Stupid Shoe Season

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Yesterday (June 1) really felt like spring. Finally warm. Very little wind, which has been blowing around like a con newly released from prison. I threw off my shoes and chose a pair of sandals I had despaired of ever being able to wear this summer

I felt like dancing. The sandals were so light, it was like shrugging off, with great delight, the cumbersome vestiges of winter, and welcoming in warmth and golden sunshine.

When my husband saw me with sandals on my feet, he stopped in the middle of his words. “Uh, oh,” he said, “stupid shoe season.”

Laughter peals like bells in this lighter-than-air time of year.

You have to understand where he comes from: New York City, where places to stub naked toes lurked on every street corner, down every set of subway stairs, and where parks provided untold numbers of opportunities to step in dog poop. His belief in “sensible shoes” comes from his personal experience. Not the sensible brown oxfords matrons used to wear as they walked up and down Second Avenue pushing little shopping carts, but sensible in the sense of completely wrapping the feet in protection—in things like sneakers, saddle shoes, boots, ski boots.

In California, people are born with sandals on their feet. They can maneuver in them, run, hop, throw Frisbees, dance and hike in sandals. They wear them year round, hot weather and snowy.

I discovered sandals late. I grew up without sandals. When summer came to my childhood neighborhood and the grass—coddled by my father into a thick green carpet shone with morning dew—I begged my mother to “wear bare feet.” I’d rather go barefooted than wear sandals; sandals were an excuse for not going completely barefooted. We had rites of passage every summer when we were between four and 10 years old: Walking across our street without running, without getting up on tiptoes; and walking the entire length of the graveled driveway; then running on the burning-up, melting-tar streets of summer without feeling the burn. All these challenges became moot as soon as the soles of our feet toughened. And it always felt like prison in the fall when we had to put our shoes back on.

My first pair of sandals came when I was in college, when you had to look like every one of your dorm mates. Bernardos. Good thing the Italian sandals came in lots of colors, because they were uncomfortable—kind of flimsy and floppy, not good to run in, and they always made the space between my toes itch like crazy.

So, welcome to stupid shoe season, another word for summer, wonderful, warm, sparkly summer. I, for one, am happy it’s here, no matter what you call it.

Holiday cheer in a ski resort bubble

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My visions of the Christmas holidays have always been couched in snow — drifts of it snugged up to red New England farmhouses, sleigh bells and sleigh rides, making snowmen and building forts at the end of the driveway to provide shelter for snowball fights. Lots of family and friends and gales of laughter piercing the cold air from toboggans whooshing down the hill.

That was childhood. I no longer live down a country lane. I live in a ski resort, a place that many, many people like to visit for the holidays.

This is a land of contrasts — hot summers and cold winters, mountains and desert, times when making a left turn is a no brainer and times when left turns are impossible. This time of year a day that begins with a Robert Frost snowshoe trek in the quiet woods can segue into an encounter with herds of wild city people running amok in public places.

On one of the first mornings of the New Year, my husband and I bundled up for the cold temperatures and headed out snowshoeing with our dog to the deep woods and meadows just outside town, a place crowded only with drifted snows and pines. We drove past flocks of people sledding and building snowmen. They used what was at hand — pine boughs and needles to cover the snowheads with bushy pine dreadlocks.

Up at the tops of the several sledding runs, dads gave their charges a push and shouted encouragement as they slid down the hill. Kids shrieked with fear or glee as their round saucers picked up speed. Anxious mothers in fashion boots rocked from one cold foot to the other, watching, ready to catch or rescue.

A mile or two farther down the road, we parked, slipped into our snowshoes and set off into the track of a snowmobile. In this deep snow we would have been postholing without the symbiotic trailsetting of snowmobiles. Clods of snow fell from branches, landing with muffled thumps. And except for the occasional discontented raven squawking at our intrusion, the only sound was the squeaking of snowshoes on snow. Our contentment was complete. I looked around at the graceful pines hung with snow, the almost-fluorescent blue sky above and wooded snowfields that seemed to stretch forever — grateful to be lucky enough to live in the mountains, in a town of human scale, without big boxes to supersize our needs.

Back home, we settled in for the afternoon. But a sudden craving for a chicken pot pie dinner propelled me to the market. Off I trundled in search of puff pastry, frozen peas, mushrooms and white wine. Never satisfied to do one errand when I can gang a bunch of them into one trip, I stopped into Tailwaggers, which is next to Vons, for homemade dog cookies. There I ran into two friends. One of them is a crackerjack storyteller, often unspooling tales of drama and trauma. This tale was no different, and I was hooked, listening intently, so completely captivated that I lost track of time.

There are few times during holidays in a ski resort to grocery shop without the accompaniment of hundreds of strangers, all packed into the grocery box. Sure enough, I’d missed the narrow window when I could breeze in and out of Vons in a scant few minutes. By the time we’d finished hashing out possible outcomes for my friend’s story, and I walked into the market, the cacophony had reached highest decibels.

