The Most Durable Double Standard

Sunset over the Roaring Fork River in Basalt, Colorado

I think for myself. Certainly, this also is true for anyone I count as a friend. What is occasionally unclear is whether others expect that we do so.

When I travel, work and live overseas, people I meet often engage me in conversation about the United States, what goes on here, what I think about our government or the current administration, and how I feel about it.  I always take it as a complement that they view me as someone with whom they can chat about issues related to America and our actions and place in the world.

I am cognizant that the willingness of people around the world to approach me with their questions and concerns belies an essential underlying belief: in a republic, the actions of the government do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or values of the nation or its people. To be clear, it is possible that my presence overseas, on the ground, trying my best to order lunch or simply be friendly in a foreign language that I may or may not speak, and my lack of white tennis sneakers, an American flag polo shirt, and cartoonish American nose-first voice may single me out as someone to whom people may safely and respectfully seek out answers. This is particularly striking in our case as Americans given the outsized attention our Republic receives around the world and the impact of our economy, our media, and our political and military strength. There is one other nation and its people in particular who suffer considerably from the opposite treatment.

A substantial issue affecting British post-war politics has been thoroughgoing antisemitism on the political left. This is not new. Digging deeper there are several factors that make liberal British antisemitism thorny: a long history of anti-Jewish violence in England, true antisemitism among the elite of the former British Empire, the nuances of Middle Eastern politics and the British role in directly creating those conditions, the ease with which the Jewish people are convenient scapegoats (a term taken directly from the Hebrew Bible), and the inability of the media and public figures to distinguish between actions of the Israeli government and the hearts and minds of the Jewish people and individual Jews worldwide. It’s become common in the UK, here in America, and around the world for people to sympathize with the legitimate plight of the Palestinian people on every level by taking overtly antisemitic positions, sometimes with violent effect. “From the river to the sea” chanted by crowds is an overt expression of the desire to wipe all Jews from the planet – it is not an expression of the desire to restrain or reform Israeli government or military actions towards Palestinians, and it is not an expression of the Palestinian people’s longing for their own state. Secular Westerners adopting that chant and or other similar positions in their meme-filled ready-for-social-media simplifications is a victory for Hamas and their similarly a-moral, hyper-violent, unapologetically extremist brethren. Period.

I do not apologize for Israeli actions. I do believe that after millennia of hoping, enduring, surviving, and suffering at the hands of the enemies of the Jewish people, the Jewish state is a miracle. With that as historical context, I expect better of the it - I expect the State of Israel to be humanist in a way that belies our experiences as the historical other. Nonetheless, I do indict the people who fail to give the Israeli nation and the Jewish people the same respect we Americans and the Brits receive from others around the world as individuals. I am confident that American tourists in Vietnam do not have to suffer the indignity of being shouted-at about the My Lai massacre while traveling there, and I do not qualify my commemoration of Veterans’ Day with its memory. I do not take the time during Christmas or Easter to tell my Christian friends that their holiday observance should be tempered because of the litany of horrors inflicted on my people throughout the last two thousand years in the name of Jesus or with the complicity of institutionalized Christianity.

Yom Hashoah in April is the Israeli national remembrance day for the victims of the Holocaust (the “Shoah” in Hebrew). This is distinct from International Holocaust Remembrance Day which is in January and was established by the United Nations General Assembly to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp in 1945. On both occasions this year, a popular meme that generated notable amounts of attention on social media espoused the position that any Holocaust remembrance should be qualified because of Israeli government actions in Gaza. A few people with whom I am friendly and who are prone to meme-i-fying their political views shared this idea widely. When I politely suggested that they are conflating Israeli government actions and conduct with the Jewish people, our religion, our culture, and our history, they responded angrily. When I told them that their anger reflected antisemitism rather than anti-Israel sentiments and that doing so was a victory for Hamas, they were still more angered. Why these people do not afford the same latitude and respect to the difference between Jews around the world and Israeli state actions that they expect to receive as American or British people is between them and their consciences. It pains me to say so, but these people who so easily apply this most ancient and durable double standard are no longer my friends. I expect better of my friends in the same way I expect better of the State of Israel. For every complex question there is a simple answer that is wrong, and sometimes that simple answer becomes hate or violence.

One of my favorite places to be on Planet Earth is the table of an exceptionally dear friend in New Zealand who is an ex-pat American and is Muslim – everyone should be so lucky. Although on paper we are as different as you can imagine, she is family to me, true mishpocha. We have dissected and made progress on a long list of vexing issues over the years, usually while preparing, eating, or recovering from some shockingly amazing meals. Politics, capitalism, gardening, gastronomy, skiing, fart jokes, you name it, nothing is off the table and all of it with the constant underpinning of love for each other and for humankind, and of our shared desire for peace. Our friendship and our common bonds are never, ever reduced by the actions of others or of any current or historical government claiming to act on our behalf.  This is what a friend is to me and going forward I shall endeavor to be more careful and that particular. With love in my heart. Inshallah; shalom aleichem.

Paradise Lost; Paradise Found

Aspen trees just about to burst into green in early May

 “What’s your definition of Paradise?"

In the many years when I would ski and occasionally coach in Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico, I was privileged to have become good friends with some legendary characters. Most glamourous among them was Elzabeth Brownell, and one of her wonderful stories has been on my mind lately.

Elizabeth was the owner and proprietor of the Thunderbird Lodge, a landmark Taos ski hotel with great food and a welcoming, convivial atmosphere – her countrymen in Bavaria would have called it a truly gemütlich place. She arrived in Taos early in the resort’s life in the 1960’s and she carved out her own successful life and business in that remote and beautiful corner of the Rocky Mountains with grit, determination, and copious amounts of charm and good humor. Elizabeth’s loyal staff referred to her behind her back as “the velvet fist”.

Elizabeth was a keen world traveler in summer and when I visited Taos we would always plan dinner or drinks at the Thunderbird so she could tell stories and show photos of the far-flung places she had been that year, always in her stubbornly present but gently time-worn German voice. Moving slowly through the details, from start to finish of any story she always made clear that it was the people who captured her interest and who were her source for learning and growth.

Skiing with Elizabeth Brownell in Taos Ski Valley always felt a bit like being elevated to the status of minor celebrity. “Hey, I saw you skiing with Elizabeth today!” Runs were non-stop, unhurried but never slow, and although everyone knew her and would say hello to her by name when we loaded or off-loaded the lifts, nobody outside that day’s ski posse would dare ask to join.

One of our Spring ski days together looms as among my most memorable. Deep, fresh, impossibly light New Mexico powder. Blue skies without a blemish of clouds, the mountain uncrowded as always in Taos, with the entire place and everyone in it seemingly lulled into a calm, joyful ease of mind. Impossible to forget, Elizabeth, probably just over seventy years old at the time, wore a classic canary yellow Bogner one piece ski suit and white knit hat that day, and every turn she made was equally stylish. I simply can’t express how it felt to be skiing with my friend, in her orbit, on that day. I treasure the memory.

Sitting together on one of the resort’s long, slow chair lifts, Elizabeth told me a story about a recent trip to Tahiti. One day while sitting around a fire with some locals on the beach in a small fishing village, she asked about their culture’s concept of “paradise”. Perplexed, they needed an explanation of what she meant. After listening to her description, they each looked at their surroundings and each other, their community, and made clear that they felt as though were in it, living in paradise. They wanted for nothing. And then, Elizabeth looked right at me, extended out both arms to indicate her embrace of the mountains she called home, and told me that on that day, in that snow, skiing together in that place, amongst that community, was at that moment her personal paradise.

