October 2024
Books read:
- Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
- Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
- The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, translated by Joel Martinsen
Trails walked:
- Lost Lake near Red River, NM (Oct 8th)
- Gavilan Ridge near Taos Ski Valley (Oct 12th)
- Ceran St Vrain/Miller Rock loop near Jamestown (Oct 16th)
- Deer Mountain Loop in Rocky Mountain National Park (Oct 23rd)
- Nighthawk Loop near Lyons (Oct 28th)
Song(s) of the month: Patty Griffin
- Be Careful
- Sweet Lorraine
- Mary
- Making Pies
- Long Ride Home
- Go Wherever You Wanna Go
- When It Don’t Come Easy
- Useless Desires
- Burgundy Shoes
October Summary:
With the election just days away I wanted to remind everyone that no matter what the candidates say, our enemies are not our fellow citizens. There was a time in this country when our political differences did not define us. It was just another small piece of who we were; a time when Republican and Democratic members of congress actually socialized and worked together for the betterment of the country (Newt Gingrich put the kibosh on that in the 90s). We need to find a path back to those days. Last month’s blog included my review of David French’s Divided We Fall which has some ideas on how to do that; even though he wasn’t completely optimistic about it. I’ve preached this idea over and over to everyone I know: stop watching political commentary, stop reading social media posts on political commentary, and start reaching out to people you know on the other side of the political spectrum. Most of them are just like you; they want to be able to feed and clothe themselves and their families and they’d like to earn enough money to make life easier for them. For several years our conservative friends in Arizona had no idea that my wife and I were progressive. When they found out recently, they were shocked. But it didn’t change our relationships at all (well maybe they thought we were nuts, but they didn’t say so). We knew all along where they stood politically, but it was never important enough to change how we felt about them; we all raised our kids together, complained about finances and spouses together, and went on vacations together. Don’t buy into the rhetoric that regular people on the other side want to destroy our democracy. Find ways to unite with our fellow citizens rather than separate from them. There are enough smart people in this country to figure out how to do this. I just hope it’s not too late.
My songs of the month are by Patty Griffin, and I wanted to include one of them here in the summary as a tribute to all the wonderful women out there, especially those who are terrified about this year’s election. It’s called Be Careful from her great 2002 album 1000 Kisses. More on Patty later on.
My lack of reading this month was due to two things (excuses): One, playoff baseball just takes up too much of my time and two, my wife and I watched our two grandsons for 4 days and nights and it reminded me of why I hardly ever read books when we were raising kids; so much chaos, but also so much fun…and then, exhaustion. The World Series is turning out to be a bust compared to the rest of the playoffs, but I guess the good news is that I can get back to my regularly scheduled book reading. This month I read another great book by Anna Quindlen, a classic book about income inequality from the 90s, and the 2nd installment of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past Sci Fi series. My rambling took me from the high mountains of New Mexico to the foothills of the Colorado mountains. Enjoy!
Things My Grandkids Say: I was watching both grandsons one day when the 4-year-old (“I’m four and three quarters!”) wanted a toy that his “one and three quarter” year old brother was playing with. I told him to let his brother play with the toy. He looked at me and said, “Watch this trick grandpa.” He grabbed a different toy, gave it to his brother, and then grabbed the toy he wanted. It worked brilliantly. I think magicians call this misdirection.
Patty Griffin was raised near Bangor, Maine, the youngest of seven children. Nobody has a crystal-clear voice like hers. You will see what I mean when you listen to these songs that were nearly impossible to whittle down to a few. She never expected to make a living making music until her divorce in 1994. So at the age of 30 she gave it a try, and we are all the luckier for it. My wife and I first saw her live performance in 1998 during one of Jackson Browne’s Sedona benefit concerts. At that time, she had just released her Flaming Red album which was a bit more rock than the folk that she eventually settled into. But there was no denying that voice. When she married Robert Plant, formerly of Led Zeppelin, that had to be the greatest marriage of voices ever made. We saw her live on stage with Robert Plant once and got to hear her sing some old Led Zeppelin songs which were right up her voice’s alley. We last saw her at an outdoor venue in Arizona where her pure voice melded with the stars on a hot desert night. If you’ve never heard of her then I envy the fact that you are getting to hear her for the first time. Enjoy.
