Art is 80

(1) I am thinking about a subject for my next presentation for my Thursday morning breakfast group, which will probably be some time in the fall. It will probably be on the Jews of Alaska. 

What is there to say? I am sure I will find some interesting tidbits. After all, Alaska has had an important Jewish Senator, Ernest Gruening, and Anchorage, its largest city, has had two Jewish mayors. And the little known Slattery Plan (the historic basis for Michael Chabon’s novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union) proposed bringing refugees from Nazidom to four Alaskan cities, both to give the refugees a place to land, and to spur Alaskan development. We will see what else.

(2) What will Trump’s next move be in Iran? It has been reported that Secretary Hegseth and General Caine have so far pushed back on accelerating the war now. This is not surprising considering that Hegseth is running out of weapons and Caine has no idea what will be required for a victory that would end the conflict.

By the way, how is it that the greatest military power in the world is running out of weaponry, when places like Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and even Iran and Yemen can seem to fight on and on? It does seem strange.

(3) We picked up the new Prius yesterday, and it is a very attractive shade of red called Supersonic Red, a replacement for the earlier red tone, Hypersonic Red. Great minds at work here. It is also very sleek and cute, and is rated to get 57 miles per gallon.

Because I was most interested in non-plug-in fuel efficiency, this was my choice, and we didn’t consider anything else. I didn’t even test drive the car.

What surprises me most is the differences between the 2019 and 2026 models. It is not like driving an updated 2019. It is a different car altogether. And it will take some getting used to.

The 2026 Prius seems to be smaller. In fact, it is a tad longer and wider (just a tad), but it is lower and sleeker. This apparently does not affect the front seats, but makes for less head room in the back. This means that back seat passengers will no longer say, “Boy, is there a lot of room back here.”

What is really different is the dashboard, completely unrelated to the 2019. It will take some getting used to. It used to be that there were four ways to display mileage – how far I have driven on my current trip, how far the car has driven altogether, and two other measures, called A and B, which I used on road trips to calculate how far we had driven that day and how far we had driven on the trip as a whole. These two additional measures, A and B, don’t seem to be there any more. This is one example.

On the other hand, the screen is larger and placed a bit higher and displays GPS maps, which can be operated by touch screen or voice, so I can throw away the device into which I would place my phone. That is a big improvement.

On the third hand, the Prius several years ago eliminated the rear window wiper. We will see how much I miss that. Generally, it has been said that the newer models go for form over function, while the earlier ones did the opposite.

I should add that the new Prius gives you four ways to drive your car – ECO, Normal, Sport, and EV. Push a button and you go from one to another. ECO gives you most fuel efficiency. Sport gives you most zip. This is new.

(4) Finally, a shout out to Erna Marcus, who discovered that the official plural of Prius is Prii, and that it was the result of a Toyota sponsored poll from 2012. “Who knew?”, I responded to the news. Erna answered, “Google did.”

Our major activity today will be to head out to Jim Coleman Toyota to pick up our new Prius LE and turn in our six year old Prius LE. It has done us will and I trust it will be treated well by Coleman and restored to its original condition before being placed in the hands of someone who really wants a well-loved 2019 vehicle.

We own our current Prius, and we are leasing the new one. That creates a kind of magic because it means, without putting down any cash (only our old car), we will sign a three year lease, paying under $250 per month for our new car. And the new car will come not only with a three year warranty for repairs with parts and labor, but will also cover the new car’s standard maintenance. On the old car, it seemed that every time I took it to be serviced (twice a year or so), I came away with a bill for servicing and replacements in the $500 to $700 range, so as I look at it, this new car is almost free. (Of course, when our three year lease ends……)

Why a Prius? Well, we have had, I think, five of them and they have all been comfortable to drive and have saved us quite a bit on gas. Our new Prius will has an EPA (EPA?) estimate of 57 MPG. No other car, other than an electric one that you have to charge and charge and charge, has that kind of mileage. I looked at the actuals on our current car last night. Over the 65,000 miles, the car tells me that we have driven at a rate of 56+ MPG, so we should at least equal that.

We are getting the baseline Prius – interestingly, as you look at the three more expensive models, your gas mileage estimates go down. So what would be the point? If we, for example, went up to the next level, the price goes up about 20% and you get a heated steering wheel, heated front seats, power front seats, and a skylight that you cannot open. That is it. Except for the power seats, I don’t see the point. And scooting the seat forward or back without electronic assistance doesn’t seem worth a 20% price hike. Oh, yes, you also get leather, rather than cloth, upholstery inside. To me, that is a negative, not a benefit. The MPG estimates on the more expensive model goes down from 57 to 52 MPG.

Our current Prius is white. For whatever reason, Toyota does not give Prius buyers many choices – now it is limited to white, sort of white, pretty much white, gray, sort of gray, pretty much gray, black, sort of black, pretty much black, red and blue. I wanted a color. My first choice was blue, my second choice was red. The dealer could not find a blue LE within a reasonable distance, but found a red one in Turnersville, New Jersey. Turnersville, by the way, is, I think, the only town in New Jersey that I have never heard of. I think it is near Philadelphia. The car was (I hope) driven down here last night and will be in pristine condition when we go to get it in a few hours.

The dealer sent this picture last evening, when the car was on its way down.

Other than that, not much to report, I guess. Trump looked pitiful (and sounded more pitiful) at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last night, and mentalist Oz Pearlman did his normal tricks, but seemed somewhat out of sorts. Maybe he always does, I don’t know. But he did last night. Of course, he had a tough crowd to deal with. Did you watch? It was some of the most boring TV I have seen in some time. My guess is that Donald, who sat through the whole thing, wished he were somewhere (anywhere) else. Melania didn’t come, nor to did J.D., nor Marco R. The crowd, they say, was smaller than at the original aborted dinner, but I guess that is because of the change in venue from the Hilton to the Waldorf Astoria. The Hilton gets rented so far in advance that I did not think they would be able to set aside their large ballroom on such short notice. The Waldorf, which I have heard is struggling and still bears the stigma of having been the Trump International, was, I guess, more available, but with a smaller room.

The topic of the presentation at my Thursday morning breakfast group yesterday was the story of King Leopold II of Belgium who wound up as the proprietor of the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo, Zaire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The territory was one of the remaining parts of Africa not claimed as a colony by a European empire (or would-be empire) and Leopold felt Belgium was being left out. But Leopold was not an absolute monarch; he was a constitutional monarch, and the Belgian parliament, or whatever it was, refused to go along with his idea for Belgium to claim ownership of this vast territory (by vast, the DRC today is about 1/3 larger than the state of Alaska). So Leopold decided to take the territory for his own, and he did, with the help of Henry M. Stanley (not his real name – of Dr. Livingstone, I presume fame). And he did, and held it as a personal possession for decades before Belgium finally decided to take it as a colony of the country.

