di Cesare Sacchetti Di lui, non si sapeva nulla fino all’estate del 2023, quando da queste parti si parafrasò una famosa opera shakespeariana per annunciare la sua improvvisa venuta, quale “Sogno di un gatekeeper di mezza estate”. Il generale Vannacci ha esordito così nella politica italiana, attraverso una preparazione di marketing concepita da altre menti […]
Tudo em que dá pra sentar é cadeira! — berrou Jorginho, de doze anos.
Faz um tempo que dou aulas de matemática extracurricular para pré-adolescentes e gosto sempre de alterar o material, já que não preciso seguir nenhum programa de conteúdo muito rígido. Recentemente pensei que seria interessante tentar ensiná-los a importância (e a dificuldade) de boas definições e, antes de lhes apresentar as bases euclidianas do fazer matemático, propus um desafio a fim de mostrar que essa empreitada é muito mais complicada do que o pai da geometria fez parecer. Expliquei que a matemática moderna é feita a partir de definições muito precisas, que delimitam exatamente os objetos que querem — bem — definir, mas que, ao longo de sua vasta história, houve inúmeros embates sobre como deveria ser definido, por exemplo, um plano. Antes, porém, de entrar de fato nos objetos abstratos da mãe das ciências, sugeri que começássemos por delimitar algo mais concreto, mais empolgante.
— Alguém pode me dizer o que é uma cadeira?
— Tem um encosto, quatro pernas e dá pra sentar! — alguém no fundo falou.
— E se o encosto quebrasse, ainda seria uma cadeira? — perguntei, crente de que eu conduziria essa investigação magistralmente, pelo infalível método socrático.
— Aí seria uma cadeira quebrada, professor! — Começaram a rir.
— Pois bem, eu quero uma lista de características que a cadeira PRECISA ter para ser uma cadeira. Se ela não precisa de encosto, a lista também não precisa.
— Lá em casa tem uma que não tem apoio de braço, nem encosto, nem perna! É um quadradão assim, e a gente chama de cadeira.
— Quadrado, não. Cubo. — disse Jorginho.
— Certo, então é só um objeto em que dá pra sentar. Seria isso? — perguntei.
— Não! — exclamou Gabriel. — Dá pra sentar no chão, mas o chão não é uma cadeira.
— O chão não é objeto!
— Tá, mas dá pra sentar numa mesa também, e mesa não é cadeira!
Os alunos engataram na discussão e me segurei para deixá-los livres, queria ver se chegariam a algum consenso. Continuaram se lançando exemplos e contraexemplos até que a turma se dividiu em dois grupos: um deles, liderado por Jorginho (que tem uma incrível memória, sempre me lembra de fazer a chamada), defendia que tudo em que se podia se sentar poderia ser chamado de cadeira; o outro grupo, cuja voz mais ardente vinha de Gabriel, tinha como fundamento a intenção do criador do objeto: se alguém fez algo em que se poderia se sentar e o batizou de cadeira, logo aquilo assim seria chamado. As duas escolas de pensamento, então, travaram um feroz embate acerca da natureza real de um tronco cortado na floresta.
Fiquei tão absorvido pelo debate, pela truculência com que sustentavam suas alegações, que me esqueci de que esse é um problema sem solução. A impossibilidade de um consenso foi se tornando mais clara quando vi alguns alunos subindo em suas cadeiras como demonstração de um argumento que não captei por completo e vi bolas de papel voando em suas direções, certamente carregadas de eloquentes réplicas. Tive que me restabelecer como autoridade daquela ágora vulcânica assim que começaram os gritos de “DERRUBA! DERRUBA!”.
— Chega! — e dei um tapão na lousa tentando disfarçar minha satisfação em ter instigado um bélico debate filosófico entre pré-adolescentes.
Mas no silêncio borbulhante da turma ainda com os peitos ebulindo opiniões, Gabriel se levantou lenta e confiantemente e, com uma folha de papel amassada na mão, foi em direção à lata de lixo, gesto que passou despercebido pelos rivais. Eu o olhava pacientemente, esperando-o voltar a sua carteira para que eu pudesse prosseguir com a aula. Ele jogou fora o papel e, no caminho de volta ao seu assento, foi para o palanque na frente da sala, levantou os braços e disse “Tá aqui a cadeira do Jorginho!” e encheu a mão com o argumento que tinha entre as pernas.
This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Sept. 01, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
Ouano Tante worked the afternoon shift at the Tyson beef plant in Joslin, Illinois, for five years. But when she and hundreds of her co-workers arrived at work on August 13, they found the plant closed.
They speculated that someone on the morning shift might have gotten injured. Then two mid-level supervisors came outside in tears. Plant supervisors told workers the plant was closing permanently, effective immediately.
Inside, the early-morning shift had just ended when the workers were informed it would be their last. The cafeteria erupted into chaos. Plant supervisors stood guard by the doors, workers said, while everyone received their closure paperwork.
“People were crying, shaking,” Tante said. “When we were leaving the parking lot, there were so many car accidents. People were so upset.”
