Brilliant.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a Teacher. Learn from him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student. Teach him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a menace. Avoid him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is our Attorney General. Impeach him.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
More on Christianizing the military
Navy vet: Chaplains tried converting me
By William Petroski - The Des Moines Register
Posted : Monday May 14, 2007 12:35:14 EDT
Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, he didn’t realize he would get a hard sell for Christian fundamentalism along with treatment for his kidney stones.
Miller, 46, an Orthodox Jew, said he was repeatedly proselytized by hospital chaplains and staff in attempts to convert him to Christianity during three hospitalizations over the past two years.
(More below the fold...)
He said he went hungry each time because the hospital wouldn’t serve him kosher food, and the staff refused to contact his rabbi, who could have brought him something to eat.
Miller, an Iowa City resident and former petty officer third class who spent four years in the Navy, outlined his complaints at a news conference in Des Moines on Thursday. The event was sponsored by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an activist group based in Albuquerque, N.M.
He described the Iowa City facility as an institution permeated by government sponsorship of fundamentalist Christianity and unconstitutional discrimination against Jews.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Got yer peanuts....
The ultimate American snack food has gotten a bad rap. From tasteless bags at ballparks to being banned at pre-schools nationwide, beloved peanuts have become the black sheep of the nut family.
But remember how much you loved that roasted aroma at one time? David Wolfe of Sunfood has taken that atavistic experience to a whole new level. He has recently started bringing in the most amazing Amazonian Wild Jungle Peanuts - quite likely the original ancestors to all the commercial nuts grown today - cultivated by the Shuar tribe of the Ecuadorian rainforest.
These little guys are beautiful to look at; long and lean, with deep chocolate-colored stripes! And the flavor? Subtle yet rich, aromatic and earthy - intense. If you've ever compared the complexity of a wild strawberry to the blandness of big, styrofoamy commercial strawberries you'll have an inkling of the difference.
Not only are they prettier and tastier, but they're a nutritional revelation - containing 26 percent protein (more than hemp or flax seeds!), including all 8 essential aminos plus methionine, plus a whopping helping of the beautifying oleic acid. And best of all - unlike nearly all commercial peanuts, there's absolutely no aflatoxin, so you can pack a sack for the kiddies without the worry.
Additionally, you can soak these nuts to encourage them to quicken (germinating nuts have more nutrients, and less enzyme inhibitors); toss them in the blender with coconut milk, lime juice and Thai basil to make a peanut sauce that is simply divine! Oh, and the added environmental/social benefit I relish - the Shuar people are fighting off oil development, meaning that every bag purchased helps them protect the land, too.
(Note: You can now get them directly from Wolf's source, ELFWholesale.)
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Congealed Electricity
(Cross-posted at EcoFabulous)"Congealed electricity"?
It sounds very technical but it's actually the nickname they gave aluminum back in the '50s, since it's so incredibly energy-intensive to create. You'll actually find most aluminum smelters near hydroelectric dams (like those in Washington State).
The good news is that we have become such good recyclers that the volume of aluminum cans going into landfills is actually dropping! About half of the reclaimed metal goes straight back into cans; as for the rest, it goes into some very cool products, like this "Louis the Umpteenth side table" from Johnston-Ready, available at fab new online eco-shop greenwithglamour.com.
In place of the usual rococo gilding, the aluminum finish makes for a chic modern twist to Hollywood's most glam, without sacrificing the essential ornateness of the period.
You can also clean up with Eleek's sleek line of aluminum sinks, from the mod waterbox to the useful waterfalling with its built-in strainer (all available with artist patinas and powdercoats).
Friday, April 27, 2007
Holocaust Jokes at the Air Force Academy.
This is scary. But I'm glad somebody is trying to do something about it.
There's an indepth analysis of this at DailyKos.
And you might want to support the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Because I love America: Reagan's Assistant General Counsel Speaks Out
Mikey Weinstein served as Assistant General Counsel for Ronald Reagan. He founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to ensure the continued separation of Church and State, as essential principle of America's Constitution.
When I began asking questions about what I saw going on at Colorado Springs in 2004 I never expected that the inquiry would lead me to the horrifying conclusion that our country had been taken over by people who have used our own freedoms to enslave us. But that is what happened. When I began I, like most people, was focused on the personal. I believed that what was happening at the United States Air Force Academy, the harassment of cadets and staff with unwanted evangelism, was limited in scope. As the months passed, however, I found myself forced to constantly reassess my basic assumptions
(More below the fold...)
"What you do when you have a 3 star general that's ordering his staff to put together a Powerpoint presentation showing the direct parallel between the Book Of Revelation and all of our movements in the AOR ? ( for you civilians - area of responsibility, Iraq and Afghanistan )
What do you do when have a four star general who favors the distribution of a pamphlet in his commander's bulding, his palace, advertising in all faiths and why "Jesus vs. Mohammed, An Examination of The Life of Both Prophets and Why Jesus is Superior To All" ?
Why was the most popular joke here at the Air Force Academy in 2004 "Why do Jews make the best magicians?" Anyone know ? Show of hands ? We make the best magicians, apparently because we have the magical ability to walk into a red brick building and come out the smokestacks in a puff of smoke."
...As a Republican and an Academy graduate I find myself in head-on conflict with my own oath to protect the Constitution. As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country.
There's an indepth analysis of this at DailyKos.
And you might want to support the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Wolfowitz & World Bank: It's all about Iraq
It shouldn't come as a huge surprise, but the current scandal that might sink Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank is actually a sideshow to the real issue. His sweetheart, big-bucks deal for his girlfriend is just the "Al Capone/Tax Evasion" gambit.
And people have questioned why all this is coming out now - after all, these personel decisions were made a couple of years ago, right?
The real story is, as always, Iraq.
(More...)
The New York Times is reporting this morning (based on a Vanity Fair report from last week), that this isn't the first time that Riza has been involved in controversy (despite an earlier puff piece that pictured her as a good career bureaucrat who specialized in women's issues).
That first attempt to involve the WB in Iraqi reconstruction came to an end in the bombing that killed the UN envoy, along with a WB employee.
But then Wolfowitz arrived at the WB as President - with no development experience, no banking experience, but plenty of (theoretical, at least) Iraq experience.
Let's let Bea Edwards at Whistleblower.org take up the story:
So that means the World Bank isn't moving into Iraq, right?
Wrong.
That's the story. The Busheviks are trying to extend hundreds of millions of additional dollars to their good buddies, courtesy of the World Bank. And the honest folks at the bank are appalled, and fighting back the only way they can.
Expect to see more reports like this in the next few days, from Bloomberg:
(Note Worlfie's cute parsing - moving from no Iraq office and personell at all to a full in-country operation is a "modest, incremental upgrading"; and the typical Abu Gonzales parsing in which he puts responsibility for the decision on the "donor nations" making the request, and approval by the Mideast department.)