Because my mind always goes back to the same topic, it reminded me of Donald Trump. And in particular, Donald Trump’s takeover , or presumed takeover, of Gaza, when he declared that an extra-legal organization that he founded would take over control of the area with contributions from many countries and that he, Donald John Trump, would be in charge and run it. The United States was not going to run Gaza, the United Nations certainly was not going to run it. Donald Trump was.

And you can also look at Venezuela and, in futuro, Cuba. The United States Congress has not, I do not think, passed any laws giving the United States any control over the independent country of Venezuela, but Donald John Trump says that he (or in this case maybe “we”, but who knows what “we” means to royalty like Trump) runs Venezuela, through his agent the Secretary of Energy, Chris White (whoever he is). And if Donald John Trump’s blockade of Cuba works and Cuba succombs, Donald John Trump will also presumably personally run Cuba, without any American legal help, through his factotum, Marco Rubio.

I have recently spoken about the book I was reading The Remaking of Italy, published in 1941, and how the description of Mussolini’s governing Italy was so similar to descriptions of Trump governing the United States. Fascism is fascism, and power is power. And yesterday, Edie was reading a review of the new Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey, where the reviewer said that Nolan was for sure filming Homer’s epic poem, but that he was doing it in a way that made it a story about Trump’s United States.

Yes, everything reminds everyone about Trump. But I want to get back to King Leopold, who ruled Belgium for over 40 years, and who, when his government refused to agree with something he wanted to do, just went ahead and did it anyway, and presumably did things by whim as they occurred to him. (I really don’t know anything about Leopold other than what I put in the first paragraph above, by the way, so I am sort of making the rest of it up.)

Look at Saudi Arabia. One day last week, I said that I thought that Spokane was weird. Well, if Spokane is weird, it is nothing compared to Saudi Arabia, a family run kingdom awash in oil, attempting to modernize and diversify. The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States has always been a bit unusual, from the days of Aramco (originally, joint venture between the kingdom and Standard Oil of California), through the various interconnections with the Bush family, the role of Saudis on 9-11, the refusal to let Jews into the country, the spread of Wahabi Islam, and the killing of Khashoggi.

Donald John Trump has tried to be friendly with new Saudi leadership and recently it was announced that we were going into a relationship with the country that would let them refine uranium for a peaceful (presumably) nuclear program without safeguards. It was announced that an agreement had been reached (again without any Congressional role) and would be signed, and then, presumably by whim, Donald John Trump decided that he wouldn’t sign it unless the Saudis agreed to recognize and established normal relations with Israel. All of a sudden, the deal was, it seems, no deal, and Donald John Trump says it was never something that should have been made public at all. He apparently blames his Secretary of Energy, or at least the Energy Department, for leaking the whole arrangement prematurely. Do you think Secretary Chris White (whoever he is) was too busy running Venezuela?

At any rate, the mess continues. Iran “who really is desperate to make a deal” is refusing to make a deal, oil prices are up, etc., etc.

I have a busy day ahead, so will stop now. Sorry this is a bit disjointed. So am I. Trying to buy a new car, and my back and forth with the dealer has been strange. As strange as Spokane? As strange as Saudi Arabia? In short…..yes.

Zohran Mamdani is 34 years old. That is too young to be mayor of New York City, and that explains a lot of things.

Digression. Of course, he is not the youngest person in history to take on positions of major responsibility. Look at what Alexander the Great did before dying at 32, and look at what Jesus did before dying at 33. End of digression.

But being 34 could explain his intemperate call for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York to address the United Nations.

I am pretty sure he was not surprised that he did not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu and ship him off to The Hague. But he said he would do it, setting off an unnecessary firestorm, and giving Trump the opportunity to ridicule him and to, once again, show the Democrats to be a party of radical, lunatic, antisemitic leftists.

It also once again threw the Jews into a central place in American politics, which is the last place they should want to be. But there we are.

Of course, if Mamdani is too young to be where he is, perhaps Netanyahu at 76 (like Trump at 80) is too old to be where he is. But that is another story for another day.

Israel has made a lot of mistakes in recent years. One, of course, was permitting a cascade of security failures that allowed the devastating Hamas atttacks in October 2023. There is no reason that attack occurred with such severity. Had Israel paid attention to its own sophisticated security apparatus, it probably would have been nipped in the bud. Of course, a true internal investigation into what went wrong has been stymied by Netanyahu and the Knesset which he controlled.

And Mamdani and many others, including many scholars and Jewish scholars, believe Israel’s response has been genocidal. This is, to me, unimportant, because “genocide” is a word which clearly has ambiguous definitions, and whether or not Israel was/is committing genocide depends on the definition you are using.

But, genocide or not, many, including me, condemn Netanyahu and his government for their response, just as we condemn Hamas for its attack, which can also be called genocidal. I do not know if Mamdani has called the Hamas attack genocidal, but he has more than once called it a “horrific war crime”.

Mamdani has also said that a two state solution does not seem workable. This is now a mainstream thought, one I agree with, and one that is hard to disagree with in 2026. Whose fault is that? Probably everyone’s.

In 2018, Israel’s basic laws were changed to formally denote Israel as a Jewish State. Mamdani thinks that this was a mistake (as do I), just as I (and I am sure Mamdani) believe that calling the United States a Christian country is wrong. (Mamdani, by the way, says that he also disagrees with countries, such as Saudi Arabia, which elevate Islam.) Israel is 20% Arab and those Arabs are and always have been Israeli citizens and should be treated fully as such.

One of the important  Palestinian positions is that those displaced from Israel in 1948 and their descendants should have the right to return to Israel. This is a pisition which Mamdani appears to accept (to what extent, I do not know), as do many American Democratic Socialists, and one I strongly disagree with, unless Israel succeeds in expanding its borders into Gaza and the West Bank (something I also disagree with), which it might.

The American Jews are in an awkward position, the Democratic Party is in an awkward position, both caused by the actions of Israel and the responses of part of the left wing of the Democratic Party. This is very unfortunate when the most important domestic issue is the defeat of the Republicans. And Mamdani, and those Democrats who agree with his positions on the Middle East, are simply making this more difficult. As, by the way, is AIPAC, also caught in the middle, which has inserted itself into Democratic party contests, again bringing unwanted attention to Jews in America and feeding antisemitism.

I start with an obvious admission. I only know what I know about this subject, only what I see in or on media. Having said that……

I understand the difficulty even a rational Congress would have with the administration’s latest request for another $67.1 billion for the war in Iraq (the money presumably is to carry out the war going forward, and to replenish some of the military weaponry and equipment used so far). If you add this to the money contained in previously approved funding for the Department of Defense (a/k/a Department of War), some, or much, of which is unspent apparently, and add all of that to the money being requested for the upcoming fiscal year, you are talking about real money.