Vons is the sole market in town. Its prices are high — Mammoth is a resort market five distant hours from suppliers. I grabbed the second-to-last

The well-coiffed snowman.

cart, imagining supermarket bumper cars — a greater challenge even than maneuvering through rush-hour mobs in Grand Central Station. My strategy was to shift into low gear, not be in a hurry, and enjoy the amusing show scrambling in front of me.

Snowboarder dudes ambled with sailors’ gaits in their droopy pants, baggy tops and odd headwear. Gaggles of girls in pastel parkas, couples with overtired tots, middle-aged folk in toasty UGGs — vied in every aisle for space and merchandise in an odd dance of reach and pull, dodge and grab, scowl and smirk.

Checkout lines oozed to the back of the store, carts knitted in and out of those lines in a weird frenzy. People with their carts overloaded to point of groaning waited in express lines, ignoring the sign that limits the take to 15 items.

Now working their tenth day in a row, checkers were on automatic — bobbleheads with deer-in-the-headlights eyes and weary smiles that trembled. Baggers fled from one checkout stand to the next, stuffing plastic bags full of groceries. “Twenty-one days of hell,” a bagger whispered hoarsely, begging me to let him carry out my bag so he could get a few minutes’ respite.

I exhaled upon emerging from the supermarket’s north side entrance onto the parking lot of treacherous ice that can last all winter. SUVs — gigantic white or black behemoths — parked wherever they pleased. Their engines left on, seething with power, they could be transformers, primed to turn into road warriors on the way back to L.A. Small vintage Hondas in shades of teal and turquoise squeezed between them, diminished by the gigantism of the SUVs.

“Made it.” I exhaled again. As I drove home, the calm, wonder and gratitude of living in a small mountain town re-surged. I have lived in the city, rushing here, bustling there, stressed by the knowledge that there was so much to do, and so little time. I remember the feeling of being a tourist, of leaving my life and arriving in some version of paradise, moving in a magical bubble throughout my visit. There is much to be said for coming to the mountains and untying the knots of city living. While I no longer live down childhood’s quiet country lane, I can’t imagine living in a more perfect place, where eyes lift to a vertical, mountainous horizon. And despite the squeezed feeling of a very full town, I welcome holiday revelers to come and explore their individual touristic bubbles.

The Art of Bootfitting

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“I like to know that when someone walks out the door, they’ll have as good a time as I do. That’s what it’s about…fun,” says Corty Lawrence, left. “I enjoy it,” added his son Zach. “You apply what you’ve learned.” Both Lawrences are bootfitters at Footloose Sports in Mammoth.

Corty and Zach Lawrence are artists. Most people think they are skiers and master bootfitters, which they are, but in their souls they are artists who apply their artistry to all their pursuits, with equal passion.

Corty has mastered the art of charcoal, pastel and pencil drawings and Zach is an accomplished musician; he plays guitar and trumpet, and records the music he improvises. “I play every day, I could play for five hours,” Zach said.

Consciously or not, both have transposed their artistic spirit into the art of bootfitting. They talked about art, business and sport in their lives early one December afternoon at Footloose Sports.

Corty started out working at Footloose 32 years ago when he asked owner and boot guru Sven Coomer for a job. “He taught me everything he knew,” Corty said.

“Sven brought bootfitting from caveman days to a science. He knew how the body worked biomechanically, and he came up with SuperFeet,” Corty said. With these insoles the feet are supported, stabilized and aligned from beneath. Thus … better edge pressure, better control, better balance. “What Sven understood was that the best solution is underfoot support.”

For both Lawrences, father and son, bootfitting is problem solving. “They both know how to listen, then they’re able to explain it back to the customer so they understand,” said Mary Lawrence, Corty’s wife. “People skills are number one: relate, listen and explain.”

The senior Lawrence is happy to have his son working in the boot department at Footloose, of which Corty is co-owner (along with Tony and Andrea Colasardo). Zach grew up in Mammoth, in Footloose, went to college in Durango, Colo., and he and his wife Shaina came back to Mammoth a few years ago when their daughter Andrea was born.

“The opportunity was available and I didn’t have anything else lined up,” Zach said, implying that music might not always pay the bills. “You can’t sell your own art,” Corty added, having spent about nine months in Southern California after college trying to sell his art before coming to Mammoth to work.

Zach was almost born at Footloose, where both Corty and Mary were working in the winter of 1983, a big snow year. “I worked until I was ready to explode,” she said.

“Zach came to work with us, stayed in his infant seat. He hung out with us, we took him everywhere. I suppose he learned the business through osmosis. We had to keep moving the merchandise, like sunglasses, higher and out of the youngster’s reach,” Corty said.

Tony and Andrea Colasardo’s kids, Michael and Daniella, as well as Zach, grew up in the store and worked there during Christmas, holidays and school breaks.

“We like to think of ourselves as a family store, so it’s a great thrill for us to have them come back,” Andrea said. “Zach has been great. He jumped right in. It’s second nature to these kids; they grew up in the store.”