Sweet Lorraine – From her debut album, Living With Ghosts, she manages to capture the life of a woman who was somehow able to rise above her horrendous upbringing to make something of herself.
Sample lyrics:
In the battle of time, in the battle of will
It's only your hope and your heart that gets killed
And it gets harder and harder, Lorraine
To believe in magic
When what came before you is so very tragic
Mary – From her 2nd album, Flaming Red, this song is, on the surface, a song about Mary, the mother of Jesus. But really it’s a song about all mothers. So good. I like this live version from her album, A Kiss in Time.
Sample lyrics:
Oh Mary
She moves behind me
She leaves her fingerprints
Everywhere
Every time the snow drifts
Every way the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts
She's always there
Making Pies – From 2002 through 2007 Patty released her three greatest albums; 1000 Kisses, Impossible Dream, and Children Running Through. All of them are incredible. Don’t get me wrong, she’s had several great songs before and after this period, but man, she was in a songwriting zone during this time. I play this song from 1000 Kisses every day before Thanksgiving when my daughter is making her delicious pies. It’s a story about an aging woman still working in a restaurant, looking back on her life. It tells the story of so many women in the world today.
Sample lyrics:
We tied our ribbons to the fire escape
They were taken by the birds
Who flew home to the country
As the bombs rained on the world
Long Ride Home and Go Wherever You Wanna Go – These two songs have become popular tribute songs when a loved one has died. It takes a great gift to write a song that so many people think is appropriate to honor a loved one who has passed. It basically takes the ability to sum up a life in 5 minutes. These songs from her 1000 Kisses and American Kid albums are great life summaries.
Long Ride Home sample lyrics:
Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed
Forty years of things you wish you'd never said
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead
I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red
Go Wherever You Wanna Go sample lyrics:
You don't ever have to go to war no more
Never have to go to war no more
Wear them boots and swim that icy shore now
You don't ever have to go to war no more
When It Don’t Come Easy – From her Impossible Dreams album, this is maybe the greatest friendship song ever written? Here’s a live version I like.
Sample lyrics:
When the last bird falls
And the last siren sounds
Someone will say what's been said before
Its only love we were looking for
Useless Desires – Also from Impossible Dreams, this is a song about goodbyes, hometowns, lost loves, and useless desires.
Sample lyrics:
How the sky turns to fire
Against the telephone wire
And even I'm getting tired
Of useless desires
Burgundy Shoes – From her Children Running Through album this is a beautiful song about memories between mothers and daughters.
Sample lyrics:
The leaves are green and new like a baby
Tulips are red, now I don't miss the snow
It's the first day I don't wear my big boots
You hold my hand, I've got burgundy shoes
 |
| Fall color on the drive to the trailhead |
 |
| Expansive views on the last mile to the lake |
 |
| Lost Lake...I found it! |
 |
| Artsy Lost Lake shot |
 |
| Fall color |
 |
| Leaf strewn path |
 |
| Yellow hills |
If you ever plan to read this novel, it’s best, but not required, if you know nothing at all about it before you read it. So stop here if you ever want to read an incredible book about family, life and death. In the novel, the first half tells the story of Mary Beth Latham who runs her own landscaping business and is married to an ophthalmologist husband. They have three teenaged children; Ruby, a 17-year-old high school senior and twins Alex and Max who are just finishing middle school. She has a deep friendship with a woman she knew in college, along with some solid and not so solid friendships with women in her Vermont town. I could have read an entire novel of her describing the mostly mundane and sometimes harrowing life of raising teens. However, she won’t let you relax and read about this world because halfway through the novel something so tragic occurs that I had to read some of the pages twice to make sure I understood what had just happened. The second half of the novel is a sort of grief therapy session on how to not fall apart when your world falls apart. It’s riveting. New friendships form, old friendships die away. There are so many little, tiny moments of grace throughout this book that will make you smile and possibly shed a tear. Here are some lines:
she says, “I’m awake.” I stand there waiting, because if I take her word for it she will wrap herself in warmth again and fall into the long tunnel of sleep that only teenagers inhabit, halfway to coma or unconsciousness.