On the other hand, we are engaged in active fighting with Iran, we have troops and equipment and bases all over the Middle East, and we have used up (or have had destroyed) materiel that we need for our defense. We need to protect what we have, and we need to get what we need.

Here is part of what I don’t know. Is there someone on some Congressional staff who is really studying the requests of the administration and who can look at the requested $67.1 billion supplemental, and say: we need this, but not this, and that but not so much of that, and so forth? Or is it simply going to be an up or down vote? Is there anyone in the employ of any Congressional committee whose job it is to examine the overall budgeting and expenditures of the DOD/DOW and make ongoing recommendations to the elected officials? I don’t know, but there should be.

Of course, in order for this to be accomplished (and a big task it is or would be), you need to have the cooperation of the administration, and this administration is not at all big on cooperation, and it gets even more complicated when you get to matters of secrecy, necessary for our defense. And you compound this even further when one or another side can not be trusted, when amounts budgeted or set aside for certain items are not spent or our used in different ways that intended. And finally, as we all know (or think we know), the DOD/DOW has never been audited (and maybe for some of the reasons set forth above) can not be.

So it may be that the money being requested will simply be given to “protect our troops”, although how each dollar would protect any single troop may be hard to detect.

With all this being said, I have to add that, as I watched Secretary Hegseth be queried by the Senate Appropriation Committee Democrats yesterday, I was disappointed at most of the questioning (as usual). There were exceptions: Senators Ossoff, van Holland, and Peters. But by and large, the questions did not probe sufficiently the issues.

For instance, I don’t think anyone asked about the effect of these requests on the national debt. I don’t think anyone concentrated on whether these additional defense expenditures would result in an decrease in other expenditures in order to keep the national debt from climbing more than it has to.

There were some questions as to what would happen if the supplemental funds were not approved. The answers were that there would be other ways to support the most important things, but other matters necessary for our defense would be shortchanged or ignored. This requires more probing, of course, and I saw no sign that anyone was going to follow up and ask for details.

The other issue related to how the war was going to end. Obviously, no one can predict the future and, as one of those testifying said, “the enemy has a vote”, but what is clear is that the definition of what would constitute a victory is missing, and that this makes everything very difficult.

At first, there was regime change, and making it impossible for the Iranian military to “engage in combat” and keeping Iran from developing a nuclear bomb at any time in the future. Now regime change is off the table, and while the administration claims that Iran no longer has any military capacity, Iran certainly acts like it does and, although Hegseth may think this is no more than flies or gnats flying around, they cause real harm and there is no sense yet of this ending. And, then of course, President Trump himself has said that it would be expected that Iran would be able to keep some missile capacity, although Hegseth, like most Trump officials, says, in effect, that “Trump, who always means what he says never means what he says.”

But what does it mean that we will fight until Iran can no longer ever ever ever have a nuclear weapon, or maybe any sort of nuclear program? When can we possibly say that this goal (according to Hegseth, the most important and most consistent goal) has been met?

And then, of course, there is the question of the Strait of Hormuz, about which enough has been said.

Trump himself has no idea of what to do, except “keep ’em guessing” as to our next steps, and bully them into……into what? Today, he tried a trick from old cowboy movies, or Netflix thrillers: Until you do what I want, I am going to kill one of you every ten minutes!

For Trump, the president with a disturbed adolescent mind, it was: Every time you attack a commercial ship, Iran, I am going to blow up a bridge or an urban power plant!! So there!! “Thank you for paying attention.” Statements like this must drive the military, who rely on set goals, which enable them to make the best strategic and tactical choices, crazy. Here their tactical choices are being made for the, the concept of strategy is being ignored or overridden, and of course the goals have never really been set, or have not been set in way that are, in any event, achievable.

Meanwhile, China bides its time with infinite patience and worldwide success, chuckling to each other as they discuss the United States: “Gee, they really are living in interesting times.”

I was tired enough yesterday and I had a number of post-vacation things to do, so I did not leave the house. But I did have a chance to do something I rarely do. A copy of the latest edition of the Yale Law Report was in our mailbox and I decided, during a period when I felt incapable of doing anything else, to scroll through it and see what’s going on at the law school I graduated from almost 60 years ago and which, except for its architecture, is hard for me to recognize, it is so much busier than it was then.

The first 30 pages of the journal were devoted to events at the school, activities of various student clinics, and activities of the faculty. Remarkable stories about advances in working on potential legal framework changes for palliative health care, about how to regain adherence to the rule of law, on potential settlement terms of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the relationship between law and technology (including AI), how to advance various forms of environmental protection, how to slow down use of the Supreme Court’s “Emergency Docket”, how to cope with federal actions that threaten local public safety, programs to introduce Yale students to foreign legal systems and to introduce foreign legal students to the American legal system, how to analyze the effects of tariffs, how to increase laws internationally to protect women from violence, issues regarding drug patents, protection of immigrants, denial of benefits for certain Agent Orange survivors, and so on.

Virtually every one of these activities seem to me to be directed to the public good; there are very, very few that I would possibly question. The issue also discussed 18 books written by faculty or others close to the school, and had a number of feature articles, in addition the usual class notes and condolences.

I assume that the magazines published by many or most other law schools could have an equal number of activities that should be applauded. As do all of the medical schools, and other professional schools serving the various interests of mankind.

My question is a simple one. With all of this good work going on, hard and good work, why is the world in such miserable condition? And I don’t mean this as a silly or facetious question. It’s a serious one. With all of this work going through the efforts of clearly very bright people……why is everything so screwed up?

I am now reading a book titled The Remaking of Italy, written under the pseudonym of “Pentad”, and published in 1941 with Mussolini in control, and World War II flaring. It is a remarkable book in that it tells the story of the Italan peninsula from pre-Roman times until the then present, and the political changes are constant. Some for the better, more for the worse, but throughout all of this political uproar, life, for those able to keep alive, keeps going. Books are written, art is created, science makes discoveries, and so on.

So, today is not any different. Errant political leaders suppress progress for many, but the world goes on. People do what people do.

Under Mussolini (the strongman who could not resist the stronger man from the Third Reich), and in a war where Italians knew they would be a loser even if their side won, it was probably hard to glimpse a better future. As “Pentad” said:

“It seems that, against the growing and irrepressible aspirations towards solidarity, liberty, and justice, there frequently arise resisting forces which try to paralyze those aspirations,and often succeed in so doing. When this happens, the idea of Lex succombs to that of Rex and the individual loses every guarantee.”

We are not living in Mussolini’s Italy and World War II is long over. But we are living in Trump’s America, and we all (should) see the leadership parallels. “Pentad” makes it clear that this too will pass. But “Pentad” also makes it clear that it may not pass tomorrow, and that it may not pass in time for the current generation to see it pass. “Pentad” also makes it clear that it will not disappear on its own, and not by external forces, but by internal actions when the time is ripe. Mussolini will die, the war will end one way or another, but the “remaking” of Italy will be up to the Italians. A lesson to remember.

