Summer Reading

This has been an interesting summer for reading, especially for non-fiction In normal times I think I generally consume mostly fiction, but this past few months it seems as though we've had a bumper crop of really good non-fiction. Here are some of the ones that stand out:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander:

Ethan read this one first and then recommended it to me (it was his summer reading book for Brown). A real eye-opener, especially as regards the history of the "War on Drugs" and the court cases in involving challenges to alleged police and prosecutorial discrimination; definitely worth reading.

Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity and poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson:

This book reminded me a lot of the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (another one of my favorites) in terms of the approach that it took to looking at how successful and economically prosperous specific nations have been over time, in a very sweeping way (both in terms of time/scope and geography). Very interesting stuff!

The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities, by Will Allen and Charles Wilson:

This was one of Lydia's required reading books. Very inspiring and interesting, about a local-food revolutionary trying to make community agriculture work in Wisconsin (along with a very intruiging "back story" of how he wound up in the business).

Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

Ethan decided to read this one; I've started it, but I'm only a couple hundred pages in.  I'm enjoying it so far -- unlike other economists, this guy seems to be much more willing to look at things in historical context, which I think makes all the difference.

[Update: I've since finished the book, and it was a really good read -- took a long time to get all the way through, but it was worth it. Really changed the way that I think about capital, earnings/savings, and money in general on the "macro" level.]

Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Julia Enders:

This was definitely a sort of "pop science" book, but it was still pretty interesting, and I think I learned a certain amount about the digestive system. Originally written in German, then translated, which gives it an odd quality (can't quite put my finger on it).

On the fiction front: 

I am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak:

Amy picked it out to have something to listen to in the car while we were driving around in Germany and Italy this summer-- we all enjoyed it. I think it's categorized as "yound adult" (whatever that means these days) but it appealed to everyone in the family.

Science fiction:

The Martian by Andy Weir:

I read this earlier in the summer and really enjoyed it -- tried to get other folks in my family to give it a shot (unsuccessful), then one of Lydia's friends highly recommended it to her, at which point she grabbed it and gulped it down (isn't that how it always works...).

Fantasy:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik:

I enjoyed this (not a very weighty read) and Lydia read it as well (I think she was a little more luke-warm on it, but still liked it).

Swimming at Buttermilk Falls

Visiting my mom in Vermont this weekend...

Yesterday morning around 9:30 or so we piled into the car and drove down to Buttermilk Falls, a swimming hole that I had heard about a while back but never tried to visit before. We picked up Sue along the way at the Tinmouth church (kidnapped her from the remainder of her rehearsal in fact) and then drove east through Wallingford and then south along rt 140 until we were almost in Ludlow (it is abiut a 45 min drive).

Buttermilk falls is a series of 3 smallish waterfalls on a small river near Okemo National Forest; the pools are not very deep (most of them) but the water is nice (definitely on the cool side). Photos:

Very nice swim. The last waterfall we visited had a place where you could swim up underneath the fall itself and let it "massage" your head and shoulders (kind of neat).

In the afternoon we went to see a performance of Guys and Dolls at the Weston playhouse -- it was a terrific show (great singing and dancing).

Fun weekend!

Flip-book animation by Lydia

A "flip book" stype animation created by Lydia:

All of the panels were hand-drawn, then photographed and stitched together into an MP4 file. Very labor-intensive.

Bikes In Munich

Munich is a good place to bike, and we see tons of them everywhere. Unlike the USA, however, where just about all the bikes you see are made by one of the "major" brands, there are many peculiar/interesting bike brands to be seen here in town. A sampling:

I could have gone on snapping photos all day, there are so many to choose from.  I have to say that I did feel vaguely guilty taking pictures of people's locked up bikes -- like a thief casing the joint before the heist, or something like that.

Last Couple of Days in Munich

Sunday night: couple of final Mittenwald photos: awaiting dinner at an outdoor cafe...

... and discovering an interesting poster on the main drag:

Monday:

We packed up our stuff in Mittenwald, got everything into the car, and headed for Garmish-Partenkirchen. Overcast and raining the whole way, so it was a good thing that we'd gotten all of our outdoor activities in beforehand.

In the car we listened to our current book on tape, "I am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak -- an entertaining story. We returned our rental car with no hassles to speak of and got our stuff over to the train station to wait for our ride to Munich. Train arrived in plenty of time to get all of our luggage on board, etc, so we had nice seats.  Spirited card game en route ("Oh Hell") mixed in with reading the international edition of the New York Times (the Int'l Herald Tribune no longer exists, it's been replaced with this new NYT thing).

Ethan and Lydia also for some reason decided to strike up a spirited conversation partway through the ride on matters related to sexuality and sexual orientation -- it was interesting to hear them debate. Meanwhile, I could tell that the young German guy in the seat across the aisle from us was trying very hard to listen in on the conversation (he was fascinated, it was pretty obvious).

Got in to the main station around noon, unpacked at the hotel (Eden Hotel Wolff), which seems to be nice. I made us reservations at a vegetarian restaurant called "Prinz Myzhkin" (sp?) that is a few blocks south of Marienplatz. We were all pretty eager to be eating something with a lot of green vegetables that didn't taste especially German, so this seemed like a good choice. I had Massaman curry with peanuts, potato, and carrots; Lydia had spinach crepes, Ethan had a japanese noodle dish, and Amy had Samosas. It was a pleasaant meal, very laid-back.

[Ethan's drink is not beer, despite the mug and the appearance...]

Curry, yum:

... and noodles:

After that we had an extended shopping expedition: Ethan looked for a couple of new pairs of pants, Lydia searched for shoes, and Amy wanted to look at loden-coats.