And you can bet you'll be seeing
a lot more like this, from the Nelson Report (via Agonist):
And people have questioned why all this is coming out now - after all, these personel decisions were made a couple of years ago, right?
The real story is, as always, Iraq.
(More...)
The New York Times is reporting this morning (based on a Vanity Fair report from last week), that this isn't the first time that Riza has been involved in controversy (despite an earlier puff piece that pictured her as a good career bureaucrat who specialized in women's issues).
The Defense Department directed a private contractor in 2003 to hire Shaha Ali Riza, a World Bank employee and the companion of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, to spend a month studying issues related to setting up a new government in Iraq, the contractor said Monday.
The contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, said that it had been directed to hire Ms. Riza by the office of the under secretary for policy. The head of that office at the time was Douglas J. Feith, who reported to Mr. Wolfowitz.
...Ms. Riza’s trip raised concerns among some bank officials, who said they did not know under whose auspices she had traveled to Iraq at a time when it was against bank policy for its officials to go there.
Bank officials said, however, that after the ouster of Mr. Hussein, the Bush administration tried to get the bank to help assist in the redevelopment of Iraq and that it was trying to involve the United Nations in the occupation to provide a rationale for the bank’s assistance.
That first attempt to involve the WB in Iraqi reconstruction came to an end in the bombing that killed the UN envoy, along with a WB employee.
But then Wolfowitz arrived at the WB as President - with no development experience, no banking experience, but plenty of (theoretical, at least) Iraq experience.
Let's let Bea Edwards at Whistleblower.org take up the story:
Only three months after Wolfowitz’ arrival, the Bank’s Board tried to restrain his management of World Bank operations in Iraq explicitly, issuing an unprecedented directive to his office to “[K]eep the Board regularly updated on developments in the country (Iraq) and implementation of the ISN” (Interim Strategy Note, September 2005, see GAP Web site). One year later, 30-year veteran Christiaan Poortman, vice-president for the Middle East, resigned from the World Bank rather than comply with Wolfowitz’s directives to prepare to increase lending and add staff in Iraq.
“In fact, the Bank is prohibited from operating in a conflict like this... In the simplest financial terms, there is no functioning banking system, the government does not control its territory and it cannot guarantee loan repayment. Any emergency or social funding in Iraq should come from donors’ grants, not loans.”
To engage in Iraq, the World Bank must justify reconstruction spending on economic grounds. If the conflict is ongoing, and the government is unstable, this cannot be done. Even assuming that the conflict ends soon, which no one is predicting, Bank Procedure 2.30 (“Development Cooperation and Conflict”) stipulates that, to operate in a country emerging from a conflict, the Bank must prepare a “watching brief,” develop a transitional support strategy, begin transitional reconstruction, then begin post-conflict reconstruction, and finally return to normal lending.
World Bank management under Wolfowitz has not taken these steps.
Although the Board did approve a limited loan program for Iraq of U.S. $500 million in September 2005, funds were not approved for disbursal, as of December 31, 2006. Disbursement was contingent on “critical progress in several areas important to IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) creditworthiness, including security and external debt-relief,” according to an internal memo from December 2006 (See GAP’s Web site). The required progress has not occurred. Currently, regular staff travel to Iraq is prohibited, meaning that lending operations cannot be properly monitored.
So that means the World Bank isn't moving into Iraq, right?
Wrong.
WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (IPS) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz may appoint a new resident director for Iraq soon, a move that sources inside the Bank say could contradict the institution's policies on engagement in conflict-stricken areas and put his role in the 2003 U.S. invasion back into the limelight.
The move by Wolfowitz, the former number two official at the Pentagon and a main architect of the U.S.-led war, likely means the Bank would release new loans to the occupied Arab nation, despite the deteriorating security situation and recent disclosures of massive corruption in reconstruction efforts.
That's the story. The Busheviks are trying to extend hundreds of millions of additional dollars to their good buddies, courtesy of the World Bank. And the honest folks at the bank are appalled, and fighting back the only way they can.
Expect to see more reports like this in the next few days, from Bloomberg:
Wolfowitz, 62, ``has placed considerably more trust in a small group of outsiders from the Republican Party than in the seasoned experts in the bank,'' said Alison Cave, head of the World Bank staff association, which represents more than 13,000 employees.
Wolfowitz, in a written statement from his press office, said plans for a ``modest, incremental upgrading'' of Iraq operations came in response to donor nations and were approved by the Mideast department.
Half of the bank's 29 highest-level executives have departed since Wolfowitz, the former U.S. deputy Defense secretary and an architect of President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, took office in June 2005. Among them is Christiaan Poortman, vice president for the Middle East and a 30-year World Bank veteran, who left in September after resisting pressure to speed up the pace of lending and adding staff in Iraq.
(Note Worlfie's cute parsing - moving from no Iraq office and personell at all to a full in-country operation is a "modest, incremental upgrading"; and the typical Abu Gonzales parsing in which he puts responsibility for the decision on the "donor nations" making the request, and approval by the Mideast department.)
And you can bet you'll be seeing
a lot more like this, from the Nelson Report (via Agonist):
Recall the early days of 2001, when “job lists” were the name of the game here in Washington, you would find Wolfowitz on everyone’s short list for the CIA, not for DOD. Something happened which knocked Wolfowitz off the intelligence side of the equation. What you might have forgotten (if you ever knew) is why:
A certain Ms. Riza was even then Wolfowitz’s true love. The problem for the CIA wasn’t just that she was a foreign national, although that was and is today an issue for anyone interested in CIA employment. The problem was that Wolfowitz was married to someone else, and that someone was really angry about it, and she found a way to bring her complaint directly to the President.
So when we, with our characteristic innocence, put Wolfowitz on our short-list for CIA, we were instantly told, by a very, very, very senior Republican foreign policy operative, “I don’t think so”. It was then gently explained why, purely on background, of course.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
"Bright" as in "Smart"
(Cross-posted at EcoFabulous.)
Think about light bulbs.
Millions of light bulbs. In scoreboards and moving displays. Think of the trash as they burn out and are replaced.
Now, think of LEDs. Millions of tiny little near-immortal LEDs. All computer-controlled with a degree of precision and sharpness you could never get from light bulbs, and all using 95% less power.
Element Labs is doing it in spectacular fashion, from concerts to sports arenas to homes – check out the 45,000 square foot display that covered the length of the stadium for the Asian Games in Doha. They’ve become a staple of concert tours and music videos, and now they’re moving into high-end restaurants and very high-end homes.