It’s very easy to vacation in wonderful places and romanticize about life there, to imagine that a simpler way of life would be a better and easier way to find meaning. That can be equally true for our guests in Aspen Snowmass basking in the powder day sunshine as it was for Elizabeth on the beach in Tahiti. Still, even if only for a moment through rose-tinted lenses, there is truth revealed in the feeling of it. How my friend felt, what she expressed was real, was meaningful, and clearly stayed with me. It continues as an important guidepost in my own life and work in the mountains. Lately, the concept of paradise has been on my mind as I consider the political and religious views of some of those Americans who have been attracting a great deal of media attention.

My friend Elizabeth’s question is apt when considering all that has cleaved our own society at this moment in time: What is your concept of paradise? What is mine? Do we make our own paradise here on Earth or achieve it in an afterlife? To what sort of society do we aspire? Are we helping move forward toward that idealized place of peace and harmony or acting to move further from it? Are we doing our part or are we psychologically committed to a chronic myopia that narrows our focus to only our material needs and wants, or our fears? Is our concept of paradise inclusive of only ourselves or do we envision it as a place inclusive of our whole community, or even all humankind? In this query, I hope we are each answerable only to our own consciences and to the Almighty rather than to the judgement of the loudest voices in the room - I hope but I am not certain. My daily read of the newspapers tests this frame of mind and often leaves me concerned about the world we live in and the people who surround me. With apologies to Dante Alighieri, whether our society has lost the path to paradise or found it remains as yet undetermined.

I spend a great deal of time with people visiting the mountains for recreation, and it is one of several indicia of the success of our time together when they begin to ponder these and other, similar questions. In that way, I aspire to provide a little of what Elizabeth and others have given to me, what the Tahitian villagers gave to her. Even if only while skiing light, dry snow in the high alpine sunshine together. As for the rest of our nation and the world, I am answerable only to my own conscience and to my own standards, and I find peace and solace in those who share them.

A Slice of Home

Vegetables recently transported by friend to Colorado from her garden in Vermont

I miss great pizza. By that I don’t mean that I miss teaching a lot of beginner ski lessons, although I do. I mean that I miss being able to walk into any one of a number of local pizza joints and just have a slice or share a pie with friends.

Growing up in Upstate New York where Italian food was ubiquitous, our preferred local pizza place was DD’s, just down the road. Friendly, welcoming, busy, loud, all business, with red sauce from Heaven, fresh mozzarella, and crust that was perfect every time. I can see it in my mind's eye: stacked ovens, Pepsi-branded refrigerators, bright fluorescent lights, faded old framed Italian tourism posters, and enormous ancient wood pizza peels in constant motion. I suppose there was nothing truly exceptional about the place - it was exactly as it should have been, it set the standard for me, the pizza was wonderful, and we loved it and the people there. We were spoiled, and we had no idea how badly.

Now, after decades living in New England happily taking great pizza for granted, I live in a place where people routinely put ranch dressing on their pizza. I cannot write those words without cringing. Ranch. Friggin’. Dressing.

I recently made a trip back East to see family and to have ready access to sea-level oxygen and its gastronomic equivalent, good affordable food. On my connecting flight from DFW to Logan, I sat next to a very nice young woman, maybe 30-ish, on her way for a long weekend in Boston with her mother, what would be her first time there. She was excited for the adventure and eager to show me her well-researched and quite good list of things to do and see. She asked me for suggestions, and at the top of my list, along with taking the ferry from the airport to downtown, seeing the Public Gardens, and a taking a stroll along The Esplanade, was of course the North End, Boston’s old Italian neighborhood. I explained that if she were to see a bakery with a very long line out the door while walking along the busy streets she should get in the line, wait patiently while people watching, and then have a cannoli. Or two. Don’t ask, just go. North End cannolis went on the list.

Then it happened; very innocently. My airplane row-mate told me that a friend of hers in Texas had told her that people in Boston don’t put ranch dressing on their pizza, and she sheepishly, warily, asked me if that’s true. I promise that I did not wince, I did not swear or tease, I did not raise my voice. I merely calmly answered “Yes, that’s true,” and then I offered some advice. I explained that not only do Bostonians never, ever put ranch dressing on their pizza, but that she should under no circumstances ever ask for it. It was quite likely, I explained, that if she were to ask for ranch dressing on her pizza while in Boston she would be refused and even asked to leave, and that there would be expletives involved. Great sauce takes time and care using recipes honed over generations, and ranch dressing would be an insult to the pizzaioli, to their families, their ancestors, to the soil in which the tomatoes were grown and the seas they had to cross. As kindly as I could, I emphasized that I wasn’t kidding; not at all. Feeling a little guilty, I wrapped up by suggesting that maybe the best mindset would be “when in Rome” and that it would be worthwhile to experience great pizza without ranch dressing while in Boston, just so she could appreciate the place, the people, and her time there. I still find the whole episode entertaining and may have told the story on several different occasions while visiting my folks.

A can of San Marzano tomatoes costs almost ten dollars in my local supermarket here in Colorado. Yes, I will buy “San Marzano style” tomatoes without shame, and they’re not too bad. I can buy good olive oil, fresh mozz, corn meal, reasonable oregano … you get the idea. I can even buy pizza dough made on site in a local pizza parlor (do they even call them ‘pizza parlors’ in Colorado?!) – it is good enough to remind me of good pizza dough. When I make marinara for pizza, I use roasted red peppers and go heavy on the oregano so the sauce stands up well against the toppings, and I use copious amounts of corn meal on the counter when I roll out the dough so that the pies slide easily in and out of the cookie sheets I use in my not-hot-enough oven.

The taste of the corn meal and the oregano in the sauce is really what triggers my olfactory memory. Breathing in deeply, smelling all of it together with the sound of people chatting away in the house in the background transports me somewhere else. I end up quietly feeling present at dinner parties in faraway places with people I miss terribly, memories that decorate my psyche like those old framed Italian travel posters at DD's, bringing me back to a place, to an environment that warms my heart and feels like home.

Damn, I really need a slice; and I will happily eat it while sitting outside on the curb.

The Happy Bavarian

Lake Oeschinen seen from the flank of the Bluemlisalp

In a remote corner of Alberta filled with tall, jagged mountains, I spent a week decades ago skiing with a group of people that included a gentleman we all referred to as “Erhart zee Happy Bavarian”. Erhart was one of those ageless life-long skiers, as calm in his bearing as his skiing was smooth in a way that belied his many years well-spent in the mountains. A native of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, he could have been 65; he could have been 85; his actual age was unclear and utterly unimportant.

Erhart alpine skied in randonnée boots — we’d call them “alpine touring boots” now — at a time when they were uncommon in North America outside the guiding community. When I asked him why that was, his response embodied his whole approach to the sport: when there was a line for lifts at home, he would just start walking uphill instead (“Ven der iz a line for zee leeeft, I chust valk up zee moun-tain”). We shared many stories on that trip, as you do, and one of Erhart’s has been on my mind a lot lately.

Erhart did a lot of business in the United States throughout his career, frequently flying across the Atlantic to do so in that blessedly analog time. The very first thing he would do each time he arrived in the United States was to buy a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar before even exiting the airport. Garmisch-Partenkirchen was among the first German towns liberated from the Nazis by the U.S. Army in the Second World War, and to this day has a large U.S. military presence, and the distinctly American appearance of the Hershey’s bar and its particularly American taste and texture triggered vivid memories of the GI’s who handed them out to the local schoolkids, including Erhart. With each saccharine sweet chocolate bar, he was reminded of those young soldiers from our Greatest Generation, filled with the infectious optimism and generosity that inspired Erhart throughout his life along with countless others in post-war Europe. Buying one right off the plane, unwrapping the brown paper and foil, and savoring the sweetness of it was his way of paying tribute to those GI’s and of reminding himself of the modern, liberating democracy they brought to the world.

