays, some of the families in Colorado were out of town. But with 100mph winds there isn't much time to respond. I wrote in my blog in January 2022 that a friend of our daughter's drove away as their home went up in flames in their rear-view mirror. There are so many stories like that in the Marshall fire, folks barely escaping with their lives and with what they wore on their backs. Why did they survive but so many in Maui didn't? I suppose folks will be investigating cell phone warnings and sirens in the days and weeks to come. I think that the law enforcement officials in Colorado played a heroic part by speeding through neighborhoods ahead of the fire, knocking on doors and making announcements via megaphone as they drove down streets choked with chemical-filled smoke. Did that happen in Maui? Some of you may be groaning now, thinking, oh man is he gonna talk about climate change again!? Maybe. All of these "once in a lifetime" weather events that we're seeing every year now are studied for climate change attribution. Many of them end up getting some % value attributed to climate change. The Maui fire attribution study has not yet completed, but certainly some percentage will be blamed on climate change...because, well, the climate is changing. Climate change attribution for the Marshall Fire (and all fires) is complicated and best understood by reading this article from climate.gov. As I'm writing this, hurricane Idalia is pummeling the southeast part of the country. Yes hurricanes have always occurred but with a warming ocean they are getting bigger and more frequent. They are a bit easier to attribute to climate change than wildfires:

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/ocean/1/8/1850-2023

It was a very productive month for both reading and hiking as you can see. Five of each! My reading took me from the Love Canal to burro racing two miles above sea level. And my rambling ranged from Steamboat Springs to the James Peak Wilderness to Brainard Lake and as always to the spectacular Rocky Mountain National Park. Enjoy.

Scientist Spotlight: Emile Berliner, gramophone record inventor

I love listening to music. It touches a part of me that words alone can't. The right music can make or break a movie scene. Can you even imagine the ending of the movie Stand by Me without Ben E King singing Stand by Me? Or the "ear" scene in Reservoir Dogs without Stealers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle with You? So I thought I'd look into how all of this wonderful sound came to be available for us regular people. Music was first reproduced as early as the 9th century by the Persian Banu Musa brothers using hydro power and cylinders with raised pins. However it wasn't until Thomas Edison created the cylinder phonograph in 1877 that music could actually be recorded as it was played. But the cylinders were expensive to make and recorded music for the masses really wasn't available until Emile Berliner created the gramophone disc record in 1887. The disc become the dominant format for music recordings by the 1920s. Edison later invented the double-sided disc which became the standard listening format of recorded music through the 20th century (I still use them today because they provide a richer sound than digital).

Berliner was born in Germany in 1851 and emigrated to the US at the age of 19 where he ran paper routes and cleaned bottles while he tinkered with various inventions and studied physics at night. He eventually got a job with Bell Laboratories. After a battle with Thomas Edison on the use of carbon for audio recording (which he lost), he went on to invent the gramophone record which improved on Edison's cylinder (likely infuriating Edison I'm guessing). This slight change in format is what eventually allowed us everyday folks to listen to musical recordings. So for that I'm thankful to Mr. Berliner.

Song(s) of the month: The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs by Greil Marcus

See my summary of this entertaining book further below. I decided to include those ten songs on this month's songs of the month. It might be best to read my review before figuring out why the heck THESE songs, of all songs in rock and roll, were chosen.

Shake Some Action by The Flamin’ Groovies’ - I had never heard of this mid 1970s song nor the band until reading the book. It's actually a pretty good song that sounds a lot like the 70s (and the late 60s) and was played on college radio stations throughout the decade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIcmk8WA10A

Transmission by Joy Division. The band's bassist Peter Hook said this about the the song: "We were doing a soundcheck at the Mayflower, in May, and we played 'Transmission': people had been moving around, and they all stopped to listen. I realized that was our first great song." Pitchfork ranked it number 10 in their list of best songs of the 70s. The first video below is the Joy Division version; the second video below is from the song's haunting rendition in the film, 'Control', a 2007 British biographical film about the life of Ian Curtis, singer of the late-1970s English post-punk band Joy Division who killed himself at the young age of 23 (Sam Riley was the actor who portrayed Curtis in the film).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBt3mJtgJc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUdmLXq695E

In the Still of the Night was first recorded by the doo-wop group the Five Satins and continues to be a part of many iconic movie soundtracks from American Graffiti to The Irishman. It captures the sound of the 50s.

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

All I Could Do Was Cry was written for Etta James by Billy Davis, Berry Gordy and his sister Gwen Gordy. It was inspired by the true life events of James' former boyfriend leaving her for Billy Davis' former girlfriend, Gwen Gordy. It explains James' emotion in the song. The second video below is from the movie, Cadillac Records which was based on Chess Records (the recording studio in Detroit). Beyoncé played the part of Etta James in the movie and her rendition is incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdD-zac4mx8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMxCKz2XnjE

Crying, Waiting, Hoping. Buddy Holly wrote so many great songs in his too short life (he was only 22 when that plane crashed the day the music died). I'm not sure this song would have been my choice out of all his songs, but I don't know music the way Greil Marcus knows music. It does capture all the great qualities of Holly's music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcLx--6xTk

