New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #35

philip bone wrote:

Holy, holy WOW!

I've known you for more than 25 years and I've never seen you or a photo of you that young. Hands down the best shot I've ever seen of you too. You even had your patented smile all those years ago?

Are those shoes maybe first generation Fires?

Making a wild ass guess from the one time I've been there that that's Mount Rubidoux?

Brian in SLC… still got it!! Come by sometime for cactus juice and a viewing!

^^ Thx Brad. There are older pictures to scan. First generation Fires yes. Lake Perris. I may have waded to the base of that slab. 

Photo: Melinda G. 

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

Seriously. You had a choice of a federal prosecutor and a football coach over a rapist. WTF

A friend of mine posted this some time back which was written by the historian A.R. Moxon

“Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?”

Went to Seneca in 93 and 94. Had an excellent time climbing both trips. Great old skool area.

Ecstasy 

Marshall’s Madness

Triple-S

The Gendarm

Emil Briggs wrote:

A friend of mine posted this some time back which was written by the historian A.R. Moxon

“Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?”

This is the most powerful synopsis and summary  that I have seen since this madness started.

Wow.

Greg Opland wrote:

Whoa...mutual friend.  Drank a liter of red wine or two with her at Cinque Torri in the Dolomites a few years back.  

Any idear how she's doing?

Brian in SLC wrote:

Whoa...mutual friend.  Drank a liter of red wine or two with her at Cinque Torri in the Dolomites a few years back.  

Any idear how she's doing?

We got together a few times when she moved back to WV, but lost contact with her many years ago. She may be living in Montgomery, AL. 

If there were to be a contest here for the earliest photos of the participants climbing, I submit this: 1953 Black Rock Mountain. GA., taken by my father

I win  

Introduced to rock climbing in Georgia in Spring of 1953, I learned the sport mostly on my own. There were virtually no books or magazines available. I remember looking up "mountaineering" in Encyclopedia Britannica and not learning anything there. When I finally got out to Boulder in August, 1954, I saw what it was all about after meeting several real climbers and getting on the rock with them (including the fascinating rappel off the Maiden)

Did anyone else here learn climbing by themselves? Actually, I consider myself fortunate for I learned a different approach to climbing.

John Gill wrote:

If there were to be a contest here for the earliest photos of the participants climbing, I submit this: 1953 Black Rock Mountain. GA., taken by my father

I win  

Introduced to rock climbing in Georgia in Fall of 1953, I learned the sport mostly on my own. There were virtually no books or magazines available. I remember looking up "mountaineering" in Encyclopedia Britannica and not learning anything there. When I finally got out to Boulder in August, 1954, I saw what it was all about after meeting several real climbers and getting on the rock with them (including the fascinating rappel off the Maiden)

Did anyone else here learn climbing by themselves? Actually, I consider myself fortunate for I learned a different approach to climbing.

There will be no such contest and you definitely win it.

My dad graduated from high school in 1953.

• John Gill wrote:

If there were to be a contest here for the earliest photos of the participants climbing, I submit this: 1953 Black Rock Mountain. GA., taken by my father

I win  

Introduced to rock climbing in Georgia in Spring of 1953, I learned the sport mostly on my own. There were virtually no books or magazines available. I remember looking up "mountaineering" in Encyclopedia Britannica and not learning anything there. When I finally got out to Boulder in August, 1954, I saw what it was all about after meeting several real climbers and getting on the rock with them (including the fascinating rappel off the Maiden)

Did anyone else here learn climbing by themselves? Actually, I consider myself fortunate for I learned a different approach to climbing.

Unless Paul Ross chimes in again for a likely 'tie', this would clearly be the 'winner' in any such contest!!!! John, will you share with us what got you motivated to climb back then in an area with no, or very little, established climbing or other climbers (given the timing, was it reading about the FA of Everest)? How did you learn any basic techniques--what books, if any? How did you get in touch with other climbers when you got out to CO--even there I'm sure the 'community' was very small back then? I know that many of us would be very interested in hearing your 'origin story'.

I started a decade after John and while I do have a number of 'period piece' photos, unfortunately none are currently in digital format to allow me to post them on here--a situation I hope to rectify in a few weeks.