Skiing is also second nature to these people named Lawrence. Corty’s mother Andrea Mead Lawrence, well known to Mammoth, was the first American alpine skier to win two Olympic gold medals (for giant slalom and slalom in the 1952 Oslo Olympics when she was only 19). Corty has been skiing all his life. “Skiing is like breathing. I don’t remember learning,” he said.

Zach “skied right off the bat.” In fourth grade he switched to snowboarding, but he’s been back on skis for four seasons now. Corty remembers that the two of them were riding up Chair 2 a year or so ago when Zach said, “Dad, this [skiing] is a lot more fun than snowboarding.”

Theirs is an extraordinary legacy. On the skiing side, the excitement the two men feel is palpable. At 60, Corty is as much of a nut for skiing as he ever was. He still gets that shiver in his belly on a ski day. And, this winter Zach, who is 32, will extend that legacy when he introduces his four-year-old daughter to the sport.

As they sat on their boot-fitting stools in the boot sanctuary at Footloose, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing and talking, it was clear they’re having a ball. Through the science and art of boot fitting, Corty and Zach get stoked when they can increase their customers’ joy in skiing.

Another View: Timeless conflict in the Middle East

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In the breath-holding cease-fire between Israel and Hamas over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was catapulted back to the early 1980s when Leon Uris was writing his novel, “The Haj.” The memory is bittersweet, especially of the enormous challenge the author took on: that of a zealous Zionist writing a novel from the Arab point of view.

At the time we both lived in Aspen, Colorado, only slightly removed from the world. Uris was a prolific researcher; he excavated deep, thoughtful and insightful backgrounds in his stories, many of them political.

I had been Uris’ researcher since the early 1970s, when he wrote “Trinity.” The whole process of bringing “Trinity” to life was a joyous one. Leon and his third wife Jill were in the early years of their marriage, they’d traveled in Ireland, and much of this Irish novel was a love story.

Uris was also a nut for history. So much so, that while he was writing “Trinity,” we put a sign above his Selectric typewriter that said, “This is a novel,” because he could so easily get lost in the record of time and retell it rather than stitch his fictional tale into the historical fabric.

In contrast, research for “The Haj” was not easy. Times were troubled, and the Middle East was, to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, too much with us. As a Zionist, Uris’ delving into Islam—and how the Arab characters behaved and interacted with the Jews—was a complex and painful exercise for him. While much of what our research revealed supported his views, he had to take negative facts and turn them into character qualities that a reader would find sympathetic.

He had read and digested Raphael Patai’s “The Arab Mind,” and thus formed an idea of what he might learn from the Koran about Muslim attitudes toward the Jews when he assigned me the task of a close reading of the Koran. I read it twice, marking references to the “non-believers,” among which were counted Jews as well as Christians. Uris’ interpretation was that the Koran is rife with hostility toward the Jews.

An Arab view, posted Nov. 20, 2012, on IsraelSeen.com states that, “This hostility [November’s Hamas rocket threat] is the direct result of years of anti-Israel and anti Western incitement in the Arab and Muslim world…. In today’s world of the Palestinians, anyone who talks about peace with Israel is a traitor and a collaborator….” [http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3457/arab-view]

“The Haj” opens in the decades before the formation of Israel. Uris paints the Palestinian Jews in as smart and collaborative, while portraying the Arabs/Muslims as hate-filled people who consistently got in their own way.

He rationalized the Arabs’ behavior as supremely tribal, as in this statement by Ishmael, the book’s narrator: “So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.” (The Haj, p. 15)

For Uris the entire process was turgid and tough, like trying to motor through a swamp of mud. The cheerful attitude that had permeated our lives during the “Trinity” years was replaced by sourness, a pursed-lips kind of drudgery. He was tormented by the fight between Arab and Jew, a battle that played out in his head and his heart. His use of alcohol increased, along with cocaine and pot. He was irritable and angry and picked fights with those closest to him.

His longtime editor, the legendary Ken McCormick of Doubleday & Co., encouraged Uris in his book, writing that an Arab hero was “an absolutely great idea—a Jew writing a book from an Arab point of view.” Yet, Doubleday’s chief, Sam Vaughan, was not as enthusiastic, according to Uris’s biographer Ira Nadel (“Leon Uris: Life of a Best Seller”). Vaughan cited the use of too much history in place of story, the rough writing, the lack of Uris’ understanding of the Arab mind, and the book’s structure.

I’m certain Uris recognized these as the diversionary tactics of the hesitant part of himself who fought to turn his distaste and distrust of the Arabs into compassion and empathy for his characters. From my perspective as his researcher, he seemed to listen to the facts on any given subject, placing them either in his Jewish camp or his Arab camp, always reflecting the latter against the light of the former.