Anyone who has raised teens have had a conversation like this: “I’m thinking of breaking up with Kiernan.” “What?” I say. Because of the surprise, I have let my voice rise and sharpen. “Nothing,” Ruby says. “Forget I said anything. I knew you’d make a big thing out of it.” “All I said was ‘What?’ ” “Never mind,” Ruby says. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
They have four boys, Ben the eldest, and, unlike my children, Olivia’s all seem to be cut from the same cloth. “Someday,” she said to me once, “there will be five hulking men in the house, and one small woman.”
This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver’s seat and keeping quiet.
Sarah says, “We don’t really date the way you guys did when you were young.” She makes our youth sound like something Glen might have seen on the History Channel.
Ruby has parsed my childhood stories and come up with a fairly accurate portrait of a mother who believed clothing and feeding were the same thing as loving.
the quickest way to lose a friend is to suggest that she is a bad mother, or to suggest that her children have problems, which amounts to the same thing.
I’m always reminded of Alex’s question about a female judge he met on one of our rare visits to my brother Richard’s home in the New York suburbs: “But if she doesn’t have any kids, what does she do when she’s home?” His father and I had cackled wildly in the front seat, shrieking answers: Sleep! Read! Talk to her husband! When we had exhausted our sarcasm, Ruby said in a creamy tone of voice, “You both are so completely full of it the car might flood.”
It’s so odd that, depending on the circumstances, pregnancy is either the thing we embrace most wholeheartedly or the thing we fear most.
I’m often distressed by the difference between my feelings for Ruby and those I have for her brothers. Perhaps it’s because she’s the oldest, and I was so young, and I discovered myself as I learned to know her, discovered that I could do without sleep, without stimulation, could subvert myself to a greater good. I felt triumphant when I survived her colic, her fall from the bed, the morning she caught her tiny pink finger in a closet door..
Here is what I know about dressing like your teenage daughter: She will always look better than you.
Ruby believes Alice is who I would have been had I chosen a more interesting life. A more interesting life that would not have included Ruby: There’s the problem with her analysis.
I open the windows to the sharp winter air and exorcise the yeasty smell of unwashed teenage boy. There is a faint grubby impression of his body on the sheets, like the Shroud of Turin.
Suddenly Alex has moved up into a different teenage gene pool, the one in cars.
“Do you have any notion of what a loose end I was at before I met you?” A loose end—that’s what we women call it, when we are overwhelmed by the care of small children, the weight of small tasks, a life in which we fall into bed at the end of the day exhausted from being all things to all people.
 |
| Dogs waiting patiently at the trailhead |
 |
| Daughter, son-in-love, and granddaughter heading up |
 |
| Color winding its way to the ski valley |
 |
| blues, yellows, greens |
 |
| Happy family on the ridge |
 |
| Beautiful up here |
Ehrenreich was a journalist at the time with a PhD in cell biology. She was raised in a middle-class family with a history of mining jobs in Montana. For this book she went through the process of trying to obtain a minimum wage job and to find affordable housing in three different cities over three months. Her jobs included serving at a diner in Key West, cleaning houses for a maid service in Portland, Maine, working in a memory care home, and working as an associate for Wal-Mart in Minneapolis. There are so many takeaways from this book and it would take a separate blog to discuss all the issues. The vast majority of the people she worked with were hard working Americans who could only get by if they were living with a working spouse or parent or child who could supplement their meager wages, otherwise they needed two jobs. They sometimes had to live in daily or weekly rentals which were more expensive per month because they didn’t have cash to pay down payments or cleaning deposits. Some were living in their cars. They were subjected to humiliating drug tests and psychological profile tests in order to get a job (some of them requiring resources they didn’t have like a ride to a medical clinic or money for a test). They get stuck in these low paying jobs because they can’t afford the time to search for another job or because they have no transportation to get them to another job. These are not people living on welfare; they are working Americans. I think their lives are not much better, likely worse, today than in the late 1990s. One of the things the author states during her writing is that she has never used a maid service even if she could afford it because she couldn’t imagine having that type of relationship with another human being (she mentioned this after describing the realities of cleaning other people’s toilets in her maid service job). Here are some lines:
It is probably impossible for the private sector to provide everyone with an adequate standard of living through wages, or even wages plus benefits, alone: too much of what we need, such as reliable child care, is just too expensive, even for middle-class families. Most civilized nations compensate for the inadequacy of wages by providing relatively generous public services such as health insurance, free or subsidized child care, subsidized housing, and effective public transportation. But the United States, for all its wealth, leaves its citizens to fend for themselves—facing market-based rents, for example, on their wages alone. For millions of Americans, that $10—or even $8 or $6—hourly wage is all there is.