Money (That's What I Want). Another Berry Gordy song, this became Motown's first hit in 1960. Barrett Strong was mainly known as a songwriter and not a singer, but for the rest of his life he was known for this song even though he co-wrote such classics as I Heard It Through the Grapevine, War, Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me), and Papa Was a Rollin' Stone. The second video below is the Beatles' version of the song which they included in their second album in 1963. It was a big hit for them, among many. John Lennon's piercing vocals show one of the reasons the Beatles were great. The song tells the truth for many people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt82PlxKTKM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeWjEYhk7Xo

Money Changes Everything was written and recorded in 1978 by the new wave group The Brains. Cyndi Lauper made it a hit, but I like her toned down video of the song in the 2nd clip below. This song (and title) also tells a truth, for better or worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLWbp3w2eqM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdcOSRbU9M

This Magic Moment. The great Doc Pomus wrote this song for The Drifters (with Ben E. King). Pomus wrote many other great songs including Save the Last Dance for Me and Viva Las Vegas. This Magic Moment was never a number one hit, but it lives on to this day. It describes, well, that magic moment and it was used in many soundtracks including David Lynch's Lost Highway (2nd clip below) where Lou Reed's version of the song perfectly paired with Patricia Arquette and the great direction of David Lynch. They take the song to another level. The original version of the song by The Drifters also provided the backdrop to one of the many, many great scenes in the movie, The Sandlot (3rd clip below), although as great as The Sandlot was, I doubt you could make a scene like that these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul041CSNJto

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jmKpjqDrPs

Guitar Drag. The soundtrack of artist Christian Marclay’s video installation in which he drags a guitar behind a truck along the same path that James Byrd, Jr was dragged down by white supremacists in 1998. It's more of an artistic statement than a song, but what a statement. The original video production lasts 14 minutes; below is a shortened version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENzw0XGAX2Q

To Know Him Is to Love Him. Originally written and performed by Phil Spector with his group, the Teddy Bears, it was inspired by the tombstone on Specter's father's grave. It was a number 1 hit in 1958 and has been covered by many, including a nice rendition by the trio of Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt. But according to Greil Marcus (and with my total agreement) the song was given an entire new life by Amy Winehouse (2nd clip below). That's part of what Marcus loves about music; the way songs can be reinterpreted and given new life by artists from different generations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIUf6dOGc1c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9IGoEdXJ6s

Paradise Falls by Keith O’Brien - Everyone should read this book. Not only because it’s an important lesson, but also because it’s riveting and heartbreaking. The double entendre title is brilliant; the story is about the infamous Love Canal in the community of Niagara Falls a few short miles from the famous iconic falls. I vaguely remembered hearing the name, Love Canal, but I was in college in the late 70s and there was no internet and I just tuned it out. Many of the families that first moved into this community near the Love Canal believed it to be paradise. But paradise fell after the great blizzard of 1977. In the years leading up to the great blizzard there were reports of rocks igniting in the schoolyard where a school was built on top of a chemical dumping ground; reports of strange odors and slimy goo appearing in basements; and many of the kids seemed to be sick a lot. But most people didn’t know the history of Hooker Chemical’s dumping of their waste here in the 1940s and early 50s before selling the land to the Niagara Falls school board for $1 in 1953 (such a deal!). Hooker Chemical manufactured pesticides and poison gas during World War II, among other things. They weren’t the only manufacturer to improperly dispose of waste during this time. There are thousands of these sites around the world. But Love Canal was different because a school and a neighborhood were built right on top of this waste land.

In the late 1800s, a nefarious businessman by the name of William T. Love came to town with plans to build a hydropower canal between the upper and lower waterfalls. The canal would provide power to a new city he was naming Model City. But Love abandoned the project after digging only 3,000 feet of canal. He fled for Europe with the investors’ money in his pocket. In the 1940s, Hooker Chemical saw the abandoned canal as an ideal location to dump its waste (over 20,000 pounds of it, some in chemical drums, some not). It all seems insane these days, but this was the norm, and one of the many reasons that the Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970 on a bipartisan basis. Occidental Petroleum bought out Hooker Chemical in 1968, bringing billions of dollars from its CEO, Armand Hammer, with it (and it’s fleet of lawyers).

What the great blizzard of 1977 did was to dump so much snow that the spring thaw started leaching these forgotten chemicals into underground swales which carried them well beyond the border of the old canal, into creeks that kids played in. The odors were worse, and residents started complaining. A young reporter (still living in his parents’ basement) named Michael Brown began investigating the area, interviewing families and writing news stories. And here began the extraordinary battle between ordinary citizens (mostly women) whose pets were sick, whose children were sick, whose young women were having miscarriages; and the politicians, lawyers and corporations who fought them for years before doing anything. And that’s what most of this great book went on to describe in gripping detail. It’s the same old story that we’ve seen reveal itself over and over: The tobacco companies denying responsibility, the chemical corporations fighting Rachel Carson’s discovery of DDT’s impact on human health, and now the fossil fuel companies’ denial and now delay on its product’s impact on climate change. It’s also the same old story about lower income people and marginalized people of color ending up living in areas contaminated with the waste and pollution of our thriving economy.

There is a long list of heroes and villains in this story. The author did an incredible job of unwinding all the information, even interviewing some of the women activists just before they passed away. The names of Lois Gibbs, Beverly Paigen, Luella Kenney, Elene Thornton, Karen Schroeder, Marie Pozniak, Debbie Cerrillo and many others should be known in our history books as ordinary women who became the face of environmental activism in the US. Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action said, “This book—about an historical event, an environmental catastrophe—reads like a thriller, even if you know the contours of that event and its outcome. In luminous prose, O’Brien brings people to life on the page. You’ll end up caring about them, and admiring them, for their courage and persistence.” Seriously, read it! I have a copy you can borrow.

