When you are writing, you are actually engaging in a spiritual activity. It is a responsibility.
That’s why they used to kill writers.Al Young
Am I the only person in the world that thinks the Mona Lisa is overrated? I don’t get it. Really. I don’t think I’m alone on this. Let’s hear from you other doubters.
Humanity is alive and well. In pockets. We are on the road. Columbus > Salt Lake > Park City > Lava Hot Springs > Jackson Hole > Pocatello >Salt Lake City and back home. We’ve met some nice folks. Very nice. They are out there. Lots of dipshits of course, but whattya gonna do?
Remarkable contrast between cities and towns. Park City is probably 50/50 split between conservative and liberal. But the conservatives here are wealthy and smart enough to keep their politics of hate under the covers. They want the tax cuts but not the notoriety that goes with being seen as supportive of a fascist regime. Let’s call them reluctant supporters. This sentiment probably applies to Jackson Hole as well.
Lava Hot Springs is a different animal. The people we saw, with a few hippie exceptions, were unabashedly still all in on Trump. Lots of MAGA hats and expressions of perverted visions of patriotic bullshit.
Interestingly, also a stark difference in physical appearance. People we saw in Lava, were on average, significantly overweight or obese. Park City and Jackson are full of pretty people.
Just observations. I am not making this up to support a viewpoint. Go see for yourself if you don’t believe.
Yesterday the news reported that the Trump Administration is fast tracking additional coal mining permits to increase coal production — while simultaneously aggressively working to shut down all solar and wind power projects. Heartbreaking. Our language is inadequate to the task of articulating the contemptible and despicable nature of this adminstration.
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
Wallace Stegner
A few interesting tidbits from current readings.
Indigenous peoples make up around 4% of the world’s population, but they live with 75% of the earth’s biodiversity. They live with the wild things. We have shoved them aside, both indigenous inhabitants and all the amazing life forms of our planet, to create a closed ecosystem of artificial convenience.
I want to be on their side.
I did bump into an old acquaintance In Idaho. A ski bum. Good enough guy. The most predictable man I’ve ever know. He is single-threaded. One dimensional. When talking skiing, he lights up. Try to change the subject and he goes flat. He simply has almost no interest in any other discussions. He is late 30’s and all he knows is skiing. No thought of a career even as his ‘professional’ ski situation winds down with age and injuries. I say professional in italics because in this environment, almost no one gets cash. Everyone gets merch or equipment. That is their payment for having fun and getting photos taken. Not bad except it doesn’t pay rent or food or health insurance.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not judging. Not at all. I have a certain sort of respect for people who completely go their own way. However, the ones that impress me most are the ones who are intellectually curious and self-educate on other matters for that 90% of their lives that they are not on the side of a mountain. Topics such as social issues, politics, current events, etc., are completely foreign to him. This guys got nothing. Nada. He is dull and lifeless when trying to feign a conversation about anything except skiing. His vernacular is ‘fresh-tracks’, ‘first chair’, ‘face shot’, ‘pow-pow’, ’bluebird day’, ’dump’ (as in snow’, ‘chicken heads’, ‘Jerries’, ‘shred’, gnarly’, ‘chowder’ and ‘yard sale’.
I’ve been around a lot of skiers and after a while, this whole scene just gets absurd. The hard core ski hacks are oblivious to the world around them.
Anyway…..my blog; my observations and characterizations.
Park City and Jackson Hole are full of high end outdoor apparel stores. Inside, they sell exactly the same things with a different logo. Presumably all made by the same 9-year old in Cambodia. A thin poly/cotton shirt is $100 or so, but in a year it will be in the local thrift shop for $10. Or, if you want, just drive 60 miles down the road to the nearest outlet store and get it for $45. But it all sells. It keeps the locals employed, the corporations’ stock price up, the tourists happy, and the little kids in Asia in the sweatshops. Round and round it goes.
Why do women wear cowboy boots and dresses here and Nashville? It’s insane here with the boots and dresses. Men basically dress the same wherever. Shorts, t-shirt and sneakers. Hat — backwards if you please.
When I was young, probably 20’s, I remember someone once told me, and I do not remember the context, ‘Relax. Just be yourself’. And I remember thinking, why the hell would I want to be myself. I want to be someone else. That is a true story.
David Bowie famously said “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” True that. Go David. Lovely man. Ahead of his time.