By the way, you may wonder who “Pentad” was. First, as you may know, a “pentad” is a group of five somethings. In this case, it was a collaboration of five authors, Italian and British who felt the necessity of hiding their identities. From what I see, today in 2026, no one can yet identify them.

We got home yesterday at about 3:30. Our trip is over. Back to the real world for a month or so, and then it is off to Maine to wrap up the summer. Hopefully, today will be quiet here. A recovery day, after our unexpectedly extended return.

When I go downstairs this morning, I should find two newspapers. On our 16 day trip, I only saw one newspaper. None on the boat at all, and none on land. If I wanted to read a newspaper, I guess I could have found one at CVS. Certainly not in any of the hotels.

So you can imagine my shock when yesterday, on the plane from Chicago, the man sitting next to me in seat 11D, began reading the New York Times page by page, line by line. I glanced at his newspaper and, although it was Sunday, he was reading the Times from Thursday. At first, I had no explanation, but then I realized why. It probably took him three days to find the Thursday edition.

Over the course of the last week, I did turn on MS NOW or CNN a few times. But not on the boat. Neither channel was available on Holland America’s Eurodam. There were only BBC and CNN International as news channels. That was another surprise.

There were few signs of politics anywhere. And we saw no signs of the upcoming midterm elections. I had expected to see evidence of the big Senate election in Alaska, where former Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola is looking to flip the seat currently held by her Republican opponent Dan Sullivan. But……nothing. At least, yet.

Another thing about the places we visited is that the minority populations are truly minorities. Yes, we were on Indian reservations, and the indigenous populations are “honored” everywhere, but the overall numbers of native Americans is quite small. And while Seattle’s population is about 8% Black (its metro population only about 6%), while the metro DC population is 24%, the Black population elsewhere is hard to count. Even Spokane, the only other sizeable city we visited, is less than 2% Black. And the Hispanic population is also relatively small. Only the Asian population in Seattle is by percentage larger than in DC. As for Hispanics, the DC population by percentage is three times larger.

I was impressed by most of the cities we visited, although in Alaska, I must say that Ketchikan and Sitka were more appealing than Juneau. Seattle always impresses and, as I said earlier, Spokane seemed just plain weird (” i after e, except after w”). Wenatchee and Kalispell were delightful, but physically Missoula was surprisingly unimpressive. This included the hodgepodge campus of the University of Montana. Let me  put it this way. If I were interested in becoming an architect, and if Montana had an architecture school, I would not apply.

Do I have more to say about the trip? Sure. Will I say it? Not today.

There would be advantages living in a place like Missoula. For one thing, when you turn in your rental car, you simply park it and give your key to a fellow inside the terminal. When you check in for your flight, there is no line and agent is willing to do everything for you. At TSA, there is no line and a friendly TSAgent. You look on the schedule board and you see there are about 8 flights leaving in the morning, and only eight gates. From your waiting chair, you watch other take offs.

I will abbreviate the rest. Our 12:34 flight left Missoula at approximately 5:40. First, there was a 2 hour delay because “all flights were grounded at O’Hare”, then another 2 hours because our crew was timed out and they had to get another crew into Missoula, and another 45 minutes because we missed our window to take off.

That meant we missed our connection to DC obviously and we weren’t going to get into O’Hare until after 9 and the only available dc flights would have got us to Dulles around midnight, so they automatically booked us on a 6 a.m. flight, which, with Michelle’s help from home (it was chaos trying to change anything in Missoula), we rebooked at 11:15. So we should be home at about 2:30 p.m. at National.

Of course, our bags are at O’Hare and we are pretty barebones here. We hope our bags are put on the 11:15 and not the 6 a.m., but we will find out when it is too late to do anything about that.

We are at the O’Hare Super 8 because we didn’t want to pay $400-$500, apparently a normal airport last minute rate, but the O’Hare Super 8 turns out to be 8 miles from the airport. United did not give anyone hotel vouchers because “the delay was  weather related”, but our taxi driver said there was no ground stop and the weather was fine.

More to come, I am sure.

P.S. Edie told me there were even more typos than usual. I am sure you understand. But I just corrected (most of) them.

We have wrapped up our last day in Montana. We fly home on Saturday.

We started the day at the Smokejumper Visitor Center, near the Missoula airport. Smokejumpers are federal employees whose job is to parachute near active forest fires to control spread of otherwise uncontrollable fires. Missoula has the largest smokejumper training school in the country, and the Center maintains both a museum and  gives tours of smokejumper equipment.

Smokejumpers are trained in fighting and control of forest fires, must be able to parachute into wild country, and carry 100+ pound packs for miles. And you can’t just decide to become a smokejumper. You must already have years of firefighting experience. With all of this, two facts struck me as remarkable. First, 20% of smokejumpers are female. Second, in over 85 years of smokejumping, there have been only three parachuting deaths.

From there, we drove an hour from Missoula to visit Garnet, which was, in the 1890s, a town of 1000, but has been empty for more than 100 years. It is about 40 miles from Missoula, and about ten miles off a highway on a largely unpaved road.

The road to Garnet had no restaurants, and it was after 1 p.m. so we decided to head about 15 minutes in another direction and go to a Mexican restaurant with a 4.8 rating on  Google. Disappointment, although another beautiful lake side drive. It was just ordinary. But our friend Frida was hanging around.

We then went to  two museums, the Missoula Museum of Art downtown and the Montana Museum of Culture on the University of Montana campus.

Here is part of what we saw in the art museum which has exhibits focusing on indigenous art.

And on the University campus

Our last vacation dinner was at a wonderful informal Italian restaurant, Ciao Mambo. Everything was delicious, and the portions were unbelievably large. I ate half of mine. Here is what sadly will be thrown out.

Now….fill up and then turn in the car, get on a plane, and hopefully get home on time.

Oh. And the Nats scored 23 runs last night

We don’t fly home until tomorrow (Saturday), but yesterday (Thursday) was our last travel day. We had a good-bye dinner with Josh and Michelle last night because they are flying home tomorrow, while we have one more day to explore Missoula, the home of the University of Montana and the only city in Montana which supports Democratic candidates 2 to 1.

Our meal was at Plonk, a downtown restaurant. We were all happy with our meals.

But the day itself was complex. We started in Kalispell, and headed north about halfway to Glacier Park to visit Hungry Horse Dam, one of the tallest in the country. It turned out that the visitor’s center was closed, and we could only see the dam from the security entrance to the dam grounds.

No problem, though, because the ride was so nice.

We then stopped at a roadside store where you could by a $600 hat made of skunk fur, and did a drive-by by another roadside store, this one sporting two Confederate flags (in Montana).

The road from Hungry Horse to Missoula led back through Kalispell, but I decided to detour through Whitefish for no real reason.