Rabbit Ears Peak and Dumont Lake near Steamboat Springs – On a recent long weekend exploring Steamboat Springs I was able to go on this nice walk with daughter and her dogs. The trailhead is about a mile or so off US highway 40 southeast of Steamboat Springs. We knew it was gonna be a good day when we spotted a mother and baby moose just as we turned onto the access road. Our initial goal for the day was to hike to Long Lake via the Wyoming trail, but the jeep road to the trailhead was taking way too long in my Subaru, so we settled on this hike which started just before the jeep road got rough. The walk is just under 3 miles each way and around 1,100 feet of elevation gain to reach the peak. All but the steep last quarter mile is a nice gradual climb. Once you are at the base of the Rabbit Ears there is a bit of a scramble which takes you to a ridge in between the two “ears”. This was definitely the highlight, so the scramble is worth the effort. Peregrine falcons were dive-bombing all around us along with their piercing screeches. I imagine they may have been protecting their nests and maybe weren’t too happy to see us. The wildflowers were another highlight. Every imaginable color was on display for most of the entire walk which included expansive views of the many green valleys in this area to the south, west, and east. As we got close to the trailhead on the way back, we decided to take the half-mile detour to Dumont Lake. We hung out at the lake while the dogs cooled off in the water. A beautiful day in a more remote section of Colorado with animal sightings, incredible wildflowers, and sweeping views.

Wildflowers everywhere

See!?

And views (the pointy peak is called Granny's Nightcap)

In one ear and out the other

Daughter and wonder dog at the ear base

Daughter and I with views from ear base 1

No words

Cooling off in Dumont Lake

So Far from God by Ana Castillo – Another book gifted to me by my wife’s wonderful Aunt Alice. I had heard of Ana Castillo since she lives in New Mexico but never had a chance to read any of her work until now. A native of Chicago, she now lives in the desert between Las Cruces, NM and the Mexican border. Painter, professor, poet, essayist, novelist, blogger, playwright, social justice activist…she does it all and has been doing it for nearly half a century. The book title is from a quote by Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s dictator during the Mexican Civil War: “So far from God—So near the United States.” It tells the story of Sofi and her four daughters. It’s loosely based on the Greek goddess of wisdom, Sophia whose daughters were named Faith, Hope, and Love. Sofi’s daughters have the Spanish equivalents (sort of): Esparanza (Hope), Fe (Faith), Caridad (Charity), and…La Loca (the crazy woman). Like many Greek myths this novel combines the supernatural with human tragedies and contains lessons about life in the telling. The story is set in the village of Tome, NM which is just about five miles north on NM highway 47 from my birthplace of Belen, NM. I recognized so much of the townspeople and their lives in this novel from my weekly visits to Belen while I grew up in Albuquerque. The mixture of Spanish and English (Spanglish), the Fiestas which had evolved from Indigenous celebrations, the loss of land from greedy developers, the importance of religion and family, and the food! I still remember my grandparents, Macedonio and Josefina Sanchez, taking me to the Belen Fiestas when I was young. Sofi’s life was full of tragedy, joy, and spirituality. I loved reading about their magical lives. Here are some lines:

..despite her grandmother’s insistence that they were Spanish, descendants of pure Spanish blood, all shared the flat butt of the Pueblo blood undeniably circulating through their veins.

La Loca had “cured” her sister of her pregnancy, a cause for excommunication for both…a crime against man if not a sin against God.

He’s like an onion, we will never know all of him…

Call him a pacifist or a chicken, Domingo did not believe in war, which he felt only benefited los ricos.

Sofi prepared…posole and sopa and lots of chili, because feeding is the beginning and end of what a mother knows to do for her offspring, even when she doesn’t know what to say.

…even this existence of ours has no start and no finish but is the continuance of a journey on an endless, unpaved road.

She knew that nothing that exquisite could last in the vulgarity of the big world very long.

And everyone knows, if you want to find La Llorona, go hang out down by the rio, or its nearest equivalent, especially when no one else is around. At night.

Then he met this white chick, just before they finished college. She drove a new little sports car and the worst trauma of her life had been living with braces through high school.

Loca was not sure if she was a present nun or a past nun or maybe hasta una future subjunctive nun.