“They gave no reason, nothing,” said Ahoro Asselissime. “People have no job. No money to pay our bills. For 11 years, I made money for them. And now they’re not doing anything for me.”
DISASTER FOR COMMUNITY
Joslin is home to just 56 residents. But 2,500 workers from Africa, Latin America, and Burma toiled at the meatpacking plant there, butchering cattle for Tyson, one of the world’s largest meatpacking companies. The workers were represented by Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1546.
Most of the workers live in the Quad Cities, clustered around the Illinois-Iowa border 160 miles west of Chicago. Everyone there knows someone who works at Tyson, the area’s ninth-largest employer. The closure announcement sent the community into a tailspin.
Tante, originally from Togo, had the job of determining the age of cattle by checking the size of their teeth. An overhead conveyor would move carcasses, suspended by their ankles, along the chain. Tante checked the teeth, sprinted up a set of stairs to mark the cattle’s ankles with ink, then sprinted back down to catch the next carcass.
Simultaneously, other workers drained blood from the animal by slicing the neck with knives. If Tante didn’t work fast enough or was off-pace with the other workers, she said, she could get cut by their knives.
PALTRY SEVERANCE
The laid-off workers will be paid for 36 hours a week until October, but that’s far less than they had been making with overtime.
“I got $500 this week,” said Asselissime. “My rent is $925. I have to put gas in my car, buy food for my kids. Everything is so expensive now.” Prior to the closure, Asselissime could expect around $900 a week.
“I’ve been sounding the alarm about how Tyson treats their workers for years,” said Nana Ouro-Agoro, founder of Akwaaba, a nonprofit organization that provides support to the Quad Cities’ immigrant population.
Originally from Togo, Ouro-Agoro came to the Quad Cities after winning the immigration lottery in 2008. She learned that many of her neighbors worked at Tyson, where they were frequently injured on the job and afraid to speak out. Workers told her they were being treated “worse than the cattle.”
“It was hard for me to sleep at night, hearing my fellow immigrants were working hard, getting injured, and nothing was being done,” she said.
Akwaaba helped Tyson workers with translation services and resources to help them assert their rights, including when Tyson abruptly fired dozens of Togolese workers as alleged retaliation for reporting injuries and sexual harassment. Now, about 500 of their clients—roughly 1 in 4—are out of work.
And because so much of the local economy depends on income from Tyson workers, “we’re going to see a crisis in every sector,” Ouro-Agoro said.
ONE MONOPOLY AFTER ANOTHER
It’s been a profitable few years for Tyson. So why shutter the plant? Tyson cites the nationwide cattle shortage.
Cattle stock in the United States is at a 75-year low. The costs of raising cattle have gone up significantly for ranchers, in part due to drought and higher prices for fertilizer and diesel, exacerbated by the war on Iran.
But the crisis facing Tyson workers and cattle ranchers alike is driven by one major factor: corporate consolidation. The “Big Four”—Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef—own over 80 percent of the U.S. beef industry.
The Big Four have, according to multiple court decisions, colluded to fix prices for just about everything, from the price customers pay at the grocery store to the price cattle ranchers receive for their livestock.
Yet despite the strain placed on cattle herds, U.S. beef production in real terms has remained relatively steady, due to the heavier weight of today’s cattle compared to decades ago.
Tyson isn’t the only one closing plants. JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, closed a facility in Memphis in June, laying off 200. JBS also announced plans to close a 1,500-worker processing plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, but efforts from union and political leaders pushed JBS to convert the plant to a smaller facility, saving 400 jobs.
With nearly 4,000 meatpacking jobs cut just this summer, is the cattle shortage really to blame?
As of the most recent fiscal quarter, Tyson’s operating income is up 8 percent, or $547 million, over last year. Tyson attributes the increase to growth in its chicken and prepared foods segments.
Tyson CEO Donnie King took home nearly $35 million in total compensation last year, 781 times more than the median Tyson worker and double the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio among S&P 500 companies.
While cattle shortages could be cutting into beef profits (Tyson reported a third-quarter beef operating loss of $138 million), overall the company is making money hand over fist. And as the meatpackers squeeze cattle producers, the shortage itself is a problem of the Big Four’s own making.
But meatpacker consolidation is only one piece of the puzzle. The meatpackers may claim that they are also the victims of collusion—by the grocery giants.
Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, and Albertsons can collude to lower prices paid to meatpackers too. Estimates place Walmart at between 20 and 25 percent ownership of the grocery industry, while Amazon (thanks to its acquisition of Whole Foods) is now the second-largest grocery retailer in the U.S.
Grocers are pushing down prices paid to packers, while packers are slashing prices paid to ranchers. In 1980, cattle producers took home $0.63 of every consumer beef dollar and the packers and retailers took home a combined $0.37. As of 2021, that number is exactly flipped, according to More Perfect Union. All the while, workers and consumers get the shortest end of the stick; price collusion lines the pockets of meatpacking and grocery store executives, while depressing worker wages and inflating consumer prices.