As the protagonist Haj Ibrahim comments to his Palestinian Jewish neighbor Gideon Asch, who is also his best friend, “You see Gideon that is why you are fooling yourselves. You don’t know how to deal with us. For years, decades, we may seem to be at peace with you, but always in the back of our minds we keep up the hope of vengeance. No dispute is ever really settled in our world. The Jews give us special reason to continue warring.”

The above passage is quoted in a 2011 essay by Joseph Puder on IsraelSeen.com. Puder goes on to say that, “The dialogue presented by Uris [in The Haj] is more than relevant in our own day. Israel provides food and electricity to Gaza, while Hamas-led Gaza uses the land vacated by Israel in 2005 to fire rockets at Israel’s civilian population in southern Israel….” [http://israelseen.com/2011/07/31/leon-uris-the-haj-what-it-teaches-us-today/]

Uris believed the battle between the Jews and Arabs in the Middle East would never be resolved, just as he viewed Ireland’s religious friction between Catholics and Protestants to be an ongoing fact of life. I do not think Uris would be surprised by this most recent turn of events between Palestinians and Jews in the Gaza Strip. Despite his bias, “The Haj” provides an insight about the Middle East. Indeed, Uris considered his book, published in 1984, to be a warning of what could happen.

Originally published: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-eagle-kataoka/another-view-timeless-con_b_2213836.html

Autumn’s Saddle

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At the acme of any cycle – the seasons, the moon – a sweet poignancy holds me in thrall. Like a carnival ride that shoots us to the top, where we pause for the briefest of breaths. And then we begin the free fall into the next cycle.

Colorado ski town bears gorge on crabapples and berries as temps drop them toward hibernation.

The fall equinox, September 23, held me for just such a moment between waning summer and waxing autumn. It is fall, not spring, that quickens my step, dawning each day with excitement and anticipation.

It is that feeling of anticipation I’ve experienced since I was a kid… Fall has always meant new beginnings… one year older and a brand new school year.

It is that time of great fishing and hiking, the saddle between summer and winter, the off-season. It is a miraculous time. In the burnished light of autumn, people seem to walk around in a daze, as if internal springs have loosened, less tension on them.

Up in the mountains, where seasons have distinct personalities, we stretch out into fall, savoring every moment of daylight on hikes and walks through aspens lit up from behind as the sun goes down. Nights grow imperceptibly longer, pulling us toward close winter nights indoors.

We preserve summer’s bounty so we can enjoy fresh tomato sauce or squeaky green beans at our winter dinners. It’s a genetic thing in humans as in animals to store up for the winter. Cravings for bacon, stews, mashed potatoes signal an ages-old physical preparation to add bulk against the cold. Bears do the same thing, filling up for their own dark winters. Squirrels scurry, stripping myriad pinecones of precious seeds.

Out come parkas and hats, ski equipment examined, dollars counted for new gear or a visit to yard sales and consignment shops. Cross training is in full gear, to be ready for opening day on the Mountain.

We take trips in this interim time, lying on beaches, traveling to spots all over the world or across the country. They provide perspective on our lives and businesses, a chance to fill up on theater, music, museums, to spend luxurious time with friends or relax with a good book. Because returning home, whether by car or plane, causes an intake of breath, a sureness that we live in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

A pine cone so rich in nutrients, the squirrel hoisted it in its mouth and lugged it across a bridge, despite people all around.

Breaking New Ground—A rule is a rule until it isn’t

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A child in the 1950s, I learned to follow the rules. I was one of those kids who colored inside the lines. The consequences of not following the rules — a spanking or being grounded — were too dire for my little bottom or adolescent psyche to risk.

When I graduated from college and moved into New York City, sexual pioneer Helen Gurley Brown threw my neatly organized pickup sticks into the air and left me to contemplate my sensibilities all messed up on the floor. In New York I found a world of rebellion and gusto-grabbing. I was dizzied by the possibilities that existed for liberated women. Brown’s pioneering voice showed how women had been girdled by their undergarments long enough; it was time to break new ground, throw off the shackles (even the elastic ones of girdles and bras).

Brown’s book, “Sex and the Single Girl,” preached that not only was it okay for women to have sex before or even without marriage, but we should embrace it. It was the rebellious, lascivious 1960s, when the birth control pill had been legalized.

Unencumbered of our rules, we embraced like crazy.

I broke the rule of “skirts only” at the publishing house Harcourt, Brace & World and wore the first pantsuit in my department. (I still prefer pants to skirts; I own only two dresses.)

Brown and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem said women could have it all, could live any life they wanted to live. We believed her. In that freewheeling city, we could question the efficacy of rules, challenge status quo in all quarters.

When I left the gridlock of city life to move to Aspen and work with the author Leon Uris, I discovered a world without rules. Their absence enabled us to look objectively at reasons behind rules and adopt them or not depending on their perceived viability.

Some rules seem so deeply rooted that it doesn’t occur to us to challenge them: Rape doesn’t cause pregnancy; the Bible holds the one true word of god; home ownership brings security, for example.