The possibilities are endless: imagine a wall in your living room that’s a non-stop moving art installation… or a display that can give you sunshine on a cloudy day. But beware when you tell your friends and neighbors - they will certainly all want to come over and share the spot light(s)!!
Think about light bulbs. Millions of light bulbs. In scoreboards and moving displays. Think of the trash as they burn out and are replaced.
Now, think of LEDs. Millions of tiny little near-immortal LEDs. All computer-controlled with a degree of precision and sharpness you could never get from light bulbs, and all using 95% less power.
Element Labs is doing it in spectacular fashion, from concerts to sports arenas to homes – check out the 45,000 square foot display that covered the length of the stadium for the Asian Games in Doha. They’ve become a staple of concert tours and music videos, and now they’re moving into high-end restaurants and very high-end homes.
The possibilities are endless: imagine a wall in your living room that’s a non-stop moving art installation… or a display that can give you sunshine on a cloudy day. But beware when you tell your friends and neighbors - they will certainly all want to come over and share the spot light(s)!!
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Why can't Dems do this?
Wow. An actual piece of journalism, in which the WaPo's Dan Eggan draws in background info and compares Whitehouse cant with self-contradictory statements they have been making!
(More...)
I was prepared for the admin's statements to go unchallenged as always, but Eggan lays it all out, Boom-boom-boom:
Read the whole piece... it's apparent that something different is starting to happen.
Why? I hate to say it, but... there isn't a Democrat quoted in the story. The good news is, we've got Republicans like Boyd making the hard-hitting points that the Dems just have not been getting in.
Let's face it - we've been playing nicey-nice. Look at the Pelosi issue - Holbrook made some hard-hitting comments, but as Greg Sargent noted, "I haven't seen any Democratic elected officials or direct Pelosi allies denouncing this story in such stark terms as Holbrooke did."
We still go out there acting as if it's not our job to hand the MSM the story on a plate. Well, guess what? The Repubs have been doing that for years, and it works, and we've been getting our asses handed to us.
Can we please put together a boot camp weekend for Democratic officeholders that teaches them how to do this? How to go into inverviews with background info, talking points, snappy one-liners - whatever it takes!
Until we master this, we're going to be doing nothing but playing defense.
Follow-up:
I cross-posted at Dailykos, and got a very interesting discussion going...
My first thought when I read the opener was, "But that's just what they accused Iglesias of doing...". Ignominiously, of course, since he was "absent for weeks at a time" because of his role in the NATIONAL GUARD.A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.
Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years -- prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer's office "a mess."
(More...)
I was prepared for the admin's statements to go unchallenged as always, but Eggan lays it all out, Boom-boom-boom:
"Having U.S. attorneys serve at the department ensures that a local perspective is brought to policy-making decisions," Roehrkasse said in a statement. ". . . U.S. Attorneys assigned to the Department's headquarters also gain a national perspective and can bring this perspective and national focus to their districts."
But [Dennis Boyd, executive director of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys,] said the prolonged absence of a chief prosecutor can lead to a lack of direction and leadership in U.S. attorneys' offices. The Justice Department made a similar argument in defending the firing of Iglesias, alleging that he had entrusted too much responsibility to his first assistant.
"Quite frankly, U.S. attorneys are hired to run the office, not their first assistants," William E. Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, told the House Judiciary Committee last month.
Iglesias filed a complaint with federal investigators last week, alleging that his dismissal amounted to discrimination based on his status as an officer in the Navy Reserve, which took him away from the job for 40 to 45 days a year. Alleged absenteeism has been the Justice Department's main public criticism of Iglesias, although officials have more recently added concerns about his handling of voter fraud and immigration cases to their arguments about him.
Read the whole piece... it's apparent that something different is starting to happen.
Why? I hate to say it, but... there isn't a Democrat quoted in the story. The good news is, we've got Republicans like Boyd making the hard-hitting points that the Dems just have not been getting in.
Let's face it - we've been playing nicey-nice. Look at the Pelosi issue - Holbrook made some hard-hitting comments, but as Greg Sargent noted, "I haven't seen any Democratic elected officials or direct Pelosi allies denouncing this story in such stark terms as Holbrooke did."
We still go out there acting as if it's not our job to hand the MSM the story on a plate. Well, guess what? The Repubs have been doing that for years, and it works, and we've been getting our asses handed to us.
Can we please put together a boot camp weekend for Democratic officeholders that teaches them how to do this? How to go into inverviews with background info, talking points, snappy one-liners - whatever it takes!
Until we master this, we're going to be doing nothing but playing defense.
Follow-up:
I cross-posted at Dailykos, and got a very interesting discussion going...
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Someone - buy me dinner with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame!
Oooh, I like this...
The Robert Kennedy Foundation is holding its celebrity auction, with bidding to close on April 6th.
Plamegate junkie that I am, my favorite would have to be dinner with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Any generous souls out there feel like buying it for me - or Marcy Wheeler? As of this writing, the bid is at $2,650.
There's a bunch of fun stuff up, all to raise money for the Foundation's charitable activities....
You could have a walk-on role in the next Farrely Bros. movie; current bidding there is $4,250. That would be cool....
Or how about a set visit to Boston Legal and a cigar with Legal eagle William Shatner? Boldly puff for just $5,500...
The one I just don't get: breakfast or tea with Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell. Even if the dude was head of the Fed all those years... chilling with him might be worth $45,000, but not if you have to put up with HER as well...
The Robert Kennedy Foundation is holding its celebrity auction, with bidding to close on April 6th.
Plamegate junkie that I am, my favorite would have to be dinner with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Any generous souls out there feel like buying it for me - or Marcy Wheeler? As of this writing, the bid is at $2,650.
There's a bunch of fun stuff up, all to raise money for the Foundation's charitable activities....
You could have a walk-on role in the next Farrely Bros. movie; current bidding there is $4,250. That would be cool....
Or how about a set visit to Boston Legal and a cigar with Legal eagle William Shatner? Boldly puff for just $5,500...
The one I just don't get: breakfast or tea with Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell. Even if the dude was head of the Fed all those years... chilling with him might be worth $45,000, but not if you have to put up with HER as well...
Hail, Sigg!
Plastic water bottles.
Before you know it they build up under the back seat of the car, they hide in the corners of the kitchen, they sneak under the couch.
But where do you stow 30 million plastic water bottles? That’s how many bottles Americans are adding to landfills every single day. It’s not just the landfilling – all of those bottles were manufactured (using lots of power and 63 million gallons of oil per year), packed into cardboard boxes (millions and millions of trees – often rainforest trees - cut down), then trucked around the country (more petroleum).
Plus, NRDC discovered that a “third of the tested [bottled water] brands were found to contain contaminants such as arsenic and carcinogenic compounds in at least some samples at levels exceeding state or industry standards.” So, kick the plastic habit - it's amazing how easy it is once you re-train your brain!