UNION PENS AGREEMENT
After the Joslin plant closure, the union released the following statement: “UFCW Local 1546 has a long-standing and proud union partnership with Tyson Foods, and we were extremely disappointed in not receiving advance notice of this news. If given the opportunity, we could have sat down and found an economic solution to keep this plant operating, but sadly our voice was silenced.”
Four days after the company’s closure announcement, Local 1546 President Robert O’Toole signed an agreement with Tyson, which includes severance pay of one to four weeks, depending on years of service, on top of the two months of payments.
The UFCW agrees to “not to take any steps or action to… interfere in any way with the orderly closing of the Plant, and the Union agrees not to support any such steps or action by others.”
Many workers feel their union leadership has left them hung out to dry. “The union doesn’t care about us, Tyson doesn’t care about us,” said Asselissime. “A lot of immigrants work for this company, from Mexico, from Africa. That’s why they don’t care.”
Some workers were already mobilizing independently. The day after Tyson announced the closure, laid-off workers rallied outside the plant gates with community supporters and political groups. The workers demanded Tyson make a plan to keep the plant open; if that wasn’t possible, they wanted six months of severance pay, not two.
At various points in its history, the UFCW has taken up key fights against the packers. In 2007, it spearheaded a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security after ICE raids detained 12,000 workers at six meatpacking plants.And in 2008, after a 16-year battle, it organized the world’s largest pork processing plant, the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.
But in recent years, the International union seems to have changed its tune, tying itself to the meat cartels in exchange for short-term, modest gains. Now Tyson workers say that labor-management “partnership” is swinging back at the members, with little response from union leadership.
“The union hasn’t said anything, aside from telling us to go apply for unemployment,” said Tante. “I thought the union should defend us, so I was surprised they didn’t do anything. The union could have fought for us to get more severance, but they didn’t.”
PROTESTS CONTINUE
Several hundred maintenance workers who remain in the plant are reportedly dismantling equipment and preparing the plant for demolition.
Meatpackers are notorious for refusing to sell plants to other packers, wanting to stifle competition. In 2018, for example, when Tyson closed a plant in Cherokee, Iowa, it refused to sell until the next owners agreed to limit the number of cattle they would slaughter there.
While some workers might move and get jobs at other plants, Tyson has not outlined formal transfer rights or relocation stipends (in previous plant closures, relocation bonuses have been up to $15,000). JBS has held mass hiring events in the Quad Cities for those willing to relocate to Nebraska or Utah.
Veronica Ceballos, originally from Mexico, worked at Tyson for 19 years, commuting on rural backroads through harsh Iowa winters. Even after she injured her back working on the line, she transferred to a different position and continued working. Since her children are now adults, she says, she has the flexibility to relocate if necessary. But she worries for co-workers who don’t have that option.
Several hundred Tyson workers and their families have continued organizing protests and rallies, calling on Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker to invoke eminent domain to bring the plant under state ownership and re-open its doors, and on Tyson to increase severance pay to six months. On September 3, workers and community supporters will caravan to Springfield to march on the state capitol building at noon.
“There are people who’ve worked at Tyson for 20 years, 30 years. People with health issues, people who are sick, people who can no longer work elsewhere,” Asselissime said in a speech at a rally of about 100 workers on August 27. “We need fair severance pay, so we can have a future.”
Caitlyn Clark is a national organizer at Essential Workers for Democracy (www.ew4d.org), an organization dedicated to rank and file member education and empowerment for workers in grocery, meatpacking, and retail.
Correction 09/10/2026: Workers were informed about the plant closure on August 13, not August 14 as previously stated.
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In a beautiful and vivid essay on home, time, and family, Diane Roberts reflects on the house that her parents built, and their family’s land in Leon County, Florida, to which she feels deeply connected. I especially love Roberts’s thoughts on a home versus a house—the latter is composed of construction materials, but “home implies a complex neural network of family association and feeling, layers of experience, a shared past.” Despite the tragedies the home holds, it is ultimately a place of memory and meaning.
Home and time are as tangled as the skunk vine and Confederate jasmine choking my backyard fence. I suppose that’s to be expected. My house holds our history and the indispensable relics of former houses, objects cherished by the now-dead: the tiny rocking chair my grandfather made for my mother when she was three; the 1960 TR3 in the barn my brother never quite got around to fixing; the two old rosebushes dug up from the Washington County farm, replanted at Great-Aunt Rilla’s house in Chipley, then dug up again and transported to our front yard. The house didn’t simply belong to us, it was us—our mother, our father, Brad, and me.
Quando entrarono alla corte di Susa, Spertia e Buli non chiesero un’alleanza, denaro o la liberazione di qualche prigioniero. Chiesero di essere uccisi. Le guardie ordinarono loro di gettarsi a terra davanti a Serse, ma i due rimasero in piedi, pronti a subire con la forza l’umiliazione che si rifiutavano di compiere volontariamente. Erano arrivati da Sparta per consegnare le proprie vite al posto di due araldi persiani assassinati anni prima. Il re avrebbe potuto accettare quell’offerta e trasformarla in una vendetta esemplare. Scelse invece di rimandarli a casa.