I’ve recently returned from an exceptional trip hiking in the mountains of the Bernese Oberlandt in Switzerland. I stayed in a small, remote town, just busy enough for the local folk to look forward to the slower pace and quieter weeks of autumn but without any bitterness or a lack of genuine welcome towards their guests. Though my mountain adventures are the premise for these trips I enjoy, without fail it is the distinctiveness of each place I visit and the opportunity to meet and get to know the people that stays with me long after I’ve returned home. My trip hiking in the beautiful near-vertical mountains around Kandersteg was no exception.

My German is terrible — I speak just enough to engage in a conversation that involves saying hello, ordering lunch or coffee and then quickly moving into English or French. The effort makes a difference in my casual interactions with people, especially if I am happy to take time and move and speak slowly — particularly important with the mountain Swiss who are just not in a hurry to do or say anything as though preserving their energy for what is really important is the regional pastime. On this recent trip, the locals in my hotel, in mountain huts, shops and tramways were curious to engage a little bit longer with me but only when nobody else was around.

“American?”, I was asked quietly and carefully. What followed my “yes” was usually a quiet nod and gently raised eyebrow, and it often included the sheepishly asked question: “Trump?”.

Obviously, I have my political views. It’s very important to me that I am a good, non-partisan ambassador for our republic and our people when I am overseas. For whatever reason, when traveling I frequently and politely have been put in the position of being the great explainer of all things American to the people I meet. This year, this trip, these interactions felt different. I felt as though the people who asked me about the current President in such loaded fashion really wanted to know whether their idea of America, the image they clung to in the same way as my friend Erhart, is still valid. It’s a question that I ask myself quite often at the moment, and I do worry very seriously that America’s deliberate abdication of leadership and advocacy for democracy and democratic values has left behind only a haze of constant, bellicose, selfish noise. It’s hard for us to maintain an informed and hopeful world view while drinking from a firehose, and it’s clearly challenging for our friends overseas to watch when they are accustomed to looking up to us and the society we created here.

I am not suggesting that we all start eating Hershey bars and eating them while binge-watching Band of Brothers in an effort to find a way to heal our nation. I do find the news of the day to be a severe challenge to my belief in the American Dream and my confidence in my own future and that of our Republic. Still, as I always conclude, I will not forsake the immeasurable effort of our preceding generations who came to America on whatever deck of the boat and in whatever status, and who made it the great nation our friends grew up admiring so much. I am not giving up. I am lucky to have Erhart’s memory and the hopeful inquisitiveness of the people I meet as a reminder that America as an idea still looms on the horizon and will always be a work in progress. There can be no going backwards, despite the consensus of the fire hose.

I bought some delicious freshly picked apples and beautiful corn at the farmer’s market this Labor Day Weekend. I did not buy any Hershey’s milk chocolate bars. Maybe I should have, and just maybe the idea of them and their sweetness is enough for now.

Thank you, Erhart. Enjoy your uphill walk, my friend.

Bonderalp ridge between Kandersteg and Adelboden

Farmhouse in Ober Allme; nice cow bells!

A Long Walk Off a Short Pier

The MBTA ferry docked in Hingham,MA

Domestic air travel in the United States this year has become, ummm, shi …, nope won’t say it. Let’s just say that it’s become an expensive, unpleasant and very uncomfortable way of bookending any trip. I’m certainly not old enough to have experienced the pleasures of having walked up a staircase, welcomed into a gleaming new aircraft by designer-clad and remarkably skinny, uniformly white staff resembling residents of Stepford in a pillbox hat, and handed a cocktail in an actual glass while placing my fedora in the ample storage space above my luxurious seat in a two-by-two row. If that was the “Jet Age”, this is something quite different. We get to wait alongside throngs of equally grimy fellow travelers wolfing down fast food while waiting for our non-egalitarian group to be called by a barely audible announcement so we can sit in an inadequately air conditioned over-crowded aluminum tube for three hours before even leaving the gate while praying that we’ll make our connection to the next flight. To be fair, my experience over the last few years usually includes a cabin crew doing their best to ameliorate the circumstances. Thankfully, my standards have sunk commensurably with the experience and I muddle through it all with good books and a prodigious ability to nap on demand while sitting bolt upright and strapped to a chair.

There is something I do that successfully mitigates the damaging effects of air travel on my mind, body, and spirit. It works like magic, never failing to snap me into a low blood pressure relaxed reverie and positive-minded contemplative nature. When flying back East to Boston for whatever reason, personal or professional, after deplaning and collecting my baggage, I get on the bus that transports travelers between terminals and then exit the vehicle at … wait for it … the ferry terminal. With luck I have enough time to stand still on the wharf for a few moments, breathe the sea air, feel the wind in my face, and gaze absent-mindedly across the sailboat-filled harbor at downtown Boston. And then I get on a boat.

Boston’s Logan International Airport sits at the at the end of a long, narrow peninsula immediately across the harbor from downtown, and it is surrounded by little islands. The Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park includes an amazing number of stunningly gorgeous and remarkably interesting spots to explore in a way that feels quite removed from the urban hustle and bustle. It’s far too easy to visit Boston and not have the seafaring life of the city as part of your experience or to rush off to Cape Cod’s celebrated and very busy beach towns without seeing these close-by gems. I can’t recommend visiting the harbor islands enough (https://www.bostonharborislands.org/).

Yeah, yeah; sorry about that. I promise, I am not about to recite “Sea Fever” by John Masefield (although I could, just to make my ninth grade English teacher happy). When I’m able to plan my travel so I can take the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority ferry from Logan to the little port town not far from where my parents live, it works every time. I immediately feel as though I am on vacation. While waiting for the ferry, I even sometimes get to watch the seagulls catch clams, fly high up and drop their prey onto the ferry docks to crack them open for easier dining. The place is littered with clam shells like some seagull’s fantasy Las Vegas buffet, all right underneath the many unsuspecting flights coming and going from the busy airport.

I can’t quite explain why it is that traveling by boat is such a compelling and relaxing way to transit from one place to another, and it most certainly is the antidote to the current challenges of domestic air travel. It’s quite different from paddle boarding or canoeing on a river, it’s certainly not a cruise, and why isn’t important. Take the ferry to Nantucket rather than fly; take the mail boat from Portland to visit friends on the islands of Casco Bay; from Greenwich Harbor to the islands in Long Island Sound for a picnic with a view of Manhattan; or from Seattle to Whidby Island for dinner at your favorite seafood restaurant. Watch the commercial fishing boats or pleasure craft float by as the people on board waive and, abracadabra, that little bit of transit becomes a calming, restful nugget of vacation in a way unlike anything else can achieve. The people on passing boats do waive in a way that is a noteworthy distinction from the drivers in Boston traffic who flip the bird or just cut off other vehicles while listening to the talk radio shows that make them angry at the world while speeding ever faster. Maybe those people just need a slow trip on a sturdy vessel to relax a bit (https://www.timeout.com/boston/news/boston-drivers-ranked-worst-in-the-nation-for-the-10th-consecutive-year-062625). I for one will remain happy on the slow boat.

I’m genuinely grateful to be out of the shoulder season doldrums and into a busy summer season even though I am up to the gunnels in work. Still, if the Hades-hot weather forecast proves to be correct here in the landlocked middle of the continent, I will eagerly anticipate the joys of a long walk off a short pier and into some cool mountain water. Followed by an ice cream sandwich in the shade of a big tree. Because it’s summer, and these things are important to keep me on the right tack all season long. I will look forward to my next travel plans that can include the gentle rocking of a boat in the harbor, the salt spray, and the wind in my face, and I feel better just thinking about it.