By itself, hard work was no ticket out of poverty, just as the unemployment rate by itself was not a reliable signal of how well the economy was working for scores of Americans.
When companies keep wages low as the cost of living keeps rising, the government has to spend more just so the poor can remain stuck in place.
how she can even think of paying $40 to $60 a day (for housing)? But if I was afraid of sounding like a social worker, I have come out just sounding like a fool. She squints at me in disbelief: “And where am I supposed to get a month’s rent and a month’s deposit for an apartment?”
Of my fellow servers, everyone who lacks a working husband or boyfriend seems to have a second job:
I need a job and an apartment, but to get a job I need an address and a phone number and to get an apartment it helps to have evidence of stable employment.
Work is supposed to save you from being an “outcast,” as Pete puts it, but what we do is an outcast’s work, invisible and even disgusting. Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditchdiggers, changers of adult diapers—these are the untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society.
Each potential new job requires (1) the application, (2) the interview, and (3) the drug test—which is something to ponder with gasoline running at nearly two dollars a gallon, not to mention what you may have to pay for a babysitter.
I never see anything sold, since sales take place out of my sight, at the cash registers at the front of the store. All I see is customers unfolding carefully folded T-shirts, taking dresses and pants off their hangers, holding them up for a moment’s idle inspection, then dropping them somewhere for us associates to pick up.
I can’t afford to live on $7 an hour, and how does she do it? The answer is that she lives with her grown daughter, who also works, plus the fact that she’s worked here two years, during which her pay has shot up to $7.75 an hour.
Low-wage people who don’t have cars are often dependent on a relative who is willing to drop them off and pick them up again each day, sometimes on a route that includes the babysitter’s house or the child care center. Change your place of work and you may be confronted with an impossible topographical problem to solve, or at least a reluctant driver to persuade.
When you enter the low-wage workplace—and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well—you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of the shift.
What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The “home” that is also a car or a van. The illness or injury that must be “worked through,” with gritted teeth, because there’s no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day’s pay will mean no groceries for the next.
To go from the bottom 20 percent to the top 20 percent is to enter a magical world where needs are met, problems are solved, almost without any intermediate effort. If you want to get somewhere fast, you hail a cab. If your aged parents have grown tiresome or incontinent, you put them away where others will deal with their dirty diapers and dementia. If you are part of the upper-middle-class majority that employs a maid or maid service, you return from work to find the house miraculously restored to order—the toilet bowls sh!t-free and gleaming, the socks that you left on the floor levitated back to their normal dwelling place.
The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, “you give and you give.”
It’s only a 6-mile loop, but I added another mile and a half or so to explore down a dirt road. So about 7.5 miles today with 1,000 feet or so of elevation gain. The trailhead is about 5 miles west of Jamestown along the winding Overland Road which eventually turns into a smooth dirt road. The first two miles of this pretty trail follow South St Vrain Creek whose source is at the spectacular Isabelle Glacier where I hiked back in August of 2023. There are lots of great spots along the way to spend a day by the creek if you’re not up for a long hike. At the 2 mile mark the trail starts climbing towards Miller Rock. This part of the trail is also a very difficult 4WD road, but I saw no vehicles up here today. Lots of the rocks had scrape marks from ATVs bottoming out. At the midpoint of the loop, I decided to head down Miller Rock Spur road towards Peaceful Valley to see if I could get any views or see any animals. No luck on either count but it’s a nice walk with plenty of meadows. Back on the loop I reached Miller Rock and climbed up about halfway (I could have made it to the top but without someone along to spot me, I decided it wasn’t worth it). I did get some nice views of Meeker and Longs peak from here after being hidden in the trees for most of the hike. I completed the loop and then headed back up the Ceran St. Vrain trail along the creek and back to my car. On this Wednesday I ran into 2 backpackers and 6 hikers. I imagine weekends would be pretty busy; the parking area is small, so plan ahead.
