Is the mind improving as the body ages?

One of my good friends just turned 79. He’s a great guy with a philosophical tendency and as I was wishing him a wonderful end of a remarkable decade, he said that his mind still felt the same and since I’m either overoptimistic or slightly delusional, I concurred with him.

The reality might be a bit different as the general consensus is that changes in thinking are common as people get older.

Older adults typically have more difficulties at finding words and recalling names, not paying as much attention as they ought to, and younger folks often find them inept at multi-tasking. I strongly believe that these symptoms, when they exist, pale in comparison with all the knowledge and insight we’ve gained from a lifetime of experiences.

Further, if we really want to, we still can learn new things, create new memories and improve our vocabulary and our language skills.

Of course, naysayers will say that as we get older our brain shrinks, our neurons aren’t communicating as well as they used to, but I believe this vary vastly with individuals.

As far as I am concerned, I remain convinced that my mental functions have never been so good as of today, and frankly, I suspect this is due to the fact that I always was a “late bloomer” through my entire life, without, I guess, never being able to catch-up.

So on paper and in my humble opinion, I still have plenty of to grow mentally and wouldn’t be surprised if I had another three decade of progress to add to my quiver before I reach the “adult level!”

When too many options lead to dissatisfaction

For some intuitive reasons I tend to link the level of happiness with simplicity. In other words, the simpler our lives are, the happier we’ll be and vice-versa.

As we add complexities into our daily existence, our society, our rules and our culture, we believe that by doing so, we enrich our environment, but we also create more bifurcations that in turn, create more choices, more questions, more thinking, more uncertainty and an increased risk for error or malfunction.

The same that applies to our daily lives also applies to medicine, engineering, thinking and pretty much everything under the sun. For instance, a Tesla electric car represents a huge step forward towards automotive simplification with less parts, a more reliable and long lasting system.

This means that everything we invent or any improvement we make to our lives and their surroundings should always proceed with a driving concern towards simplification, with a strong effort placed in eliminating complexity, except if there is absolutely no other available solution.

If we were wise enough to aim at a life built around simplicity, this would automatically bring us much more peace and satisfaction.

The Theme Parks test

When I think about the 2020-2021 ski season, I wonder how lift lines may be regulated and how social distancing might affect the way lifts are loaded, their overall capacity and the entire uphill experience, that by far, will be the most critical.

I’m not too worried about skiing down, because I don’t ski crowded runs and generally navigate these to my advantage, but I wonder how practically people will load a triple, quad or six people chair?

Likewise, how will folks be distributed inside gondolas of all sizes and trams? In other words which percentage of each lift can be safely utilized? I’m not even talking about mountain restaurant and bars, since I don’t patronize these much.

No doubt, this will have huge implication on skiers’ experience and ski resorts’ profitability. In the meantime, what will be highly informative is to watch how Theme Parks and other outdoors venues will begin dealing with the new Covid reality this summer, when restriction begin to fall...

Our complex society gets more complicated…

The current pandemic is inspiring a trove of interesting articles that are exposing the societal problems we’re facing and to quote an upcoming article of the monthly magazine The Atlantic, “We Are Living in a failed State, the coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken”, our culture seems no longer able to cope with its own complexity.

This actually was missing in the above-mentioned article, but we have evolved from a rather simple society with dual, heterosexual parent families, cars without seat belt or airbags, free-range kids, radio, TV and print media only, into a society that it infinitely diverse and much more complicated, with countless options, versions and styles and a variety that has become impossible to fully manage and satisfy.

At the same time our form of governments and our political organization haven’t changed sufficiently to handle that momentous transformation and we still expect that they’ll still work to cater to that mind-boggling system and solves its infinite problems. It simply won’t. We have reached a point in which society has to literally shed its old skin and re-invent itself from top to bottom, while our minds are still working the old fashion way for a reality that no longer exists.

In particular, the sacrosanct American Constitution must be totally reviewed to take into account of the changes that have taken place over the past 100 years and must become a document capable of evolving with our society and its culture.