Typical fisherman's shack near the Nantucket ferry terminal

View of downtown Boston from Logan International Airport

Not Just a Nametag

The view from the sun-baked patio of the wonderful Hotel Eiger in Mürren, Switzerland

Imagine this: You’re sitting in the dining room of a lovely little hotel in a famously picturesque mountain village in the Swiss Alps. Outside it is pouring rain so the large brightly colored awning covering the entrance and the umbrellas that ordinarily protect patrons from the sunshine are all put away. Most of the diners in the lively room with stunning views through the panorama windows are on a half-board, pre-fixe meal plan, as am I. It includes several choices of delicious main courses that follow a range of exceptional soups, a fish course or salad, and fresh bread. The wine is plentiful, the atmosphere convivial, and the staff are friendly, efficient, and engaging in numerous languages.

After a long, vigorous day of hiking I am ready for the wonderful plate of beef stroganoff when it arrives, piping hot from the kitchen and made with care. And then it happens. It really did; and I wish it hadn’t.

From somewhere behind me, I hear the uniquely loud and nasally voice of an American. She says to the dining room manager (the always hilarious and quite amazing Carla), in specific reference to the meal just placed in front of me, “The smell of burning flesh is disgusting to me. We’d like to sit outside”. I did not turn around. I did hear Carla ask gently whether they realized that we were in the middle of an enormous and quite terrible rain storm, only to be dressed-down by the nose-talker about how it can’t possibly be hard to pull out the awning, dry off the table and chairs, and turn on the heaters. The American and her companion promptly walked out and waited in the hotel lobby, toe tapping, while the staff scurried to make them happy (or at least less miserable). I went ahead and dove face first into my stroganoff with vigor and more than a tiny bit of amazement. The staff bit their tongues.

I wish this had been an isolated incident. On that trip, I had several other encounters just like it.

After the few worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I tip-toed back into travel and eventually swan-dove in with vigor. In each of the last three years, I’ve sought out and found some exceptional experiences hiking in mountains far from home and getting to know some wonderful people. In my recent travels, I have always been made to feel welcome without exception or qualification and I have never felt as though I was being served by the people who staffed the hotels where I stayed, the cafes and remote mountain huts I visited, or the shops in which I poked around. Wherever I have traveled, the local people have been universally hospitable in the best sense of the word.

This year, in advance of my trip to the Bernese Oberlandt in Switzerland, I’d had in mind an article about the distinction between service and hospitality. It was a perspective that I kept in mind as I roamed around the car-free streets of Mürren and the surrounding villages perched on the cliffs above the Lauterbrunen Rift. It’s as beautiful a place as you can imagine, and yet it was the welcome of the people I found throughout the area that elevated it into the realm of the “I wonder if I could stay here for a long while” places. What stopped me from writing my article, what surprised me the most, was the realization that many, dare I say most, of the Americans in the bustling little village quite obviously did not share my view of how to experience the place and the hospitality of its people.

Among my compatriots, there was a clear expectation of being in receipt of service in Mürren, of being served, of experiencing the place just enough to be able to say that they’d been there and to show off their photos. There’s no other way to say it: the other Americans were noticeably and loudly disinterested in the people of the area, in their language and their culture. Their needy and entitled voices frequently interrupted my quiet reverie. I’ve been telling the uncomfortably numerous stories of my run-ins with cartoonish Americans to my friends here at home, selectively of course, and we all understand that underneath the entertaining tales about ugly Americans is a dark reality and a valuable signpost for the rest of us.

To be clear, I have zero issues with people preferring to modify their experiences for personal preferences, comfort, health or welfare. I do have an issue, a quite significant one, with people who treat the staff of exceptionally welcoming places like servants. It makes my skin crawl, especially when that staff is so committed to making all who come to their corner of the world feel at home in their home. Ours was among the first nations to cast aside social class as an essential component of how society is ordered and I would hope that egalitarianism is a part of our DNA whether we are at home or abroad, so this behavior really is challenging to my beliefs about who we are as a people. Thankfully, when I gently confronted Swiss villagers about whether this was a new phenomenon, their warmth with me remained unabated and they often shared their frustrations in a way that was always kind and made clear that they understood my own angst – their optimism about Americans remained unqualified even when tinted by polite consternation. Having the trust and confidence of the people there and being made to feel like one of their own was exemplified by the resident dog of a mountain hut invariably laying on my feet while having these conversations in French or my terrible German, and it did make me feel good about the world and my own place in it.

In Aspen Snowmass and in mountain resorts throughout North America, the common practice of staff wearing name tags that have their hometown on them is a subtle but effective way of humanizing each of us. The staff that work hard to keep the place clean and shovel the sidewalks, the wait staff in restaurants and everyone else are named and identified as people, not anonymously hiding like a nameless and faceless palace staff around the confines of a formal dining room, invisibly and silently serving their masters. The hometown on nametags indicates that we’ve each arrived here for a reason that often is similar to that of our visitors, and that our geographic diversity invites mutually respectful conversation and enriches our guests’ experience. I do hope that it keeps all of us, guests and staff alike, feeling and being squarely on the hospitality rather than the service side of the equation.

So, to my newfound friends in Mürren, danke schoen. Gracie mille. Merci beaucoup. Thank you for having made me feel welcome and for reminding me that true hospitality is neither transactional nor can it be rehearsed, and that its effect on the people being made welcome is far-reaching and quite wonderful.

I’m already looking forward to my next overseas adventure. For now, I may just have to treat myself to another slice of apfelstrudel at Bonnies on Aspen Mountain – it may make me feel soft around the waist but it does always make me feel good about the world.

The First to Fall

Boston harbor on a summer evening

Crispus Attucks has been on my mind lately. Considering the long-view context of his death at the hands of British soldiers in 1770 has been helping me find my footing in light of recent events.

Given that my home is in the mountains, it’s no surprise that when I try to make sense of the world around me and the people in it, I shift my gaze to high altitude to gain valuable context, stepping back and climbing up to get a better view. In the case of our recent Presidential election, I’ve had to step very, very far back in order to regain my balance and have a sense of what is happening. I stand by my conclusions though they have brought me no satisfaction. In essence, my view is that the arc of our American society and political history alternates between three steps forward and two steps back, and three steps forward four steps back (or five, or six).

Crispus Attucks was the first casualty of the American Revolution; the first person to die in the cause of American liberty. In an interesting historical wrinkle, he was of Wampanoag Nation and African descent, and it is unclear whether he was an escaped slave or had been freed by his owners. In Boston, he was well-known in his community as a free man and a working sailor. He was shot and killed by uniformed British troops outside the Customs House at the Boston Massacre. Though his race was happenstance to the means of his death, it does lend interesting punctuation to the timeline of the relationship between African Americans and the nation Attucks's ultimate sacrifice helped create.

In 1783, slavery was abolished in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the basis that it was inconsistent with and repugnant to the state's new constitution. In 1833, slavery was abolished in the United Kingdom. In 1848, slavery was abolished in France and its colonies. In 1858, the United States Supreme Court declared in the Dred Scott decision that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States of America, and that would have applied to Crispus Attucks's descendants despite his place in history. Dred Scott was decided 88 years after Attucks’s killing.

The 13^th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865, 95 years after Crispus Attucks’s death; the 14^th Amendment providing equal protection of the laws was ratified in 1868, 98 years after his death; and the 15^th Amendment prohibiting discrimination with respect to the voting rights of citizens on the basis of race was ratified in 1870, 100 years after Crispus Attucks was gunned-down by British soldiers. Plessy vs. Ferguson, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregating on the basis of the race was constitutional, was decided in 1896. 126 years after Attucks was killed, his descendants would have been segregated in every aspect of their life as Americans.

Shall I continue? Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson in a stirring, succinct, and unanimous decision declaring that racial segregation was unconstitutional was decided in 1956; 176 years after Crispus Attucks’s death and 60 years after Plessy was decided. 176 years after so famously dying in the cause of liberty, Crispus Attucks’s descendants finally could attend school, drink out of a water fountain or sit at a lunch counter without a “whites only” sign – at least according to the United States Supreme Court. The March on Washington when Dr. Martin Luther King etched the words “I have a dream” into the American psyche wasn’t until 1963, and John Lewis had his head cracked open by the Alabama State Police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge while marching to secure voting rights for all Americans in 1965. Those seminal events were 193 and 195 years respectively after Crispus Attucks was killed at the start of the American Revolution.