Forest Lakes in the James Peak Wilderness – I’ve hiked near here during my walk to Crater Lakes in June 2022. I also drove up to Rollins Pass in September 2021 with my son where we then hiked to King Lake. On this hike, I touched portions of those two adventures. I began at the East Portal trailhead near the Moffat Tunnel which is about 8 miles west of Rollinsville on an easy, graded dirt road. There were several cars here this Tuesday, many of them from folks backpacking into this wilderness. As I drove into the parking lot there were two juvenile moose sauntering across the railroad tracks! It was going to be a good day. I started on the South Boulder Creek trail which basically is the access trail to many of the great hikes in this area and follows the rushing South Boulder Creek whose source is about 4.5 miles up its namesake trail. South Boulder Creek eventually flows through Eldorado Canyon and merges with Boulder Creek in Valmont, east of Boulder. I walked two miles of this trail on my Crater Lakes hike last year but only one mile today before taking a sharp right up the Forest Lakes trail. The grade for most of the way is moderate (2,000 feet in 5 miles) and very rocky. There were lots of wildflowers and various streams along the way making for a very pleasant walk. A saw a few backpackers making their way down. There are two main lakes (I’ll call them Lower and Upper Forest) and five smaller ponds that make up Forest Lakes. When I got to Lower Forest Lake after 3 plus miles there were two people hanging out at the lake and a three-generation family camping out. I made my way around the southwest part of the lake and headed along the trail to Upper Forest Lake which was another mile up the hill. There were 3 people fishing up here who had driven the very bumpy Rollins Pass Road and walked the half mile trail from the road. I noticed on the map that there was one small pond (Upper Upper Forest Lake?) above the tree line but there was no trail. So I made my way off trail to see it. It wasn’t too bad of a climb, just some large boulder fields to traverse where marmots and picas were chirping at me. It was less than a quarter mile above Upper Forest Lake. Behind Upper Upper Forest Lake was a one-thousand-foot wall and on top of that wall is the Continental Divide trail which you can hike from the Mexico border all the way to the Canada border at Glacier National Park…if you so choose. I headed back and wound my way around the other side of Upper Forest Lake and decided to head up that half-mile trail to Rollins Pass Road which I had driven on two years ago with my son. I walked a little bit along the road until I got to some nice views before heading back down. It was a nice easy and beautiful walk back down to my car after a 10-mile day in this wonderful wilderness.

Two juvenile moose near the trailhead looking for trouble

Start at the East Portal trailhead

Lower Forest Lake

Stream between the lakes

Upper Forest Lake

Stream and wildflowers

Upper Forest lake from above

Upper Upper Forest Lake

Great tundra views

Trail art

Went up to Rollins Pass Road

Ripplin' waters

In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd – So the way I pick my reading list is a bit haphazard but works something like this: I keep a running list on Google Docs of books I want to read. I add items as I come across an article about a book or if someone recommends a book to me. I’ve also added books from various “best of” lists that I’ve read. When I finish the book, it gets removed from the Google Doc file. When I’m ready to read a new book I peruse the file and then use the Libby app to see if that title is available in Kindle form at the two libraries that I use. If not, I go on to another item on the list or put it on hold. I will occasionally order a physical book from bookshop.org (which donates a portion of each sale to support independent bookstores) if it consistently shows up as not available from the library. The reason I wanted to explain this is because I couldn’t remember why I had this book on my list…until I started reading it.

It tells the story of a guy returning to his hometown in northern Indiana to write an article about small towns for his New York City newspaper. He runs into an old school friend who is now a bartender in that small town and they start to drink a lot of beers (30!) and reminisce about their childhood. They talk about the time he (Ralph) wanted a bb gun for Christmas…I thought, huh, that sounds like A Christmas Story. Then he reminisced about the time his dad won a big prize that turned out to be, yes, a fishnet stocking leg lamp. Oh yeah, THAT’S why I had this book on the list! It was the inspiration for that great movie that airs 24-7 during Christmas, A Christmas Story. Those of you who are aficionados of the movie probably already knew this. And you probably also knew that the author of this book, Jean Shepherd, was the narrator in the movie; and that he made a cameo appearance as one of the parents in line for meeting Santa Claus at the mall. The Santa story was in the book as well; so was the time when Ralphie beat up the school bully (but in the book it happened during the summer). Overall, five of the fifteen stories in the book made up A Christmas Story. There are many other really good stories in the book that are NOT in the movie, especially as Ralphie got into high school and college. One of the other differences is that the movie was set in the 1940s whereas the flashbacks in the book were set in the Great Depression with all the realities of lack of work and food for many. Published in 1966, the book has its share of cringe writing that was the norm for that period (stereotypes on women and various ethnicities). But overall, it was really well written and entertaining. I was chuckling many times during some of the stories. Shepherd, along with the help of Shel Silverstein, published many of these stories originally for…. get this…Playboy magazine! So yes, A Christmas Story originated on the pages of Playboy magazine. Here are some lines that I enjoyed:

My mother would simply throw her shoulder against the front door, pushing back the advancing drifts and stone ice, the wind raking the living-room rug with angry fury for an instant, and we would be launched, one after the other, my brother and I, like astronauts into unfriendly Arctic space. The door clanged shut behind us and that was it. It was make school or die!

It was the Depression, and the natives had been idle so long that they no longer even considered themselves out of work. Work had ceased to exist, so how could you be out of it?

Already Santa was sliding me off his knee and toward the red chute, and I could see behind me another white-faced kid bobbing upward. “I want a Red Ryder BB gun with a special Red Ryder sight and a compass in the stock with a sundial!” I shouted. “HO-HO-HO! YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, KID. HO-HO-HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Down the chute I went.

Poor little Charlie crouching next to his radio—a born Right Fielder. Playing right field all of his life, knee-deep in weeds, waiting for a flyball that never comes and more than half afraid that one day they will hit one in his direction.

Everyone is coated with an inch and a half of something called citronella, reputedly a mosquito repellent but actually a sort of mosquito salad dressing.

Two kids trooped in through the front door at this point, letting in a big blast of frigid air and a strong whiff of Refinery gas, an aroma so much part of the everyday life in Hohman, Indiana that it is called “fresh air.”