Maybe everyone knows it but us, but Whitefish is nothing like the other Montana towns we have traveled through. It was like being transported to another planet, where the stores are too expensive, but the tourists look like long term members of the billionaire class. I felt like we were outclassed by far, and I don’t know that I had that feeling ever before.

We went into a western themed women’s clothing store where some dresses were more than $5000, and where they were having a designer trunk show (presumably for female billionaires under 30) and which had a fancy back room bar.

Other stores had $60 t-shirts, and $100 short sleeve shirts.

Whitefish also has a railroad station designed to mirror a Glacier Park lodge with a city history museum inside. The museum has a bust of an Indian, whose face looks like it could start talking to you at any minute.

We had lunch just outside Whitefish, and took off for Missoula, thinking we would get here by 4 or so. We drove by Flathead Lake, 30 miles long, and filled with roadside cherry orchards, entered the Flathead Indian Reservation and then saw a sign to a bison range, which looked like something we shouldn’t skip. We did not realize that visiting this extraordinary facility would take over an hour. We saw bison, both at a far distance and up closer.

And we saw this fellow, a wild pronghorn.

The bison range is run by the Reservation and is an ecological triumph. The views are also magnificent.

For our last day here? 40% chance of rain. No agenda. We will see.

Yesterday morning we drove from Kalispell to the western entrance of Glacier National Park, about 45 minutes away. We were expecting massive crowds and bumper to bumper traffic on the Going to the Sun Road, a 50 mile drive that runs between the east and west gateways to the park, climbing to over 6500 feet at the Logan Pass at the Continental Divide. But to our surprise, although there were large crowds everywhere, the road itself was never affected.

I published a group of landscape photos yesterday afternoon. In addition to enjoying the mountains and valleys, we stopped at one of the lodges, built in 1914.  Here is the lodge (outside and in), the lake behind the lodge, the deer who wandered into the lake, and one of the rehabbed 1936 shuttles that can guide you through the park.

When we reached the east exit from Glacier, we drove for about 30 minutes where it seemed we were still in a park. Beautiful mountains, lakes and rivers and no sign of human development.

When we finally left this wild landscape, we found ourselves in the town of Browning, on the western edge of the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. Driving into Browning was driving into the 1950s. The only restsurants were a Johnny Taco and a Subway (we chose Subway,). Everything was dilapilated, the small houses, the businesses and the streets. Wikipedia says that almost 50% of those who live on the reservation live below the poverty line.

But the reservation does have a museum. It isn’t theirs but is a federal museum.

And it contains contemporary art by tribe members, and an absolutely fascinating collection of Indians clothing, tools, weapons, and so forth, mainly from the 19th and early 20th century. For some reason, photography is not allowed. Because the collection was so interesting, I broke that rule with one photo.

All real, original costumes. And this is just a small part of this museum that has been in Browning since 1941.

The museum and, yes, the neighboring casino seem to have no effect on the rest of the town. Sad, sad, sad.

After our Subway lunch, we had dinner in Kalispell at Moose’s Tavern, which had been recommended by our chef in Spokane. It was jammed with customers, it has virtually no illumination, you order your pizza at a window and your drinks at the bar, you have to find a table and clean it off, there is sawdust on the floor, and boy is it noisy. And I didn’t like the pizza.

And you can get your hair cut next door.

That’s it. Tomorrow, off to Missoula. Our last stop..

Glacier National Park, in northwest Montana, on the Canadian border is such a special place. Here you go. No narrative. Only pictures from today.

Add some wild flowers

These are some of mine. Edie’s were, as usual, better. Maybe tomorrow.

I said yesterday that we found Spokane surprisingly weird. Also that the chef last night at our hotel’s Dona Margarita , a Spokane native, agreed that it was a bit weird, and said it was paranoid and had an inferiority complex.  Today, I would add one more thing. I think that Spokane is less than the sum of its parts.

Today, we visted its arboretum, its main park, and its downtown river park (home of a series of waterfalls on the Spokane River), each of which would be welcome in any city.  We visited Bing Crosby’s boyhood home, now on the campus of Gonzaga University. We looked at neighborhoods of attractive homes built more than 100 years ago, include some which are very elegant.

We saw the sculpture of energetic runners downtown.

We had breakfast at First Street Coffee, ultra modern, very large, right downtown, with maany ways to enjoy  coffee, and a limited selection of home baked pastries.

The shop had an interesti g sign posted on its door.

But the city is filled with people who appear to be homeless, and buildings poorly maintained. It just appears……well, weird.

Perhaps we should just laugh at it.

Leaving Spokane, the scenery is pleasant and before you know it, you are in Idaho, and a neighborhood that seems pretty uninteresting. But as you go north, there are large lakes, and pretty soon you are in the clearly prosperous resort city of Sandpoint.

We had a delicious lunch at Bixby’s (I had a bowl with pulled bbq chicken, corn, tomatoes, couscous, and something else), but passed a number of troubling signs, including

And after we headed east from Sandpoint, we saw

as well as

and more.

After we entered Montana, the scenery improved. Hills, mountains, lakes. And then we were at the Kalispell Hampton Inn, and had a delicious dinner at its neighbor, the very highly rated Himolayan Kitchen, where the four of us had tanduri chicken, samosa chat, vegetable korma, saag aloo, and garlic naan.

Tomorrow we go to Glacier National Park.

From Seattle, you start out at Puget Sound, pass through an exciting big city and its attractive suburbs, and before you can say Holland America, you are in the tall, craggy, rough edged Cascade Mountains where it always rains, and then all of a sudden you are in fairly barren hill country where it hardly ever rains, and then you are in beautiful farming country where it must rain just the right amount, and then you are in canyon country where you find Grand Coulee Dam where you don’t care if it  rains because you have dammed up more water than you need, and then you are back into farming country, and then you are in Spokane where (in the metro area) 500,000 people live and, as you look around downtown finding your hotel, you are not impressed.

I am telling you this because I was behind the wheel most of the day and did not take pictures of the scenery, like I was able to do before. If I had been able to take pictures of the farmland, they would look like this

And the Coulee Corridor, like this

Of course, I took a few. Like the roof of EZ’s in Wenatchee.

EZ’s, by the way, seems to be in trouble. A sign says you should write the mayor. But we are not sure why.

And then there is the Wilbur WA Visitor Center.

Maybe we should write that mayor, too. Unless Wilbur is the mayor.

We are staying at the Hotel Indigo downtown, which is a trendy redo of an old hotel. There are several like that in Spokane. Ours is railroad based and our room, like all (?) is railroad themed. Here is a view from the bed.

Spokane is, I believe, a bit weird. Our chef last night said it was just paranoid and had an inferiority complex.

This post is weird, too. Totally out of sequence. Like we did go to Grand Coulee Dam. It was a big part of the day. But it was hours ago, and I haven’t really mentioned it yet. Here it is.

And the guy who made it possible.

