And the question is whether passing that threshold just perpetuates the stoicism and quietism of the US working class. Ian
But, unless I'm missing something major here, "mostly white, mostly middle America" is who is being hurt... Joanna
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Well the intention was that if the middle class keeps putting jack-offs like George and Arnold in power---plastic frontspieces who only serve business and the upper crust, there is the possibility that some of those not served will begin to change their illusions. While that might seem a hopeful sign, I don't think so. It's going on two generations of working class people who haven't been able to get out or get ahead and its getting harder and harder every damned election cycle. And it gets more and more obvious who is in power and what they represent.
Anyway, your not missing anything. Precisely. Why fucking argue with them any more? They think it is all the Mexicans. Hasta luego kemo sabis.
``And since "mostly white, mostly middle America" accounts for a majority of the U.S. population, Chuck0's stance is anti-democratic, despite claims to the contrary.'' Doug
The problem is, it's not anti-democratic. I just recognize the razor thin majority are pretty much doomed, if they keep on voting for illusions. From my experience you can explain it (just about any issue) to them until your blue in the face and they seem absolutely convinced otherwise by their own illusions, with generous helpings from the media and the political establishment. So, I give. Fuck it. They are pulling themselves down the toilet.
And the truth is I've been in foul mood ever since Bush was installed by the Supreme Court---disgusted really by the complete lack of any mass outrage. Now it's established fact Bush was elected president, a majority support the war on Iraq and everything is coming up roses.
Follow Kerry and the Democrats, you'll end up owning the fucking war and the jive time `new economy' of nothing. Follow the anti-christ, I mean anarchists and you're accused of marginalizing yourself and `alienating' the scared majority.
Well, screw'um. Out now. I think I fall somewhere between Chuck0 and Yoshie.
``Asking Ruckus to teach phone-banking is like asking some NGO to teach climbing skills in some backyard in suburban Maryland.'' Chuck0
Right on. But, speaking of climbing, I went off to Yosemite this weekend--too fed up with everything. It was beautiful.
I asked one of the climbers at the gym, I've known for along time if he had any favorite solo climbs or hikes in the Valley. He thought a minute and said, his favorite hike was something called the Ledge Trail. It starts behind Curry Village goes to the top of Glacier Point. It was originally a route used by John Muir and was built into a hiking trail sometime after the turn of the century. My climbing friend at the gym said it was abandoned sometime in the 60s when the park service stopped maintaining it after a bad rockfall. Emphasis shifted to the more tourist friendly Four Mile Trail. The Four Mile Trail starts below Sentinel and wonders up an auxiliary buttress to the east and then goes back around the southeast over the ridge to Glacier Point.
I couldn't find the Ledge Trail or One Mile Trail on any map. Roper's old green Yosemite Guide mentions it as an approach to climbs that are no longer done. So I went on a web search and found two references for it. The first was from a 1920s book on the wonders of Yosemite. This report claimed the trail started behind Le Conte Memorial. Le Conte Memorial at the moment is at a center of controversy between some righwing hack politician from Mariposa and the Sierra Club who maintains the building in the National Park.
The second report was a personal description from somebody who had recently done it in 1998, taking his nine year old daughter and seventeen year old son and a friend. Let me tell you, that is one tough nine year old girl. But they climbed it in July when the snow was gone and not April.
Both accounts matched on the general directions and both said it had the best view of Yosemite Falls.
Both accounts failed to mention that you look down more than a thousand feet on Yosemite Falls. That's right down on the Falls, down on Sentinel, down on Half Dome, down some three thousand, three hundred feet to the Valley floor.
So I packed up my camera shuff, (F100, 28-70mm, 80-220mm lens) which must weigh twenty plus pounds along with lunch, water, and some bivy gear (nylon shell parka, wool socks, glove, cap) just in case and got a killer early start at 10:30 in the morning. I was only half committed to doing it, if I found it.
Walking passed the cafeteria in Curry Village, I headed straight up passed tent cabin #75 into the trees and talus. It was a beautiful day. The birds were chirping and insects were buzzing around. Thousands of feet of dark rock loomed overhead. After five minutes I saw no one. After about an hour of steep talus and trees, I didn't seem to be getting any closer to the enormous overhanging bulges of the far right side of Glacier Point. Another hour, finally the small trees thinned out and I reached some very large and very old trees up against the vast wall above. There were two battered old signs nailed to solid rock. The faded yellow sign from some former era said, Trail Closed, Slick Granite. The other one, slightly newer, grey paint with red lettering on aluminium said, Trail Closed, Rock Fall.