La vicenda occupa poche pagine del settimo libro delle Storie di Erodoto, fra il passaggio dell’esercito di Serse in Macedonia e l’invasione della Grecia. È rimasta nell’ombra di avvenimenti più celebri, dalle Termopili a Salamina, eppure contiene una delle scene più sorprendenti delle guerre persiane. I due Spartani — indicati anche come Sperthias e Bulis nelle traslitterazioni moderne — sembrano uscire dallo stesso mondo che avrebbe reso celebri i guerrieri di Leonida. Il passaggio più inatteso appartiene però al loro nemico. Serse, il sovrano che si preparava a invadere la Grecia, rifiutò di violare una legge che Sparta aveva già calpestato.
Terra e acqua
Tutto era cominciato intorno al 491 a.C., quando Dario inviò messaggeri in diverse città greche per domandare «terra e acqua». Consegnare quei due elementi significava riconoscere la superiorità del Gran Re e accettare di entrare nel sistema politico dell’Impero achemenide. Gli obblighi concreti potevano essere stabiliti in seguito; il gesto iniziale dichiarava chi occupasse la posizione dominante. Il significato preciso del rituale è ancora discusso dagli studiosi, anche perché lo conosciamo soprattutto attraverso fonti greche, ma Erodoto non lascia dubbi su come venisse percepito dalle comunità alle quali era rivolto: era una richiesta di sottomissione.
Molti accolsero gli araldi e consegnarono ciò che Dario chiedeva. Atene e Sparta reagirono in modo diverso. Gli Ateniesi gettarono i messaggeri persiani nel barathron, la cavità nella quale venivano precipitati alcuni condannati a morte. Gli Spartani spinsero i loro in un pozzo, invitandoli a prendere da lì la terra e l’acqua da portare al re. La risposta aveva l’efficacia brutale di una battuta destinata a essere ricordata. Dei Persiani uccisi non ci sono rimasti neppure i nomi. Nella cultura greca, tuttavia, l’araldo godeva di una protezione che sopravviveva perfino allo stato di guerra. Poteva recare una minaccia, intimare la resa o parlare per conto di un nemico, ma colpirlo significava distruggere il canale attraverso il quale anche i combattimenti potevano essere sospesi, i morti recuperati e una pace negoziata.
Anni dopo, quando Serse rinnovò la richiesta di terra e acqua alle città greche, escluse deliberatamente Atene e Sparta. L’assenza degli araldi ricordava che con quelle due comunità la diplomazia era già fallita nel modo più irreparabile. Per gli Spartani il silenzio persiano non cancellava comunque l’offesa. Il problema non dipendeva soltanto dalla reazione del Gran Re: riguardava gli dèi, i rituali pubblici e la possibilità stessa di prendere decisioni con il loro consenso.
Dopo l’uccisione, racconta Erodoto, i sacrifici cessarono di offrire presagi favorevoli. Prima di una decisione pubblica o di una spedizione militare, le vittime sacrificali dovevano mostrare che gli dèi approvavano ciò che la città stava per compiere. Quando i segni continuavano a risultare negativi, l’intera comunità si trovava davanti a un ordine del mondo che sembrava essersi inceppato.
A provocare la sciagura sarebbe stata l’ira di Taltibio, l’araldo di Agamennone nell’Iliade. A Sparta l’eroe possedeva un santuario e i Taltibiadi, che si proclamavano suoi discendenti, conservavano il privilegio ereditario di svolgere le ambascerie della città. Non era quindi una figura remota confinata alla guerra di Troia. Il suo culto proteggeva una funzione ancora viva, indispensabile perfino a una società educata al combattimento. Uccidendo gli inviati di Dario, Sparta aveva offeso insieme una consuetudine condivisa e il custode divino di quella consuetudine.
La devozione sopravvisse a lungo. Nel II secolo d.C. il viaggiatore Pausania ricordò a Sparta un tumulo attribuito a Taltibio e scrisse che gli venivano ancora offerti sacrifici come a un eroe. La tradizione registrata da Erodoto non poggiava quindi sul nome occasionale di un personaggio omerico: richiamava un culto radicato nella memoria della città.
Due vite per due araldi
Le assemblee si susseguirono senza trovare una soluzione. Alla fine fu fatto proclamare un appello: esisteva un Lacedemone disposto a morire per la città? Si offrirono Spertia, figlio di Aneristo, e Buli, figlio di Nicolao. Erodoto ricorda che appartenevano a famiglie nobili ed erano fra gli uomini più ricchi di Sparta. Non è un particolare ornamentale. A offrirsi non furono due uomini senza peso, scelti perché più facili da perdere, ma due membri della ristretta comunità degli Spartiati. Avevano prestigio, ricchezze e figli che sarebbero riapparsi molti anni dopo nella stessa storia.
La loro missione aveva una logica che oggi può apparire estranea. Non partivano come colpevoli materiali dell’assassinio e neppure come negoziatori incaricati di ottenere il perdono. Rappresentavano Sparta anche con il proprio corpo: due morti persiani sarebbero state compensate da due morti spartane. Nel mondo raccontato da Erodoto, la responsabilità poteva oltrepassare l’individuo, aderire a una famiglia o ricadere su una comunità intera. L’offerta di Spertia e Buli cercava di ricomporre un equilibrio, non di dimostrare che la città non aveva sbagliato.