I went for an interview at Akron Children’s Hospital. I got there early, as is my way. I found a family gathering area with a table and internet and hunkered down to work while I waited. I was prepared for my interview, as also is my way.
I was not prepared for the legions of families and kids walking by — the kids often bandaged or bald or limping. Some with medical devices or paraphernalia attached to their frail little bodies. At least one with fox ears and a clip on tail on the back of her shorts. Some in wagons, some in strollers, some walking, some riding on dad’s shoulders. Parent’s with shirts that said ‘I know a fighter’ and kids with ‘I beat cancer’ stickers.
It was overwhelming. A tug on the ole heart sleeves. I had been prepared to defend my billing rate but that suddenly didn’t seem quite as important.
Still slogging through Hemingway. He seems to have labored writing this one (The Sun Also Rises) and I am definitely laboring reading it. Down to just a few pages so will probably finish by the time these words find their way into ethereal space.
These 16 hour days are wearing on me. One would think I would be more productive but I think I get the same amount of work done in a 12-hour day. My brain is a sprinter, not a marathoner.
Another amazing hot summer day. I don’t mind the heat so much. This morning the sky was full of snow white big billowy cottony clouds. Now, late afternoon, there are no clouds at all. It’s still hot and humid even in the shade, but I prefer this to the artificial conditioned air inside.
I had a little smoked salmon and some good Amish cheddar for a snack. But no wine. I can’t start this early when I have to be up at 11:30 at night. It’s a concession; eating without a glass of wine. But one I need to make for now.
I was on mom and dad duty one day last week. Mom had to go shopping and dad to the senior center to piss everyone off around the euchre tables. He’s a brutish partner and a worse competitor. There is no upside to playing cards with Ed.
Mom and dad are uncomfortable with silence. But they are also both extremely hard of hearing — especially in the car when they cannot easily see or read lips moving. So conversations are awkward. From the back seat dad will say ‘I forgot my watch’ and mom will reply, ‘I think his flight is Thursday evening’. They exist in conversational platitudes. They are having two different conversations most of the time but do not realize it.
Theirs is a tightly closed ecosystem that could not be more detached in emotional or physical terms. They share space and accept the practicalities and the limitations that go along with the situation.
In the car, other than the occasional whole sentence, they fall to simply repeating things they are seeing as we drive. ‘Cow’. ‘Golfers’. Maybe a descriptor – ‘that’s a pretty tractor’.
From the backseat dad makes sure to direct me on every turn. He can’t help himself. He’s always been a car man. Now, stripped of his license, he is reduced to barking out directions from the backseat. Including, inevitably, pointing out an empty parking space among a sea of empty parking spaces.
Mom talks about the weather. A lot. Pretty much every conversation starts with a plea and a prayer for more rain, less rain, warmer or colder. There are approximately 3 days in any given year that meet to her satisfaction. She nudges god hourly to do something about the weather.
Today, on the way down to the store, she told me about the new pie recipe she made last week. Not just high level. But detailed ingredients list, preparation and the substitutions she made because she didn’t have this or that. On the way home, she told me again just in case I forgot a detail or two.
Mom and dad both compete to be the most knowledgeable about where things are located. As in really detailed explanations of how to get to someone’s house or to some town or place of business. Yesterday someone stopped by for a minute that I had not met before. They were giving mom a donation for some charity or another. When they left, I asked if they lived around here, since I had not seen them before. I was thinking maybe they would name a town or a county or something generic like that.
15 minutes later, after no small amount of arguing, we had mentally tracked a course from where we were sitting to these folks’ house 9 or 10 miles away; we took multiple turns and saw lots of landmarks and interesting farms and learned a bit about the history. This is their way. They are unbelievably specific about directions. As if I was that very moment going to go to those people’s house and I was not allowed to use GPS.
But I guess this is the way of old people. I think silence scares them a bit. Or maybe they have so much silence in their respective loneliness that when anything comes up that can pass as meaningful dialogue presents itself, they climb aboard and ride the wave for all they’re worth.
When I was in school I ran with a kid down the street,
And I watched him burn himself up on bourbon and speed,
But I was smarter than most, and I could choose.
Learned to talk like the man on the six o’clock news.
When I was eighteen, lord, I hit the road
But it really doesn’t matter how far I go.Bob McDill
Humbly Submitted
Robert Myres – Flanker, Portneuf Valley Rugby Football Club (ret.)
The Martini Tales 