Responding to a topic from a couple of days ago; Idaho Bob, as others have said, a climbing trip to Seneca---and other 'Eastern' areas---both North and South, is very much worth the effort. I think that it is very 'valuable' for climbers from all parts of the country ( the world!!) to travel and climb in other regions at least at some point during their climbing 'career' and, ideally, much more frequently. While we don't have any true alpine climbing or really big walls, the actual climbing at the various East Coast areas, even many of the small ones, is usually excellent, very varied, and often unique. Yeah, the weather can be a problem--does rain a lot, hot and humid summers, cold winters ( at least up north and in the higher southern areas), bugs, sometimes overwhelming vegetation in places, but when you do get good conditions ( and, fall, especially September-October is usually best--except for the hurricanes!!!) it can't be beat!!! 

Alan… I do hope that conversation continues. It feels very similar to the questions I have been asking about Climbers who were here in Joshua Tree in the early 60s and all the way through the 70s.  Hopefully John will continue to unfold his history for us, it would be great if Paul Ross joined in.

I also wound up meditating on that excellent summary of the word Nazi and how similar that feels to what we are facing today. 

The situation with Harvard University really triggered something within me and has caused a lot of upheaval emotionally because my time at UCLA was so important to me . I left when I got pregnant in my senior year and I was sure I would go back. It just never happened, but I would have made a great professional academic. So seeing that Harvard‘s president has refused to acquiesce to Trump’s demands has made me wonder how we can help. Does president need letters of support? Maybe a nationwide GoFundMe?  

Browsing through Harvard’s website looking for email addresses I discovered that Harvard university offers dozens of excellent classes for free. Oh my goodness! It’s not too late to become a Harvard scholar! Here are samples of their online classes.

I knew a monk for many years who was a great scholar. I was sort of a distant groupie long before I became a Catholic. I snuck into his classes at Claremont just to hear him lecture. Every now and then I would go on retreat at his monastery and I would find him in his tiny garden with his cassock and baseball cap. He had known the great existentialist philosophers in France. He had lived in China for many years. He had a beautiful blend of intellect and faith, and I always pictured him sitting in his little room as an old man reading by candlelight. I happened to visit him at the monastery just a few days before he died at 102. Anyway… Here we are in our senior years and they are important ones. Not just for the opportunity to adventure but also to continue that formation of body mind and spirit. I never got around to learning calculus so…  

Lori, who was the monk, out of curiosity?

Daniel Joder wrote:

Lori, who was the monk, out of curiosity?

Fr. Eleutherius Winance. St Andrews Priory in Valeyermo.

As someone whose main academic interest was ethics, I highly recommend this Harvard course:
Justice | Michael J. Sandel.

BTW, it's very entertaining.

Li Hu wrote:

...

Dismantling “American Democracy”  was a team effort by all American politicians. He’s simply benefitting personally from it.

This is a pretty broad swipe at all politicians. If they are literally all that vile, then we're already done, man.

...

And shipping violent citizen criminals to El Salvador doesn’t sound like something a Democracy would do

No kidding, but have they actually done this so far? It seems illegal to me, but "anything goes" these days, apparently. The current worst thing is the shipping of accused non-citizens to El Salvador. Because they are maybe possibly terrorists. Right. I consider this to be a human rights violation. One in a long tradition of them.

and the fact that the rest of the country isn’t doing something to stop it is just as appalling to me.

So what exactly can we do? Another peaceful protest. Sure, I'll go. I don't think it will do anything, but I will go to express my support. It is better than not going.

Back to your earlier post:

Trump’s Tariffs, Biden’s Chip act both do one thing, suppress another nation for being better than the USA at what we in the West do and have done in the past

I understand why every nation would want to keep some manufacturing expertise of specific, security-related goods within the country - chips, drones, etc. I don't see it as "suppressing another nation for being better." Can you specifically point to something that you thought was wrong about the CHIPS act? To be clear, I think the current tariffs are insanity and/or corruption.

I don't think we should be trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. I don't think China should be struggling to retain these jobs either. We should all be working together to automate all these manufacturing processes so that humans (of any country) are not forced to grind their lives away in factories, dying of horrible diseases in order to barely scrape by.

I get it, it's not easy, and it won't happen soon. (I don't even have my own robot butler yet.)

When we colonised places such as China, we had treated them extremely poorly as we had done to all others

I didn't recall the US colonizing China. I just checked and the interwebs are saying no. That was someone else (Britain?). Are you using "we" as meaning "the west" in this case?

When throwing around accusations, we should not forget that there are few (or no?) countries that are innocent of vile behaviors (not to trigger you, but can you say "Uyghurs"?). This is a sad product of human behavior. I'm not saying this to defend or excuse the current goings-on, but as a reminder. I guess the US is just the latest guilty party, failing to meet our mediocre expectations. We try, we fail. It's f*n depressing.