There was no trail to be see any where. Well after some inspection up ahead there did seem to be what appeared to be an animal path and up near the beginning of the heavy brush was a rock with an orange paint mark. By following these weathered paint marks from boulder to boulder it was possible to pick my way through the dense, tough bushes. I don't know what these bushes are called, but climbers, hikers, and animals hate them. They are very tough, they always point down hill, so you can not fight your way up, and you can not pass through them unless somebody or some thing has worn their way through them over centuries. Luckily the bushes had not entirely over grown the former path.
Once into the brush, the angle dropped from very steep down to just plain steep. I was slowly working my way up a large ramp that can be seen from just about anywhere you can see both Curry and Glacier Point. It is a prominent ramp that ascends from left to right and ends on the top of a buttress. I could hear water running but couldn't see any. From far below, sitting in the Pizza tables at Curry, you can see a small stream coming off this buttress in the Spring.
After an hour of bush wacking my way up this ramp I got to the sound of a creek and the top of this buttress. About four hours. It was a little before two. I was very slow.
I couldn't believe what I saw. In front of me or more or less on the right was the most most magnificent view of Half Dome I have ever seen. To my left was Yosemite Falls roaring in thundering cascades that boomed across the canyon. I dug out the camera and shoot maybe five or six pictures. Then turning back toward the wall, was this very steep gully with dreaded snow bushes, or the wet version of the same nasty brush below, and long patches of snow covering a roaring stream in full spring thaw. This was Staircase Creek, and naturally the gully was Staircase gully. Only the angle was much steeper than a stair case, covered in (what I call) snow brushes, moss covered boulders, and snow packs.
After about fifteen minutes up this gully I was facing a ridiculous dilemma. I was standing on slippery moss covered boulders, with ice cold water running over my `trail running' shoes, with a waist high snow bank that was completely undercut into an edge. I couldn't climb the rock because there were no holds and they were slippery, I couldn't get on the snow, because it was too high and would probably break off the edge. And the angle of the snow was about sixty degrees with a landing of ice water and boulders, some ten meters below. No ice axe. But I did have my camera mono pole strapped to my pack in the ice axe straps.
It is a little difficult to understand this dilemma, unless you have `been there'. Trust me, it features potentially serious injury over a completely easy and ridiculously trivial passage---provided you have boots and an axe. I had tennis shoes and an aluminum pole. But these are not entirely without their uses. I reasoned, John Muir had a stick, and leather soled boots, so just be careful. Go slow. Kick steps and don't get lazy. So I opened the monopole to a about three and half feet, sunk it into the snow about two and half feet, and launched myself on to the snow slope in a belly flop. I carefully got up and began kicking steps. The trick to getting the running shoes to kick steps is of course soft snow and kicking in a steep downward angle. The snow packs under the shoe to form the step. After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes working up this scary but trivial snow patch, I got off into the dreaded snow bushes. Climbers, mountaineers, hikers, and animals hate them even more than they hate the dry variety. I thought the whole gully was a giant pussy, covered in tough, wiry pubic hair, and I was a demented little animal crawling my way up toward the unknown.
There next to the right wall of the gully was another orange paint marker. When I get to it, I look down, and somebody a very long time ago, had cut steps into the rock. Fucking A, it is a stair case under the bushes, moss, and water. More snow, more icy water, more nasty bushes, and by now unbelievably fabulous views of Yosemite Falls, looking down through the V-slot of Staircase gully.
I think of LBO of all things. And this post, which I haven't answered. They're not going to believe this. Fucking two thousand feet plus off the Valley floor, it's getting on to three in the afternoon, another thousand feet to go. All I want to do is take pictures and smoke a cigarette. It is awesomely glorious. I have never seen the Valley like this. I check the film. Oh, great, TX 400 B&W. Fuck! I can't believe it. I forgot to change the damned film. Imagine looking down on Yosemite Falls in the distance framed in the base of dark V-tough. The afternoon sun doesn't get into this gully, hence the snow pack. Half a cigarette and I almost pass out. Gotta quit smoking. Jesus.