Few things in life, I learned from my parents, were more important than owning one’s own home. There was no more real stake in a community or in one’s seriousness, importance and security. The certitude of that advice percolated until the day my husband and I became enchanted with Mammoth Lakes, with its small-town, ski-town sensibility, and scraped together all our funds and bought a condo, a home. Check. One rule of life, followed.

We enjoyed a few years of feeling proudly serious and important. Then, the recession hit and property values plummeted to the point where our “home” lost half its value and our mortgage was underwater. Our notion that home ownership signaled security was dashed.

With hindsight I find myself questioning the fundamental tenets of American life. Those tenets were more solid and safe in my parents’ times. The world didn’t move at such a meteoric pace. Values and goals handed down by parents had staying power — the venerable institutions such as marriage, owning a home, working for 50 years for one company to earn the gold watch at retirement. Oh yes, how about retirement — there’s a rule that has died a sad death for many Americans. Retirement is now so far beyond the norm, light at the end of the tunnel isn’t even visible.

But back to being liberated, and its value in confronting tired conventions.

Back in the ’60s, breaking the rules was exhilarating. We respected the rules, which was why it was so exciting to break them. In today’s world, many people seem to think they they’re more important than the rules.

In HGB’s era, it was breaking new ground. Today it’s acting like you own the ground. In the forest, dirt bikers ignore posted signs that say no vehicles allowed, and tear up the trails on joy rides. Road rage is an expression that one person’s time is more valuable than the next person’s.

Anything, it seems, carried to extremes, risks losing its purpose, its reason. How do we refresh the rules of life; it’s not so simple as pressing a button on your Internet browser.

And with the world changing so fast, a rule may last through one 24/7-news cycle. Whew! Talk about dizzying.

A Weekend of Memorable Jazz

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Jazz, Jazz… Mammoth Jazz

Papo Rodriguez, Scott Martin and Rick White of the Scott Martin Latin Soul Band play a three-hour set at the Village Saturday night of Mammoth Jazz 2012.

Sunday afternoon. I walk into Little Eagle to hear Temple of Folly. Seven years of Jazz Jubilee and I haven’t arranged my schedule to hear this fabulous band until now. Up on the bandstand seven instruments play musical magic…guitar, sax, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, piano. This band goes all the way back to the festival’s very first year, when Mammoth residents Elliott Thompson and Ken Coulter, along with their friend Dave Koonse, formed the band—one of only two bands in that first jubilee. Named for Mammoth’s first Temple of Folly, a bar, dating back to mining days in 1879.

Temple of Folly is Mammoth Jazz’s host band. On the schedule I see it’s supposed to be the band at Little Eagle at one o’clock Sunday afternoon minus their amazing vocalist, Yve Evans. After a couple of numbers when I marvel at the virtuosity of this band, Ken Coulter, the great humorist (and drummer) gets up to introduce the band members, then breaks the news that indeed, Yve Evans is going to sing. And oh, this woman can sing, with sweet sweet dexterity, passion and power.

So hard to sit when the music is so energizing. I stood at the back so I could move to the music. I noticed a woman knitting while she presided over the CD table. A strand of yarn looked as if it were coming out of the CD box directly to her needles—as if she were knitting a sweater out of the music that was being played.

So Temple of Folly with Yve Evans is the second new band (new to me) that I have fallen for this summer. Backspace to Saturday when I heard the first new band that knocked my socks off (not such fun to lose one’s socks and have to walk barefooted across sun-hot wood chips at the Holler): Side Street Strutters. Bonnie Colgan, whose photography tent is a permanent fixture at the back of the Holler every Jazz Jubilee, has been raving about them for years. Last year Ron Verdi and his giant saxophone were a featured Jazz article, but again, I hadn’t managed to be in the right place at the right time, until now. Wowee…virtuosity, musicality, incredible ensemble, tight arrangements. Oh yeah. And again I couldn’t sit still. No wonder there’s a dance floor at most Mammoth Jazz venues.

Now to my main reason for attending Mammoth Jazz this year. Actually two reasons: Scott Martin Latin Soul Band and Jennifer Leitham Trio. Both of them performed Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I have Ken and Flossie Coulter to thank for introducing these bands to me a few years ago.

Jennifer Leitham and her bass. Susan Morning photo

My husband is a former bassist and has shown me an appreciation of many bass players, so when I heard Jennifer Leitham’s smooth eloquence, strong fingers and rock-solid intonation, I became an instant, passionate fan. Her fingers bounce over the strings like she’s a 45 rpm record played at 78. And never missing a note. She loves her bass and it’s clear it loves her back.

I caught her West Side Story medley on Sunday morning; it was almost a religious experience, especially nice because she was playing with her main guys, drummer Randy Drake and pianist Josh Nelson. Drake has been with her for years and Nelson recorded West Side Story with her. As I listened, I noticed the pines that frame the stage, and it was clear that the trio’s music was lifting the pine branches and setting the needles atwitter.