Another specialty of wax that had a certain illicit air about it was a small wax bottle filled with a colored, sickeningly sweet syrup, usually green in color, and a sure-fire appetite killer. These bottles had a vaguely illegal quality to them since they had the unmistakable hint of Jug-Hitting, and there was plenty of that on Saturday nights in our neighborhood. The bottles were not shaped in the form of milk containers. The kids were practicing up to be grownups even then.

Basketball, which in Indiana is far more a mystique than an athletic contest. Basketball has been responsible for suicides, divorces, and even a few near-lynchings.

the sousaphone player is among the loneliest of men. His dedication is almost monk-like in its fanaticism and solitude. He is never asked to perform at parties.

In spite of legend, many drum majors are notably unsuccessful with women.

I had mastered the art of manufacturing an entire book report from two paragraphs selected at random, plus a careful reading of the dust jacket, a system which still earns a tidy living for many a professional reviewer.

Isabelle Glacier in the Brainard Lake Recreation area – I hiked part of this trail in August of 2021 when I climbed to Pawnee Pass on the Continental Divide. There is a junction just as you reach Lake Isabelle; turn right up to Pawnee Pass or turn left to skirt Lake Isabelle and then climb up to Isabelle Glacier. I turned left this time. I couldn’t get a parking pass for Long Lake but was able to get one for Brainard Lake; this added a couple of miles to the hike. But Brainard Lake is beautiful and there are trails you can walk to get to the Isabelle Glacier trail without having to walk along the road. It was a cool 57 degrees to start the day but with the sun shining I was hiking in shorts and a t-shirt. I walked along the south side of Brainard Lake and then took the Niwot Cutoff trail towards Long Lake where I picked up the Isabelle Glacier trail. Long Lake is aptly named as I hiked along its northern edge for just under a mile. In another mile I was at that junction sign where this time I headed left towards the glacier. Isabelle Lake is a great destination in and of itself. It’s gorgeous and most folks seem to end their hike here. I headed along the north side where a nice couple were stopped in their tracks due to two bull moose grazing near the trail. The woman was terrified because she had been attacked by a moose earlier that summer near Nederland where they lived; she was having a bit of PTSD. In the attack she said she kept a tree between her and the moose (which was inches from her face) for what seemed like forever until the female moose eventually decided she was no longer a threat to her calf. Yikes. We eventually found a way to make a wide berth around the moose to continue the hike. The trail past Isabelle Lake was the highlight (I mean besides watching two giant bull moose grazing) as there were creeks and waterfalls and wildflowers everywhere you turned. There were a few spots that were muddy with lots of water on the trail, but it wasn’t too difficult to get through. About a mile and a half past Isabelle Lake was a tiny lake (I’ve heard some call it Little Isabelle Lake) with an incredible backdrop including Navajo, Apache and Shoshoni peaks. The couple I had been hiking with since the moose sighting stopped here. There were 4 others up here as well. I rock hopped along the small lake until I saw the trail making its way steeply up to the north towards the glacier. It was another half mile and 600 feet up to get to the glacier. Last month on my Lion Lakes hike I was able to see the headwaters of the North St. Vrain; on this hike I reached the headwaters of the South St. Vrain, which is Isabelle Glacier. The glacier spans the saddle between Apache and Shoshoni peaks, and you are surrounded by this basin cirque of stone. At the base of the glacier is a beautiful small tarn that was half frozen over on this mid-August day. It’s a humbling experience being surrounded by all this ice and stone with nobody near you. I sat up here quite a while before finally deciding to head back down (also the clouds were gathering, and I needed to get below tree level). The hike back was a nice and easy downhill. When I reached Long Lake, it started raining so I put on the rain gear and headed back to my car after another epic day in the Rocky Mountains.

Brainard Lake next to the trailhead

South St. Vrain Creek

Lake Isabelle

Moose on the loose

I stayed far away

Lake Isabelle from the west end

Climbing up there

Lake Isabelle from higher up

Little Lake Isabelle

Little Lake Isabelle reflections

Isabelle Glacier

Darn pretty tarn below the glacier

Look ma, I'm touching a glacier!
(and the source of South St. Vrain Creek)

Very bouldery up here looking towards Navajo Peak

Nice lighting up this high

Shoshoni Peak?

Lake Isabelle far below, with Niwot Ridge to the right (Daughter and I were up there a couple of years ago looking down on Lake Isabelle)

Flowers, dense brush and magnificence

Looonngg waterfall

Spectacular

Trees designated as Wildlife Trees cannot be chopped down

The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs by Greil Marcus – The author is perhaps the first rock critic ever. He started his career in the late 60s as Rolling Stone Magazine’s first review editor and has written 16 books on artists ranging from Bob Dylan to the Sex Pistols to Elvis Presley and Van Morrison. His own life started out with a bang. While his mother was 3 months pregnant with him, his father perished in a typhoon during the last year of World War II after his commander demanded the ship sail into the storm; an event later immortalized in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny.