RKM wrote:

Seriously Bob?  I’m surprised and disappointed in you - that you would arrogantly paint with such a broad brush against more than half of the US population and a high percent of readers of this thread.  I totally am proud of and support President Trump - and more importantly his administration and DOGE that have exposed the complete corruption, fraud, abuse and waste of our hard earned tax dollars.  Pretty profound and hellacious statement that WE all should ‘crawl back into our hole’.

Kim Miller

So far I haven't seen any actual evidence of corruption, fraud, abuse, or waste exposed by DOGE. I have seen that we're losing government scientists, weather forecasters, aid workers, and other federal employees whom I'm grateful to have my tax dollars support.

RKM wrote:

Seriously Bob?  I’m surprised and disappointed in you - that you would arrogantly paint with such a broad brush against more than half of the US population and a high percent of readers of this thread.  I totally am proud of and support President Trump - and more importantly his administration and DOGE that have exposed the complete corruption, fraud, abuse and waste of our hard earned tax dollars.  Pretty profound and hellacious statement that WE all should ‘crawl back into our hole’.

Kim Miller

More than half of the us population you say?  Is this reflective of your understanding?  Literally nothing you said is true in support of your enthusiasm for a literal convicted rapist and felon.  Congrats on your enthusiasm though!

hey RKM you would be at home on wide fetish, and i suggest you take your politics over there -thats all they do on that site- although even there you will find libs who will call you on statements with little corroborating data like what you posted upthread 

dragons wrote:

This is a pretty broad swipe at all politicians. If they are literally all that vile, then we're already done, man.

No kidding, but have they actually done this so far? It seems illegal to me, but "anything goes" these days, apparently. The current worst thing is the shipping of accused non-citizens to El Salvador. Because they are maybe possibly terrorists. Right. I consider this to be a human rights violation. One in a long tradition of them.

So what exactly can we do? Another peaceful protest. Sure, I'll go. I don't think it will do anything, but I will go to express my support. It is better than not going.

Back to your earlier post:

I understand why every nation would want to keep some manufacturing expertise of specific, security-related goods within the country - chips, drones, etc. I don't see it as "suppressing another nation for being better." Can you specifically point to something that you thought was wrong about the CHIPS act? To be clear, I think the current tariffs are insanity and/or corruption.

I don't think we should be trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. I don't think China should be struggling to retain these jobs either. We should all be working together to automate all these manufacturing processes so that humans (of any country) are not forced to grind their lives away in factories, dying of horrible diseases in order to barely scrape by.

I get it, it's not easy, and it won't happen soon. (I don't even have my own robot butler yet.)

I didn't recall the US colonizing China. I just checked and the interwebs are saying no. That was someone else (Britain?). Are you using "we" as meaning "the west" in this case?

When throwing around accusations, we should not forget that there are few (or no?) countries that are innocent of vile behaviors (not to trigger you, but can you say "Uyghurs"?). This is a sad product of human behavior. I'm not saying this to defend or excuse the current goings-on, but as a reminder. I guess the US is just the latest guilty party, failing to meet our mediocre expectations. We try, we fail. It's f*n depressing.

Dragons, while I agree with about 99% of what you write here ( and mostly disagree with Li's comments), for the sake of historical accuracy, the reality is that the US, along with many other (mostly Western) countries did, in fact, have a colonial presence in China in the 19th/early 20th Century. It wasn't the 'direct control' form of colonialism that was common elsewhere ( including the US in the Philippines as one example), but through such things as territorial 'trading concessions' it was effectively the same. That is why the US Marines and Navy were among the forces that suppressed the nationalist Boxer Rebellion---at a substantial cost of Chinese life. Of course, the Chinese, too, had been a colonial power for many years. As you said, we are historically pretty much all 'guilty parties'.

Kim, as Wendy asked, could you please point us to any evidence of actual fraud and corruption, let alone 'widespread', uncovered by Trump, Musk, DOGE and their minions? So far, they have shared none. It is sort of like ( well, exactly like) the claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election---it's been over 4 years and 'they' have now been in power for over 3 months---but still not a shred of actual evidence.

The real corruption and fraud is that which will occur/ is already occurring now that they have destroyed or neutered pretty much all the systemic safeguards meant to prevent Trump, Musk, et al from stealing from all of us now--and from the future---including the public lands upon which we pursue our sport.

While, it is perfectly reasonable to disagree on such things as governmental spending priorities and the appropriate amount of regulation, it is sad, to put it mildly, that you are still happy to support the clear and accelerating destruction of our Constitution and the democratic republic that it established.