Dear Everyone,
Cranes are flying overhead.
Spring bulbs are popping. Google tells me it is 66 outside, but it feels
warmer. I thought I would write this letter in bits, because I want to chart
this past week prior to leaving for Colorado. I will be skiing with Alison,
Jacob, Christine, Lucas, Jasper, and Vivian this coming weekend in
Aspen/Snowmass (provided there is snow).
This past Friday we went out with the Wallochs, Andrea Blumstein,
and Denise Allen to a restaurant in Lemont called Barrel and Vine. We’ve eaten there once before with the
Wallochs. The food is pretty good, if a
bit pricey, but the restaurant was noisy (I don’t know what it’s like mid-week,
but I think restaurants like more noise - - it helps to turn the tables
around). It’s also hard to park in
Lemont. Moreover there was a freak
snowstorm that made driving there feel a bit scary. We had originally planned to eat at some
restaurant in LaGrange, but they were having restaurant week, and everything
was booked up by Tuesday.
We went out ostensibly to celebrate Andrea’s 60th
birthday. You may recall that Andrea was
one of our partners at Christ. Now she
shares chairmanship duties with Rasheed Hammadeh. Denise Allen is one of the more senior
histotechnicians (and she shares a birthdate with me); I don’t really know how
she horned in on this invite. Andrea’s daughter is applying to colleges; she is
interested in a musical theater degree.
Who knows if she will make a living as an artist? Anyway, applying to these programs requires
an audition as well as the usual other college preparatory stuff, but she has
done well at her auditions. She’s hoping
to go somewhere on the East Coast.
On Sunday we went to see Al Franken at the City Winery in the west Fulton area.
We
had some interesting ciders (I had
a blueberry one). The food portions
were a bit small, and they forgot one of our orders, which was fine by me since
I had had a late lunch (I get home around 2 after my tai chi class). There was
a 20 minute set from a warm-up comedian whose name I don’t recall, but he was
pretty good. Al Franken (for you young
ones, Franken was a long time staff writer for Saturday Night Live, and then
eventually was a cast member. He later
went on to become a (D) senator from Minnesota, but resigned during the MeToo
movement for what were probably pretty minor (and maybe innocent) incidents in his younger years.) The current act was clearly a workshop for
him, with frequent referral to notes, and sometimes forgetting part of his
story. Franken is unabashedly liberal,
and obviously does not think highly of the current Republican Party. He thinks that Lindsay Graham is one of the
funniest and most cynical senators. He
recalls Graham once told him, on hearing that Franken was going to Puerto Rico
for vacation, to hold two rallies, one for pro-statehood, and one for
anti-statehood. “The two groups never
talk to each other”. He did take some
questions from the audience; unfortunately, I was not able to ask if he would
increase John Oliver’s pledge to give Clarence
Thomas 1 million a year and a new tour bus.
I would certainly be happy enough to contribute!
Interesting books: Breaking Through,
My Life in Science by Katalin Kariko. Not only did Dr. Kariko win the Nobel Prize
for her groundbreaking work on messenger RNA, her daughter is a two-time
Olympic Gold medal winner in rowing.
Kariko makes a pretty valid point that a lot of academic science is
driven by the ability to get grant money - - she was kicked out of several
labs, either for being outspoken, or because she was working under other people’s
grant programs, and they didn’t have the finances to keep her on. She persisted, even when others did not think
her research was worthwhile. And while she
is justified in her complaints, she was able to keep her research program going. There are a lot of people who had less
support than her, many who left science altogether. Just like the Arts, Science is a pretty cutthroat
world, and there are a lot of talented people.
It’s the perverse incentives of our capitalist world.
Some interesting fiction as well: short stories by Bora Chung, Your
Utopia; a surprisingly sad time travel book, A
Second Chance for Yesterday; and a creepy horror dystopia, The Collector.
I’ll finish this after skiing.
Ski trip!
We decided to go to Aspen/Snowmass this year. The last time
I was here must have been over 50 years ago with the family headed by Barbara
and Roger. Snowmass at that time was
less than five years old. I don’t
remember it at all, and my guess is that Barbara and Roger dropped us off at ski
school, and then drove down the road to ski Aspen and the Aspen Highlands.
My plane to Aspen left a little late, but was uneventful.