To be clear, the British regulars who fired on a crowd of unarmed protesters in Boston on that March day in 1770 did not care about and did not discriminate against Crispus Attucks on the basis of race. Bullets and musket balls, of course, are race blind. In 2023, the State of Florida provided a new curriculum for the public schools there that speaks glowingly of the skills and self-improvement provided to African Americans while enslaved; and today numerous leading figures in the political life of our nation openly express their view that America does not have a racist history while they openly consort with White Supremacists. Crispus Attucks died 254 years ago, and the constant and ongoing struggle and painful history of his people, our nation, have been white-washed in Florida. Pun intended.

Of course, the same pattern applies to women’s rights, reproductive rights, civil rights and voting rights. It certainly applies to blatant antisemitism in our society including in my own professional life.

Two steps forward, four steps back.

I have friends and family, people I respect and who are very dear to me, who clearly and regularly vote to move us backward. I have vowed not to spend time or expend energy disavowing them of their beliefs or the rationales they use when in a voting booth. I do reserve the right, however, to acknowledge whether they are moving our society backwards rather than forwards. If and when they start to see and understand the larger ramifications of their myopic political choices, I will listen. In the meantime, I’ll continue to search and prepare for every opportunity to inch our society forward along the path to a better future for all Americans - whether it’s on the Edmund Pettus bridge, on a segregated bus, inside a women’s health clinic, on the grounds of a public school, at a polling place, or otherwise. Crispus Attucks, so many others and many more to come will have died in the cause of liberty, and we’ll only know whether their sacrifice will have been in vain after a very, very, very long time. And many more hard-fought steps forward and the inevitable numerous steps back.

Time will tell. Until then: patience, peace, and love for us all.

"Out of My Way, Alexis!"

The true seat of real power in America.

I have been trying to remain positive during this election season. By “remain positive” I mean try to understand how it is that Americans can ignore abject hypocrisy and dishonesty by immoral people whose strategy is to accuse their political opponents of hypocrisy, dishonesty and immorality. I do not believe it is a constructive use of time or energy to try to disavow anyone of what they believe to be true despite a mountain of actual evidence that they are not (or to prove a negative by the complete absence of evidence). I do consider directing people to the nearest Flat Earth Society meeting, where I feel they are most likely to find kindred spirits.

For my own sanity and blood pressure, I often turn to the work of some of the early writers about our nation to find clarity. Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal book Democracy in America published in 1835 is always a welcome source of wisdom and remarkable prescience. De Tocqueville wrote after having been dispatched to the fledgling United States by the French government to study our people, our democracy and how it all was working. Blah, blah, blah; I get it – not exactly a ‘made for prime time’ analysis for our sound-bite driven, short-attention-span times. Still, de Tocqueville has been on my mind lately for another reason altogether. I’ve concluded that if good old Alexis had experienced the phenomenon of the increasing numbers of Tesla Cybertrucks parked in suburban strip malls while on his travels throughout the country, his conclusions about the viability of our democracy would have been very different.

Certainly, the Cybertruck is an interesting experiment in consumerism. If you aren’t sure what it is, have a look around the parking lot of the most expensive shopping areas where you live. The vehicle looks like a cross between a giant stainless-steel doorstop and a truck of the future designed by an eight-year-old. It’s appearance itself is really very striking, even show stopping – the Cybertruck simply looks like nothing else on the road. What makes it interesting as a sociological phenomenon, however, is not its appearance – it is that the thing is very expensive, horribly engineered, challenging to drive, not functional as a truck, not even remotely reliable, and has been subject to at least five significant factory recalls in the past year. And it costs more than $100,000. And it is selling; quickly.

Why on earth would anyone buy such a vehicle? Two very good reasons: it is very, very fast; the fastest and quickest accelerating truck ever made. And it commands lots and lots of attention wherever it goes. I therefore believe it to be an example of two very important psychological characteristics of Americans: (1) the dearth of available Freudian analysis for people who really need help with their overwhelming desire to prove their, uh, similarity with Arnold Palmer; and (2) why so many Americans vote against their self-interest.

Snarky, sarcastic not-so-subtle partisan digs aside, one of the truly vexing dynamics of modern American politics is that significant numbers of Americans vote in ways that are clearly contrary to their best interests – economic, civil liberties, physical health and wellbeing, environmental, belief systems, etc. The differences between polling results that ask Americans about their preferences on a policy-by-policy basis without mentioning political party or candidates and those that do demonstrate this effect with remarkable clarity. This certainly is not a new phenomenon though it has become far more pronounced in recent election cycles.

I am fearful of completing any analysis of this electoral contrariness – I am a true patriot on a deep and meaningful level and I have no wish to denigrate my fellow Americans. I just want them to make better decisions because, ultimately, the well-being of our Republic and ourselves is in the mix. Hence the entertaining and yet frightening dichotomy of the Cybertruck and Alexis De Tocqueville.

Alexis De Tocqueville spent significant portions of his writings on the uniquely American combination of the role of individual beliefs, the separation of church and state, the political philosophies underlining the Constitution, and the work ethic of a people not encumbered by institutionalized aristocracy and its constituent limits on participation in civic and economic life. The basic premise was and is that when everyone acts and votes in their own self-interest in a democracy a society achieves a successful and balanced consensus. That’s quite a mouthful to be sure, but it stands in stark contrast to the success of a $100,000 jalopy sold by a thrice married multi-billionaire with eleven children and a long list of bizarre and destructive core beliefs that directly run counter to the original guiding egalitarian principles of our Republic. I believe that one look at the Cybertruck and the giddiness of those who buy them and Alexis would turn around and put his money in Euro Bonds concluding that the American people are not what they once were and that there is a high risk of the failure for our nation.

On good days, I do not agree with that fictional yet plausible assertion by my buddy Alexis. On bad days, I do wonder how we moved so quickly from the sublime to the ridiculous. On really bad days, I wonder whether the list of the “enemies within” that one of our Presidential candidates has vowed to prepare and pursue will have my name on it.

We’ll know how all this shakes out next week and in the two months that follow Election Day. In the meantime, thankfully, the number of Cybertrucks that I see every day in traffic on Colorado Highway 82 is far fewer than the conventional vehicles that do not send me into existential and philosophical fits. And there is snow across the peaks, which means that we can all look forward to enjoying another winter together in the mountains in a way that would provide Alexis de Tocqueville some validation that his conclusions about us all remain correct.  #morethanavote #rockthevote

Thinking of Robinson and Rickey

American Lake in Aspen, Colorado

My father is a lifelong Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Although I am not and instead respond to Yankees pin stripes in the same way that a young zebra does to its mother’s stripes, the pantheon of Brooklyn’s heroes informs my world view. This past weekend like so many summer weekends, strolling to downtown Basalt, shopping for produce in the farmers’ market and bumping into friends and colleagues there crystalized an idea that had been on my mind increasingly over the last couple of weeks. As I moved among the vegetable stalls and tried in vain to avoid the local bakeries, I recalled that Dodgers players typically lived in Brooklyn and were part of their neighborhoods – shopping for groceries, having a yarn with the school kids playing marbles or stickball in the streets, and generally being members of the tight-knit communities they represented when playing at Ebbets Field and around the nation. Like all subjects Dodgers, this brought to mind Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey.

As a quick reminder, Branch Rickey was the General Manager of the Dodgers who brought Jackie Robinson to the team in 1945. When Rickey joined the Dodgers in 1943 he was already highly regarded as an innovative baseball scout and tactician, and he made clear to the Dodgers that identifying and signing players from the Negro Leagues to break the color barrier in baseball was a priority. Robinson was his first choice for reasons including a now well-understood, long-ago proven and exceptionally rare combination of athletic prowess and personal character. After two years in the Dodgers’ Minor League affiliates, Robinson went on to start his first Major League game in April of 1947, making him the first African-American to play in the Majors.

