THORTON POINT 41X, HIGHPOINT OF NORTH VALLEYS REGIONAL PARK 59X May 26, 2021
With groceries for breakfast, I finished up some webwork, and bagged Thorton Point 41X. Then going to the whole foods market, I had even more food, with groceries. I had just signed up for A Prime, so got good deals. Back home, I made lunch. My 3 flagpole order arrived, so I called Washoe County Parks for permission to place them atop peaks. They had no issue with it, so I set out right away for North Valleys Regional Park.
Putting the flagpole kit into my pack, I zoomed to the top, and carried up rocks to brace the pole. Done in a half an hour, I marveled at my creation. There would now be the flag to encourage the curious to maybe climb to the top. I set heavy rocks, and looking back, to check on the flag. It gets to 100+ mph winds, so I promised to maintain it. I can see it from about my new home, so would know when to head back up for maintenance.
With a good grocery store dinner, I relaxed for the rest of the day, liking my new curtains with gold rods, with movies and music.
In time for the holiday, I had sent an e-mail to the parks superintendant. My dad was in the MIS unit in WWII, and spoke very little about what was then top secret ops. Into something like the psychological warfare service, I had it in my head that they were charged with getting the Japanese to surrender at Iwo Jima. The enemy had taken away all the radios, so broadcasts went nowhere. Heavy casualties, as it turned out, so I recall stuff weighed on his mind. In the Clint Eastwood movie, Flags of Our Fathers, they depicted the battle with the flag raising on Mt. Suribachi, which then zoomed to history and fame.
Maybe he said this all to me when I was a baby, so it's in my subconscious. I can check military records to see what he did, but they say it was very little. My uncle also served in Korea, but still the Sierra Club bosses say, "Why don't you go back to your own country?" The peak chair then said to me, "Why don't you stick to your own kind?" A climber girl had asked me to dance with her at a fund raiser for the 1978 American Women's Himalayan Expedition. The guy was a hater and Hitler lover, with an admitted nazi in his section as a charter member. Sometimes he was civil enough, but others ascribe things to "mood."
With his closet filled with softcore porn, back then, most nude models were blonde-haired and blue eyed. Just as he was, until diversity took over, and he then gave away his collection to another Clubber, or so I heard. A moron when it came to navigation, one male had to stay out overnight, lost, on one of his leads, a ski snowshoe tour. The guy could not ever turn, them all doing kick turns and traverses, all mostly flopping and falling, with telemark declared a "dangerous turn." Be it each to their own, why they are highly regarded to even this day, I suppose that it was the exclusion of non-white. Though they could see that I was of Japanese descent, so as Japan was allied with Hitler, they thought that was cool.
Family emigrated back in the late 1800's, and we've been Americans ever since. Still to this day, the media hollers about Pearl Harbor, and a neighbor declared that I couldn't be trusted. Her seeming racist to the core, I used to deliver confidential mail to the CA State Capitol with leading safely all my Sierra Club trips, giving belays and being a trusted rope partner.
Most people today would revile such hate, and though nobody ever listens, I am privy to the Club chapter history. In 1972, when I joined, they previously had a "grandfather clause," whereby you needed three member sponsors to become a member. Clearly now a racist club, with near all white-only, good that the NPS seeks to remove them and their hateful history from the parks. Speaking with rangers, they claim that John Muir did good. Well, so did Hitler, by many in the Club. If not for him, there would be millions more Americans to enjoy, explore, and protect!
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