You can’t beat Swiss design – Sigg has just added some seriously stylish patterns to their classic line of vibrantly-colored brushed-aluminum water bottles. They’ve even got a tres cute kids line.
Sigg bottles are seamlessly extruded from a single piece of aluminum (no seams=no leaks); a proprietary interior coating is baked on to ensure the bottle won’t interact with anything you choose to swig from it, from apple juice to CO2 drinks to alcohol (think of it as a modern flask); a powder coating is baked on the exterior to attain those cool colors and designs; the tops are guaranteed leak free and are available in several styles. Using a plastic bottle will seem tasteless before you even know it!
And strong? Backpacker magazine fired a cannon at water bottles to test them – Sigg was the only one to emerge unscathed. Even Beckham can’t bend it! (He’s a Sigg fan, too.)
With health concerns about Lexan bottles, it’s nice to know there’s a product out there that looks chic, lasts for years, and won’t harm either you or the environment. (Sigg is also part of One Percent for the Planet) You can get them online from Sigg; they ship straight to you....
Friday, March 30, 2007
Ca-Boom, Baby
Cross-posted at ecofabulous
The West Coast Independent Design Show, AKA Ca Boom 4, takes flight today in the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport. No, you won't find a biodiesel Learjet (sorry, John Travolta) but this is the bleeding edge for making the stationary parts of your life eco-conscious.
There's light power: the incredibly cool built-in LED applications of Element labs. There's solar power: the warm power of the sun from California Solar. And there's star power (if only by association): Willard Ford (Harrison's son) gathers ultramodern sustainable teak furnishings from around the globe. And you'll find much more – including companies and products so fresh they don't even have websites yet!
Ca Boom 4 runs Friday, March 30 through Sunday, April 1, 2007, at the Santa Monica Airport's Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA. For more information visit caboomshow.com.
The West Coast Independent Design Show, AKA Ca Boom 4, takes flight today in the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport. No, you won't find a biodiesel Learjet (sorry, John Travolta) but this is the bleeding edge for making the stationary parts of your life eco-conscious. There's light power: the incredibly cool built-in LED applications of Element labs. There's solar power: the warm power of the sun from California Solar. And there's star power (if only by association): Willard Ford (Harrison's son) gathers ultramodern sustainable teak furnishings from around the globe. And you'll find much more – including companies and products so fresh they don't even have websites yet!
Ca Boom 4 runs Friday, March 30 through Sunday, April 1, 2007, at the Santa Monica Airport's Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA. For more information visit caboomshow.com.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
David Honigsberg, 1958-2007
Wow.
David is dead. Massive heart attack at 48.
I'm reminded of Neil Gaiman's comment, so sad but so true, "You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime."
Before he was a Rabbi, he was a Science Fiction writer. And musician. And lover of great scotch whisky. I remember being on a panel with, David, Alex, and Sue York at Albacon, right around his birthday ten years ago... the panel started at 11 pm, so I brought along a bottle of Laphroaig to toast the birthday boy, and it got sillier from there. Some were outraged (They were drunk! On a panel!), while many more told us it was the most fun they'd ever had at a con panel.
He was a mensch, and he will be missed.
David is dead. Massive heart attack at 48.
I'm reminded of Neil Gaiman's comment, so sad but so true, "You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime."
Before he was a Rabbi, he was a Science Fiction writer. And musician. And lover of great scotch whisky. I remember being on a panel with, David, Alex, and Sue York at Albacon, right around his birthday ten years ago... the panel started at 11 pm, so I brought along a bottle of Laphroaig to toast the birthday boy, and it got sillier from there. Some were outraged (They were drunk! On a panel!), while many more told us it was the most fun they'd ever had at a con panel.
He was a mensch, and he will be missed.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Ray of hope
I've been seriously thinking of moving back to Canada. Or fleeing further.... like Thailand.
On the other hand... go see the movie "Ray", about the life of Ray Charles. It puts things in perspective a little bit... on the bright side, 40 years ago black men in the south were called "boy" and unless you were a white male you were utterly screwed in American society. So things are better than they were.
On the down side, the assholes who brought us 100 years of misogyny and racism are now in charge of the Republican party.
But I walked out of "Ray" thinking that no matter how shitty it is at the moment, they're fighting against the tide of history, and in four years we'll take it all back.
On the other hand... go see the movie "Ray", about the life of Ray Charles. It puts things in perspective a little bit... on the bright side, 40 years ago black men in the south were called "boy" and unless you were a white male you were utterly screwed in American society. So things are better than they were.
On the down side, the assholes who brought us 100 years of misogyny and racism are now in charge of the Republican party.
But I walked out of "Ray" thinking that no matter how shitty it is at the moment, they're fighting against the tide of history, and in four years we'll take it all back.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Take Me To The River
Another classic clip...
By Jeremy Bloom
(Originally appeared in Capital magazine)
"Go, go, go!"
We hoist up our 15-foot rubber raft and march out into the frigid river. As my booted, wet- suited foot enters the water, I feel... nothing. No cold, no damp, just a slight pressure as the water closes around my calf. "Hey," I think, "these things really work."
We clamber aboard our craft and swiftly, albeit clumsily at first, paddle out into the current. Behind us, the next of several hundred rafts is already being man-handled down the bank.
We have entered the Indian River, a major tributary of the Hudson, a few hundred yards down from the dam that regulates its flow out of Lake Abanakee. During the summer, the Indian is a tranquil stream.
But that was months ago.
Now, the melting snows of Bullhead, Horseshoe, Little Panther and Bad Luck mountains have swollen Lake Abanakee with cold, clear water. We can see it cascading over the dam, exploding down a narrow channel before spreading and running swiftly but calmly past our embarkation point. We join the flow.
After bumping over a few small waves, we get a chance to look around. Clusters of fiddleheads - the tightly curled shoots of ferns that resemble the scrolls of violins - are poking up through the newly-thawed earth. Here, the river flows along the narrow defile it has carved among the peaks, overseen by the evergreens clinging to the slopes which angle up from the banks.
Interspersed among the deep green boughs are bare, silver-gray aspens, their slim branches only just beginning to break out in golden buds, an impossible dazzle of color in the bright morning sunlight.
Rounding a bend, we hear thunder. No more time for surveying the shore. The bed here is full o f glacial detritus, from gravel to boulders the size of buses, which whip the water into peaks and valleys, fountains of spray and standing waves that slam our raft - wash! wash! wash! - one after the other, tossing and twisting us and splashing over the gunwales into our faces as we whoop in part laughter, part terror.
We emerge spluttering from our first rapids with a foot of water in our raft, spray dripping from hair and eyebrows and noses, adrenaline coursing through arteries. The water isn't swimming temperature by a long shot, but in our insulated wet suites, we don't notice the chill.
