Worlds best Dad is gone

My Dad, Thomas F. Soare died Tuesday September 25, 2007 after a long fight with throat cancer. He was the greatest husband my Mom could have. He was the best Dad I could have. He was my Mom's boyfriend for many years when I was little. I loved going to dinner at his place, especially because his son Randy, now my brother, would play with me for hours! Anyway, Tom and my Mom finally married when I was leaving home. I got to have a very special time with them both when I moved back home for a year in college. We would discuss metaphysics, music and politics for hours after dinner. Those talks shaped me enormously. Every time I have a glass of wine, or hear Vivaldi, or see anything having to do with Theater, my Dad, Tom, is with me.






Click on Tom's picture to visit his web site...


Dad I love you so much. I will see you on the other side. Pour me a glass of wine and put on the Brandenburg Concertos. Lets talk in a room surrounded by your father's paintings.

The Imster Klettersteig and Höllentorkopf North Ridge

I'm trying to finally write up the rest of the climbs that Aidan and I did when he came to visit last month. It's been a really busy month, what with Kindergarten for the boys and all. Some details may be a little fuzzy.

Aidan and I were feeling battered by the bad weather. On Wednesday we decided I'd "resume" my vacation and take off work to head back to the mountains. There was a semi-promising forecast for the Northern Limestone Alps close to home. Despite trying to get out early and do something bigger, we got a late start and finally settled for a hike and via-ferrata called the Imster Klettersteig. We could take a lift up which shortened the approach hike to about an hour. I remember waiting for the lift to open after it's lunchtime siesta, and we went to a restaurant and ordered a "fitness salad." It turned out to be really good! Aidan is really into healthy eating and I've gotten to where I feel bad consuming something meaty and greasy when he's here.

So I was really happy to actually enjoy this salady dish. :-)


the route up and the descent for the Imster Klettersteig.


Aidan taking a nap!

The weather in this area was stellar. Too bad we didn't sign up for something harder. But it was very difficult to judge. If it was raining the day before, the climb could still be miserably wet. The hike was very pretty, and terminated in a quiet basin below cliffs. The grass, bubbling stream and sheep here were very nice. Aidan said he would stay here and wait for me, news that I was expecting. I felt his deep lack of motivation in every heavy sigh and wincing look! But he picked a great spot to bail out, I was tempted to join him and just take it easy. But alas, the "iron will" that can only come from years of working and doing the dull things of life required to get by wouldn't let me. I figured I wouldn't come back here for quite a while so I should go ahead and climb it. "Farewell Aidan!" I called. He was already asleep!

15 minutes of hiking up scree brought me to the base. I put on my climbing harness and helmet and started up. Then I climbed for well over an hour along the ridge, in corners, gullies, chimneys and cracks. The climbing was varied and entertaining, especially because I avoided touching the iron cable as much as possible. The crux was a shaded near-vertical wall, probably 30 meters high. Some ups and downs and I was on the summit.


The "crux" of the Klettersteig


Another view of the crux


What a beautiful view peak this is! The air was washed very clean all around. Brillant green meadows on a mountainside to the north caught my eye. Twisted and folding valleys spiraled out in all directions. Aidan was so tiny sleeping on a rock I couldn't see him anymore.

Coming down was easy, lots of scree skiing in my now very torn up tennis shoes. Will they last a full year? I picked up Aidan and we had a fun time hiking down the valley to a lower lift station.


Looking back down the ridge


Panorama from the summit


Pretty green valleys...

Here we got pretty excited about taking a little toy car along a track back to the valley. We had to wait in line a long time, but ultimately it was really fun. Basically the car is on rails and you have one lever to do some braking. We zoomed down, taking curves as fast as we dared. I want to bring Kris and the boys for this, they'd love it!

With the great weather in that area, we were feeling optimistic about the next days. In fact, we decided to drive to the Sella Pass in Italy tonight! We had some dinner (where? I forgot) and sped down over the Brenner Pass where drops of rain clouded our excitement a little bit. No matter, it will pass. But an hour or so later we were sitting in the cold rain at the pass, completely crestfallen and seeing no hope for the next day.

In one of my favorite moments of the trip, I played the song "It took the Night to Believe" by Sunn 0))), sitting there in the dark and wind of that alpine pass. This actually frightened us a little bit, especially Aidan! I was very happy. For an alpine rock climber, nothing is more demoralizing than rainy weather with seemingly no escape. We could excite ourselves about something else for a moment and forget our weary pilgrimage for dry rock.

But the damage was done. It was clear that the next day would be soggy, with routes too wet to climb. So we drove north and crashed in a field south of Innsbruck. The weather forecast indicated that, again, the Northern Limestone Alps would be clear with absolutely everything else socked in. In the morning there was only one cloudfree area: to our northwest, back towards the Wetterstein Range. We pointed the car in that direction and took off.

