Last weekend Robin and I drove up to Steamboat Springs to spend a couple of days with Ally and Kyle. It had been years.
For a midwinter trip, the traveling was amazingly easy, without any wintertime difficulties at all. From the character of the snow cover on the ground as we neared their home it was obvious that nothing new had fallen for at least a week or two. The snow was tired-looking, gray, in need of refreshment.
But it was still enough for starting the 112th running of the Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival. Late Friday we trooped over to a park in town and watched local ski jumpers and something that was new to us and often hilarious – downhill bicycle racing in snow.
We broke away for supper, and when we left the building it was raining, which turned to snow before we got out of town. The snowfall was huge flakes that reflected the headlight beams back at us and made visibility poor and the driving treacherous. Four inches of fluff fell that night, and it transformed the town and the surrounding countryside, which went from a gray background to pure white.
Saturday was an all-day snowshow finishing with spectacular fireworks. (I’ve included a gallery, but none of the pix are mine. The crowds were not oppressive, but they did prevent my getting access to good photo-talking locations.)
Lovely time, in all.
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Remember the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words?”
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I confess that I don’t know quite what to make of Musk. While he has a certain amount of technical knowledge and skills, he is otherwise lacking in a host of other areas. One has only to read the sad history of what used to be Twitter to see that. I’m not a huge fan of social media, but Musk took Twitter from a service that was at least trying to keep itself clean to “X,” which is now little more than a megaphone for hate speech.
And he seems to be challenging us to ignore (or accept) his Third Reich-style speeches and gestures. Don’t know about how you see it, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck …
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From The New Yorker
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BTW, if anyone is having trouble making sense of what is happening in Washington DC, I can recommend a book. It’s The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer.
It is compelling reading, as it lays out in detail the steps that are the playbook for the rise of authoritarian regimes wherever they may occur. (Think of it as Project 1934). It is neither a dull nor stodgy history, and totally apropos in our moment.
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Normally I am the soul of tolerance. A poster boy for acceptance. Forbearing to the point of being a saint. But something happens to me at the gym when I am using the weight-training devices and another client breaks etiquette by doing one of these things:
- Dives in front of me and grabs the machine I have been obviously waiting for
- Puts their water bottle on one machine to hold it while using another one, thus tying two of them up
- Sits on a device while chatting with some other thoughtless bozo
- Talks over their headphones while doing a set, turning 10 reps into a 10 minute-long workout
- Makes no attempt to wipe their grime, sweat, and microflora from the device they have just used
If any of these behaviors occurs and I witness it, the sequence runs something like this: visual data to optic nerve to visual cortex to lizard brain to murderous impulse.
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So far I have been able to stop at this point and not do something which requires that I be incarcerated, but if some Christian teachings are correct and the thought is equal to the deed, I am a serial killer. And an unrepentant one to boot.
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From The New Yorker
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Little Home In The Valley 