La destinazione era Susa, nell’attuale Iran sud-occidentale, una delle capitali nelle quali il sovrano achemenide riceveva funzionari e delegazioni provenienti dall’impero. Durante il viaggio i due furono accolti da Idarne, un alto comandante persiano responsabile delle coste dell’Asia Minore. Li fece sedere alla propria tavola e provò a mostrare loro i vantaggi del servizio imperiale. Il Gran Re sapeva riconoscere gli uomini valorosi; se gli Spartani avessero accettato la sua amicizia, avrebbero potuto ricevere onori e il governo di terre greche. Idarne poteva fare una simile offerta: apparteneva all’élite di un impero abituato a premiare la lealtà e a servirsi delle aristocrazie locali.
Spertia e Buli gli risposero che il consiglio nasceva da un’esperienza incompleta. Idarne conosceva bene il servizio al re, ma non aveva mai assaggiato la libertà; se l’avesse conosciuta, avrebbe combattuto per difenderla «non soltanto con le lance, ma anche con le scuri». La frase è diventata la parte più famosa dell’episodio. Erodoto scriveva molti decenni dopo, perciò non sappiamo se quelle parole siano state davvero pronunciate a tavola. I discorsi delle Storie servono anche a mostrare il carattere dei protagonisti e le idee che attraversano l’opera. Chiamare Idarne “schiavo”, d’altra parte, non descrive la sua condizione giuridica: era un dignitario potente. La risposta spartana trasforma la dipendenza da un sovrano nel contrario della libertà politica e anticipa il modo in cui i Greci vincitori avrebbero ricordato lo scontro con la Persia.
Il re che rifiutò la vendetta
Idarne li aveva accolti come ospiti e aveva offerto loro una via d’uscita. Alla corte di Susa fu Serse a spostare ancora una volta il significato dell’incontro. Le guardie pretesero la proskynesis, il gesto di deferenza previsto dal cerimoniale achemenide. La sua forma variava secondo il rango e poteva comprendere un inchino o una prosternazione. Per i Persiani esprimeva la gerarchia della corte; agli occhi di molti Greci assomigliava invece a un atto riservato agli dèi. Spertia e Buli rifiutarono di compierlo davanti a un uomo, pur sapendo che quella resistenza poteva anticipare la loro esecuzione di pochi istanti.
Quando furono ammessi alla presenza di Serse, spiegarono la ragione del viaggio. Sparta li aveva inviati affinché pagassero la pena dovuta per gli araldi di Dario. Gli Spartani, rispose il re, avevano infranto una legge riconosciuta da tutti uccidendo dei messaggeri. Lui non avrebbe imitato la condotta che condannava e, mettendo a morte i due volontari, non avrebbe liberato la loro città dalla colpa. Spertia e Buli avevano offerto la propria vita; Serse rifiutò che fossero loro a stabilire il prezzo.
Il rifiuto poteva servire anche alla politica regale. Risparmiare due aristocratici nemici consentiva a Serse di presentarsi come un sovrano capace di dominare la propria ira e di rispettare una norma universale. Nel racconto di Erodoto, però, il valore del gesto non viene ridotto a calcolo. Lo storico parla apertamente di magnanimità. È un dettaglio importante, perché incrina l’immagine di un’opera costruita soltanto per celebrare la superiorità morale dei Greci. Proprio mentre Spertia e Buli pronunciano una fiera difesa della libertà, il Gran Re mostra una forma di autocontrollo che Sparta non aveva saputo esercitare.
Il debito passa ai figli
Spertia e Buli tornarono vivi. Erodoto osserva che l’ira di Taltibio cessò comunque per qualche tempo: il viaggio non aveva prodotto le due morti previste, ma aveva mostrato che Sparta riconosceva la gravità dell’offesa. Lo storico, tuttavia, non chiude qui la storia. Compie un salto di circa mezzo secolo e segue il debito fino alla generazione successiva.
Nel 430 a.C., all’inizio della guerra del Peloponneso, Nicolao figlio di Buli e Aneristo figlio di Spertia partirono a loro volta come ambasciatori. Sparta cercava l’appoggio e il denaro della Persia contro Atene. La delegazione fu intercettata in Tracia, consegnata agli Ateniesi e condotta in città. Tucidide racconta che gli uomini vennero uccisi nello stesso giorno, senza processo, e che i loro corpi furono gettati in una fossa. Per Atene si trattava di impedire a emissari pericolosi di raggiungere il Gran Re e di rispondere alle esecuzioni compiute dagli Spartani ai danni di mercanti e marinai. Erodoto guardò allo stesso avvenimento con occhi diversi: la collera di Taltibio, scrisse, aveva infine raggiunto i figli di coloro che avevano tentato di placarla.