No wonder why we are terribly frustrated and still much less so today than we will be tomorrow. They are to many cogs and wheels into our modern life and sand seems to be the only lubricant left inside…

Mega-ski companies are hurting…

A few years ago, Vail Resorts and Alterra were buying ski resorts left and right, probably paying far too much for them, fighting among themselves to get the deal, seemingly ignoring the real threat of global warming and understandably unaware of the pending epidemic that would be a global game-changer.

This what happens when you give key people a checkbook and ask them to “acquire” asset. I’ve seen that movie unfold with a company I used to work for, East West Resorts, in which a well-to-do real estate developer eager to reproduce what seemed to be a lucrative business model in Beaver Creek, Colorado all over the Rocky Mountain West.

In their hurry to buy and look good, its purchasing team didn’t conduct good due diligence and paid through the nose for questionable assets, in markets where the cost of entry was very low. The end result was that five years later most of the hastily gotten acquisition had to be liquidated at a substantial loss.

Today, both Vail Resorts and Alterra are in the hot seat with each a class-action suit against them for not refunding skiers for part of their season ski passes, following a shortened winter by Covid-19, and the former company that is public is facing a dwindling stock price and the threat of having to shed assets.

In Park City, for instance, the former owners of Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort must be high-fiving each other and thinking that they were indeed very smart in selling when they did and for so much money. The morale of that story is that a fat checkbook is always a dangerous guide, especially if the buyer lacks patience, time and qualifications for making a smart purchase!

The end of 50 years of good times ?

The pandemic that currently ravages the world is largely going to leave huge scars all over the world. That kind of trauma might set us back significantly and for the older ones of us, could make us regret the crazy and comfy life we’ve so much enjoyed during the past half-century.

Back in the spring of 1970, I was concluding my first season as an Avoriaz ski instructor, in France. We were skiing down “Les Grillages”, to the right off piste du Crot, “La Combette” and “Les Cables”, right under the tram, bouncing from one huge boulder to the next.

At the end of April, we were in the midst of many celebrations with the Ski Patrol (“Soirée Ricard”) ending up at La Grande Terche, dancing the night away and having great fun at “La Grange Heureuse” at nearby Les Gets ski resort, where uncontrolled libations was fully accepted, if not encouraged by the local culture.

My tiny 2cv Citroën or God, perhaps, was miraculously and consistantly taking me home in one piece, and life for well into the following century looked endlessly promising as well as filled with great joy, and that outlook held firmly. That was, at least, until now.

Is Covid-19 bringing us anything good?

In spite of all the casualties, of all the sick, a stringent lock-down and of dire economical consequences, I still can see a silver lining associated with the 2020 pandemic: 

• The microscopic virus could be mighty enough to unseat Trump. 
• Humanity begins valuing life over material things. 
• We get a weekly “Zoom” video conference with our kids. 
• My hands have never been so clean! 
• We call all of our friends more often. We know everything about infectious diseases. 
• And for Coved-19, I might test positive (pardon the pun!) 
• In that category, America is number one! 

And you, which other advantages do you see?

Remember the Great Depression ?

We talk a lot about some impending depression these days. Unless you are at least 95 years old, you won’t remember much from the Great Depression that began in 1929.

I don’t either, but I remember a lifestyle that wasn’t so distant from that epochal event.

When I was growing up in the Alps and was about 3-4 years of age (yeah, that me named Go11, in red, on that picture), during 4 months out of the year, we had dirt floor in the kitchen, no electricity, no running water and the whole family (5 of us) slept in the same room in beds made of hay. The only positive thing is that we never went hungry and always had plenty to eat thanks to our parents’ hard work.

Yet, still today, I never forgot where I came from and would be ready for some stringent sacrifices if I had to...

A crucial confluence : Earth Day & Covid-19

Today is Earth Day and it happen as we are in the midst of the worst pandemic since 100 years. This year’s theme for the 50th anniversary of the event is climate action.