Back in Garmisch, under brilliant sun, we wearily decided we had to climb something. Aidan seemed almost sick with boredom. His mood was catching and soon I was staring vacantly and wondering what the point of it all was too. But the reptillian brain had been well trained in us both, and we mechanically packed our gear for another climb. The Alpspitzbahn lift took us up high, then we spent an hour hiking down then puzzling out how to climb back up to start the climb.



Aidan climbing tiring scree


Michael on the second pitch

The book described following a faint trail directly across cliffs speckled with latschen bushes and scree fields. But we must have passed that. So we had to climb up through steep latschen trees to reach lower angle terrain where a natural line seemed to lead up to the steep rock. Following our noses worked, because we were rewarded by seeing a metal bar with a piece of string on it which marked the start of the climbing. We had passed a "Gedankentafel" along the way for someone who died here in the 1960s.

I lead the first pitch, marked by a tough move to start then easy ground for 30 meters. The second pitch climbed a short 5.7 corner and crack again up to easier terrain.


Aidan led us into this chimney


Nearing the ridge crest


Aidan on the ridge

More pitches followed, never hard, but the rock wasn't sound enough to make simul-climbing appealing. I remember a massive chockstone in a chimney, and then some steep pitches above that to gain the ridge crest. On the crest we went straight up, and gradually were deflected left to easier terrain. Aidan led a long simul-climbing pitch to finish the route, and soon we were hanging out on top watching the clouds cover the Zugspitz. It was a nice climb, but not enough to lift our spirits too high after the driving defeat the night before, and Aidan's general lack of motivation. He said he was game to stay out tonight and try heading south again if the weather warranted it. But by now both of us really just wanted to go home. So we did, Aidan did the driving which was a great help.


Yay, on the summit!


Aidan looking mysterious

Imster Klettersteig

The Hoellentorkopf

Global warming book review

From the NYT Review of Books, several reviews about global warming:


Consider the fact that the average Western European uses half as much energy as the average American (and hence produces half as much CO2). Half is a big proportion, especially when you consider that it comes not from any new technology but instead from somewhat different social arrangements. Europeans have decided to, say, invest in building cities that draw people in instead of flinging them out to sprawling suburbs, and invest in mass transit that people then actually take. This kind of investment may produce quicker returns than high-tech R&D; at the very least, it's urgently important that these kinds of societies (where reported rates of human satisfaction are sharply higher than in the US) be held up to China, India, and the rest of the developing world, in place of our careening model. In addition, given that we will certainly be facing a disrupted planet, tighter human communities are probably a better bet for "surviving and thriving" than bioengineering to achieve different kinds of bodies.


Very interesting read overall, for the article click here.

Playmobil and Legos made in Europe

Interesting article in the New York Times about some vindication for these two beloved toy companies. Playmobil is based in Bavaria, and withstood a lot of pressure to move their factories to China:


FRANKFURT, Sept. 17 — Playmobil of Germany has long promoted its colorful plastic pirates, firefighters and farm animals as better-than-your-average plaything — toys to be handed down rather than chewed up. Now it can add another selling point: they are made in Europe, not China.
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Hans Rudolf Oeser for The New York Times

Attila Britting building models at Brandstätter in Bavaria. The company, maker of Playmobil toys, has passed on a move to China.

The same goes for Lego, the Danish maker of toy bricks, and for Ravensburger, a German puzzle and game manufacturer, though it does produce small quantities of nonpaper toys in Chinese factories.

With Mattel and the American toy industry reeling from recalls of millions of Chinese-made toys, most because of lead paint, some of Europe’s best-known toy makers find themselves in the fortuitous position of having bucked an industrywide trend of moving production to China.

“Looking back, it feels like it was right to make that decision,” said Andrea Schauer, managing director of Geobra Brandstätter, which makes Playmobil toys. “At the level of quality we need,” she said, “we didn’t have enough manpower to inspect factories in China.”


The rest of the article is here...

First day of kindergarten!

Today was the first day of Kindergarten, hooray!

Boy, I was scared. I woke up at 6 this morning suddenly in a cold sweat, imagining that if I were in my kids shoes, plopped into a room full of kids who don't speak my language...that I might be pretty mad. And mad 2 year olds make for good tantrums!

So we were extra good, I made eggs for breakfast and let the boys crack the eggs open which they love to do. They got to choose their shirts and pants from a pre-arranged selection Kris had laid out the night before. We walked there just as it started to rain. Seriously it is freezing cold in Germany right now.

We met Sara at the Kinderhaus, and the boys took off jackets and shoes, placing them in their own boxes for storage. We went upstairs and the boys started getting familiar with the place. There was plenty for them to do. A wooden train set, a typewriter, a telephone, little wooden and metal puzzles.

We all sat in a circle, called to it by a beautiful little Tibetan gong the teacher had. She introduced Elijah and Rowan, who meanwhile were trying to escape the circle, apparently bored out of their minds by the polite attention on them. I had to say their names while Kris tackled Elijah and I held Rowan by his shirt collar. Boy was this embarrassing! Harkening back to my cold sweat dream of the morning I thought we'd be kicked out within the week for such shockingly bad behavior.