Al di fuori delle Storie non possediamo un racconto indipendente dell’incontro con Serse. Le parole scambiate con Idarne e con il re appartengono alla forma letteraria scelta da Erodoto; anche il legame fra il sacrilegio dei padri e la morte dei figli rivela il suo bisogno di riconoscere un ordine negli avvenimenti. È proprio questo intreccio a rendere la vicenda più interessante di una semplice curiosità sul coraggio spartano. Vi convivono la memoria di un delitto diplomatico, il bisogno collettivo di espiazione, due concezioni della libertà e una riflessione sul limite del potere.
Spertia e Buli erano partiti convinti che Sparta potesse liberarsi dalla colpa soltanto attraverso la loro morte. Serse rifiutò di trasformare due innocenti nella moneta con cui saldare il sangue versato. Quando, molti anni dopo, i loro figli ripresero la strada della Persia e furono uccisi prima di raggiungerla, Erodoto riconobbe nella coincidenza il ritorno di un debito mai estinto. Era il modo antico di chiudere una storia che la clemenza del re aveva lasciato in sospeso.
Some people say that being anti-war is to be against “the troops” – the Americans who in the past were drafted to fight and today volunteer to serve. But that is a superficial criticism that distracts from what the criticism of U.S. wars really should be. Many of us believe in a strong national defense. […]
In this story for MIT Technology Review, Sara Harrison explores the field of social robotics and the growing use of robot companions as therapy for autistic and other neurodivergent kids. These playful machines show promise: Research suggests that they can help children practice social skills and offer something overworked therapists and exhausted parents can’t—a patient companion, available 24/7. But Harrison also reports on their limitations and risks. Does this approach truly work? What about all the data gathered on the child? And what happens when a robot friend suddenly stops working and “dies”? A fascinating and unsettling look at tech that has moved into the most intimate corners of a family’s home.
While Moxie found herself in more and more people’s homes, Embodied still struggled to make money. In 2024, the company announced it would cease operations. Its robots—which depended on external servers that the company could no longer pay for—would descend into a deep slumber.
Videos of bereft children who seemed to have become deeply attached to the blue bot began to circulate online. “I don’t want her to leave,” wailed one child in a TikTok video. Desperate parents posted on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit looking for solutions. “My autistic child is devastated and I’m pissed,” wrote one parent. “Hope Embodied gives us a couple days to say goodbye,” wrote another.
Soixante-quatorze ans après Peau noire, masques blancs, un nouvel essai déplace la question de l’aliénation noire vers le terrain religieux. Dans Peau noire, Dieu blanc : Essai sur l’aliénation spirituelle des Noirs, le journaliste ivoirien Axel Illary critique l’adoration, par les populations noires, de divinités étrangères, sans lien culturel avec leurs sociétés, dont les cultes […]
When I was little I had a ritual with my parents where, as they tucked me into bed, they’d tell me a few reasons why they loved me (yes, I know how lucky I am to have been raised in an environment like this). As part of their list, I always asked them to say I was careful, and dutifully they’d repeat, “Yes, of course, we love you because you’re so careful.” I needed my parents’ words to ward against a recurring-day-mare-type vision I had in those years, in which I climbed onto our roof and then, while recklessly peering over the edge, toppled off the eave and cracked open my skull. I would never have put myself in that situation in waking life; I was so cautious that even an imagined scenario in which I endangered myself was enough to terrify me. But being reassured of my carefulness night after night made me feel safer.
My prudent youth did involve a handful of responsibly chaperoned birthday parties at Northern California climbing gyms, and a handful of climbing excursions in the Sierras with my grandfather, but ironically the flatland of Minnesota is where I got serious about the sport. During those unrelentingly brutal winters I seized upon climbing for exercise and entertainment—in the gym, since it was colder than the dark side of Mars outside—as a way to stave off cabin fever in the long months of permafrost. On a recent visit back to the Twin Cities at the close of one such winter, right after a session at the gym where I first cut my teeth, I posted up on the patio of an organic café to bask in the abrupt warmth of springtime. A guy sitting at the table next to me asked if I was a climber—our veiny forearms signal us to one another like Harley-Davidson jackets do for bikers—and I said yes. We started chatting.
This guy had just moved to town to save his own life. He was a paraglider, parachutist, kite-surfer, and wingsuiter, and he said that in the last year a dozen members of his inner circle “went in,” including his best friend and his brother, all in accidents related to their gravity-skirting pursuits. At first I couldn’t figure out what he meant by “went in,” but as I listened to him enumerate their various methods of “going in,” I eventually realized he was telling me they had all died. I could hardly comprehend the reality he described: being at the heart of a community where loved ones blink out in droves, like candles in a gale. He knew if he stayed in the game as a professional extreme athlete, pressured by peers and sponsors alike to remain at the cutting edge, he himself wouldn’t be around much longer. So, sight-unseen, he moved to the flattest and boringest place he’d ever heard of: Minnesota. He came specifically because there weren’t any cliffs for him to throw himself off. Only a few months into his new life as a Minnesotan, he was still in the jittery, cold turkey phase of his thrill detox.
“You done much free soloing?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said. A truer answer would have been HELL NO I’M A WIMP, MY PARENTS LOVE ME BECAUSE I’M CAREFUL.