Higher up the gully splits in two and I take the larger leftish fork, which actually steepens a bit more, but the snow is gone up here. It must get the morning sun. Slowly the angle relaxes. I haven't eaten anything but a bagel and cream cheese in the morning. It's three-thirty, going on four. Up above the angle lessen more and I can see day light through the big trees above. I am almost there. I make my way to a small overlook and have a quick snack: apple, cheese and part of a baguette--yes a pure yuppie lunch. More pictures. I pack up the camera, collapse the monopole and tie it onto the pack and head for the top which is an soft open forest of old growth, tall trees.
Up ahead I see a fallen tree cut in two. The return of the civilized world. That has to be the Four Mile Trail and the descent. It's forty-thirty. I have a four and half mile hike down the three thousand feet I just came up and a two mile hike back to Curry before nine o'clock at night to get there in time before the Pizza stand closes. Otherwise, its cold snacks in the car for dinner.
I debate. Should I hike to the actual Glacier Point overlook, which is only a few hundred yards through the forest. Maybe the last shuttle hasn't left yet and I could get a ride back down to the Valley. But if I hike to the overlook, and there is no shuttle, maybe I could hitch a ride back.
Better not risk it. I made it this far and I am thoroughly exhausted. I better keep moving or I'll be hiking out in the dark. So I turn to the right on the paved, yes paved trail and start heading down. After about twenty minutes I get more fabulous views of Yosemite Falls, and then I round a corner and there is gate across the trail. I climb over the gate and read, Trail Closed. As I round another bend, I come out on top of a buttress and the trail is completely covered in a steep snow bank on the left, with a nightmare drop of thousands of feet on the right. Luckily the stone bank of the trail has heated up during the day and left a narrow stone ledge to traverse along, and somebody had crushed steps into the snow slope closer into the hillside. After another turn, I come around a bend to a view of Sentinel in the foreground several hundred feet below in sharp thin profile, and off in the extreme distance is the full profile of El Captain, Cathedral, and Three Brothers with the Valley floor lost in mist and haze below. It looks exactly like a huge open jaw full of giant teeth, just like the Indian legend has it. God damned what a view. I pull out the camera and blow off the rest of the film. Jesus, I hope these come out.
Hour after hour down, my knees are giving out, my upper back is killing me, and I have never been this tired before. I discover that these trail running shoes were actually designed for downhill. The heavy band on the instep keeps my foot from sliding forward and there will be no blisters! My god, Adidas TR-9 did something right. Now if they just harden the toe for kicking steps in snow...
Switch back after switch back, I finally stumble onto the beginning of the Four Mile Trail, with yet another sign that says, Trail Closed. It's seventy-thirty and daylight is just about over. A sign in the forest trail on the right claims that Curry Village is only 2.2 miles away. Fuck. I can't walk fifty feet, let alone two fuggin miles.... Somehow these two desperately long miles disappear. Just as I pass Le Conte Memorial turn out, I look up and see the Ledge route in the deep evening shadows high above. It's a little after eight. What a beautiful day. God damn, I made it. Now to get changed into something not covered in mud and blood from the bush wacking and pretend not to look too scary.
I make it to the Pizza place and finish off most of a medium pepperoni. It's completely dark and I can't see the route. Back at the tent cabin at ten I take three aspirin and sleep the sleep of the dead.
The next morning after ten, I can't move, my legs are burning with a thousand scratches from the death bushes, my mind is a complete fog. I get up only to make it out to the Curry meadow where mid morning light hits the ledge system, which I can now photograph from the Valley floor. It's another beautiful spring day.
I decide I can't function well enough to face a drive home, so I go to the Curry office to get another day. I asked about the road to Glacier Point, thinking, well I can drive up there and hike back into the forest and see what I missed. I find out the road to Glacier Point is closed.
I laugh. And, I think, well just imagine hiking that few hundred yards to the overlook, only to find the place closed down for winter. Deserted. No shuttle, no hitch-hiking, no food, no water. Nothing. Just the wind. God forsaken nothingness, sun going down, another half hour or forty minutes wasted, and still faced with a long hike down, anyway. Jesus. But then I wonder, maybe I should have taken that in too, as a kind of ending icon to a long day in mountains.
Who says LBO is a bunch of wimps? US Marines, kiss my sixty-one year old broken down ass. I still wonder how a nine year old girl made it. Well, she obvously wasn't a smoker.
Chuck Grimes