In August of 1945, Rickey called Robinson into his office for a conversation that has been mythologized in print and on film and that has achieved true legendary status – in sport and, more so, in our society. After being asked to turn the other cheek to the inevitable abuse he was to receive, Robinson asked Rickey if he was looking for a black man who was afraid to fight back. Rickey then famously explained that he was looking for a player “with guts enough not to fight back”. Rickey then signed Robinson to a contract with the Dodgers, assuring him that desegregating baseball was something the team would do as an organization, together.

Over the last few weeks, the conventional and unconventional press has spent a great deal of column-width parsing out and analyzing Vice President Kamala Harris’s approach to her racial identity and ethnicity. That is, she has let others discuss the groundbreaking nature of her potential presidency from that perspective, choosing instead to focus on her vision for America, the tone and approach she will take as President, and the policies she will pursue. She has a job to do and while she isn’t ducking questions when posed to her directly, she is not dwelling on the subject of the place her presidency would have in American history. What occurred to me this weekend while perambulating with a bag full of fresh produce is that she is taking a cue from Jackie Robinson: Vice President Harris is focusing on playing ball and winning games with and for the American people, retaining her remarkable grace and sense of humor in the face of some truly ugly comments and criticism from those that oppose her.

To be clear, Jackie Robinson was not mute on the subject of race or civil rights generally in America. I believe that he and Branch Rickey simply understood that his performance on the field while enduring abuse of a nature and extent that is difficult to fathom was the most important contribution he could make. I do not in any way mean for this to be a criticism of those athletes whose active and essential role in the civil rights and women’s movements were more vocal than his – Muhammed Ali, Billie Jean King, Jim Brown, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar immediately come to mind. Whether those remarkable athletes who used their influence in American culture to move our society forward could have done so without Robinson’s having broken the barrier in the way he did is a question that is more interesting than important to me – Jackie was the first, he did so with aplomb and an indefatigable nobility, and we are all the better for it.

In my world view, given my own family and baseball provenance, comparing anyone to Jackie Robinson requires treading carefully. In this moment I do so deliberately. I don’t know if perhaps President Biden had a quiet chat with Vice President Harris about what she could expect; perhaps it was President Obama whose own experience may be the best guidepost. Perhaps it is simply the examples provided those icons of our Civil Rights heroes with whom she may have had some personal experience that are guiding her – Congressman John Louis, for example. I just hope that when the digital age version of the chants and jeers from the outfield stands test her mettle, the Vice President knows that she can depend on myself and millions of other Americans to pick up the mantle of that other Dodger great Pee Wee Reese, put our arm around her shoulder and face the hate and the resistance to a better future, together.

The Correspondence of Cattle

Recent view of The Jungfrau from The Land of Happy Cows

Exceptional cheese comes from happy cows. Over the last few years, a constant reminder of that essential fact has been the ringing of cowbells as the background music of my travels hiking in Europe. Most recently, I spent a week in the stunning mountain village of Mürren in the Bernese Oberlandt of Switzerland. While there, I was struck by the total absence of milk barns even though cheese-making is such an iconic and essential part of the local economy. Add to that my overwrought angst about the orange-colored cheddar here in Colorado, and I’ve been thinking about how cows in the Alps might interact with their overseas cousins if given the opportunity. Imagine how a happy Swiss cow might write a letter …

---------------------------

 

Greta Holstein

c/o Mürren Beef SA

Mürren

Switzerland

August 23, 2024

VIA AIR MAIL / PAR AVION

Akiko Wagyu
c/o 5k Ranch Cattle Co
Steamboat, Colorado

Dearest Akiko:

I was delighted to receive your letter, all those weeks ago. I apologize for taking so long to respond – with the summer having been so rainy, the grazing in our highest altitude pastures has been exceptional so we’ve all been out of touch more than we like. If it’s any consolation, the clover has been more plentiful and tastier than usual, so we are all quite fat and happy. Judging from the looks on the faces of the visitors to the mountain hut nearby, it would seem that the milk, cheese and butter we are all providing has been a tribute to our wonderful mountain environment. Thankfully, at least all that high altitude walking keeps us fit even if I am a little soft around the udders these days.

I was delighted to hear that you also have had great grazing weather over there. I do worry from time to time that the arid climate in Colorado can make life challenging for you and your herd. One of the great joys for us in summer is the variety in our daily meadow buffets and I am grateful to know that you and yours similarly aren’t spending these months relegated to only eating hay from bales wrapped in plastic. My children romanticize the life you all must lead out there, cowboys and all - my youngest Heidi in particular derives great joy from my reading your wonderful letters out loud to her in my best American accent.

I would like your opinion about something. Last week, the ladies and I had a conversation with a chatty old sheep dog who was visiting the village with her humans. They were from Wisconsin and the dog was curious about how it is that we dairy cows in Switzerland don’t spend time in a milk shed. As you can imagine, we needed her to explain to us what she meant and we were all quite shocked to learn that some American dairy cows spend their lifetimes inside enormous buildings chained to machines that milk them, day in and day out. Can this possibly be true? It’s such a disturbing thought. How can their milk possibly even taste good? I mean, we may all be deaf from the incessant clanging of the bells around our necks, but at least we are mostly free to roam, and I have to believe that it is part of what makes our Swiss cheese so delicious and keeps our humans so happy. I couldn’t help but wonder if this bovine bondage explains why their humans feel the need to dye their cheese yellow – such an awful state of affairs. I didn’t sleep well for a week afterwards. Please let me know your thoughts and experience on the subject. I may also reach out to Aunt Martha in Vermont – she always has valuable perspective on what makes us cows happy.

We’re all now back in lower pastures just in time to start getting ready for the big end-of-summer traditional cow parade through the streets of the village. Heidi will be participating for the first time and is making a fuss about her fancy new outfit for the occasion – it’s all so very Swiss! I for one will be happy to just fit in mine from last year. Everyone’s expecting a big crowd of tourists and the village has been getting better with their social media exposure, so we’re all anxious to look our best and make an impression. I’ll send you some photos from the event; hopefully the weather will hold.

Please give your lovely bull Clyde my best. Regards also to those kind farmers the Gibsons – such a nice family and they certainly appreciate and know how to take care of their Wagyu. I hope that the grasses are tall and plentiful, the sun is forgiving, and your hooves find only soft ground.

All my love, dear cousin.

Greta

Dr. Freud? Paging Dr. Sigmund Freud!

Maroon Bells from Hayden Peak in Snowmass

I drive a Subaru. If that just made the person next to you snicker, continue reading because the rest of this blog post is about them. If that made you snicker, well, what you do next is entirely up to you.

I am not really a “car guy”. I do not have the desire, bandwidth, or financial wherewithal to care much about what my car says about me, my personal style, my political leanings, or my career choices. I like a car that gets me where I need to go in all weather conditions without fail; that doesn’t break down much and isn’t expensive to fix when it does; and that is reasonably parsimonious on petroleum. My current Subaru has saved my life more than once and delivered me from one end of Vermont to the other in some seriously treacherous ice storms. Yes, in Vermont we have ice storms, as in ice falling from the sky and accumulating on the ground, the trees, the roads, our vehicles, on ourselves, and everything else. My Subaru may actually have snickered at the ice storms.

My vehicle has about 120,000 miles on it. I recently asked the head of service at the nearest Subaru dealer what I should expect will go wrong with my car in the next year, just so I’m ready. His response: nothing, my car is in great shape and should last a long while. I promptly took the vehicle to the local super duper car wash to give it the all-over shine that it deserves.

