Time flies

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” (Groucho Marx)

Five weeks ago I underwent surgery on my right ankle to repair a torn tendon. It turned out to be two tendons and, apparently, one was mis-located, that is, congenitally in the wrong place. That explains why, even before the skiing mishap, I always had pain in that ankle when working on our hillside.

If I were fifty instead of seventy, the accident would not have happened. It is simply a product of aging, that joints, tendons, bones and ligaments are hardened and more easily damaged.

Today the boot is removed, and I will be wearing an ankle brace. I have no idea what that will look like. Full healing of the tendon takes about three months, so that by January I will be skiing again. I should add, it is cross country skiing, not downhill. Growing up with just the change in my pocket, I could never afford downhill skiing, oh poor me. Cross country over the years has taken me to places I never otherwise would have seen. Downhill skiing, while exciting and dangerous, is repetition, the same hill all day long. I have done it on several occasions, and enjoyed it. Once Red Lodge Mountain offered a free day to the public, and I took my kids there – they all took to it right away. It was a fun day. After that, I stuck with XC.

When I lived in Montana, we would go to a downhill ski hill near White Sulfur Springs called Showdown. My friend Steve and I would start at the bottom, outside the pay zone, and walk uphill on our skis, eventually getting to a trailhead called O’Brien Creek. From there we would cross country ski seven miles to a small town called Neihart, a delightful excursion. On a good day, we could do it twice, but it took planning as a shuttle was necessary. When I met my wife, we too did that journey.

I suspect that trip, that trailhead, is still there and available to anyone enjoying an outing that includes seven miles of mild downhill skiing. Just ask around. I would do it myself if I still lived there, even at my advanced age.

I thought my recuperation time would be a good time to do some reading, and have been slowly making my way through three books: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy; The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein.

Anna Karenina is a story of Russian aristocrats, a humanizing one where Anna, who committed adultery and confessed it to her husband, is cast out of proper society. Her lover is still accepted in the proper places, but Anna not. Tolstoy (and his translator) is an amazing writer, a man of insight into the human character. There are no bad guys in the book, just humans, some more compelling than others. I read a few chapters each morning, and then put it down, grateful that I’ve still several hundred pages ahead. I learned that in 2012 the director Joe Wright made a movie of this book, a herculean undertaking starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law. I cannot wait to see it, after I am done with the book.

The Real Anthony Fauci is a dense-packed book that thoroughly demonizes Fauci, Robert Gallo and Bill Gates. These men are indeed monsters, but so powerful that they are unscathed by the depressing truth around them. They are criminals of historic stature, and are currently raping the continent of Africa, testing vaccines against viruses never proven to even exist. Kennedy writes with educated style, continually sending me to the dictionary with words like Brobdingnagian, having to do with a city from Gulliver’s Travels. The book, oddly, is not indexed, a major shortcoming. The author holds tight to mythology regarding viruses and vaccines, and refuses to admit that HIV has never been proven to exist, much less cause AIDS. But it is still a worthwhile journey, as he covers a lot of untraveled ground not mentioned in mainstream journalism.

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels highlights another major scam of our time, Climate Change. The book has been around for some time, and I find it less enchanting than the other two. It often sits unopened for days at a time. Epstein was once, like me, a true believer, and self-educated his way to enlightenment. I do not think he sees (or did not see in 2014) that the CC hoax is not accidental nor the result of stupidity, at least in the powerful agents behind it. (The on-the-ground agents, the morons with placards and marching boots, are indeed brainwashed and stupid.) The CC movement is a result of mendacity and misanthropy, racists who hate humanity fear the awakening of Africa, South America and Asia. They mean to do irreparable harm. The world population can surely fit into the state of Texas. The exciting bit is that each person would be comfortable, with about a thousand square feet of room. That’s gross oversimplification, of course, as factors like enough food are not taken into account. But it does show that human perceptions are controlled by that square little box we stare into each day, television. The planet is far larger than our brains can embrace. The idea that we can affect the environment as imagined by the Chicken Little crowd is absurd.

Imagine if we could all fit in Texas, how much room we would have on the continent of Africa, or in Alaska. Population is not a problem, CO2 is not harmful, but humans, especially evil and mendacious ones like Al Gore, Bill Gates, Robert Gallo and Anthony Fauci, are indeed dangerous in the extreme.