"Did anyone get wet?" inquires our grinning guide....
Skip Grant is stocky and blue-eyed, with chiseled Hollywood features and a 24-hour smile. During the week, he is Hoyt S. Grant, is a salesman of some kind of incomprehensible high-tech computer equipment. But on weekends, he comes up here as a licensed river guide. And lets loose.
Shooting the rapids, our paddling had been raggedy; now we work on getting in sync. We're still banging into each other as Skip calls out, "Back paddle on the left! Front on the right! Let's spin this sucker around!"
We take a break at Blue Ledges, a prodigious scarp of several hundred feet that stands directly in the path of the rushing Hudson. As a huge raven flies overhead, catching thermal updrafts along the cliff, we bask on the riverbank rocks in the warm sun and watch armies of fellow rafters come splashing by.
Each outfitting company has a different colored wetsuit, so it's like watching Kurosawa's film "Ran", with its color-coded armies. First comes a group in orange suits with orange vests, then a division of blue suits and orange vests, then a contingent all in blue plus red helmets. We drink coffee (but not too much - no bathroom stop for an hour!) and psych ourselves up for the next stretch.
By Carter's Landing Rapids (sometimes called Mile Long Rapids) we're paddling in sync, which is a good thing, because this is the most treacherous stretch of the river. It is market by several "holes" - gaps between boulders which catch the turbulent waters and trap them in pounding, roiling eddies.
You can roller-coster over them, but if you hit them at just the wrong angle, a raft can go over in seconds, dumping everyone. We pass "Jim's Hole", where one guide spilled his entire crew a few years back, and earned himself a place in local nomenclature.
(I learned later that, after our trip, an inexperienced group of rafters wiped out in Jim's Hole - and one died. It's rare, but it's real. And danger is both the carrot and the stick of every adventurer.)
We pass the rest of the five-hour odyssey in a blur of exhilarating rapids and lazy flat stretches. It's like the best carnival ride you've ever been on, but it lasts a lot longer than 30 seconds, and there's no waiting in line.
By the time we pull out of the river near the town of North Creek, the sun is disappearing behind the mountains. Back at our hotel – the American in "downtown" North Creek - we realize that our bodies are far too keyed up to even consider sleep. Tranquilizers are definitely required, and the American has the best post-rafting oasis in town: the Thirsty Moose. It's got a solid garnet bar (actually garnet ore, a bluish-black rock shot through with nodes and veins of the burgundy gemstone), and when we arrive the bar's stuffed-head namesake is presiding over a hubbub of voices exchanging rafting tales over ales.
"...And then we hit the rock and he went right over the side!"
"That's nothing - we bumped a shallow rock on a calm stretch and no one got dumped but our guide! He came up spluttering and real embarrassed...."
"I wish I could go again tomorrow. I checked and they're all booked up."
"I am going again tomorrow!"
Three hundred miles downstream, the Hudson flows quietly, a constrained river, between New Jersey and the skyscrapers of Manhattan. But here in the north she's still a wild river. And she makes for one wild ride.
(Photo used under creative commons license from Flickr.com)
Thursday, September 02, 2004
SETI may have found something
SETI, the search for possible extraterrestrial intelligence by scanning the heavens for radio signals, may have found something....
"Named SHGb02+14a, the signal has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz. This happens to be one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.This is pretty damn exciting...
Some astronomers have argued that extraterrestrials trying to advertise their presence would be likely to transmit at this frequency, and SETI researchers conventionally scan this part of the radio spectrum.
SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak.
�We are looking for something that screams out �artificial�,� says UCB researcher Eric Korpela, who completed the analysis of the signal in April. �This just doesn�t do that, but it could be because it is distant."
Monday, August 23, 2004
90 years since the War to End All Wars...
"If any question why we diedThis was Rudyard Kipling's shortest poem - his angry and anguished response to the death of his son in the First World War.
Tell them, because our fathers lied."
It's been 90 years since "the guns of August" began the process of tearing Europe apart that lasted most of the last century, and Adam Gropnick has a chilling essay in The New Yorker that looks at some new scholarship and some old truths.
As we approach the 1,000-casualty mark in Iraq, and revisit Kerry and W's war in which 50,000 Americans died, it's chilling to contemplate the reality of that earlier conflict:
"The war began on August 4th. By August 29th, there were two hundred and sixty thousand French dead...There are also disquieting resonances of our own time: the rush to war, the seeming inevitabity of it, the leaders who expected easy victories and think about or plan for what they would do if things didn't go the way they expected...
On one day during the Battle of the Somme, in the summer of 1916, more than fifty thousand British troops died walking directly into German fire, without advancing the front by a single foot."
As we contemplate the prospect of a failed Iraqi state and a new Shia militancy spreading across the Islamic world, it's worth considering some of Gropnick's closing words:
"And so the question remains: Were they right to fight? What would have happened if the British neutrals had held fast on August 3rd and not gone in? A Europe overrun by a triumphant German militarism is only one possibility. A Communist revolution in France is a secondary possibility, with unknowable consequences...Reading this piece, I am filled with fear - that we are heading into another storm like that one... and that the long-term consequences of W's splendid little war will be as unexpected, and as debilitating.
"Yet it is hard to see even a victorious German Reich costing liberal civilization quite as much as its defeat did. Wilhelmine Germany was, if not liberal, at least plural... The logic of German militarism may have meant that there would be a war sooner or later. But, just conceivably, the force of German civil society — of science and reason, in that age of Einstein and Freud and Planck and Warburg — would have tempered the force of militarism. The experiment never had a chance. What is hard to imagine is a worse consequence: Britain and France demoralized and depleted, Germany humiliated but not vanquished, Russia robbed of any chance of liberal reform and turned over to a gang of psychopathic fanatics. What exactly would have been worse than that?"
Monday, June 28, 2004
Enjoy Michael Moore while you can....
The Washington Business Journal reported last week:
The Loews chain owns 200 movie theaters. For those of you unfamiliar with the Carlyle Group, it's a $17-billion military industrial powerhouse with a lot of Saudi money backing it up. Bush Sr. was on the board and did a lot of schmoozing for the firm.
The company does a lot of synergy - for instance, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, they bought the largest cigarette-manufacturing firm in Italy, positioning them to supply the troops and make a bundle. And it was a target in "Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11", for its involvment in linking Saudi money with the Bushes.
What would they want with movie theaters? Up until now the Rethuglicans have been able to work on their media mogul peers with the usual forms of pressure, blocking such things as the Reagan TV series on ABC and getting Disney to drop distribution of "Fahrenheit 9/11". But Moore did an end run, and got independent distribution. Solution? Buy up the theaters.