Marcus is a walking encyclopedia of rock music, including its beginnings in the early 20th century Mississippi Delta with Robert Johnson, Son House, Charley Patton, and Willie Brown. He begins the book with a six-page continuous text of all the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. I believe he did this in order to dispel any criticism of the fact that it’s impossible to name only ten songs that define the genre’s history. In fact, he did something really brilliant; he chose ten songs that likely nobody would ever choose to define Rock’s history. Honestly, I was a bit dumbfounded at first because I had never heard of the first song nor the band (The Flamin’ Groovies’ 1976 song, Shake Some Action). The song though is really good and sounds a bit like early Rolling Stones. For me, this first song’s chapter however was the weakest, and I was close to setting the book aside, but I’m really glad I didn’t. Because the chapters on Buddy Holly’s "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and on Joy Division’s "Transmission" and Barrett Strong’s "Money (That’s What I Want)" are brilliant and enlightening and just really fun to read. They talk about the times, the songs’ beginnings and how they continue to be meaningful to this day; how they were influenced by previous artists, the whole shebang. It’s fun. Did you know that the Beatles are so named in tribute to Buddy Holly’s group, The Crickets? That’ll Be the Day was the Beatles first recording in Liverpool in 1958, the year I was born!

Here are some reviews of the book that say it so much better than I can: From Ann Powers of NPR - "No writer puts you inside the experience of music the way Greil Marcus does. His descriptions of songs, especially, unfold like thrillers or romantic rhapsodies, sucking you in and revealing aspects of each beat or vocal trill that you'd never have noticed on your own.” From Touré of the New York Times: "Marcus looks at various versions of 'Money (That’s What I Want),' 'This Magic Moment' and 'In the Still of the Night' to see what each iteration says about the song, the singer and society at large." And Carl Wilson from Slate had this to say: "The chapters on Joy Division, on Buddy Holly, and on the two 'Money' songs are tours de force delving into rock nihilism.”

On some of the songs, Marcus describes their rebirth as they are covered by later artists like Beyoncé covering Etta James’ 'All I Could Do Was Cry' and Amy Winehouse covering The Teddy Bears’ (headed by Phil Specter!) 'To Know Him is to Love Him'. Or the Beatles covering 'Money (That’s All I Want)'. One of the 'songs' is titled 'Guitar Drag' by the artist Christian Marclay. It’s really just a bunch of noise that goes on for 14 minutes until you know the story. Marclay had recently read about the murder of James Byrd, Jr by white supremacists in Texas in 1998; they chained him to a pickup truck and dragged him through the streets until he died in a torturous manner. Marclay hooked up an electric guitar to an amp and dragged the guitar by pickup truck through those same Texas streets and recorded the sounds. In that chapter Marcus evokes the names of John Henry and Colson Whitehead to talk about race relations in this country. Wow.

See Songs of the Month above for a list of the ten songs. Meanwhile, here are some lines from the book I enjoyed:

(Marcus describing watching a scene in the movie Control about the band Joy Division): Sitting in the theater, watching the movie, I realized that half a minute had passed and I hadn’t taken a breath.

They had named themselves Joy Division after brothels in Nazi concentration camps filled with prisoners.

“IIIIIIII heard”—with a tone as rich and deep as any in rock ’n’ roll, (Etta) James doesn’t so much sing the opening words of “All I Could Do Was Cry” as let them out, stones hidden in her lungs for twenty years…. the scene in which Beyoncé records “All I Could Do Was Cry” is so powerful it can make the rest of her career seem like a cheat

the most glamorous element of (Buddy) Holly’s career was the plane crash that ended it—on 3 February 1959, leaving his twenty-two-year-old body in an Iowa cornfield along with those of seventeen-year-old Ritchie Valens and twenty-nine-year-old J. P. Richardson, the Big Bopper, and the pilot, Roger Peterson, twenty-one.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, as the Quarry Men, cut a version of “That’ll Be the Day” for their first recording, in Liverpool in 1958, and later named themselves the Beatles in imitation of Holly’s Crickets.

Bob Dylan... on 31 January 1959, he was present in the Duluth Armory for Buddy Holly’s second-to-last show...in 1998 he accepted the Grammy for Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind, “Buddy Holly looked right at me”—meaning that, on that night, Buddy Holly had passed on the secret of rock ’n’ roll, of all music, of life itself, one avatar to another...

As 1966 broke into 1967, it was a time in rock ’n’ roll—in life lived according to its pace—when no one knew what to expect. Album by album, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, even the Beach Boys, even someone who might not have been heard of the year or the month before, were in a constant battle to top each other.

“Listen,” the producer T Bone Burnett said the year before, “the story of the United States is this: One kid, without anything, walks out of his house, down the road, with nothing but a guitar and conquers the world.”

The Beatles loved Motown. They covered everything they could, even if it wasn’t a hit, as “Money,” issued in Great Britain in 1960, wasn’t.

(In David Lynch’s) Lost Highway when the mobster’s lover played by Patricia Arquette gets out of a black Cadillac convertible in an auto garage and, in super-slow-motion, passes under the gaze of Balthazar Getty’s mechanic, and stops him cold. Look out look out look out! the song (This Magic Moment) says as Lou Reed shreds it on his electric guitar. You’ll never get her face out of your head! You’ll never get out of this song alive!

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” the closest a mere song has ever come to sainthood,

“I didn’t want to just wake up drinking, and crying, and listening to the Shangri-Las, and go to sleep, and wake up drinking, and listening to the Shangri-Las,” Winehouse would say of how she wrote her unflinching songs, but she did.