Yet, both our climate challenges and Covid-19 are most likely the byproduct of major overcrowding of the planet. So what’s come first? The chick or the egg? What is causing all of this chaos?

In my opinion the 7.7 billion humans that keep on multiplying and trampling everything in their earthly path. Climate change and the coronavirus are mere symptoms of how bad things are.

Why are we so obsessed by treating the symptoms rather than addressing what causes them?

A matter of life and death

In the midst of this pandemic, it clearly appears that overcrowding isn’t a good idea and should be avoided at all cost. Not easy to do when one lives in New York City, Milan or Paris.

Yet, sparsely populated areas and social distancing will win the battle. Yesterday as we were walking, some folks were making fun of social distancing.

I told them: “I’d rather stand 6 feet apart from you, than be 6 feet under!”

Education: More economy, less religion…

The current coronavirus crisis is showing us that folks who weren’t prepared to a brutal change in economic situation have been badly hurt and are suffering much more than they should.

It also tells us that we don’t teach enough basic economic rules in school, like saving for a rainy day or for sake of creating a buffer, or better yet, a springboard to acquire a roof over someone’s heads and a tiny bit of freedom from credit.

The current endless lines at food banks is a telltale reminder that something is badly wrong with our American society, in a country that we’d like to call the richest on the face of the earth.

Instead, we make damned sure that people place some kind of religious education far before some basic information about navigating a day-to-day economic reality.

That's why we prefer administering to young kids plenty of religiosity through early, massive and continued brainwashing.

As a result, most individuals are stuck relying on divine prayer than on common sense economic rules that could free them from the tyranny of consumerism and merciless capitalism

Where’s my soul? (continued)

Towards the end of January, I went on a limb when I said that mind and soul were the “same and unique thing”.

That was not quite what I wanted to express. Today, in reviewing my assertion, I’d say that if the mind is really part of us, the soul belongs to the Universe and a limited number of people are able to get to it.

Sure, we can get some through intuition, ESP and our collective unconscious that we share with the rest of our fellow humans.

When we’re very young we still could catch that invaluable material, but as soon we got “educated” and formatted by society it soon vaporized, not to be found again. To retrieve it later, it takes special self-examination and training like mysticism, contemplation, meditation and mindfulness.

What we then recapture is, in my view, is nothing but the “Soul” religious folks are talking about. Just like the software that resides in today’s “Cloud”, our soul is a collective source that radiates from the Universe for whoever ask for it.

We simply need to pursue what’s required to tap into that rich source of knowledge, wisdom and comfort.

Is the American Dream on its last leg?

The American Dream is a three-leg stool.

One leg represents the land we stole from the native Amerindians, another stands for the black slave labor that jump-started America’s greatness, and the third leg represents all the hypocrisy that placated these two deeds.

Today, neither land nor labor are quite as cheap as they once were, and what’s left is our hollow supply of hypocrisy for the rest of the world to see.

No wonder then, that the once iconic “American Dream” is just precariously standing as the shadow of its former self.

Yesteryear’s snow…

Fifty years ago today, my brother and I rode the Avoriaz tram, went up to the Prolays ridge, and skied down into the Lindarets Valley.

In these days, there was no lift, no ski run, just a mountain village where our family restaurant was located.

We went there to discharge the roof that was dangerously loaded, and even though it was relatively late in the season, snow was at its peak level with more than 4 meters (160 inches) accumulated.

We had never seen so much of it (yeah, we still were young!) and when we told our parents they had never heard of such huge layer either.

It was another era and with global warming and a deteriorating planet, it may never be seen again.

I’ll miss that...

Morning aftershock

A little over 4 weeks ago we had an earthquake centered near the Salt Lake City airport.

This morning, at about 7:35 am, we got a reminder under the form of a 4.2 aftershock, centered in the same spot.

