Wednesday, November 19, 2008
When? Now.
My last post, written on Saturday, November 15th, wondered out loud when winter would hit us here in Vermont. 48 hours later we answered the question. It's now Wednesday, it's been flurrying for three days straight, the snowmaking crew at Okemo has had guns ablazin' since Sunday night, and we'll be skiing and riding on trails from top to bottom on Saturday the 22nd. Perhaps, after all, my snow dance actually worked. Now if only I could remember which ski socks I was wearing so I can get it right next year.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
When?
It’s November 15th, the original projected start date for Okemo’s 2008/09 winter season. This evening at about 7:30PM the temperature outside was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 degrees Fahrenheit and it had been raining for most of the day. That’s good news if you’re knitting a quilt, writing the great American novel or doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. It’s not so encouraging if you work at a winter sports resort, especially if you teach skiing for a living as I do.All kidding aside, the reality of the effect of the weather is that it makes all of us a little anxious, perhaps a little stir crazy as we wait for winter to arrive. With all of the concerns we have about what effect the receding economy will have on our business, more anxiety is not welcome. This is compounded by the fact that all of us who work in this industry share one very effective means of releasing stress - that is skiing or snowboarding – which is not available to us at the moment. Now that it’s so gloomy and wet, riding my road bike isn’t so attractive and there’s only so much time I can spend in the gym buried in my iPod without going completely out of my mind. So, what are we to do?
Warm, wet and snowless starts to the ski season are nothing new. Those of us who work in the mountains and depend on winter don’t need to read the scientific journals to be convinced that global warming is a reality, but the fact is that snow and snow-making temperatures in New England are always spotty at this time of year. The 2006/07 season was horrible in this respect, with a dismal early season and the first real storm not hitting us until Valentines Day. That year, those of us accustomed to the ebb and flow of New England weather spent an inordinate amount of time assuring our foreign staff that, yes, it would in fact snow. There were occasions when I wasn’t sure whether they or I really needed the reassurance but, as was the case in every poor season, we were right. It did snow. It snowed a lot.
So, once again we’re walking around in circles, peeking at our cold weather clothing still hanging in our closets, anxiously talking about the amount of early season ticket sales, getting taunted by friends in the Rockies, dialing in our equipment and chomping at the bit.
The only remedy that I am aware of for the resultant psychological condition is to do the snow dance. In my experience, though there are many varieties of the snow dance, there is one tried and true formula. It involves wearing a ski hat or helmet, goggles (down over the eyes), ski or snowboard boots, and pajamas (preferably flannel with some sort of snow-themed design) while dancing around the living room or watching ski movies while seated on the couch. Please understand that in no way do I think that the snow dance affects the weather. It just makes us all feel a bit funny and helps pass the time pass while it rains in November. When, oh when will it snow? Soon, that’s when. And at Okemo we’ll make winter, we always do and we’re the best at it.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Looking Forward, Listening Back
This is a blog principally about skiing and the experiences, exposures and opportunities it provides me. In the end, however, it is just skiing and sometimes more important events require, really demand my attention. This evening, as I follow the television coverage of our election and its results become clear, I am incredibly moved and I struggle to articulate what it means to me personally or to our nation. The best I can offer is to remember the words of President Lyndon Johnson. LBJ may seem an odd choice, but his vision for America sounds as fresh and a propos on this historic evening as it did in May of 1964 to the students of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. For now, I would like a glass of scotch, a good cigar, and the promise of a great winter to come.
I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country.
The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the “Great Society”.
The “Great Society” rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in out time. But that is just the beginning.
The “Great Society” is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
But most of all, the “Great Society” is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the “Great Society” - in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.
Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans - four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States.
Aristotle said: “Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life.” It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today.
The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.
Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.
Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders.
New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life.
I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.
This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.
A second place where we begin to build the “Great Society” is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.
A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the “Ugly American.” Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.
For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.
A third place to build the “Great Society” is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal.
Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million - more than one quarter of all America - have not even finished high school.
Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.
In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.
These are three of the central issues of the “Great Society”. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.
But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings -- on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the “Great Society”.
The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.
Woodrow Wilson once wrote: “Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time.”
Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.
For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?
Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?
Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace -- as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?
Will you join in the battle to build the “Great Society”, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.
Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.
Thank you. Good-bye.
---------------------------
I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country.
The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the “Great Society”.
The “Great Society” rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in out time. But that is just the beginning.
The “Great Society” is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
But most of all, the “Great Society” is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the “Great Society” - in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.
Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans - four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States.