“Amazing feeling,” he said. “Being certain if you fuck up you’ll die, and being equally certain you won’t fuck up.”
We listened to the birds, sipped our coffees. I picked at the remains of my huevos rancheros. The juncos twittering around us sounded gladder than usual to be alive. I asked, “Is it really that much less fun to have a rope on? Like, clip a few draws? Place some cams along the way?”
He shook his head. “Once you been hucking yourself off the high dive, it’s no fun jumping off the edge of the pool.”
This at least rang true. Even I find it boring to jump off the edge of the pool.
“Glad you got out when you did,” I said.
He nodded grimly, seeming less glad than I was. Then I asked what he was getting up to instead. Of course, it was the most extreme thing you can do on flat ground.
“Ultramarathons,” he said.
He didn’t seem interested in probing his own psychology or rationales. He unapologetically liked the feeling of being adrenalized, and he wanted to feel that feeling as much as possible without killing himself. Why turn it into some elaborate trolley problem? For those living on the outer edges of risk, I suspect confidence is the key to survival: the confidence in one’s ability to assess a risk and then the confidence to execute the necessary action once a risk is deemed acceptable. Extreme athletes don’t seem to think too hard, at least on an abstract philosophical level, about the dangers they face. Their engagement is logistical, methodical. Far more productive to test the snowpack, visualize the beta, read the weather report, double-check the way the parachute is folded, determine what direction the wind blows down the talus field.
Rather than focusing on what we stand to lose, what riches does risk put us in position to gain?
But risk has been on my mind of late, because, much to my own surprise, my relationship to it has been changing. Recently I was on a very tall boulder called the Kraken, and it felt like I spent a hundred years with the sand in its penultimate pocket rolling grittily under my fingertips while I searched the rounded top of the block for a hold I could trust. A part of me is there still, suspended in that epoch of hold hunting, gearing up for the final move. This is one of risk’s most obvious gifts, the chance to experience that rare, thin-slicing acuity where each separate millisecond stands out like an image etched in stone. The present dilates to activate the past and future, too, as though we’re living our whole life all at once. With a cognitive rapacity available only during a fight-or-flight response, we cast our gaze forward, asking what grim future will bloom if we fall. And simultaneously cast it back, asking what errors in our past have brought us to this crossroads. Have I survived a situation like this before? Will I get lucky and survive again?
In a film, that’s where the music would come up, dissonant strings, ringing ears, the drums increasing tempo. It’s odd that the times of our deepest dumbstruck not-knowingness should be called “moments of truth.” I found a shallow, sandy divot for my right hand, threw my left heel high over the lip, and rolled onto the top of the boulder. A friend took photos, but it makes me uncomfortable to look at them.
From the back seat of a lifted pickup, deep house oozing out of a handmade portable stereo that Owen built into an antique suitcase, I look over the truck bed at the contrail of dust we send into the Eastern Sierra evening. Our pilot expertly navigates a kaleidoscope of dirt roads to deliver us at the Crab Cooker. Tumbling out of the truck we grab towels, water bottles, and puffy jackets, and walk a raised wooden path to the area’s hottest hot spring. An eggy, algal cloud envelops us before the spring itself comes into view. Then we see the rock-rimmed pool, a steam plume ascending from a dark crater. The water here, when it first comes to the surface, hovers around 150 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to cook crabs, no exaggeration in the name—so people cut it with cold water from a surface stream until it comes down to around 110. The pool is still hotter than any man-made tub I’ve ever sunk myself into, and its scalding sting feels spectacular on the aches we’ve accrued from several consecutive climbing days at the Buttermilks and in Owens River Gorge. We keep our hands lifted above the surface of the water so our hard-earned calluses don’t melt off.
Parallel to us climbers, there runs an entire subculture of hot springs enthusiasts who travel the country to find the loveliest, toastiest, unlikeliest geothermal pools that tectonics has to offer. Connecting with this odd population of wanderers is one of the surprise pleasures of our annual Bishop trip. The Crab Cooker must rank high on their list. Wild sage and scrubby junipers riddle the sand, boulders punctuate the foothills and draws, and the impressive ridgelines of the Sierra Eastside tower over it all, seemingly close enough to splash with the flick of a finger. At sunset the land gets saturated with glory and import and impeccable desert light, and we in our good fortune get to gaze at this panorama while the guts of the planet warm us to temperatures well in excess of our own hearts’ heat.
When, to our surprise, two bodies coalesce out of the steam, we apologize for our loudness and promptly shut down the stereo. The strangers don’t mind, they say, they’ve been enjoying the ruckus. The new arrivals are a pair of Germans, a father and his grown son, who have been touring America together. Before long our separate conversations become enmeshed in the small pool. We learn that the younger soaker, the son, used to be an accomplished extreme athlete. He somberly explains that he found himself a lonelier and lonelier survivor as his BASE-jumping and wingsuiting friends went in. Hearing the phrase now for the second time, I’m struck by the gentleness of the euphemism, far softer than the verb to crater, as in “their parachute didn’t deploy and they cratered,” which I’d heard in gruffer conversations with BASE jumpers. I picture these lost friends “going in” to a collective reserve of matter and spirit, the heavenly welter where all unmade is remade. Although, with the image of a crater in mind, I suppose “going in” could refer not to the eternally cyclical return to one’s mysterious origin but rather to a body “going in” to the ground at terminal velocity. Needless to say, I don’t ask the German.