Frozen Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – I was able to snag a 5:00-7:00am entry permit for the Bear Lake corridor in the park for this Tuesday. I left home around 5:15am and arrived at the trailhead at 6:15. The main trailhead at Glacier Gorge was already full! But luckily the secondary, and much larger, trailhead at Bear Lake was only half full (at 6:15am!!). This is a very popular park this time of year. For this hike there is very little difference in mileage between the two trailheads (maybe a tenth of a mile), but there is one downfall to the Bear Lake trailhead: The last half mile upon returning to the car is uphill and that’s not fun after 14 plus miles of walking. It was warmer in the early morning than I expected (around 63 degrees here at 9,400 feet) but the wind was howling which forced me to wear a mid-layer for the first couple of miles until my body heated up and the wind calmed a bit.

In September of last year I hiked beyond Black Lake up to Blue Lake which was a tough 12 miles. This time I did the same hike, but farther up to Frozen Lake, totaling 14 miles (don’t believe the AllTrails app that says this is “only” 11.5 miles; several others have pointed out this issue). I had this crazy idea in my head that I was going to hike all 4 remaining lakes above Black Lake today (Frozen, Green, Solitude, and Shelf). Bwaahhaahhaha, what a dream that is. One lake at a time is now my mantra for these alpine lakes. There were lots of tourists on the trails up to Alberta Falls (1 mile), then the remainder of them seemed go up Icy Brook to The Loch and Sky Pond leaving fewer folks headed up Glacier Creek to the Mills/Jewel/Black Lake trail. I was lucky enough to be the only person at all three of those lakes (and certainly the only one at Frozen Lake). I saw maybe 7 people the entire way from Mills Lake to Frozen Lake; two of them were 20 somethings that had gone up to climb the Spearhead, which looks terrifying (which explains why only 20-somethings were doing it); especially considering you’ve already hiked 7 miles and 3,000 feet of elevation just to get to its base!

The hike from the trailhead to Black Lake is a bit over 5 miles of fairly steady moderate climbing. Since I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet because I woke up so early, I stopped at Black Lake for a sandwich and to rest up for the push to Frozen Lake. Past Black Lake it’s a very steep climb to reach the tundra of the Glacier Cirque Basin, one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen. Fourteen-thousand-footer Longs Peak hovers above you along with several 13ers. All around you is green tundra, white snow, colorful rocks, waterfalls, rivers, and lots of marmots and pikas. It’s a special place and makes the work to get there worth the while. I passed a woman who was having trouble trying to reach Blue Lake. Since I was there last year, I was able to help her out. There are no real trails up here in the tundra, just routes that are fun to navigate. Once she was on her way, I started picking my way up the tundra to the base of Spearhead and then over to Frozen Lake which was an eerie place. The lake was in a sort of chasm and was very dark. I don’t know why it gave me an eerie feeling, but it did. I wandered around its eastern edge over to the outlet where I got a couple of photos. Next, I climbed a small ridge above the lake and I could see that there was a different and more direct route back to the trail above Black Lake that also might have better views of Black Lake far below. It did! The route probably wasn’t as fast as the way I came up because I had to navigate around some marshes and juniper forests, but it was enjoyable, and I was able to get a different perspective above Black Lake.

I started my way back and just past Black Lake I ran into a woman who warned me of a family of 5 elk on the trail. She said the mama elk was being very protective of her calf and tried to run the woman off the trail. When I got to where the elk were, a father/son was trying to manage their way around them towards me. They finally did and the father gave me a big stick and said “Here, good luck.” I would have been more concerned had it been a moose. The guy offered to wait while I made my way around, but I told him to continue to enjoy the hike and to come back if he heard screaming. I managed to locate the calf who was to the right of the trail (mama was in the middle of the trail). So I set a wide berth to the left of the trail, sloshing through the creek. Every now and then I’d step on a stick and the entire family (mama, calf, two young males and a young female) would snap their heads towards me in unison. It was a very cool and heart-pounding moment. I described a similar encounter with two bull moose on last week’s hike to Isabelle Glacier. The rest of the trip back was uneventful and nice and relaxing and downhill…until that last half mile up to the Bear Lake trailhead.

Alberta Falls, one mile in

So many choices

I'm heading up where the sun is shining on the rocks

The pretty Mills Lake

Wind was perfectly calm for this reflection on Jewel Lake

Glacier Creek reflections

Ribbon Falls below Black Lake and McHenrys Peak

Lunch spot!

Black Lake far below now

Longs Peak looming in the upper left

The Spearhead (two younguns had already free-climbed this today)

Seems like the world just drops off

It sort of does just drop off

Frozen Lake

Loved this boulder view

A different view of Black Lake

Black Lake with sun shining on Powell Peak

A very protective mama elk

...and a curious juvenile male elk

Trail art

Angry face trail art

Running with Sherman by Christopher McDougall – This book came from a strong recommendation by my daughter which usually means a great read. And it was. I had already read and loved McDougall’s incredible story of the Tarahumara tribe of indigenous runners in Copper Canyon Mexico a few years ago and was intrigued by the story of this donkey, published in 2019. It started as a regular column in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017. McDougall had left city life behind and moved to the Pennsylvania Amish countryside to live with his wife and two daughters on a farm. One day they were asked to care for a neglected donkey who was being hoarded by a person unable to care for animals. McDougall reluctantly agreed, which eventually transformed his life and that of his family and a few friends (and many strangers who later became friends). When the donkey (whom they later named Sherman) arrived at their home he was near death. The veterinarians who took a look at him said he likely wouldn’t make it. His hooves were unclipped and too long to allow him to walk, his coat was matted, and he was festered with parasites inside and out. With help from some of his neighbors, Sherman’s hooves were repaired and his coat and parasites where addressed, but his mental state was another matter. Eventually one of the McDougall’s goats, Lawrence, befriended Sherman and that turned out to be the key to his eventual mental recovery.

