All in Favor...

I'm starting a campaign.  I think I'll start locally and then just move out from there.  Actually I want to standardize two things, but I'm not sure if I should concentrate on one and achieve success, or if I should just let loose on both.  What do you think?

Campaign #1  STANDARDIZATION OF ALL MALE SOCKS INTO TWO CATEGORIES--Dark and white.  I know you've thought this; why haven't we done anything about it?????  Just for fun, hop up and go count your single male socks.  Now, sit down with all the dark male mated socks in your life.  Are they perfectly mated, or do you find microscopic pattern or color variations in your supposed "pairs"?  I just finished mating  Paco's socks.  I have a gray one, a lightish navy blue one, a semi-black one, and one we'll just call bleh left over.  Why oh why???????  Pick one dark color, America. Just one.  We'll all adapt and deal with whatever choice is made.  Let's put it on the next presidential ballot.  I can wait that long if I know a change is coming.

Campaign #2  STANDARDIZATION OF ALL BREAST SIZES--I've thought long and hard about this, and I realize this is an issue of cosmic significance.  Far too many wars (both international, national, and domestic) have been fought over the attention given to breasts.  They pretty much rule the planet if you think about it. They've been the groundwork for some pretty badly matched marriages and caused many a man to lose his footing. I say we genetically engineer a set of good working breasts for one and all and call it good.  One size fits all.  They'd become commonplace-- about as interesting as the nail on your pointer finger.  We could dispense with all the crude comments and innuendoes and put more energy toward line dancing or something. No more exploitation. No more advertisers yelling, "Cleavage!  More!".  Breasts need to become something all women just have two of, and we can move on from there.  Am I right, or am I right?

That's my plan.  Who's in?

Poetry in Motion--The Glacier Express

We took the train and a bus (because of flooding) from Austria to St. Moritz, Switzerland.  How can you even entertain anything but glorious thoughts when you wake up to this?

And then hop on this?  Eight phantasmal hours of

this 

and this

cruising along like this 

drinking in this. 

A shout out to google images for knowing that Glacier Express-ians have their own little hell--the windows that separate you from perfect photos.  You see it clearly and radiantly magnificent, but photos through glass are just myehhh...

About at this point I entered another sphere.  I didn't think in sentences or phrases--sonnets, I thought in sonnets.  Oh and couplets. I had to bite my lip and sit on my hands to keep from erupting into full-voiced operatic arias.  I'm not kidding.

We had a charming little headphone through which we could listen to commentary or switch the channel to Swiss music.  Dozens of villages, peaks too numerous to count, waterfalls without number, cows as numerous as the stars of the universe--as we glided along gnawing our bread and savoring our chocolate.  Ah the Glacier Express...

Eventually we dead-ended in Zermott, and we once again took out our cameras--boy howdy, did we ever.

 

Bulbs vs. Corpses

I just got an email that I am in the top 1% of Goodreads.com's 20 million readers and reviewers.  I wonder if that comes with a cash bonus incentive or a small plaque for my library wall.  Most likely my name won't end up in the local paper.  I'm guessing that little email is the extent of the accolades.  No matter.   I wasn't even aware that Goodreads was tracking my book reading or my review writing, so I'm pleased with just an email.  I'm thinking, though, that I'll have Paco design some sort of little certificate that I can hang up in my classroom--for motivation purposes...and maybe bragging rights.

Currently I'm kind of between books.  I have about 6 or 7 (Okay, 10 or 12..ish) that I'm almost finished with, but they don't seem to be compelling me like some others I've read lately.  I actually even put one down and told Paco that I couldn't picture myself suffering through to the end of it.  I am sorely disappointed too.  The title is Two Gardeners.  It is a series of extensive correspondence back and forth between E.B. White's wife, Katharine, and a Charlotte, NC newspaper garden editor beginning back in the early 50's.  I was drawn to this book in a little Maine bookstore just a stone's throw from the White's farm.  I am an unashamed devotee of the E.B. of "Team White".  But this one? Way too much dialogue about bulbs and borders and cutting things back and not enough girltalk.  A yawner.  I may speed read it and change my mind.  I'll keep you posted.  Goodreads may have to forego, or at least await, that review.

Now THIS book, on the other hand, was riveting, although not the best writing.  I picked it up off a bookshelf at Doug's Mountain Hideaway when we were guests in the VERY neighborhood of this book's setting!!!!  It concerns a young Canadian Olympic hopeful who disappears in Austria.  Twenty years later his body shows up at  a ski area where it had fallen into a crevasse only to emerge during an unusual thaw.  The hero of the story was his mother who doggedly pursued that story despite lying and nonchalance to the extreme everywhere she turned from police to embassies.  The author puts together the story:  The kid was skiing at the end of a day, injures himself, and then gets (albeit accidentally) RUN OVER AND CHOPPED UP BY THE GROOMER WHO TOSSES HIS BODY PARTS INTO A DEEP CREVASSE!!!!!!!!!!  Thus begins the huge cover-up.  It was quite a book of intrigue made all the more poignant because I could look out as I read (muscles stiff from our super-sized hiking) on the very glacier where this all took place.