By the way, do you know they only give tours on the weekends? And that the Visitor Center is weird. And that it abuts a very large Indian reservation “where tribal law applies”. And that one of it closest neighbors is a casino?

The restaurant in our hotel gets poor reviews. We ate here anyway and our reviews are very good. Plus nice conversations with the chef and bartender. I had Oregon rockfish, served with anise infused rice and slices of blood oranges and radish slices and a little spinach, and I ended with shared huckleberry ice cream.

Lunch was at Dollie’s Diner in Wilbur. You order at the counter. Edie wanted her sandwich on whole wheat. The young guy at the counter told me the choices were white wheat and sourdough. I said “you don’t have whole wheat?” He said they had white wheat and sourdough

Michelle told me that she did not think he said “white wheat and sourdough”, but thought he said “white, wheat and sourdough”. I thought she may be right, so I said “is your wheat “whole wheat””, to which he said “I don’t know”. So I said that if the wheat was whole wheat, she would want that and if not, sourdough would be good. When it came, it was on white.

And, oh, yes, because this is Washington and not West Virginia, even in small towns, you see….

Last night, for the firstvl time, two things happened. First, I had two drinks at dinner. Second, I slept poorly. Ya think there might be a connection?

I feel so lucky to be on vacation and not have to report on either Lindsey Graham or the Nationals.

We spent last night in Wenatchee WA, and started the morning at the Pybus Public Market, a former steel processing plant near the Columbia River.

We had breakfast and visited various artisans and shops, including a nice woodworker of a certain age who made cheeseboards and serving trays, including some with three dimensional Eshel-like surfaces (sorry, no pictures), and a very nice and surprisingly large gourmet food market which, among other things, sold flavored balsamic vinegars and olive oils. This is just about half of their vinegars:

You could taste them and I was tempted to buy a couple of bottles, but the shipping costs were high.

We then walked a (very) short part of their 10 mile loop trail along the Columbia River  enjoying the weather, the art and the views.

And then we headed west through the same terrain we had crossed the day before and tried to go to Pinnacle Park until we saw what it involved. Can you see the Pinnacle hikers?

So we looked at more scenery.

And we drove on through beautiful fruit orchards (mile after mile) to Leavenworth, that touristy fake Bavarian village that seems to draw more tourists than it should.

I had a bratwurst at the München House, and delicious strudel at a bakery down the street.

Thrn it was another 15 miles or so to Lake Wenatchee, a beautiful, large lake with a park on one side, and many summer (?) houses on the other.

Tonight, fish and chips at the Railroad Ale House, and home to our home away from home.

And no, I don’t know why the lake was moved to the bottom of this post. WordPress sometimes has a mind of its own.

The boat pulled into Seattle before 7 this morning. We had a final breakfast in the main dining room and left the boat a little after 9, going through U.S. Customs, and then taking an Uber to Budget Rentals downtown where we picked up the Lincoln Navigator which we will have at an exhorbitant rate for a week as we drive to Montana.

The Navigator is Escalade size, which is not a problem, but its screens seem to be. Whatever you want to do, you need to do on the screen, and you probably need to take a 3 or 4 credit class in order too understand how to do the most basic things. But if you don’t mind any of that, you can push Drive, press the accelerator and go.

And we did, driving first to Bellvue to have brunch, our second meal of the day, with Edie’s first cousin once removed Cindy and her husband Danny Weiner. A nice brunch, conversation about family and Isrsel, and we were off again. Here we were:

Then, all of us but Hannah left heading east. Hannah stayed at Cindy’s until the rest of her family came back from camping in Olympic National Park.

We drove north through some fascinating Seattle suburbs to US 2, where we headed east through the Cascades on a beautiful road. I was driving, so I could take no pictures, but the mountains are tall and ragged, some are covered with trees and some not, and there are lakes and remarkably clear rivers.

We stopped in an interesting older town at the west end of our trip and had our third meal of the day, a late lunch at the Tijuana Restaurant, a highly rated, and small, Mexican restaurant run by the same couple for 32 years. If you are ever in Monroe, try to eat there.

After we drove through Stevens Pass, where the rivers started flowing east, not west, we came a large and very touristy Bavarian village surprisingly called Leavenworth, and passed a state park called Pinnacle, both of which we plan to visit tomorrow. And then we got to Wenatchee, where we will stay two nights.

In Wenatchee, we had our fourth meal, at McGlinns Pub. I had a delicious lamb burger with feta, and a glass of Oregon stout, brand name Cavaticus. I looked up the name, thinking it might be Indian, and discovered it was, in fact, not. Cavaticus is Charlotte’s last name in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Who knew? Not the waitress.

Wenatchee is east of the Cascades, and its hills are basically treeless, and more like buttes. Maybe they are buttes. I don’t know.

Wanatchee is on the Columbia River, and the opposite side of the river is East Wanatchee, which contains some beautiful neighborhoods, set high on the buttes. Hard to get good pictures, but the houses climb in bands, and have yards or decks with beautiful views. Like this (from about half way up):

We are now back at the hotel.

Oh! One more thing. I didn’t mention another small town we passed, Sultan. They were having the Sultan Shindig, with vendor tents on closed city streets. I bought a button:

The waitress at McGlinn’s liked it.

Holland America’s Eurodam from Seattle to Juneau and back with four intermediate stops. Large ship with 2100 passengers and 850 crew members.

1. The logistics of taking a boat this size on a one week trip are amazingly complex (see my immediately preceding post) and appear to have been carried out without a hiccup.
2. Traveling with 2000 strangers for a week is weird.
3. Only 15% were over 75, but I was surprised at how many came with walkers or wheelchairs and looked to be ill or fragile.
4. The food was much better than I thought it would be was both good news and bad, in that it was impossible not to eat much too much.
5. Especially on a cold weather cruise, exercise is hard to come by.
6. The housekeeping and wait staff are largely Indonesian. They are excellent, but they say good morning and thank you and smile too much and it gets annoying.
7. There are a lot of activities, but few I had any interest in.
8. Several private companies run on board promotions that I found annoying.
9. The bed was very comfortable, as were the bathroom and shower facilities. The staterooms were fine.
10. Everything was remarkably clean.
11. 50% of the crowd on this cruise were on an Evangelical trip with bible studies, etc. This made the trip, I assume, quieter than usual.
12. Perhaps because of the size of the ship, getting from place to place can be very confusing.
13. The prices in the ship store are surptisingly reasonable.

I probably have more thoughts that will come to mind. It was a good trip and an interesting experience. Do I like cruising? That may be the question, but I don’t have an answer. If you want to see coastal Alaska, you really need to go by boat. But this is a very big boat. I don’t know how it compares with a smaller boat where you may get to know more fellow travelers, or a warm weather cruise, or a river cruise. I have no better idea how I would like those than before I got on the Eurodam. But I may one day find out.