I thought it was a noticeable reminder that our old planet doesn’t care much about Covid-19…

Waiting for the paint or glue to dry…

Re-opening a country in the aftermath or Covid-19 will essentially be a test on patience, just like waiting for paint or glue to dry.

We generally have a very hard time waiting before we want to apply another coat, touch the paint or use that broken porcelain handle that was just glued.

Generally, we are so gung-ho to move on, that the work we’ve just done ends up being destroyed in a flash. The same can easily happen if we get out of the corona-virus lock-down way too early.

There’s a tight limit and there’s a good limit. In aerospace construction, there are redundancies and margins of safety; without them, airplanes would fall off the sky all the time.

The same holds true for announcing an end to the pandemic restriction: There must be a sound margin of safety and the process must be staggered. In addition, we need to check the best practices from those countries that did a much better job than the United States and the large European countries that have had a chaotic experience dealing with the virus...

Covid-19: Impact on business travel and telecommuting?

As companies are getting used to have their employee working from home, and are adjusting to an off-location workplace, they are walking through a totally new experience. At the same time, they are putting software and video tools to the test to perform educating, conferencing and meetings.

When the pandemic abates, companies and organizations may begin to realize that there are some significant savings to be made in both evolving and streamlining the current work and travel paradigms. This can be seen in terms of a more efficient use of office space as well as huge savings in time, travel, hotel and entertainment costs.

Sure teleconferencing software still shows today a large number of inadequacies, but as its intended market comes to that realization, it may soon improve by leaps and bounds and may totally transform the way future business is conducted.

What may tip Trump over?

Some folks may still think that Biden, the presumptive Democratic Nominee will cause Trump to tip over. I personally don’t think so.

While Trump is 6’3” (190 cm) tall, he might be overthrown by a tiny-winy virus measuring between 60 to 140 nanometer in diameter.

Talk about David vs. Goliath, and if my wish is realized come next November, an outcome our fearless Leader would have never anticipated!

Closing day at Park City and Deer Valley!

Almost everyday, for the past four weeks, my wife has been teasing me by asking: “Such a beautiful day, why don’t you go skiing?”

Of course, I listen and remain totally stoic; I’ve long accepted the lock-down and the end of skiing for this winter season.

The lifts have been shut down since March 15 and yesterday, closing day, it was no different, except that there was no Easter eggs hunt on the slopes...

Even though the weather started cold and amidst snow flurries this morning, which is not unusual for Easter, the snow and the conditions are still fabulous, but the season is now over for good.

Sure, there’s always next year, but how will that future be like?

Coronavirus stats

Everyday, when I consult the Covid-19 Global Cases update from the Johns Hopkins University, I’ struck by the obvious disparity between the number of cases and the number of fatalities.

Of course, numbers are as good as the way governments’ health ministries collect them, but this is however quite telling.

I’m surprised that Turkey seems so successful in limiting its casualties, much less about Canada and its fairly good national healthcare system. I'm also impressed by Germany and a bit comforted by the United States numbers, even though we can’t claim to be the best in that particular department!

What’s spooky though, is the lackluster performance by France and the UK that are behind Spain. I’m not talking about Italy, which performance is more in keeping with that country’s natural chaos…

With such dismal results, would I ever return to France? No so fast, I’m waiting for the November election. In the meantime, Happy Easter!

Covid-19: Who’s got the answers?

Between what Donald Trump says, Boris Johnson believes or Emmanuel Macron thinks, there’s plenty to be confused about when one wants to know sensible answers about the pandemic.

Then, steps in Dr. Didier Raoult, the French director of a Marseille-based infection research institute, with his miraculous Chloroquine, and the world, including our President, is off on another chase.

How then can we know where we stand on the Covid-19, its idiosyncrasies, its behavior and its evolution ? We need to hear from a pragmatic expert that blends good common sense, absence of ego and great knowledge.

In a recent CNBC interview, Bill Gates, answers the questions we all have, but no one is able to express in a cogent, concise and understandable way.