But back to the music. The three West Side Story tunes Leitham has arranged are Something’s Coming, One Hand, One Heart, and Somewhere. The bookend numbers were amazing, but the pacing of One Hand, One Heart brought tears to the eyes and a plunk on the heartstrings. Anyone who has lost a mate or broken up before their love flagged, couldn’t help but be moved by Leitham’s arrangement and soulful playing.

This was something like the fifth time Scott Martin has performed for Mammoth Jazz. He often has a sizable entourage, including his father, a singing trumpet player who is a joy to watch and hear. Two years ago he brought an unbelievable salsa singer. This year, as Martin said, it was bare bones. He is one accomplished, smooth, clean sax player. He’s a happy guy, sings so well, and obviously likes each member of his band. Each note his guitarist Rick White plays, I can hear riffs coming out of the 1970s as well as a world of music in each note. And the drummer! Nacho (Warren Ontivera) sits up there behind the drum set and rocks the beat like crazy.

Which brings me to the congero. Papo Rodriguez has played with Poncho Sanchez (as has Scott Martin), with the great Tito Puente, and Eddie Palmieri. He’s got chops and a smile that won’t quit.

Saturday night when the band played a free concert in the Village for three hours, a little tow-headed boy, maybe four years old, kept running past the stage and up the stairs. This kid wanted to be with the band, to be in the music. His mother and father kept rescuing him until Martin encouraged the boy to come on up. Rodriguez brought the boy over to his conga drums and showed him what to do. That’s all the boy needed; he started beating the drums like an old hand, using both of his small hands and showing an innate sense of rhythm. Rodriguez told me the next day that he loves seeing and nurturing talent in young people. They’re the future, he said.

The intensity of the musicians’ awareness was an invisible current that electrified the performances of these two bands. Sidemen were tuned into each other. Even though most tunes had specific arrangements, the feeling and the voices of the soloists led tunes beyond the arrangements; the leader would throw them a nod, raise a finger and give them several extra choruses, which led to trading twos or fours with each voice. The musicianship was extraordinary and delivered a marvelous experience for the audience.

In its 24th year, the leaner, smaller Mammoth Jazz festival vibrated with good music, good audiences and good will. Not huge audiences where I went, but fiercely, loyally appreciative ones. It’s clear there’s a deep love for the music and musicians in the hearts of the organizers and the legions of volunteers who make it possible.

I’ve got to say that one of the most impressive things I noticed about the bands: They played their hearts out every single time; it didn’t matter whether there were 20 or 200 people in the audience. Gotta love that professionalism.

This festival is no temple of folly. It’s a place and time for musicians to gather and play music, which reverberates off the granite mountains and each pine needle. It’s a time when jazz fans reconvene in Mammoth to visit and listen together. I can hardly wait for the big 25^thMammoth Jazz in 2013, July 10-14.

Alana Levin and Jim Barnes: Living in Mountain Time

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Spring may be the time when a young man’s fancy turns to love, but in the Sierra even more fancies turn to the mountains, where adrenalin and endorphin junkies are scaling peaks, pedaling up and flashing down hills, running to the sky and back, and hitching themselves up stone faces by fingers and toes.

Jim Barnes and Alana Levin, with El Capitan and Half Dome in the background.

Most Mammoth residents revel in the outdoors, live and breathe mountains and explore them in tactile, thrilling ways.

Alana Levin, 41, and Jim Barnes, 42, are two of those people, always on the move, running trails, climbing steeps. Aside from their love of sport and their drive to be outside, they share another passion—the mountains themselves. “The mountains are it,” Barnes said. The mountains brought each of them here.

Levin was living in the Bay Area when she took a winter job in Bear Valley and found the mountains. “I could live here,” she thought. She learned to cross-country ski, stayed on into summer mountain biking, flat-water kayaking and trail running.

And stayed several years more before returning to Berkeley to get her bachelor’s degree in Conservation Resource Studies. During that time, she kept going back up to the mountains as often as she could.

Mammoth seemed like a good next option. “I was driving from forestry camp to find a place to live. It was late, I was tired, I pulled into June Lake.” In the morning she saw it would be a great place for a triathlon. Levin, who founded the High Sierra Tri Club, established the June Lake Triathlon two years later, in 2007.

Born in Bangkok, Levin has lived in Potomac, Md.; Curacao, West Indies; L.A.; Tucson; Santa Cruz; Bay Area. Now, with 15 Mammoth years under her belt, she swims, bikes, runs, climbs and indulges her passion for trail running, when she’s out in nature, breathing the air, seeing the trees.

“Trail running is it for me,” she said. It is a way to feel grounded and at peace. A typical run lasts two-to-four hours. “It’s great alone time, time to think. It’s spacey, flighty, an addiction for sure.”

Alana Levin telemarks the Sherwins.

The term ‘active lifestyle’ doesn’t begin to capture the energy and pace of Levin’s life. In the winter she coaches the Mammoth High School Junior Nordic Ski Team. In preparation for the June Lake Triathlon on July 7, she runs two six-week training camps for participants (April-June). She also runs (as in organizes) the Ned’s Mammoth Rock Race (Sept. 2) and the Tioga Pass Run (Sept. 9).