As I write, it is 4:30 p.m. on Friday. We are moving south, heading for a brief stop several hours from now at Victoria, on Vancouver Island, before a final stop in Seattle at 7 a.m. and a scheduled 9 a.m. disembarkation. We then will head to downtown Seattle where our confirmed rental car will hopefully be waiting, and we will drive to our cousin Cindy’s house in Bellevue, where we will enjoy lunch and meet up with Hannah’s husband Andrew and son Izzy, who have been visiting Andrew’s cousins and camping in Olympia National Park. More about all of that tomorrow.

We have been on the ship all day, starting with their last day Alaskan brunch instead of breakfast at 9. Even though it was early, I opted for the Alaska cod benny with creamed cabbage, Yukon potatoes, and an egg, along with some fresh berries. Now, cod benny is supposed to be a variation on eggs benedict (I looked that up), but this really wasn’t. The cabbage was delicious, as was the egg, and I  guess the fish was as well, but it was just too early for a big piece of baked cod. My sushi lunch was lighter and simpler, and it was topped off at the cake buffet that only happens once per cruise.

I had a piece of red velvet cake and didn’t finish it, but some people came away with three or four pieces.

This morning we went to a 45 minute program on how a ship like this operates, from its construction in Italy, near Venice, onward. I found  extraordinarily interesting how to run a ship with over 3000 passengers and crew members on board. How its many diesel engines generate power. How the ship is propelled and controlled, both from the engine room and the control room, with its many screens, alarms (5000 alarms), gauges, buttons and other devices. How the ship is provisioned with food and drink, how they rarely run out of anything and use up 90% or more of what comes aboard. How they vary how much and what type of food and drink comes on ship dependent on the characteristics of the passenger load. How the food is prepared by the ship’s 140 chefs. How all baked goods are baked on the ship at night (using one ton of flour each day) so that it is ready to be sent to the various restaurants by 5 a.m. How 180  tons of food is cooked on a one week trip, and how the waste is handled. How the water saving toilets work and what happens to the urine and feces. How the ship desalinates all the water it uses from the sea for all purposes and how it returns water to the sea. How the laundry operates, and the tailor shop. How the internet works on board the ship.

They covered a lot, but not  security. They did not talk about how they handle fires, or criminal activity. They also did not discuss medical facilities or personel, or if they have an on board morgue, which I assume they do. They didn’t talk about the shops, the promotions, the entertainment and athletic facilities, the children’s programs, or really even how the remarkable housekeeping works.

But it is all quite mindboggling when you think about it.

There are various promotions on board and today Michelle and I went to the art auction, presented by a Southfield MI gallery and its fast talking spokesman. We did not trust anything about it.

Edie and I then instead went to see the 2027 film Murder on the Orient Express, which was shown in one of the lounges. Watching that film was the worst experience of the trip for me by far. I thought we were going to watch the 1974 Albert Finney version, which I remember liking.

Tonight, our final dinner.

I am posting this earlier than usual because I am planning on a different post early in the morning with general thoughts about this, our first cruise.

Ketchikan, located 230 miles south of Juneau and 700 miles north of Seattle, is very cute. Very, very cute. Where Juneau has little personality, and Sitka is an attractive small town, Ketchikan is cute. Probably cuter than my few pictures make it appear.

It is not the capital of the state, it does not have a 10,000 year Tlinget or 200+ year Russian history. It is a town built in the early 20th century to process the salmon that run up the river through town (there were 13 canneries), and its second biggest industry a century ago seems to have been the thirty prostitution houses built to support the single men who came to work in the canneries.

Today, tourism is the biggest industry and the buildings which used to serve as brothels now serve as gift shops and restaurants. The population is about the same as Sitka’s but it has a different vibe.

A couple of stories.

1. There is a cafe called the New York Cafe, which was (maybe still is) owned by a Japenese-American family. At one time, Ketchikan was residentially segregated (Whites on one side, Native Americans on the other), and the Japanese-Americans were forced to live with their indigenous neighbors. I think that was changed and they were allowed to live elsewhere. Until World War II came, and they were moved to an internment camp.

2. We talked with a young woman who works at (owns?) an upscale shop called Ketchikan Dry Goods. She has lived here all of her 36 years and we were talking about life in the city (she rates it A+++), and then we got to her 14 year old son, and then to her 32 year old brother who came back from 10 years in the military with pretty severe PTSD, and then — whoa! — to her parents….both of whom died in a house fire only two months ago. Whoa!

Digression. Hannah broke away from the rest of us this morning to have breakfast with a graduate school friend who lives here and teaches in the middle school. She got a full island tour. End of digression.

Digression #2. Edie and Michelle met a bear while walking up a street right in the middle of town.

He was friendly and agreed to pose for the picture without asking for anything in return.

Other Ketchikan tidbits. Senator Lisa Murkowski’s home town. And the place where Ben Loman had an appointment in Death of a Salesman.

The food on the ship has been excellent (to my surprise) and last night we went to the Tamarind, the Asian specialty restaurant, and splurged on a premium dinner. I started with a Thai lemongrass soup with wontons, and then had two Mongolian lamb chops, bok choy, Thai fried rice, and Asian eggplant. Dessert was a trio of three sorbets – lychee, lemon-basil, and yuzu.

At 9:30 was the “Chocolate Surprise”. About 30 Indonesian servers walked through Deck 3 carrying trays of chocolate squares, white chocolate squares, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate macarons, and (the best of them all) chocolate covered cheerios.

Today (Friday) will be our last full day at sea. Saturday morning we dockk back in Seattle and then our week on land begins.

We pulled into Sitka at about 9 and were told that we would spend the rest of our lives there if we weren’t on the boat by 3:30. Sitka, which has fewer than 9000 year round residents is the largest city in the United States by area. It is also one of the oldest American cities, with evidence of Tlingit habitation 10,000 years ago. Sitka was the largest city when Russia claimed Alaska, and served as the first American capital of the Alaska Territory until the capital was moved to Juneau.

Sitka is located on Baranof island, there are only 14 miles of road, the weather is milder than anywhere else in the state. Baranof has about 10,000 humans and 3000 bears.

A catastophic fire ravaged much of downtown Sitka about 50 years ago. The Russian Orthodox Cathedral, originally built in the 1840s by Finnish workmen, has been fully restored.

Services are held 5 days a week. They last more than two hours. Unless you are elderly or disabled, you stand up the entire time.

Little is left of Russian Sitka. Two other buildings. One, the Russian Bishop’s House (which you can tour, but we didn’t) and the other, a downtown building where you can see some original 18th century logs, but the rest was rebuilt in the 19th century.

In addition, we visited the Fortress of the Bear, several miles from downtown, a bear rescue operation, basically helping cubs who have lost their mothers and would be helpless alone in the wild. The bears, which are trained to respond to the keepers, are well fed and cared for, it appears. They clearly do not mind humans.

The bears are in an enclosed area surrounded by forest and the forest is home to several bald eagles.