Aristotle said: “Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life.” It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today.
The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.
Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.
Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders.
New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life.
I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.
This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.
A second place where we begin to build the “Great Society” is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.
A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the “Ugly American.” Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.
For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.
A third place to build the “Great Society” is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal.
Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million - more than one quarter of all America - have not even finished high school.
Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.
In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.
These are three of the central issues of the “Great Society”. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.
But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings -- on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the “Great Society”.
The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.
Woodrow Wilson once wrote: “Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time.”
Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.
For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?
Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?
Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace -- as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?
Will you join in the battle to build the “Great Society”, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.
Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.
Thank you. Good-bye.
American Fantasy
My hometown occupies the very northwestern corner of Connecticut, with Massachusetts to our immediate north and New York to our immediate west. It is surrounded by steep, green hills and filled with rivers and lakes. With all of the recent political rhetoric about “real Americans” and the media emphasis on blue versus red states, those of us who call this hard-to-get-to and harder-to-leave slice of America home defy easy pigeon-holing.
The town, according to its 2007 Annual Report (which all Connecticut towns submit to the state government each year), consists of 60.65 square miles or 38,761 acres and it encompasses 2 villages and 3 hamlets. Of the total population of approximately 4,100 people, as of September 2007 there were 1179 unaffiliated registered voters, 706 registered republicans, 970 registered democrats, 6 voters registered with the Independence Party, and 2 voters registered as Socialists. There are equal numbers of farmers and second home owners here, and many fascinating retirees who enrich the intellectual and cultural life of town. The “business district”, such as it is, is bounded by a Congregational church on one end and the Episcopalian church on the other (with other denominations not far away), there’s a graceful old inn on the green, and soldiers from conflicts dating all the way back to the French and Indian War (a/k/a the Seven Years’ War) are buried in the cemetery behind town hall. We have not one, not two, but three highly reputable private preparatory schools in town along with the excellent regional public school district. We’re not without our social tensions, we have our share of hardship and poverty, and we definitely are not immune to the other ills of society. As far as I know Jimmy Stewart does not operate a Savings and Loan here, but you get the picture. Many families over the past 350 years have staked out their piece of the American dream here – some have made it and many haven’t, but all have a pride of place and of their association with it.
I have just spent four months on the far side of the world during the most vigorous portion of the now-completed political campaigns, literally as far from home as one can get without leaving the planet. Whether in spite of or as a result of that great distance, and coupled with the events and conditions affecting our nation at home and abroad, I have felt moved by the current election in ways both cerebral and emotional to an extent I have never before experienced. Certainly, the frequent and sincere queries from Kiwis and others looking for some insight into our national consciousness and our political process kept events in the forefront of my mind and required that I be able to articulate my own views to others, with all the requisite careful consideration. Imagine a casual, polite dinner conversation where I am asked to explain the Electoral College, the role of US monetary policy on the world economy, the defining events in the lives of the Presidential candidates, why Texas is so different from New England, and what’s so important about Brett Favre playing for the Jets and you get the idea.
One particular comment from an older friend in Wanaka struck an interesting chord with me, one which has been on my mind quite a bit as the second Tuesday in November has approached. My friend is classic Kiwi: he’s an octogenarian, fit and mentally sharp, a retired and quite brilliant psychiatrist who immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland with his young family in the 1960’s. His comment to me (which clearly struck a nerve) was that the American Dream is really just a fantasy, noting that he’s “an expert on fantasies”. The problem is that my friend, like so many British, doesn’t get it. A fantasy, as he considered it, is not grounded in reality. In America, because we have and continue to create our own reality, we are free to dream of a nation and a world which may seem far-fetched, which may seem beyond our reach, but towards which we can dedicate ourselves, our resources, our efforts and our hopes – “our sacred honor”, as it were.
As Americans we are aware that the American Dream is a representation of our aspirations as individuals and as a community. We understand that there will always be a gap – sometimes large and, hopefully, sometimes small – between our abstraction of America the dream and the reality of America the nation. My friend failed to grasp that the dream was born of the confluence of the flowering of the liberal concepts of the great enlightenment philosophers, the antithetical relationship of their philosophies and an oppressive colonial power, and the destiny of a people empowered by their own natural inclination towards self-expression and self-betterment. Our “inalienable rights” arose out of the ether and took root in each and all of us. Believe me, I’ve seen the soil in New England up close and anything which is going to take root here and flower for generations had better be stubborn.