Is anyone else thinking about Howard Beale's sermons in the film "Network" at this point?
Carlyle goes to the movies
District-based investment firm The Carlyle Group is one of three investors that have agreed to buy Loews Cineplex Entertainment from Onex Corp. and Oaktree Capital Management for $1.46 billion.
The Loews chain owns 200 movie theaters. For those of you unfamiliar with the Carlyle Group, it's a $17-billion military industrial powerhouse with a lot of Saudi money backing it up. Bush Sr. was on the board and did a lot of schmoozing for the firm.
The company does a lot of synergy - for instance, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, they bought the largest cigarette-manufacturing firm in Italy, positioning them to supply the troops and make a bundle. And it was a target in "Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11", for its involvment in linking Saudi money with the Bushes.
What would they want with movie theaters? Up until now the Rethuglicans have been able to work on their media mogul peers with the usual forms of pressure, blocking such things as the Reagan TV series on ABC and getting Disney to drop distribution of "Fahrenheit 9/11". But Moore did an end run, and got independent distribution. Solution? Buy up the theaters.
Is anyone else thinking about Howard Beale's sermons in the film "Network" at this point?
Saturday, September 08, 2001
A Visit to the Hermitage Inn
The Hermitage Inn
Wilmington, Vermont
Bertha Eastman Barry would be pleased.
As editor of the Social Register she once ruled the world of high society from this modest clapboard summer home on the lower slopes of Vermont's Haystack Mountain. Today, the comfortable elegance draws guests from all over the U.S., Europe and Asia. The 90-minute drive along the spectacularly scenic NY Route 7/VT Route 9 whetted our appetites, but nothing prepared us for the opulence of Jim McGovern's table.
"McGovern" (as his staff calls him) does not do anything by half measures, and he has several wonderful obsessions. When you enter the dining room, you are immediately hit by one of them: the decoys. There are thousands of carved and painted wooden mallards, canvasbacks, red-breasted mergansers, green-winged teals, Canada geese, swans - even a pair of (in this case aptly named) wood ducks.
The next obsession is apparent in the menu. He raises his own game - ducks, geese, partridges, wild turkeys, even deer - for the table. On this occasion we had duck, and a partridge in a delectable hunter's sauce of Madeira wine, mushrooms and a touch of tomato and tarragon.
This was real food, the flavor infinitely superior to the bland, mass-produced, chemical- and hormone-laden meat available in supermarket America. The delicacy of flavor in the Hermitage's paté, for instance, is simply indescribable; "That ain't chopped liver," as my grandfather used to say. It is made from the livers of McGovern's own geese, and that makes a delicious difference.
And then there is the wine. McGovern's cellar contains 35,000 bottles. Each year since 1985, the Hermitage has been cited by wine Spectator magazine as having "One of the greatest wine lists in the world." So read up a bit before you come, for there are gems here you cannot find at your average five-star restaurant. We had a 1985 Chassagne-Montrachet Deleger that alone was worth the drive. If you are uncertain, ask McGovern for help; he's glad to advise, and he'll talk your ear off.
Dessert, and another obsession: the maples. McGovern taps his own trees each spring and turns the sap into 300 gallons of syrup. He sells it in the shop, and he uses it on the table - in the morning over pancakes, at night on the carrots, and on the duck.
And in the inn's specialty: Maple Walnut Pie. Imagine the texture of pecan pie on your tongue, then replace the pecans with the bittersweet taste of walnuts and add the delicate sparkle of maple. Magnificent.
[The Hermitage Inn, Coldbrook Road, Wilmington, Vt. 05363. (802) 464-3511.]
Wilmington, Vermont
Bertha Eastman Barry would be pleased.
As editor of the Social Register she once ruled the world of high society from this modest clapboard summer home on the lower slopes of Vermont's Haystack Mountain. Today, the comfortable elegance draws guests from all over the U.S., Europe and Asia. The 90-minute drive along the spectacularly scenic NY Route 7/VT Route 9 whetted our appetites, but nothing prepared us for the opulence of Jim McGovern's table.
"McGovern" (as his staff calls him) does not do anything by half measures, and he has several wonderful obsessions. When you enter the dining room, you are immediately hit by one of them: the decoys. There are thousands of carved and painted wooden mallards, canvasbacks, red-breasted mergansers, green-winged teals, Canada geese, swans - even a pair of (in this case aptly named) wood ducks.
The next obsession is apparent in the menu. He raises his own game - ducks, geese, partridges, wild turkeys, even deer - for the table. On this occasion we had duck, and a partridge in a delectable hunter's sauce of Madeira wine, mushrooms and a touch of tomato and tarragon.
This was real food, the flavor infinitely superior to the bland, mass-produced, chemical- and hormone-laden meat available in supermarket America. The delicacy of flavor in the Hermitage's paté, for instance, is simply indescribable; "That ain't chopped liver," as my grandfather used to say. It is made from the livers of McGovern's own geese, and that makes a delicious difference.
And then there is the wine. McGovern's cellar contains 35,000 bottles. Each year since 1985, the Hermitage has been cited by wine Spectator magazine as having "One of the greatest wine lists in the world." So read up a bit before you come, for there are gems here you cannot find at your average five-star restaurant. We had a 1985 Chassagne-Montrachet Deleger that alone was worth the drive. If you are uncertain, ask McGovern for help; he's glad to advise, and he'll talk your ear off.
Dessert, and another obsession: the maples. McGovern taps his own trees each spring and turns the sap into 300 gallons of syrup. He sells it in the shop, and he uses it on the table - in the morning over pancakes, at night on the carrots, and on the duck.
And in the inn's specialty: Maple Walnut Pie. Imagine the texture of pecan pie on your tongue, then replace the pecans with the bittersweet taste of walnuts and add the delicate sparkle of maple. Magnificent.
[The Hermitage Inn, Coldbrook Road, Wilmington, Vt. 05363. (802) 464-3511.]
Saturday, January 01, 2000
Breakfast in America
It was a Reagan morning.
Forget hot dogs. Forget apple pie. The true American culinary ritual is breakfast at the diner.
As I dipped the corner of my wheat toast into the sunny guts of my over-easies, I listened to the voice of America in the next booth.
"Look at me," the voice was saying, and I looked and saw a balding, mustached man going to fat beneath his jacket, “me, when I was a kid I got part-time work at a factory.”
To look at him now, you could scarcely tell that he had once sweated a factory floor, but he went on, “the pay was all right, and I was working with men, guys that had been there for thirty years. I learned from them. Important lessons, about life, about dames, about the world - about America.”
The implication was clear in his well-fed face: this work made me what I am today, a successful if spreading paragon of the American dream.