The teacher dismissed us, sending us all outside in the rain and hail to play. "Uh...okay" we said. Kris bundled Elijah up while I changed Rowan's diaper, which attracted a small audience of 10-12 kids. He seemed impressed by the child-sized toilets in the bathroom. "Maybe soon you'll start using those!" I enthused.

But we went outside and the kids loved a treehouse (Baumhaus) and slide (Rutschen)...and swing set (Schaukeln). Jeez, doing all this in German is hard. Rowan didn't seem to mind my panicked/confused look. It's similar to my resting/default look.

So we played out there for 2 hours, imbibing the painfully cold "frische luft" (fresh air for the german-challenged). The kids were dirty and generally happy. When it was lunchtime, I quietly snuck out, leaving Kris to supervise them at the table. After that they went home where the kids napped well. Kris mentioned some weird events like Elijah getting everybody in the room to shake their heads, but she'll have to explain that later.

"selbstständig" is a new word I learned. It describes Elijah and means roughly stubborn and independent. Not a word I'll soon forget!

Whoa, scary! From a Salon review on the book Broken Government:

As I was writing this closing section an old friend from the Nixon White House called. Now retired, he is a lifelong Republican who told me that he voted for Bush and Cheney twice, because he knows them both personally. He asked how my new book was coming, and when I told him the title, he remarked, "I'll say the government's broken." After we discussed it, he asked how I planned to end the book, since the election was still a good distance away. I told him I was contemplating ending midsentence and immediately fading to black -- the way HBO did in the final episode of the Sopranos, but that I would settle for a nice quote from him, on the record. He explained that he constantly has to bite his tongue, and the reason he does not speak out more is because one of his sons is in an important (nonpolitical) government post, and we both know that Republicans will seek revenge wherever they can find it. How about an off-the-record comment? I asked. That he agreed to.

"Just tell your readers that you have a source who knows a lot about the Republican party from long experience, that he knows all the key movers and shakers, and he has a bit of advice: People should not vote for any Republican, because they're dangerous, dishonest and self-serving. While I once believed that Governor George Wallace had it right, that there was not a dime's worth of difference in the parties; that is not longer true. I have come to realize the Democrats really do care about people who most need help from government; Republicans care most about those who will only get richer because of government help. The government is truly broken, particularly in dealing with national security, and another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable."

Threads is pretty scary

I just watched a movie I saw on PBS as a young fella back in the mid-1980s. It's kind of the British version of "The Day After", and is way, way, way more frightening!

The video is here. The whole almost-2-hour thing is posted. Watch and be glad we've avoided nuclear holocaust so far!

This guys page is a pretty good summary of what's unique about the movie, I enjoyed reading it.

Some things I noticed

Rowan did some funny stuff. For example at night he gets his blanket over his feet and announces that it makes up a kind of shoe. Then he puts his legs in the air and pistons them quickly, announcing "running." Then he slows his pace down and says "walking."

He wrote a song too. Well sorta. If we play the piano he'll go to the lower half, say "George" (meaning Curious George) and begin playing a singular piece. Any note will do, but he plays one note at a time in a quarter note staccato rhythm, gradually going down to end on the last note of the keyboard. For symmetry, he'll say "George" again.

Holidays in ancient Rome

Very interesting article at the LA Times:

HERE IN THE MODERN United States, we tend to believe we've achieved a kinder, gentler workplace that honors 9-to-5ers with a special day off in early September, especially when compared with the workaday world of the past. But 2,000 years ago, workers in Athens, Rome and other cities around the Mediterranean got far more recognition -- and time off -- than we do. Their calendars were crowded with occupation-specific festivals.

Most of these celebrations had an essentially religious base -- either to say thanks or as appeasement. Plumbers, for instance, didn't have a "Plumbers Day." Their holiday honored their patron god -- Saturn, most likely, whose symbol was lead. Most drainpipes connecting Romans to their lavish supply of clean water were made of lead -- plumbum in Latin. In later Roman times, state priests, the Senate and/or the emperor decreed additional festivals as national holidays.

...

Workdays and times were organized differently 2,000 years ago. No weekends, much less three-day ones. The two-week summer vacation? Unheard-of. The daily grind was, in fact, daily, beginning at dawn and ending around 3 p.m. Break time, however, was always in sight. By AD 165, the number of festival days, imperial birthdays and other labor-optional days reached 135. Emperor Marcus Aurelius tried to stop vacation inflation, but it was a doomed endeavor. In time, the runaway holiday calendar rose to 177 days of leisure.

When the western half of the Roman Empire crumbled in AD 476, more was lost than good plumbing. The number of workers' holidays began to shrink. Today, the U.S. is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation or holidays. 9 to 5, indeed. Saturn help us, we're headed for XXIV / VII.