To support her lifestyle she is a personal trainer at the Snowcreek Athletic Club. In her programs, she correlates strength training, balance and plyometrics in the weight rooms with how we move our bodies outside—whether golf, tennis, hiking, kayaking, running, biking, climbing or skiing. So it’s not building strength for strength’s sake, but for how we can apply that strength in our sporting pursuits.

“You gotta love it. It has to be fun to do it so find what you like; training should be play,” she said. “If you do not find joy in it, then push yourself over the hump to get to the joy…it’s there.”

While Levin considers herself an endorphin junkie, her boyfriend Jim Barnes says he’s both an adrenaline and an endorphin junkie. Look at road biking as an example. “Enormous climbs followed by 50-60 mile-per-hour descents,” he said. “Mountain biking and backcountry skiing, same thing.”

Barnes, who previously taught at Mammoth High School’s Independent Learning Center, and is headed to nursing school, said, “We live in paradise: I’m in my classroom and looking over the Glass Mountains to the Whites and Mount Montgomery,” he said. What a life.

He’s one of those Mammoth residents who is happiest outdoors. As he says about climbing, “We’re up at three, leave at four a.m., stumble back to the car at dark, milk the day for all it’s worth. It’s the satisfaction of being outside all day—wild moments of sheer terror on walls balanced by hours of effort.”

Jim Barnes in Lee Vining Canyon….. “Ice climbing is a no-fall sport,” Barnes says. “On my crampons I’ve got 24 daggers on my feet. It’s the threads of the ice screws that provide the purchase. You do not fall. Ice can be like hero snow, and it can be variable. Your ax might go right in with one swing, or it might take 10-11 swings to get purchase.” Photo by Christian Pondella.

Born in St. Louis, Mo., Barnes played the usual team ball sports in childhood. At 23 he moved out west to the mountains. That’s all it took to convince him he would never go back.

“My first winter out west I looked at the mountains and all I saw were ski descents. Years later when I started to climb, I saw another dimension. Climbing and ice climbing changed the way I looked at the mountains.”

He learned to ski in Jackson Wyoming, where he fell in with a really good group of guys who took him under their wing.

He spent one year there, then took off and backpacked around Alaska. When he returned to the lower 48, he discovered the Sierra and hasn’t left. He moved to Mammoth in 2005.

Barnes considers himself a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. From studying finance and international business, to running a catering company in his 20s, to being a dive master in Honduras, a helicopter ski guide in Alaska, and getting his teaching credential at 30, he is one active fellow.

This past winter his second series of adventure slideshow nights at the Snowcreek Athletic Club attracted SRO crowds on Tuesday nights, when climbers and outdoor enthusiasts came out of the woodwork.

Although he says he doesn’t have a favorite sport, it’s fairly obvious that climbing turns all his lights on. “I love the thrill climbing gives me, and wildly steep backcountry lines. I love the fact that there are so many games to play here…it’s a wide open playground.”

(This story appears in The Sheet’s Eastern Sierra Summer Guide 2012.)

How Vidal Sassoon changed my life…and my hair

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That Tuesday in 1969 started out like any other.

Legions of women walked to work in New York City wearing sneakers (tennis shoes for West Coasters) and carrying their heels in shopping bags.

I was one of them. I was also one of millions of women who set our hair on big rollers every night, and slept on them. Mine were one and a half inch-diameter brown mesh over an aluminum spring. Not easy to find a pillow position with this lunar armor covering my head.

But the results—oh, the fluffy hair with body and height. For someone with stick straight hair, I adored the way my hair looked when I unwrapped the rollers every morning.

With my bouncing, long, blonde hair, I left my apartment on 89th Street at Madison Avenue that hot August morning, and walked 40 city blocks to my job at WNEW FM in the Pan Am Building, just north of Grand Central Station. I joined the ranks of my fellow gals. We looked odd dressed to the gills in the style of the late 1960s that verged on formal and sporting scuffed sneakers on our feet. We were a pragmatic lot; no one enjoyed walking in pain-inducing pumps.

I marched; I liked the exercise. Then again, everyone walked fast in New York. At the end of the two-mile trek, I was hot and perspirey. After stopping in at the corner coffee shop for a coffee regular and a toasted corn muffin, I hopped the elevator and THEN ducked into the ladies room before walking to my desk.

The woman in the mirror had loser hair. Humidity had reduced my fluffy hair to a limp, blonde mass that clung to my skull. This despite gallons of hairspray. I hated hairspray.

For this disappointing result I underwent the torture of sleeping on stupid rollers every night?

I kicked the wall beneath the mirror.

Pain shot through my toe; it throbbed, I was sure I’d broken it.

That did it. Anger morphed into resolve, and after work that evening, I marched myself over to Fifth Avenue and straight into the Vidal Sassoon salon.