 |
| South St Vrain Creek |
 |
| A lone aspen showing the rock it's glory |
 |
| The leaf couldn't decide, then it fell |
 |
| Bending aspens |
 |
| Nice views near Miller Rock |
 |
| Looks stormy up in the mountains |
 |
| Trail art |
 |
| Dancing branches |
 |
| South St Vrain Creek |
So Luo Ji did his job to ensure the future (among other things he put in motion that are too detailed to describe). He was then “hibernated” for the next 200 years and then reawoken to a more advanced Earth that had built a space force capable of destroying the Trisolarians when they arrived in 200 more years. The people had built a new society underground because the surface had become mostly desert. But everyone was happy and satisfied because their future as a society was ensured. Luo Ji and others weren’t so sure. A probe that was sent ahead of the Trisolrian fleet arrived at this time and when the new confident people of Earth tried to analyze it, well, disaster ensued. The people of Earth now realized they were doomed when the fleet arrived in 200 years. Chaos ensued. But Luo Ji had an answer to save Earth, another brilliant idea among so many in this fun novel. I can’t wait to read the concluding book. Here are a couple of excerpts:
...escape into the cosmos was never going to work. The critical question is who gets to leave, and who has to stay. This isn’t ordinary inequality. It’s a question of survival, and no matter who gets to leave—elites, the rich, or ordinary people—so long as some people get left behind, it means the collapse of humanity’s fundamental value system and ethical bottom line.
“On the one hand, thanks to our common enemy, our hatred of the West has faded. On the other, the human race that the Trisolarans want to wipe out includes the hated West, so to us, perishing together would be a joy. So we don’t hate the Trisolarans.”
“It’s a genetically altered virus that is highly infectious, but only causes mild flu symptoms in most people. However, the virus has a recognition ability which allows it to identify the genetic characteristics of a particular individual. Once the target has been infected, it creates deadly toxins in his blood. We now know who the target is.”
“You’re able to synthesize grain?” Xiong Wen answered for the nurse. “There’s no other option but to synthesize it. The land won’t grow any crops anymore.”
English, formerly the most widely used language, and Chinese, spoken by the largest population, had blended with each other without distinction to become the world’s most powerful language.
“Killer 5.2.” “What?” “It’s a network virus. The ETO first released it about a century into the Crisis Era, and then there were lots of subsequent variants and upgrades. It’s a murder virus. First it establishes the identity of the target by a variety of methods including the chip everyone has implanted in their body. When it locates the target, the Killer virus manipulates every possible piece of external hardware to carry out the murder.
“If the day comes when I have to kill you, please forgive me,” he said gently.
What was the human world like in the eyes of the mountains? Perhaps just something they saw on a leisurely afternoon. First, a few small living beings appeared on the plain. After a while, they multiplied, and after another while they erected structures like anthills that quickly filled the region. The structures shone from the inside, and some of them let off smoke. After another while, the lights and smoke disappeared, and the small things vanished as well, and then their structures toppled and were buried in the sand. That was all.
The mountains, like old men beside and in back of him, waited quietly with him and gave him a sense of security.
Human civilization has five thousand years of history, and life on Earth might be as much as a few billion years old. But modern technology was developed over the course of three hundred years. On the scale of the universe, that’s not development. It’s an explosion!
 |
| Big ram near the road to the trailhead |
 |
| Mounts Chapin, Chaquita and Ypsilon behind big meadow |
 |
| The sun shined on these last remaining aspen leaves as I passed by |
 |
| Last aspens beaming light |
 |
| Looking back towards Estes Park |
 |
| Juniper berries providing color to a decaying log |
 |
| Great view from Deer Mountain of the meadows and mountains of RMNP |
 |
| Artsy shot from up high |
 |
| Longs Peak on the left, Hallett Peak on the right |
 |
| Cottonwood colors with Coffintop Mountain in the background |
 |
| So many deer including this big boy |
 |
| Nelson Cabin near the halfway point |
 |
| Nice views up here even with the clouds |
 |
| View of Longs Peak |
 |
| Pretty meadows up here |
 |
| Expansive view of the valley near Lyons |
 |
| Cottonwood color |
 |
| Near the trailhead |
Until next time, happy reading and rambling!