We also went to the historical museum, dedicated to Tlingit life. I could see some of the berry varieties I had been hearing about. And totems.

Then back to the ship where, it being Holland America, it was Orange Night.

But I will do it!

We spent the first part of today at Glacier Bay National Park in the boat. A naturalist and a park ranger spoke. I didn’t listen. I just took pictures.

Then, we went to Icy Strait Point. A guide spoke. I didn’t listen. I just took pictures.

We were told we were here on a very good, and somewhat rare, weather day. We were also told that everything in Alaska was not peaches and cream.

Bears and poisonous plants. It’s nature’s way of keeping down its human population.

I better start listening.

I have to say that the day promised to be a disaster. We were to pull into Juneau a little after noon and be able to disembark by 12:30. We did not have to be back on the boat until 9:30. Nine hours to see the town. What could be so bad?

What could be so bad? The weather. The forecast was for a high of 45 and for 100% rain. There was also a wind alert, talking of gusts up to 45 mph.

After a leisurely breakfast, we went to the top deck (the Crows Nest) to watch our entry into the city with windows in three directions, and to listen to the boat’s naturalist talk about what we were seeing. The weather outside seemed as expected. The views were beautiful, but not as they would have been on a nicer day. A few pictures tell the story.

But by some miracle, when we left the boat, the rain had pretty much stopped and remained only a drizzle the rest of the day. The high winds never materialized.

Juneau, the state capital, has a population of about 30,000. It is isolated in that there is no access by land (the only “highway” peters out 7 miles north of town and about 45 miles south), only by air (there is an airport served by Air Alaska and Delta)), or you can come by single engine sea planes), or water. There were five large tour boats moored in town today, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. That may add 10,000, or 33% to the population of the city. But Juneau is used to this and the closest blocks to the ship were loaded with souvenir and jewelry shops.

Juneau is in a valley, cut by water and surrounded by mountains.  There are a few residences, not fancy, behind the tourist shops. I liked the color contrasts at one address and was flabbergasted at the steps at another (I started counting the steps, got to 80, and lost count).

We had scheduled an excursion to see the Glacier Botanical Gardens, a privately owned tract of land that rises 600 feet and includes a very small part of the Tongass National Forest (the entire forest is the size of West Virginia).

(I could have taken many more pictures, but I didn’t. And I could tell you the unusual story of the garden, and of its upside down trees – see above –  but I won’t). We  were then scheduled to visit a salmon hatchery, but Colleen (our guide and bus driver) mixed up the order of our visits, and by the time we finished the garden, the hatchery was closed for the day. The hatchery, as I understand it, is a place where salmon are conceived through some form of artificial, or human engineered, insemination, and then freed into the salt water where they live the life of Riley for two to five years, but then return to their place of birth, as salmon do, where they become dinner.

Filled with disappointment, we (all 18 of us), under Colleen’s confused guidance, decided to substitute the Mendenhall Glacier, twelve miles south of Juneau. We would get there at 5:30, 30 minutes before the visitor center closed, and have an opportunity to glimpse the glacier itself, which we were told stayed at the same place 24/7. (In fact, this not entirely true. Since John Muir visited the glacier in 1880 or so, the Mendenhall has receded 6 miles, or so they say.)

Digression. Juneau and Mendenhall and a lot of other place names up here were the names of late 19th century men. It reminds me of something that I heard years ago in South Dakota where, at about the same time, a visiting businessman from New York named Rushmore pointed and said, “what’s the name of that mountain?” His host responded, “Why, that’s Mt. Rushmore! Hahaha.” End of digression.

The Mendenhall is one of many glaciers surrounding Juneau, all of which border Canada, and is the only one accessible by road. Here are a few photos from the entrance to the area. The surroundings are beautiful.

And here is Thomas Mendenhall himself, a meteorologist who helped set the Canada-Alaska border. Look up his bio. Very impressive.

We were back at the boat for dinner. I ordered lingcod. No, I never heard of it, either. It’s a fish. White. Flaky. But not for me. But my fried chicken, cole slaw, and zucchini lunch was just right.

Next on the agenda? Glacier Bay National Park from the water and Icy Strait from the land. Stay tuned.

July 5, 2026 was spent on board the ship moving north. No stops. Because our first stop is Juneau, about 900 miles north of Seattle, the sailing time is about 47 hours, certainly the longest time I have ever been on a ship.

I learned two things today (without really trying). First, I had assumed that when I get to Juneau, I will be further north than ever before. But, no! Both Helsinki and St. Petersburg lie north of Juneau.

I also assumed, since the Alaska coast is pretty much due north of Seattle, that the Alaska coast would be on Pacific Daylight Time. But, again, no. Alaska (most of it) is on Alaska Daylight Time, one hour behind PDT, four hours behind Eastern.

Today was chilly and cloudy, but there was no rain. The temperature was in the mid-50s, but there was a wickedly cold wind, which made outside activities difficult. If you walk three times around the periphery of the ship, you have walked a mile, which seemed like the thing to do, until you

did it. After one go-round, I called it quits. There were a few intrepid walkers, but just a few.

The decks were pretty empty. And probably no one else at 83 did even the one lap that I did. Which reminds me. I heard some demographic facts about our cruise, and one surprised me. I thought that the majority of those on board were elderly. But it turns out that only about one in 7 is 75 or older.

Holland America is a Dutch company, and Indonesia was formerly the Dutch East Indies, so it isn’t surprising, perhaps, that many crew members are Indonesian. In fact, 50% of the crew, I was told, come from Indonesia. That would be about 450 Indonesian crew members on board. The other 450 or so crew members come from 40 different countries.

So the day was quiet, including reading much of Evelyn Waugh’s travel writing from the early 1930s, watching The Da Vinci Code on our room TV, and eating three meals.

The executive chef is not from Indonesia, but from India. I did not catch his name, but he was introduced at the Captain’s Toast tonight, and got a big round of deserved applause.

The food has been very good. Tonight, I had a salad, pan fried sole with potatoes au gratin, spinach, carrots and asparagus, with strawberries Romanoff for dessert. My breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs, baked beans and Indian potatoes. Lunch, vegetarian tacos.

About half of the passengers are part of an Evangelical group, but I have seen no MAGA hats yet. But I wonder if this is a Trump crowd. It certainly does not contain anyone who, on first glance, looks like they would be a great friend. There are many younger people, although certainly not a wild crowd. The Evangelicals are wearing name tags, and the teenage daughter of one couple seems to have a great name, Symphony Knight. Another seems not have learned how to follow instructions for dying your hair green.

At the Captain’s Toast, they were giving out champagne.

The Toast preceded a show by illusionist James Cielen, who, talented as he is, left me bored.

Monday morning, we head to Juneau. Rain, rain, rain. Wind, wind, wind. Cold, cold, cold. Where is baked Alaska when you need it?