My intention is not to preach about how right we are, nor is it my intention to lecture on the merits or nature of the American Dream. My intention is to take a moment on the night before Election Day, at a time when our concepts of who were are as Americans and our goals for our country and its place in the world find challenges at every turn, to consider the essentials. There are many attributes we share with people on the other side of the world and I am blessed to consider so many of them my friends. They have and continue to enrich my life. Still, there is no place I’d rather be on Election Day than in my home town, among my own people – farmers, teachers, doctors, retires, and even ski instructors - considering our common aspirations and our differing opinions over a cup of coffee and a ballot box.
The town, according to its 2007 Annual Report (which all Connecticut towns submit to the state government each year), consists of 60.65 square miles or 38,761 acres and it encompasses 2 villages and 3 hamlets. Of the total population of approximately 4,100 people, as of September 2007 there were 1179 unaffiliated registered voters, 706 registered republicans, 970 registered democrats, 6 voters registered with the Independence Party, and 2 voters registered as Socialists. There are equal numbers of farmers and second home owners here, and many fascinating retirees who enrich the intellectual and cultural life of town. The “business district”, such as it is, is bounded by a Congregational church on one end and the Episcopalian church on the other (with other denominations not far away), there’s a graceful old inn on the green, and soldiers from conflicts dating all the way back to the French and Indian War (a/k/a the Seven Years’ War) are buried in the cemetery behind town hall. We have not one, not two, but three highly reputable private preparatory schools in town along with the excellent regional public school district. We’re not without our social tensions, we have our share of hardship and poverty, and we definitely are not immune to the other ills of society. As far as I know Jimmy Stewart does not operate a Savings and Loan here, but you get the picture. Many families over the past 350 years have staked out their piece of the American dream here – some have made it and many haven’t, but all have a pride of place and of their association with it.
I have just spent four months on the far side of the world during the most vigorous portion of the now-completed political campaigns, literally as far from home as one can get without leaving the planet. Whether in spite of or as a result of that great distance, and coupled with the events and conditions affecting our nation at home and abroad, I have felt moved by the current election in ways both cerebral and emotional to an extent I have never before experienced. Certainly, the frequent and sincere queries from Kiwis and others looking for some insight into our national consciousness and our political process kept events in the forefront of my mind and required that I be able to articulate my own views to others, with all the requisite careful consideration. Imagine a casual, polite dinner conversation where I am asked to explain the Electoral College, the role of US monetary policy on the world economy, the defining events in the lives of the Presidential candidates, why Texas is so different from New England, and what’s so important about Brett Favre playing for the Jets and you get the idea.
One particular comment from an older friend in Wanaka struck an interesting chord with me, one which has been on my mind quite a bit as the second Tuesday in November has approached. My friend is classic Kiwi: he’s an octogenarian, fit and mentally sharp, a retired and quite brilliant psychiatrist who immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland with his young family in the 1960’s. His comment to me (which clearly struck a nerve) was that the American Dream is really just a fantasy, noting that he’s “an expert on fantasies”. The problem is that my friend, like so many British, doesn’t get it. A fantasy, as he considered it, is not grounded in reality. In America, because we have and continue to create our own reality, we are free to dream of a nation and a world which may seem far-fetched, which may seem beyond our reach, but towards which we can dedicate ourselves, our resources, our efforts and our hopes – “our sacred honor”, as it were.
As Americans we are aware that the American Dream is a representation of our aspirations as individuals and as a community. We understand that there will always be a gap – sometimes large and, hopefully, sometimes small – between our abstraction of America the dream and the reality of America the nation. My friend failed to grasp that the dream was born of the confluence of the flowering of the liberal concepts of the great enlightenment philosophers, the antithetical relationship of their philosophies and an oppressive colonial power, and the destiny of a people empowered by their own natural inclination towards self-expression and self-betterment. Our “inalienable rights” arose out of the ether and took root in each and all of us. Believe me, I’ve seen the soil in New England up close and anything which is going to take root here and flower for generations had better be stubborn.
My intention is not to preach about how right we are, nor is it my intention to lecture on the merits or nature of the American Dream. My intention is to take a moment on the night before Election Day, at a time when our concepts of who were are as Americans and our goals for our country and its place in the world find challenges at every turn, to consider the essentials. There are many attributes we share with people on the other side of the world and I am blessed to consider so many of them my friends. They have and continue to enrich my life. Still, there is no place I’d rather be on Election Day than in my home town, among my own people – farmers, teachers, doctors, retires, and even ski instructors - considering our common aspirations and our differing opinions over a cup of coffee and a ballot box.
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