We definitely could use him instead of Trump !

Does marmot sighting mean springtime?

As we were walking this past Monday, we saw the first marmot of 2020. It sure looked pretty much like its 2019 counterparts, a bit leaner maybe than the last one we saw early summer.

But what’s for sure, they’re now out, Coved-19 or not, it’s time for them to restore themselves, work on their progeny and start building up that so important fat reserve that keep them alive all winter long.

They still whistle as if nothing had happened to Park City and the rest of the world, and appear to be looking to a good spring, fun summer and productive fall.

I’d kill to be a marmot!

A goal a day keeps boredom away

During lock-down, time seems endless, everyday day feels the same, yet chores persist and don’t get done.

So, it’s essential that we break that routine by creating highlights that can drive us to the end of the day without getting insane and having a sense of making some progress.

My trick for that is to set up one or more goals for that day, that can easily be attained and give me some sense of having achieved something instead of letting all that precious time capital wasting away.

This is probably why this personal isolation hasn’t been so bad for me, so far, and that I still can believe how fast time is running, to the point that I’m totally unable to catch up.

Sure, the “hard things” don’t get done as fast as they should, but eventually, when my mood feels like, they might look more appetizing to me and eventually get addressed, albeit more slowly than during “normal times”.

But remember, these are very hard times and we all deserve to cut ourselves some slack!

Is patience dead?

When is the pandemic over?
When is the lock-down going to be loosen?
When is life, as we used to know it, going to resume?

These are questions, that, if not expressed explicitly, are on everyone’s top of mind. These days, being patient has become so hard that we can’t imagine a life where patience is even necessary.

With 24/7 updated information, fast internet and no patience for unanswered question, the quandary we’re in at the moment is choking our lives and has become totally unacceptable.

Yet, the reality is that answers are missing or aren’t forthcoming, the light at the end of the tunnel is still in our mind’s eye, but nowhere yet to be seen in our reality, and we need to relearn the lost art of patience.

One hour at a time, one day at a time, one month at a time and perhaps even more than just that...

Did “Epikon” exacerbate Covid-19 at ski resorts?

Whether it’s in Germany or in the United States, ski resorts have been a hotbed for starting the contamination and today, three ski resort communities are major hotbed, if not by sheer numbers, but on a per-capita basis, of the pandemic in the U.S.

One could be tempted to draw a parallel between the widespread availability and usage of the multi-resort passes known as “Epic”, “Ikon” or “Mountain Collective”, by incenting skiers to broadly and easily travel from resort to resort with their universal season passes.

This possibility seems quite intuitive, but when one look at the major resorts and their numbers there is no consistent trend.

Sun Valley is obviously the hardest hit with 2 fatalities, followed by Park City and the Vail Valley, but then Aspen start bucking the trend and so does Summit County, Colorado, that includes Breckenridge, Keystone and Copper as its major ski areas.

As for Jackson Hole, it’s roughly at the same level. As for the Whistler-Blackcomb, in Canada, I couldn’t find any stats.

So many unemployed, so few masks!

On Friday night we had our first weekly “Covid-19-Zoom Conference” that got the whole family together for a long and enjoyable conversation.

 At one point, my son pointed out that with 11 million people who just lost their job, out of a 165 million labor force, we still weren’t able to get the masks and the ventilators needed to address the healthcare community needs, yet alone the general population.

This said, manufacturing face masks isn’t brain surgery and yet our government is so incompetent that it can channel its available resources in a useful and productive manner.

We don’t need a wealthy Realtor and reality-TV celebrity at the head of the country, but a pragmatic manager. Let’s keep that in mind, come next November!

Looking forward to tomorrow…

Today news is bleak, bleak, bleak. If you don’t like them, don’t take them, ignore them as much as possible and turn now to what you believe things will be like, say in six month from now. Right, we’ll be in October 2020.

The summer will have been complicated because we will have tried very hard to delineate the end of the pandemic, the beginning of the next flu season and how society should return to normalcy.