McDougall recalled a burro/human race he’d watched years ago when he was doing the story on the Tarahumara runners (who had blown away the US competition in the Leadville 100-mile race in Colorado). The story of the people and their burros racing through the mountains at 2 miles above sea level stayed with him and he struck upon an idea that seemed crazy now. He decided that he’d give Sherman a purpose and train him to run that burro race in the mountains in one year. The woman who was helping him care for Sherman thought he was nuts, but as time went on, she grew to love the idea. The rest of the book details all the joy and heartbreak of that year of training. The heart of this true tale is the incredible and ancient bond of humans and animals which we’ve lost some sense of as people have moved from rural to urban areas. This story of human/animal bonding is enough to make this a good book, but what makes it a great book are all the side stories of the people who helped MacDougall and Sherman during this year of training for the Colorado race. It was almost an unbelievable collection of families and individuals who had overcome tragedies and hurdles in their lives all coming together to be part of this seemingly silly story of getting a donkey to run a race. I couldn’t help but get teary-eyed as he described Sherman finishing the race a year later. Stuff I learned about while reading this book: Amish vs Mennonite culture, autism, depression, Angola’s genocide, bridging political divides, small farms, real toughness, the strength of women (well, I already know a lot about that), running, patience, animal wisdom, donkeys, goats, overcoming adversity…. Here are a few lines:

The donkey was mired nearly to its knees in manure and rotten straw, and so cramped by the narrow stall that it could barely turn around…My daughters and I stared at him in silence. We didn’t care anymore about getting a pet. All we cared about was getting him out of there.

(To clip Sherman's hooves) Scott pulled a freakishly huge pair of steel clippers that looked like they’d been designed by Leatherface for use in his murder van.

"You need to give this animal a purpose. You need to find him a job.” A job? What was I going to do with a donkey, prospect for gold? Pioneer westward?

Philly can be cold and bitter, and that’s just the people.

I squeezed the Bronco into a parking spot between two horse-drawn buggies, then stepped through a door into the 1800s. Inside, the Amish hardware store was dimly lit by hissing gas lanterns. Men in black suits and straw hats searched the aisles for sheep testicle removers, hand-cranked ice-cream makers, spare wheelbarrow handles.

how, out of all life’s paths, did I end up cruising around with a trunk full of discarded cow and a guy who speaks ancient German and doesn’t believe in zippers?

Apparently if Sherman had a new life ahead, so would I: every three months, I’d be reminding myself to file quarterly taxes and degrease my donkey’s downspout.

it’s kind of insane that in Boston, grouchy old men with cigars and overcoats would keep declaring until 1972 that women were too dainty to run their marathon, while in Colorado, the “ladies” had been tearing up a far more grueling challenge for twenty years.

in 2018, animal behaviorists at Canisius College researched the sleeping habits of people who shared their beds with a pet and found that out of nearly 1,000 women, the majority had “better, more restful sleep” when they cuddled with a dog rather than with their husbands.

Normally, up to 75 percent of all prisoners who are released will be arrested again within five years. But among prisoners who’ve worked with animals, the recidivism rate tends to be as low as 10 percent.

Donkeys operate on one frequency—trust. They do nothing on faith, but everything on certainty. They can be dying of thirst, but if they’re not sure about the water, they won’t touch it.

Amish life isn’t about what you can’t have, he explained; it’s about what you can… The Amish don’t go hungry, homeless, or broke, because they’ve quietly created their own little semi-socialist Scandinavian paradise right in the heart of red-state America. They adopt one another’s children, care for their old folks at home, build and pay for their own schools, and take in the needy.

The Amish are six times more active than the average American, and half as likely to suffer from cancer or diabetes. (the Amish obesity rate is a nearly nonexistent 4 percent versus almost 40 percent for the rest of us)

Sam’s uncle knew that happiness, health, and security come from devoting yourself to two things—your family and your friends—and anything that doesn’t bring you closer to both is pulling you in the wrong direction. Distance and envy are two poisons that can destroy any community, and that’s why the Amish have a problem with cars, fashion, and even electricity: they let you travel too far, show off too much, and stare at screens instead of faces.

Runners like to boast that “our sport is your sport’s punishment,”

If you’ve ever heard a donkey bray, you never again have to wonder what the souls of the damned twisting on the pitchforks of eternal torment sound like.

In both Asia and the Arctic Circle, they soon came to realize, there was a spirit of togetherness that seemed to be dying out in mainland America.

Tombstone Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park – I was able to spend a nice day out with my son on this picture-perfect day. We headed up Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park since he hadn’t been up here in a couple of years. We pulled over in the small pull out by the Tombstone Ridge trailhead (I was having PTSD as this was the trail in which I dislocated my finger back in September 2022). We slowly ambled our way across the tundra taking in the epic views while we got caught up on the issues of the day and theorized how we could make the world a better place for his kids/my grandkids; and how the baseball and football seasons were shaping up. We passed a few folks along the way including several with their kids whose lives we were trying to save by thinking of how to make the world a better place. We stopped just short of the steep section where I dislocated my finger last year; not because of any PTSD but because my son had to pick up his son from daycare. No big animal sightings today, just a marmot sunning herself and munching on tundra grass. The clouds were mystical today.