“But look,” he sighed, “at what the kids do today. There are no jobs like I had. My son works at McDonald's. For less than I made in the factory twenty years ago. And who does he work with? Not men. Kids. Kids no smarter than himself. And the adults... The only role models in that dump are the failures. I mean, what have you got going for you if you're still working in McDonald's at 25?”
I threw a pocketful of change down on the Formica - funny, how dimes and quarters accumulate the way pennies used to - and got up to face the day. It's morning in America, like Ronnie said. And we're training our kids to make Egg McMuffins.
I wonder if the Japanese like pancakes
Forget hot dogs. Forget apple pie. The true American culinary ritual is breakfast at the diner.
As I dipped the corner of my wheat toast into the sunny guts of my over-easies, I listened to the voice of America in the next booth.
"Look at me," the voice was saying, and I looked and saw a balding, mustached man going to fat beneath his jacket, “me, when I was a kid I got part-time work at a factory.”
To look at him now, you could scarcely tell that he had once sweated a factory floor, but he went on, “the pay was all right, and I was working with men, guys that had been there for thirty years. I learned from them. Important lessons, about life, about dames, about the world - about America.”
The implication was clear in his well-fed face: this work made me what I am today, a successful if spreading paragon of the American dream.
“But look,” he sighed, “at what the kids do today. There are no jobs like I had. My son works at McDonald's. For less than I made in the factory twenty years ago. And who does he work with? Not men. Kids. Kids no smarter than himself. And the adults... The only role models in that dump are the failures. I mean, what have you got going for you if you're still working in McDonald's at 25?”
I threw a pocketful of change down on the Formica - funny, how dimes and quarters accumulate the way pennies used to - and got up to face the day. It's morning in America, like Ronnie said. And we're training our kids to make Egg McMuffins.
I wonder if the Japanese like pancakes
Tuesday, November 01, 1994
Skiing Aspen
Another classic clip.... Originally appeared in Capital magazine.
By Jeremy Bloom
The parking lot dropped away behind us as we pulled up through the chill winter air. Thirty feet below our ski tips, hotdoggers whipped down the Lowerstein, an experts-only run that is one of the hardest at Aspen Highlands mountain.
The valley spread out behind us, in majestic green and white - green of pine, white of snow. The top of the lift was approaching swiftly.
“Which way should we turn when we get off?” I asked my companion, a native Coloradan who was escorting this Easterner on his first trip to the big mountains of the West.
“Straight, of course,” he replied. “This is just the first lift. We’ve got three more before we reach the top.”
Oh. Aspen Highlands is big. With its 3,800-foot vertical drop, it is the biggest of the four mountains here that form an 11-mile strip of ski heaven. Two more - Snowmass, at 3,555, and Aspen Mountain itself, at 3,370 - exceed the mightiest that the East has to offer - Vermont’s Killington, at 3,175. Together with their baby sister, Buttermilk, they have made the tiny village of Aspen synonymous with skiing, and a winter haven for ski bums, movie stars, European royalty and American students on a ski-blast vacation.
And also for writers who happen to love skiing. By the time we got off at Loge Peak, we were 11,800 feet above sea level and had traveled up more than three miles of lift.
We headed down Broadway, a wide but challenging track down the center of the mountain. There were five experts-only trails leading off at intervals on our right; we went over to investigate, but they looked more like vertical cliffs than slopes to me. Good thing I’m not an expert.
Adjusting our goggles against the glare of the sun and the snow, we continued down through the powder. The wind was cold on my cheeks, but that was the only part of me exposed - temperatures go down well below zero up here, and wind chill cools it off even further. We were well bundled. Under the layers of wool and Gore-Tex, we were warm with action and adrenalin.
On a mountain this size, you don’t spend anywhere near as high a percentage of your time standing and shivering on lift lines. There’s so much room to ski! And a hint: even if you are skiing in pairs, go for the singles line - an extra line that maximizes the efficiency of triple- and quad-chair lifts by letting singles fill in the empty seats. Not only will it cut your time in line, it’s also a great way to meet people and hear some wild stories.
Like the kid who told me, in an incredulous tone, about the gorgeous, blond, 30-ish corporate lawyer who comes out from California and spends one month per annum picking up blond beach-bum-type students and showering them with Champaign-and-caviar high life. This year she had found him, he told me in a tone that implied he still thought he was dreaming the whole thing.
Or the group of young ladies from London, dressed to the nines, who informed me in very posh Mayfair accents that Aspen was much better than those drab European ski resorts. “The facilities are ever so much better here, you know,” they said. “And the Alps are all above the tree line, you know, so it’s all just snow. There aren’t proper trails there a-tall.”
Skiing tends to be a sport of younger people; here that is particularly apparent. At two miles above sea level, there simply isn’t that much oxygen in the air. Even folks in the prime of life and in peak physical condition get tired after a few hours of hard, fast exertion; not being either, we exhausted quickly, and caught the free shuttle-bus back downtown.
Seasoned Aspen hands have a routine: ski ‘till three, then apres-ski and a bit of shopping ‘till eight, then party until three in the morning. Aspen is renowned for its high times as much as for its high peaks. And the paragon of Aspen night life is - the Paragon.
This restaurant/bar/disco may not be the hoity-toitiest place in town, but it truly epitomizes Aspen. The decor is rich with gorgeous woodwork and lots of stained glass, typical of the Victorian elegance of many of the buildings constructed during Aspen’s first heyday.
And as befits a restaurant serving the contemporary wild West (in a town where the cops drive Saabs), the menu is Thai. We had intensely spicy shrimp and a delectable satay beef with a tangy peanut dipping-sauce. We also tried the house drink, which was an unnatural bluish green and tasted like... well, tasted like bluish green. They wouldn’t tell us what was in it. Just as well.
All the travel guides advise against imbibing during the first three or four days of one’s stay in Aspen, because of the rarified mountain air. Judging by the crowd at the bar, most folks were either unconcerned, or didn’t mind the prospect of getting drunk quicker (and after all, many would only be staying three or four days). And the dance floor was jammed from 10:00 until 3:00 in the morning, although how they could dance on legs that had been up and down the slopes all afternoon was a mystery.
Aspen Mountain, the main ski area, is not for beginners. There are no green-marked beginner trails. Although most locals seem to prefer Highlands, Aspen Mountain sports the famous World Cup Downhill Race Course, and miles of powder. As far as we were concerned, both mountains are equally tough, hard, fast and a lot of fun.
After our night out, though, we found ourselves stopping to rest more frequently. Fortunately, there are restaurants placed strategically up and down the mountain. (I asked one waitress how she got down at the end of the day; she smiled and replied, “I ski down, of course.” Everyone in Aspen skis.)
At 2:30, we had to pack it in. We walked the two blocks from the base to our strategically-located hotel, the Independence Square, knowing exactly what we needed. After a quick change, we grabbed some cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine from the apres-ski buffet, and headed up to the roof - and the hot tub.