Of Pilgrimages

 Next day's hike took us a couple of miles on foot to the next village, up a tram, and up yet another few thousand feet to a monastery.

Cows reposing near a shrine.  Austrians build these all over up in their mountains.  When I was hiking in this vicinity on another trip, I remember our hiking guide pausing at all manner of these along our mountain path and being very perplexed that my Mormon hiking mates and myself were not the least bit interested in adding piety to our hike.  We smiled politely but stopping to pray publicly was not in our realm of experience.


Maria Waldrast is the highest monastery in Europe.  We met two Catholic priests from Washington DC who have been coming here together for decades.  Supposedly the water here is magically healing.  I wanted to soak my feet in it, but my better judgment overruled that.  I had an ice cream bar instead.

That thin steel rail line snaking down the mountain will be remembered fondly by the kind reader as the mad dash down depicted on video a few weeks ago about which so many have commented.

 Farewell to Fulpmes.  I want to move into your graveyards,

tiptoe through your roof gardens, and bask in your grandeur forever.  Alas, Switzerland calleth...

Fulpmes, Austria/Celestial Kingdom

When we arrived in Innsbruck we were told we could take the bus to Fulpmes or the "scenic route".  Lest you think we  hopped right on the "scenic route" train, I hasten to add that we ended up on it in spite of our best efforts to make every possible other choice.  The train pulled out and began a very sharp ascent.  Before long I looked at Paco and Paco looked at me and we mouthed, "OH MY GOODNESS!"  It was absolutely incredible!  I'm betting when my spirit leaves my body and I begin my trip to the next sphere, it will look something like the one hour ride from Innsbruck to Fulpmes, Austria.  Worth our trip over.

As we climbed and climbed our jaws dropped and dropped.

We stopped for a conductor break or change, and I found this gal taking us in just around the front of the tram.  Austrian cows are regal.  They know they've got a good good thing going for them.

The glory did end (as well as the track) in Fulpmes.  Our digs here were in a hostel--Doug's Mountain Getaway.  This place was funky.  Travel books, ski stuff to wear sitting around for anyone to use, walls of hiking trail maps, board games etc.  We had a kitchen, a joint bathroom, access to a sauna, and all the quirky young adult guests from around the world that we could ever hope to befriend!  One young Aussie nurse was hacking and coughing and up all night doing it!!  I fully expected we'd take that cough away as a souvenir, but we didn't.  Doug said he'd had some octagenarians there, so we tried to blend in and forget we were soooooooo not of this variety.

Here's Doug--a Brit, German major in college, ski bum extraordinaire, maybe 28.  He caught a serious virus traveling in Africa and had to spend a few months in a hospital.  One of the nurses taught him to crochet, so he fills his nights with crocheting these hats and selling them. 

Where you leave your shoes and coats (mine is that purple anorak) and help yourself to scarves, hats, hiking poles whatever.

Yeah.  Doug's.

His mom in England owns the place.  Doug guts and builds and changes things.  He was putting in an all glass shower when we were there.  Pretty gutsy move for a hostel, don't you think, glass being transparent and all?

T.T.?

The next morning Doug told us to walk two blocks over this river and then just head up the mountain for a good hike.

I asked Paco to strike an erudite pose. This one I got  has more of a "Duh?" look about it.

Our hike culminated (after MUCH vertical hiking and strain!) at this gnome garden outside an inn.

Upon closer inspection we realized it was a card game in session, so we refrained from asking any questions.

Chocolate cake, apple strudel, and strawberry something or other!!!!!  Oh, and fresh Stub something too ...

We concluded that our present hike to the monastery Doug raved about looked like it just continued up into the clouds.  It was raining by then, so we went back and then walked across town,up the mountain the other way (are you impressed with us yet??? Just you wait!!!), past this awesome working farm/inn,

(which looked like this on the front), boarded a ski tram, and

ended up here about twenty minutes later!!!!!

Yoweeeeeeeeeeee!

Uber magnificent!!!!!!!!

The descent was steep and long--several hours worth!

I'm sure it's shorter on skiis.

We stopped here enroute down and had some German pancakes that were yummy.  We ran into a group of students there from a university in Minnesota--fortunately Paco speaks Minnesotan!  This place was blowing their minds as well.  Even with cutting our teeth on the Tetons, we were not prepared for the grandeur of Austria.  Go, getcha gone!!! Sell something and go to Austria!!!!

These cows and the church look straight out of central casting, don't they???

On the way down.

Paco made a friend.  Later that day I found a coarse grey hair on his shoulder--not mine!!!

This may be my favorite picture of the entire month.  It perfectly evokes Austria to me.

If you haven't hiked straight down a mountain for 2 hours lately, try it and we'll talk.  Rubber legs at that point.  And we still had the trek back to Doug's!!!!!!!  Let's hear some applause here!  And that was just Day 1!!!!!!!!!!