Since moving to Basalt, Colorado, I’ve spent the lions share of my working life commuting “up valley” to Aspen and Snowmass for work. In my Subaru. Famously, the one road in and out of the Roaring Fork Valley, Colorado Highway 82, is exceptionally busy with traffic that often is shockingly bad. The drive from my home to the Aspen gondola, for example, is 18 miles and in summer can take as long as 75 minutes, and that’s when the highway is not under construction. What this means is that I have plenty of time to watch and consider people’s behavior while driving. In fairness, the nature of the cost of living and housing in particular in the Roaring Fork Valley means that the workforce that makes the world turn here overwhelmingly drives to Aspen from towns far afield, and the result is the terrible congestion and some pretty aggressive driving by people anxious to start the clock on their work day.

Sympathetic though I may be to my fellow commuters, I do wonder whether it is my choice of vehicle that causes people to drive particularly aggressively near and around me. Is there something about a Subaru (especially one with a VT sticker on it) that implicates the self-esteem or self-confidence of people who choose to drive very large, gas guzzling vehicles? Does it hurt the ego of a gentleman driving a very large, super-duty, white pickup truck to be “stuck” behind my supremely practical vehicle even when I am driving at the same speed as everyone in my lane? Do people who spend far too much money on finicky, fancy SUV’s with custom license plates that live in their garages in Aspen during the 45 weeks a year when they are not in residence feel that having to navigate around my Subaru in traffic is somehow beneath them? Insert the etymology of the word ‘pretentious’ here.

Although there are plenty of moments when I just extend my middle finger as these people find salvation in their aggression, I do wonder about conducting an experiment. I’d like to drive different vehicles on the same busy route, at the same time of day, on the same day of the week, at the same speed, and in the same lane, and see if it would make a difference to the way people respond to me. To be clear, I have spent a lot of time driving around the valley this summer in a very large super-duty diesel pickup truck for work, so though my speculation is based on anecdotal experience there definitely is a basis to the hypothesis.

More entertaining than scientific, I occasionally daydream about putting up a big sign on Highway 82 that says “Freudian Therapy, next exit”. I also consider creating an Instagram page that functions like a wall of shame for people whose conduct while driving on 82 is a sign of the demise of Western Civilization: “This week’s winners of the Roaring Fork Freudian Therapy Associates gift certificates are [drumroll, please] … the gentleman in the white Ford F-150 Raptor with Texas license plate LVEGUNS and the woman driving the baby blue Bently Bentayga with Colorado license plate ASPEN-22. You can pick up your winnings at the Pitkin County Sherrif’s office and then schedule your therapy appointment.”

Ok, ok. There are some very nice, very considerate people who get stuck in traffic with me. Some of them are even courteous enough to maintain a respectable distance and let others in-and-out when the highway merges into one lane near the Aspen airport. And occasionally, one of those people will waive just like a Vermonter when I let them in front of me. Hmm, maybe they are Vermonters; or perhaps Maine.

I need new tires for my car. My plan is to make it through the scorching hot summer on my current Baldinis and buy new hoops in the fall before the first snow. And when I do, I’ll be confident that my Subaru will get me to-and-from the mountains safely and easily. And if there are people around me who really need therapy to deal with the impact that driving in my vicinity has on their delicate psyches, maybe I’ll just extend my finger in my mind only. Then again …

A Game of Telephone

Looking towards Colorado's Gore Range in the July sunshine

“Telephone”. Perhaps kids still play that simplest communication game. Sit in a line or a circle, one person whispers a phrase to the one seated next to them, something simple. Each passes it in succession until the last person has heard ‘it’ and then says ‘it’ out loud to the whole group. What began as “I took the dog for a walk in the morning,” becomes “I voted for Harry Truman” or “My cousin made the best matzo ball soup” or something to that effect. Always entertaining and frequently hilarious. This simplest of games and the lessons it provides have been on my mind quite a lot lately.

Years ago, realizing that watching or even listening to the news would raise my blood pressure, I decided to only read and not watch or listen to the news. I am deliberate and careful about the publications I read and they include a variety of newspapers, making sure to read both right- and politically left-leaning sources. I am careful to read news and not commentary until, that is, I make the overt decision to move from news to commentary.

Telephone the game has been on my mind lately because I have developed a habit while reading the news: when I am reading a story that begins with “as reported in such-and-such” or “according to some-other-news-source”, I stop and find that original piece of reporting. This means that I read news that is actually prepared by the people who did the reporting and it strips out an awful lot of flotsam and jetsam, providing me with a clear understanding of what actually has happened in the world. For clarity, I do not consider stories about social media posting or reactions to social media posting to be newsworthy or worthy of any of my time whatsoever.

My point here is not that I am so wonderful. I am open to the possibility that this selectivity of mine may indicate that I am prematurely a grumpy old man and that I have an old-fashioned idea of how to learn about and be aware of the world. I am 100% OK with both of those ideas and I may even embrace them. More importantly, this process of carefully selecting the information I read does leave me feeling a bit as though I am watching the rest of the world play Telephone.

My zealotry for original reporting goes beyond the news and extends to original source material. Get ready, here’s where I get really smug. Tell me what you think the original intent of one of our nation’s foundational documents was and I will make sure you’ve read what our founders actually wrote. In recent weeks I have re-read what Madison thought about the separation of church and state when he wrote the text of the Constitution; I have re-read Federalist 26 about the Second Amendment; and have gone back to one of my all-time faves: George Washington’s wonderful and inspirational letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (then and now housed in Newport’s Tauro Synagogue – a true gem of a landmark that definitely is worth a trip). Just to balance this all out, I also re-read Benjamin Franklin’s 1781 essay on the benefits of farting because, well, it’s Franklin and reading it may have burnished my grumpy old man credentials.

Regrettably, far too many Americans ascribe fanciful beliefs to the founders of our nation that bear no relation to what those scholarly visionaries actually said, wrote, or believed. The game of Telephone those citizens play when they hear something convenient to their own condition and palatable for their own perspective simply takes the place of actual learning. My own smugness notwithstanding, this gives me serious agita. It’s not clear whether the problem is societal myopia, a congenital lack of intellectual curiosity, poor educational standards, or simply the laziness of people who prefer to be led by the loudest or most aggressive voices in the room. I suspect that it would fall on deaf ears to explain to many of my fellow Americans that the principles on which our system of government was founded drew heavily from the writings of leading 17^th and 18^th century radical French and English political philosophers in addition to the works of the great Greek authors delineating the principles first attributable to Athenian democracy. To be clear, I do not expect to hear anyone running for office in 2024 to be quoting Montesquieu, Locke or Plato. It’s a shame. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and so many of the others camped out in Independence Hall in 1787 knew and explicitly considered the work of those authors. Our Constitution simply was the first great expression of those radical ideas synthesized together and put into practice – hence the expression the “American Experiment”.

Enough already, I’ll rein it back and get to the point. There is nothing wrong with a person taking a position – political or otherwise – because it is in their best interest, whether that interest is economic, religious, social, or psychological. Just admit it when you do. Please. It is unflattering and unproductive for anyone to take a position and then make up some fictional rationale that sounds like it might be based on facts that may have been communicated by someone in the media who heard it from someone else in our public life who may seem authoritative because of their apparent confidence in the espoused non-fact. That’s a game of Telephone and there is a reason children play that game as a lesson in ineffective communication.

Read. Ask clarifying and challenging questions and seek out the answers. Be curious, very curious. Read some more. Go to the sources for a more complete understanding. And when the person before you whispers in your ear, repeat it back to them and ask yet more questions so that you’re not the one being told “walk the dog” and hearing “Harry Truman” or “matzo ball soup”. Then, as we all should, go for a walk and contemplate. And maybe, just maybe, our world will become a better place for all of us.