On arrival at the Pitkin County airport, I called the condo shuttle service, and after about a 30 minute wait arrived at the Crestwood. Lucas, Jasper, and Vivian had already checked in, so I put my bags down, and we waited for Alison. She showed up around six, and we immediately got on the shuttle to take us to the rental shop in the mall (it closed at 7). We were the only people in the store, and we were all kitted out (including lift tickets) by 6:30. We called the shuttle to take us (and our equipment) back to our room, and then took it again to the mall where we wandered a bit looking for dinner. Jasper and Vivian had already eaten lunch at the Thai restaurant. We looked in at an Italian restaurant, Il Poggio (It was too busy; we ate there Saturday night), and ended up at the Stewpot, where most people ordered lamb stew, but I had pork habanero, and Vivian steak stew. We got on the shuttle again, just in time to greet Christine and Jacob who were arriving. We unpacked all of their food (Lucas had already unpacked his), and settled down for the night.
Day 2
We had a ski in / ski out condo (with features we were yet
to discover) and so we were among the first on the Elk Camp gondola in the
morning. The top of the gondola is where
the ski school meets, but we had time to do a short green run (Meadows) and a
blue (Bull Run) before dropping off Vivian. We took Adams Avenue to Alpine
Springs, and did a few runs there, and then further along the mountain to the
Sheer Bliss and Big Burn lifts. The snow
was hard, and we stuck mostly to groomed slopes, although Jacob and Christine
separated from us to do some black runs off of Cirque. I don’t recall where we stopped for our
packed lunches, but I did note that almost every restaurant on the mountain
seemed to have their bathrooms on the same level as the main outer door, so you
didn’t have to tromp up and down in your ski boots - - there were a lot of
other nice touches to the whole Snowmass enterprise. It was about mid-afternoon, so we skied down.
We found to our pleasure that our condo had a special room
with a heated ski boot rack. You could
leave your skis (not poles) and boots in this room overnight, and just come
down in your shoes. Super
convenient! Also, the parking lot
pavement was heated, so you didn’t need to worry about slipping in ice and
slush when you walked around. We were
also well supplied with warm bathrobes that we wore while walking to the two
different hot tub areas and the steam room.
The Coloradans were smart enough to have packed slippers to walk outside;
I made due with my duck boots - - Aspen chic!
Jacob and Christine cooked dinner – grilled chicken (the
grill was attached to a whole condo gas line, no worries about running out of
fuel), quinoa, salad, and delicious roasted vegetables. Afterwards we played a game called Calico. I didn’t understand the game that well, and
came in last place. Christine won
handily.
Day 3
We all went up the Elk Camp Gondola, and did some runs there as well as Two Creeks, but the snow was hard and icy, and we decided to quit early and drive to Aspen to check out the fashion scene.
I saw the Pitkin County library, Alison and Christine visited some consignment shops, we went to a coffee bar, and walked through the lobby of the Hotel Jerome.
That evening
we ate at Il Poggio, recommended as celiac friendly. (We had considered eating in Aspen, but there were World Cup races going on, and we figured it would be hard to find a place to eat) The food was good, but the service was a bit
slow. A big storm was on its way (it
started up while we were eating), and perhaps some of the staff had stayed
home. After dinner we played Code Words
Duet, and won one game of three.
Day 4
It snowed over a foot overnight, and continued to snow all
day. It was fairly heavy snow that took
a bit of effort to ski through. Vivian
abandoned us early on, and Lucas around lunchtime. We had some fun runs in glades on the edge of
the resort (near Sneaky). Alison, Jasper and I only did a few more after lunch,
while Jacob and Christine, young athletes, went on to the black runs off the
Campground lift. A lot of the lifts were
closed because of high winds, and sometimes at the top of the peaks visibility
was only five feet.
Vivian had an ulterior motive in leaving early; she cooked a
delicious chicken congee back at the condo we all had for dinner. Then we watched some TV: the first episode of
Lowdermilk,
and the first two episodes of Arrested Development.
Day 5
This was almost as bad as trying to leave Steamboat last
year. Our flight to Chicago was first
delayed two hours. Vivian, Jasper and I
killed some time by investigating every store at the Snowmass mall (I bought a new
pair of ski goggles), and then having a pretty good Thai food lunch. When we got to the airport, it seemed poorly
organized (people were going through security based on how close it was to their
departure time) and it was very crowded in the gate areas - - we stayed
standing for another 90 minutes. Our flight was over an hour later than the
first delay, but we finally got on. We
rode through thunderstorms on the way back, and luckily got into Chicago before
the big one showed up here, all told a three hour delay.
Snowmass is a big mountain, and there was a lot to ski, but
after this and last year’s travel experiences, I would be worried about going
past the Frisco region for less than a week. From Vail, it’s only a couple of hours to
Denver.
Love, H
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