Lydia finally settled on a pair of brown oxford-like shoes, very elegant and a bit formal, from a smallish shoe store called Bagat. I'm actually kind of amazed that it actually happened, since she had a very specific idea of what she wanted and had turned down numerous other possibilities.

Amy (also concluding a lengthy shopping odyssey) found a coat that she liked at Lodenfrey, a department store here. She also had specific things in mind -- she wanted a coat with a hood (not easy to find) with a specific length.

For Ethan we visited (among other places): Superdry, Gant, Tretter, even the following place (the picture does not lie- this really is the name of a retail establishment):

Finally at H & M, Ethan was able to find something that he liked, however we also managed to get separated from Amy and Lydia. Ethan and I were in the men's changing room when Amy stopped in to try to find us -- she yelled out "Ethan, are you there?" and Ethan yelled back "yes", but apparently his reply was drowned out (Amy never heard it, there was too much other stuff going on). Eventually after a certain amount of searching around we decided to head back to the hotel, where we reunited.

Dinner at Broeding (sp?) a fancy place that Amy had picked out a while back. Smallish dining area but extremely gourmet: smoked salmon with braised leeks, arugula, and horseradish cream, then beef shoulder with chanterelles and roast potatoes, and finally a hazlenut mousse/partfait thing with cherries and pineapple. Very tasty (the wines were quite good as well).

We had taken a cab to get to dinner, then decided to walk back. The stroll was interesting in two respects. First, the time it took on foot was just about the same as the time in the cab (traffic was very heavy). Second, the route back took us by a big youth hostel, which was swarming with young people -- we fell in with a group of youngsters from the USA and UK and listen in on what they were talking about. 

Tuesday:

Last day on vacation here in Munich. It is fun to relax and explore, but I think all of us are starting to think about returning home to sleep in our own beds and get back to our usual routines.

After breakfast we headed out to the Hauptbahnhof and got on a train to visit the museum and memorial at Dachau, the former concentration camp. Dachau is ridiculously easy to get to -- from the Munich Hauptbahnhof you take a train for about 20 mins, then hop off at the town train station (Dachau is a town as well) and then take a bus for another 10 minutes to reach the site.

We arrived a little after the 9am opening; it was already starting to get crowded even at that hour (our bus was packed). A good eighty to ninety percent of the visitors to Dachau are German school groups, which leads to a a rather odd sort of cognitive dissonnance -- somber visitors from abroad (mostly Americans, mostly older people, but a few families) alongside Germans teenagers doing the things that teenagers do together in big groups (laughing, chatting, taking selfies, goofing around, etc).

We spent about three hours there, although I think we probably could have stayed the entire day if we wanted to take in every last bit. The museum and the short film were the most interesting parts, the grounds and the buildings didn't really do all that much, given that so much of the original construction there had been torn down and then reconstructed later.

I feel as though I learned a fair amount about the Dachau camp itself -- I hadn't realized how many different categories of "undesirable" types were there: in addition to Jewish people there were also Poles, Russian prisoners, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, etc. There was even a group of men who had been fighters in the Spanish civil war (against Franco) -- they had wound up imprisoned in France and had then been transferred to Dachau later during the war.

A very grim/sad/chilling/creepy place, but in an odd way, also somehow sort of "ordinary" in a sense, tucked in and among the leafy Munich suburbs. In the film they had footage of Dachau residents coming to view what was actually going on inside the camp that they'd been living beside (taken at the time that the camp was liberated by the Americans).

We had a quick noodle lunch after getting back to Munich at an Asian place that Amy had spotted on one of our travels to/from the city center. I was glad to have a meal with a relatively short duration (with the more established restaurants it can be difficult to get in and out without spending 60, 90, 120 mins).

We split up for the afternoon -- Amy and Lydia headed off to an art museum, while Ethan and I hit the hotel gym (rode the exercise bike for an hour, then lifted weights).  I think we will shoot for a quiet evening tonight, nothing special planned.

Parasailing in Garmish-Partenkirchen

While strolling around in Mittenwald the previous day, we ran into a sign advertising tandem parasailing in Garmish-Partenkirchen (next town over, about a 30 min drive), so we decided to check it out. It took a while to get in touch with the woman running the show (she is very busy during the day and doesn't seem to answer her phone much), but in the evening we connected and made a reservation for the following morning.

Tandem parasailing works by taking an inexperienced flyer and strapping them into a two-person harness with "pilot" who actually knows what he or she is doing and can operate the equipment. It is kind of pricey (130+ euros a shot), so we decided that the kids could go but the adults would stay on the ground this time around.

Weather was good Sunday morning (the key factor is the wind-- has to be a calm day), so we hopped in the car and drove out to G.P.  They had their operation set up at the base of the Kreuzeck chairlift to the south of town (big skiing operation in the winter, but the lift still runs in the summer on a limited basis).

We met up with Edith, the leader of the outfit that we'd picked (Aerotaxi) and within only a few minutes she had lined up the "pilots" who would be flying the parasails with our kids. It was not especially difficult to notice the difference between the American way of doing these things (which would have involved lengthy safety lectures, prepayment of all funds, and pages + pages of liability forms to sign) with the European way, which essentially boiled down to "Ok, grab this bag and walk with me to the lift-- you can pay later".

Here are the kids on their way:

On the walk down from the lift we noticed this sign-- a museum devoted to people named Bob?

Photos are kind of mixed up from here on in -- first a sequence of shots taken by Ethan, who brought my camera along for his ride. At the top, getting set up:

Aloft:

 Now some more photos taken with Amy's phone:

Zugspitz, which is just to the east of Kreuzberg (and much bigger -- tallest peak in Germany, even though it doesn't really look like it from this perspective):

A shot of Ethan coming down:

... and landing:

Lydia descending:

Big smiles back on the ground:

It looked like a lot of fun -- I think the next time around I will be very tempted to try it myself!