When not writing satire about flatulence, Franklin said: “Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.” (Poor Richard Improved, Philadelphia 1755). Speaking of contemplation, please pardon me as I head outside and into the mountain air for the remainder of the afternoon.

The Quest for Lunch Greatness

The Prossliner Schwaige near Compatsch

Yesterday, as often is the case in my summer season (summer being defined as any season other than winter), lunch consisted of eating a sandwich that I’d made the evening before with one hand while moving around a job site. This isn’t a problem, it’s just the nature of things, but it also may be the reason that I went home and put the finishing touches on a vacation that I’ve been planning. On vacation, I do not stand up to eat lunch. I sit. It’s just a question of where I sit and for how long.

I do love a great outdoor café, sitting and watching the world go by in unhurried fashion. In Basalt, Colorado, I live a ten minute stroll from a couple of cafés, my favorite of which is in a small, old brick building with a patio that is just the right size, with umbrellas that are just the right size, where the tables are separated from the sidewalk by a short wrought iron fence and an explosion of newly blossoming flowers in a garden bed that also is just the right size. I do really like to sit there; and then, after a while, I stroll home.

There is something undoubtedly luxurious about lunch. Dinner is supposed to have a bit of ceremony and when we envision breaking bread with friends and family, it’s dinner that is in each of our mind’s eye. Maybe that’s precisely why a leisurely, unhurried lunch in a great spot is so special – it is an extra treat, different from what we can do in the workaday world.

For anyone who doubts my lunching bona fides, in the last couple of years since the COVID pandemic ended and I swan-dived back into the joys of travel, lunch has been a pivotal component of my mountain adventures. I am not kidding. While hiking in the Dolomites, for example, I like to plan my next day’s excursion based on where I’d like to have lunch, which réfuge, on what mountain pass. I have had some terrific food in restaurants in the past few years but there is no question that the best meals have been lunches in far flung places with exceptional views where I had to earn my calories with the effort I put in to get there.

Rifugio di Fanes in San Vigilio di Marebbe (at 2060m) had spinach spaetzle that was an otherworldly experience, and that was before the traditional buckwheat cake with raspberry filling. Of course, the three-hour uphill slog in a driving rain may have affected my view, but that lunch transported me to another level of existence. Utia da Rit (at 2000m) provided stunning gnocchi Bolognese. Ooh, and then there was the polenta al funghi at the Schlern Haus (at 2457m) – words fail me. The Schultzhaus Mahlknechthütte  (at 2054m) had wonderful speckknödelsuppe that I enjoyed in great company – I’ll tell you the story some other time; it’s a good one. Each of those places is unique, is authentic in its atmosphere, and sincere in its welcome to me and all others who venture so far to enjoy their hospitality. I’d happily return to any one of them, but for now there are more places to see and eat, more lunch spots that will be the pin on a map for a day’s adventure.

Returning home from a long day of work yesterday with a lunch that was delicious but only slightly more than a mere source of nutrition and energy, I fully committed to my next lunch spots with abandon. I’ll be going back to the Alps this summer to spend time exploring among legendary peaks. Although some of the possible hikes on my agenda are justifiably famous, it’ll be the plans for lunch that determine where I go each day. Fortified with a wonderful breakfast and exceptional coffee, I’ll lace up my shoes and head out in the cool morning mountain air knowing that the sights, sounds, and smells of the places I’ll wander will be incomparable, and that a great meal, a memorable stop for lunch will greet me precisely when I would value some moments of contemplation and rest. Nourishing is the experience I seek, and daydreaming about it already sustains me. I can’t wait.

Clay from the Riverbank

Old Town Square in Prague, from a 2015 visit.

I’ve been thinking about a golem.

The legendary golem that I have in my mind is a huge creature, immensely strong but slightly awkward with only vague features. In the classic way, he has the Hebrew word emét (אֶמֶת, meaning “truth”) inscribed on his forehead. Of the numerous golems in Jewish folklore, the one on my mind is the Prague golem conjured from the clay banks of the Vltava River in Prague in the 16th century by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. The Prague golem’s purpose was to protect the ghetto from pogroms, expulsion or slaughter by the Holy Roman Emperor. According to the legend, Rabbi Loew eventually demobilized the golem and stored his body in the attic of the still-standing Old New Synagogue in the Prague ghetto where he could be restored in the event the Jewish community again had need of his protection. Though the golem has had many different purposes in the various stories through the ages, in my imagination he is as close to a Jewish superhero as we’ve had, with my apologies to Moses.

The golem has been on my mind since early October. Following the shocking barbarism perpetrated by Hamas militants on civilian Israelis on October 7, I spent a significant amount of time explaining to well-meaning gentile friends the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the greater issues of the place of State of Israel in the modern Middle East, the history of the modern State of Israel, how it is that an otherwise unapologetically patriotic third generation American can feel a meaningful attachment to another nation so far away from home and so different from our own, and what my personal feelings are about all of the foregoing. In truth, the process of exploring my own feelings about Israel and the events on and since October 7 has been a valuable one, including a fair bit of catharsis, inner conflict, and uncertainty in the way that thoroughgoing introspection should provide.

My feelings about the existence of the State of Israel are as simple as my feelings about the nature and actions of the Israeli government are complex. I believe the State of Israel to be a miracle, a blessing to my people, and it is a tremendous source of pride for me as a Jew. And no, that is not an endorsement of any particular action, attitude, or policy. Since the Roman conquest of Judea, Jews have relied on the vicissitudes of non-Jewish sovereign rulers for protection, permission to conduct business, to practice our religion, to express ourselves as a people, and frequently for the continuation of our very existence. The State of Isarel exists now despite significant overt and covert attempts by its neighbors and the British Empire to kill it in the cradle in 1947 and numerous attempts to wash it into the sea over the decades, and thanks to several truly stunning military victories against what should have been overwhelming force. The fact that a modern Jewish nation doesn’t have to ask permission or depend on the whims of a non-Jewish overlord to defend itself and has done so repeatedly through the entirety of its existence is a stunning state of affairs for the Jewish people. My heart swells.

For this reason, woven so firmly through my being, I bristle when gentiles tell me or anyone else what Isarel should or shouldn’t do. For the first time in the post-diaspora world, Jews in Israel, though free to take advice from their allies and those who support them, have precisely zero need to ask anyone else’s permission to do or not do anything. When a gentile expresses dismay at the actions of the Israeli military or its political leaders, I long to tell them that their own complicity throughout history is effectively a total abdication of any right they may have had to influence policy in or by the State of Israel, and I suspect Arabs feel the same way. To be clear, again, this is not an endorsement of Israeli actions or policy; it is an expression of a visceral and cerebral desire to stop the noise from the gentile world about what the State of Israel should and shouldn’t be doing.

Any gentile who tries to explain why shouting “from the river to the sea” isn’t a grossly antisemitic action endorsing the premeditated, shockingly horrific actions of Hamas in their desire to slaughter Jews and wipe them from the earth will get a lecture from me about their own history before I turn on my heels and disregard their views as entirely worthless. I will continue to be conflicted, challenged and made uncomfortable by the actions of the Israeli state, and I will discuss all of it and work to influence it for the better and more humane among people who do not advocate for my or my people’s slaughter.

Whether or not the body of the golem actually lies in the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague, the idea of its presence is informative as I consider my own feelings. Someday, perhaps we will have the need to conjure him; but not today. Today we have a modern Jewish nation state that can protect itself from the most evil of wrongdoers and secure its own future. I can only hope, after so many centuries, that Israel uses that power for the good of our people and of humanity generally. As an American, I continue to have faith that I can be a Jew and also be secure in my place in this society despite the recent groundswell of antisemitism here. Here in America, in a sense, we are the golem.

As we say in synagogue, may the State of Israel be a light to the nations. And may its people, its neighbors and all humankind see the way forward to a future of peace of love.