Just what the doctor ordered. There is nothing like hot, churning water to sooth overburdened, aching muscles. The air was brisk - the steam rising off the water turned to ice in our hair and beards. But from the neck down, we were in heaven.
We sipped our wine and shared skiing stories with the other indulgent guests - a doctor from Chicago, a student from Los Angeles, and a ski bum from Sidney, Australia.
As the setting sun turned the valley behind us to umber, the last of the stragglers made their way down the slopes - just a few hundred meters in front of us - and the grooming machines rumbled out onto the mountain like some sort of gigantic, bizarre beetle. The subject turned to politics, and the doctor and the student got into a heated discussion on the relative merits of the Presidential prospects.
We didn’t care. Poaching in decadence, we had no more important long-range decisions to make than where to party that night, and upon which of the best mountains in the world we should ski on the next day.
By Jeremy Bloom
The parking lot dropped away behind us as we pulled up through the chill winter air. Thirty feet below our ski tips, hotdoggers whipped down the Lowerstein, an experts-only run that is one of the hardest at Aspen Highlands mountain.
The valley spread out behind us, in majestic green and white - green of pine, white of snow. The top of the lift was approaching swiftly.
“Which way should we turn when we get off?” I asked my companion, a native Coloradan who was escorting this Easterner on his first trip to the big mountains of the West.
“Straight, of course,” he replied. “This is just the first lift. We’ve got three more before we reach the top.”
Oh. Aspen Highlands is big. With its 3,800-foot vertical drop, it is the biggest of the four mountains here that form an 11-mile strip of ski heaven. Two more - Snowmass, at 3,555, and Aspen Mountain itself, at 3,370 - exceed the mightiest that the East has to offer - Vermont’s Killington, at 3,175. Together with their baby sister, Buttermilk, they have made the tiny village of Aspen synonymous with skiing, and a winter haven for ski bums, movie stars, European royalty and American students on a ski-blast vacation.
And also for writers who happen to love skiing. By the time we got off at Loge Peak, we were 11,800 feet above sea level and had traveled up more than three miles of lift.
We headed down Broadway, a wide but challenging track down the center of the mountain. There were five experts-only trails leading off at intervals on our right; we went over to investigate, but they looked more like vertical cliffs than slopes to me. Good thing I’m not an expert.
Adjusting our goggles against the glare of the sun and the snow, we continued down through the powder. The wind was cold on my cheeks, but that was the only part of me exposed - temperatures go down well below zero up here, and wind chill cools it off even further. We were well bundled. Under the layers of wool and Gore-Tex, we were warm with action and adrenalin.
On a mountain this size, you don’t spend anywhere near as high a percentage of your time standing and shivering on lift lines. There’s so much room to ski! And a hint: even if you are skiing in pairs, go for the singles line - an extra line that maximizes the efficiency of triple- and quad-chair lifts by letting singles fill in the empty seats. Not only will it cut your time in line, it’s also a great way to meet people and hear some wild stories.
Like the kid who told me, in an incredulous tone, about the gorgeous, blond, 30-ish corporate lawyer who comes out from California and spends one month per annum picking up blond beach-bum-type students and showering them with Champaign-and-caviar high life. This year she had found him, he told me in a tone that implied he still thought he was dreaming the whole thing.
Or the group of young ladies from London, dressed to the nines, who informed me in very posh Mayfair accents that Aspen was much better than those drab European ski resorts. “The facilities are ever so much better here, you know,” they said. “And the Alps are all above the tree line, you know, so it’s all just snow. There aren’t proper trails there a-tall.”
Skiing tends to be a sport of younger people; here that is particularly apparent. At two miles above sea level, there simply isn’t that much oxygen in the air. Even folks in the prime of life and in peak physical condition get tired after a few hours of hard, fast exertion; not being either, we exhausted quickly, and caught the free shuttle-bus back downtown.
Seasoned Aspen hands have a routine: ski ‘till three, then apres-ski and a bit of shopping ‘till eight, then party until three in the morning. Aspen is renowned for its high times as much as for its high peaks. And the paragon of Aspen night life is - the Paragon.
This restaurant/bar/disco may not be the hoity-toitiest place in town, but it truly epitomizes Aspen. The decor is rich with gorgeous woodwork and lots of stained glass, typical of the Victorian elegance of many of the buildings constructed during Aspen’s first heyday.
And as befits a restaurant serving the contemporary wild West (in a town where the cops drive Saabs), the menu is Thai. We had intensely spicy shrimp and a delectable satay beef with a tangy peanut dipping-sauce. We also tried the house drink, which was an unnatural bluish green and tasted like... well, tasted like bluish green. They wouldn’t tell us what was in it. Just as well.
All the travel guides advise against imbibing during the first three or four days of one’s stay in Aspen, because of the rarified mountain air. Judging by the crowd at the bar, most folks were either unconcerned, or didn’t mind the prospect of getting drunk quicker (and after all, many would only be staying three or four days). And the dance floor was jammed from 10:00 until 3:00 in the morning, although how they could dance on legs that had been up and down the slopes all afternoon was a mystery.
Aspen Mountain, the main ski area, is not for beginners. There are no green-marked beginner trails. Although most locals seem to prefer Highlands, Aspen Mountain sports the famous World Cup Downhill Race Course, and miles of powder. As far as we were concerned, both mountains are equally tough, hard, fast and a lot of fun.
After our night out, though, we found ourselves stopping to rest more frequently. Fortunately, there are restaurants placed strategically up and down the mountain. (I asked one waitress how she got down at the end of the day; she smiled and replied, “I ski down, of course.” Everyone in Aspen skis.)
At 2:30, we had to pack it in. We walked the two blocks from the base to our strategically-located hotel, the Independence Square, knowing exactly what we needed. After a quick change, we grabbed some cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine from the apres-ski buffet, and headed up to the roof - and the hot tub.
Just what the doctor ordered. There is nothing like hot, churning water to sooth overburdened, aching muscles. The air was brisk - the steam rising off the water turned to ice in our hair and beards. But from the neck down, we were in heaven.
We sipped our wine and shared skiing stories with the other indulgent guests - a doctor from Chicago, a student from Los Angeles, and a ski bum from Sidney, Australia.
As the setting sun turned the valley behind us to umber, the last of the stragglers made their way down the slopes - just a few hundred meters in front of us - and the grooming machines rumbled out onto the mountain like some sort of gigantic, bizarre beetle. The subject turned to politics, and the doctor and the student got into a heated discussion on the relative merits of the Presidential prospects.
We didn’t care. Poaching in decadence, we had no more important long-range decisions to make than where to party that night, and upon which of the best mountains in the world we should ski on the next day.
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