Most people will have cold feet and proceed with extreme caution. To put it simply, they’ll be traumatized and very dubious about their government and its lies.

Here in America, we’ll almost be ready to vote and we’ll find ourselves in the last throes of a super-nasty campaign in which Trump and the GOP will defend their record and do everything to hang on to power.

Who will run against the current president? I don’t know. I think it’s still too early to predict. I hope for a good surprise but this is a thin form of comfort.

The ski season in Park City will look very uncertain too. Not only will we need plenty of snow, we’ll also need eager skiers to return with plenty of courage and dough. Tomorrow will be a test about our future, our resiliency and our hunger to carry on...

Will humanity learn from Covid-19?

When the dust settles, what will the vast majority of human beings who lived through and survived the crisis ever remember?

Will it be a return to business as usual, within developed nations that will mean returning into unbridled consumerism at the expense of a more frugal, grounded and more sustainable living?

Probably, if the economic bite is not severe enough and if governments keep “kicking the can down the road” in order to save themselves.

People who read, think critically and resist being manipulated by social media, TV and other fake-news outlets, only speak among themselves – a minority – and while they advocate for what’s right, they’re simply preaching to the choir, not beyond it.

To get the rest of the population to respond and reject the business model that is forced upon them, the economy is the only factor that can change individual behaviors.

Loss of jobs, reduction of income and economic collapse are the unwelcome catastrophes that may wake-up the “sheep”, finally transform the way the world behaves, make a majority of individuals see the incompetence of their leaders and the intrusion of big-government into their lives and privacy.

It may also open their eye as to the importance of planetary solidarity, an inescapable reality that runs against the demagoguery and nationalism, preached by the Trump, Putin and Orbán, of the world.

What’s most important?

When all is said and done and after receiving our daily dose of bad news from all the media that besiege us, what counts is that my family makes it out of this pandemic in one piece and alive.

This goes for our grandson, our children and spouse, my wife and I, pretty much in that order. As I’ve told some members of my family, « The five of us, who could be counted by the fingers of just one hand » except that is not just five people, it’s six.

I probably failed to count myself or must really suck at basic arithmetic's. So, I would need a hand with six fingers to illustrate that kind of “handful”, that’s right a hand exhibiting polydactyly.

But I don’t really want so many fingers, because I’d need special ski gloves or would have to settle for large mittens as my wife has insisted I should wear.

Well, I’ll just keep the picture...

Corona-view?

Recently, a former schoolmate of mine alerted me about a Financial Time (FT) article by Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He’s a guy with a pretty dystopian view of humanity, announcing, among other calamities, the advent of the “useless class” of people by 2050.

His FT article basically says that big government is spying on everyone and going to know us so well that we will soon be under its thumb. He also laments that at a time when nationalism becomes the new normal, we should instead become a tight-knit global village.

Hard to disagree with these premises, except that they are the result a lofty view from 40,000 feet high.

The view is much closer to the ground for the vast majority of people that are scared of the virus, worried about their aging parents, their kids, their job, the food they’ll have to put on the table and their rent money, not to mention an economy in free fall. It would be great if everyone were well educated, able to think critically, but that’s unfortunately not the case, as this is a long-term project that will take a lot of efforts, tax dollars and time.

More immediately humanity might be well advised to shut down Facebook and its social media offsprings...

April’s fool joke?

A few days ago, I received that promotional email from EasyJet, the British low-cost airline that’s trying to entice me into purchasing a one-way ticket for just 34 Swiss Francs ($36) between now and February 28, 2021.

Am I in the mood of going for such a crass promotion? Hell no!

We’re in the middle of a pandemic that is likely to be followed by a terrible economic hangover (if not a catastrophe)…

Who in is right mind would consider that deal desperately aimed at giving some vital cash-flow to an airline hanging by the skin of its teeth?

And worse yet, who is that bonehead marketeer who can’t see how inappropriate his or her tactic is?