On Tuesday nights, haircuts were free, as long as you could submit to the ministrations of an apprentice hairdresser. We girls with problem hair, no money for a haircut, or the simple desire for hair adventure stood around waiting to be chosen. Student hairdressers approached each of us. They felt our hair, lifted it to see how thick it might be, how unruly. Gasps and expletives occasionally escaped their lips as they guided their conquests to the depths of the salon to perform magic.

As if they were picking sides for a softball team, they left me until last, clearly disappointed with the fineness of my hair; only at the final moment did they deign to style it.

As Sassoon has said, he was not after style; he was after bones. One apprentice washed my hair, another one cut and styled it, and a third blew it dry. Edward Scissorhands couldn’t have flown through the process any faster. When the cutter whipped away the gown and proudly showed off his handiwork in the mirror, Sassoon’s comment proved true. In place of my blonde locks (curl imagined) I had a cap of hair that contoured the shape of my head. Wispy pixie hair. About an inch long all over.

Just that easily, I had done away with the problems of humidity, hairspray and tormented sleep. I now had wash-and-wear hair; I could jump out of the shower in the morning, dry my hair with a towel, comb it into place and walk to work without fear of losing my style. It was a revelation. There’s far more to life than perfect hair.

Thank you Vidal Sassoon.

Mammoth. Skiing. Heaven.

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It’s curious how we alight in certain places.

From the moment I strapped on those long Northland skis at the age of 15, I was bitten, forever smitten with skiing. The sound of cold Vermont snow squeaking beneath my leather boots, the crinkling of little hairs in my nose as I sucked in that high alpine air and the mountains that rolled around me in shades of green to purple held me in the swirl of a hug.

That moment set a trajectory that drew me from the gentle mountains of Vermont to the Colorado Rockies and finally to the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada range.

I had tried following a traditional path set for me by my father, working in book publishing and radio in New York City, then law in Washington, D.C., but I kept escaping to Vermont in my VW bug for euphoric flights down the slopes of Killington and Mt. Snow. Around the corner from my house in Georgetown, a car’s Colorado license plates gave me such an itch to head for those mountains that it took only a few months to decide to quit my job, break up with my boyfriend and drive that Volkswagen straight to Aspen, Colorado.

Died and gone to heaven. Colder than Vermont but dry-not-bitter cold. Snow not ice. Wide-open fields of soft, airy fluff, uncrowded slopes, even elk standing against the mountains watching us ski by. And as if by magic, it snowed at night and mornings dawned clear and sunny and powdery.

Growing up in a small town on the East Coast, I had been steeped in frontier history and tradition and followed the call to the mountains in fine old explorer style. My Yankee sensibilities fit right into the Colorado ski town snugged right up to the mountains. Landing there was landing home.

My soul flew thermals with the ravens above the ski mountains. When I hurled myself from the top of Aspen Mountain to the base, I traveled through pine alleyways, swooped into bowls and gulches, dodged squirrels that shot out of the woods daring me not to run them over, grinned at the shrieks of glee lifting out of the glades…and at the end of the day, met up with friends for a beer and bragging rights.

I skied the Rockies for a lot of years, growing up there, really, married, and skied some more, hitting Vail, Copper, Breckenridge, Telluride, Winter Park, Steamboat Springs. I learned to drop my fear of going too fast. Especially if I wanted to keep pace with my husband who was an SST on skis. On 215 K2 downhills, he swooped the mountain from top to bottom like a graceful hawk chasing and toying with a mouse. We reveled in laps on the gondola. Up and down, up and down as the sun gradually filled the gulch with light.

I never wanted to leave my ski heaven, but there came a time when that idyllic existence gave way to another kind of adventure: moving to California.

The process of becoming a Californian was tortuous for me. I was happy in my life; being uprooted and hauled to a remote canyon in Los Angeles was unnerving. The PCH was a nightmare. After living someplace that was no more than five minutes from anywhere, the PCH strung out a line of sparkling cars whipping along at warp speeds, while the drivers ate, talked on phones, applied makeup, did not look at the ocean that sidled into shore. I couldn’t drive. I was trapped in a hot canyon where the air didn’t seem to move. At all.

I wanted to ski, to live within vertical horizons. We couldn’t get to Mammoth fast enough. The first time we drove up from L.A. – in the dark – we had no idea where we were going or what the landscape looked like. It was all we could do to keep focus while other, more excited drivers daringly passed us on the two-lane sections of freeway. But the second trip was in bright daylight, a breathtaking journey from desert up to mountains, and awed us with a sense of geologic time and volcanic movement.

We became permanent Mammoth residents within one winter. The bonus in discovering Mammoth was finding a town filled with great people, kind, generous and friendly, a town we never want to leave, with a mammoth ski mountain to explore in winter and neverending trails to hike in the summer.

Now, just a little snow to cover the dog poop and add to the great snowmaking done by Mammoth Mountain Ski Area and we’ll have a great year. Think snow.