He explains to a rapt audience that last year, upon successfully landing a jump, his still-open parachute caught a fierce gust of wind that slammed him into a cliff and dragged him across a talus field. Multiple impacts against the rocks shattered innumerable bones, including several in his back. By coincidence, the guy’s best friend was flying the emergency helicopter that came to collect his ragdoll body. To those on board it looked like a hopeless case, a certain fatality, but in the end the guy survived. Hearing the story, I look to my own best friend soaking by my side. We make eye contact and discreetly drop our jaws a fraction of a centimeter, a silent exchange of Jesus fucking Christ.
“Jesus Christ,” I say aloud to the German.
“It’s no problem,” the guy says, gesturing grandly at the mountain-rimmed basin that surrounds us. “Happy I am living.”
He’s still in the middle of a years-long rehabilitation process, he explains. He points to a neck brace he’d removed before his soak, whose plastic struts I now see glowing in the moonlight, a safe distance back from the water where it won’t get splashed. “It’s no problem to wear that sometimes.”
“Just like when he was a baby,” the dad says cheerfully. “I help him eat, then I help him shit!”
We typically view risk in relation to death—inviting its possibility, skirting its tentacles—but I’ve lately been exploring a philosophy that views risk, instead, in relation to life. Rather than focusing on what we stand to lose, what riches does risk put us in position to gain? This question came by way of a book called Éloge du risque by French philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle. It hadn’t yet been translated into English, but with undergrad French memories and a Larousse dictionary in hand, I bought a copy and dove in. I worked on my translations of Éloge du risque while riding the Flatiron Flyer bus between Boulder and Denver. During this commute the Flatirons themselves rise to the west like a fleet of ships tacking in formation, their huge reddish triangular faces making a tidy row of sails afloat on a choppy sea of pine.
A route called Freeway ascends the Second Flatiron (they’re numbered sequentially from north to south), and locals tell me it’s a fun, dead-easy romp for the entire thousand feet of the eastern face. Nobody bothers to use the melodramatic phrase free solo; they just call it a scramble. The route has seen barefoot ascents, no-hands ascents, and, the clearest indicator of its difficulty, an ascent by a climber wearing roller skates. For some reason I never wonder whether I’m going to climb it, I just know, innately, that I’m going to. It’s an indicator that my relationship to risk is changing. Even still, as I prepare to solo—sorry, scramble—the Second, I approach it with a solemnity bordering on gloom. I warm up at home, stretch, fuel and hydrate, tidy the basement so that if I die I won’t leave an unsightly mess for my landlady to deal with. Ridiculous. The short drive across town feels haunted, with the Flatirons leering in the windshield as I pilot my way westward. I park and take a deep breath before exiting the vehicle. Walk up the trail, a well-beaten one that sees countless tourists and toddlers safely along the base of the range, taking every rock-hopping step with exaggerated care, testing the infallibility of my balance. And then I sit at the base of the Second for ages, meditative and serious, while a string of a half-dozen stoned teenagers fire the route, unroped, not even pausing their giggling conversation as they step off the trail and onto the rock.
Supposedly there’s a crux around fifty feet off the ground, but for me it turned out the crux was just deciding to do it. When I finally put on my climbing shoes, tuck my sneakers into my backpack, and lay my hands on the crystalline stone, hard moves are absolutely nowhere to be found. The climbing feels easier than walking, in fact, since I get to use my hands in addition to my feet. From a hundred feet up, and again at three hundred and again at five hundred, I glance down at the sandstone ramp the foot of the mountain makes, observe how the trail gets thinner and the trees get smaller as I rise, and experience a wave of giddiness. I sip that sensation like champagne, peering, bubbling, then I turn my face to the wall and continue the scramble. At the summit I sit a long time and look east at a flat expanse of town and plain that appears to extend all the way to the Atlantic. I’ve wagered my life, and have been repaid tenfold.
A week later, I take an incremental step up in difficulty and try the Third Flatiron. Locals, I notice, do tend to refer to this one as a solo, not a scramble. I’m exiting the kiddie pool. Again I follow the trail through Chautauqua Park with a measure of unease in my gut, hiking through grassy open fields up into the pine sea, and then across a stretch of loose talus to the base of the route. A thousand angling, rippling feet of sandstone thrust westward, the summit hidden from view. I bring my chalk bag this time and coat my palms with a layer of white dust to keep them from slickening with sweat. Unlike the Second, the Third is a legitimate, if moderate, climb. I make careful progress, never moving more than one limb at a time, testing each handhold for soundness, testing each surface for slipperiness, before entrusting my weight to it. Focus, rather than rhapsody, rules the experience. The crux comes at the top. Until that point I’d been hanging on bucket-like holds, generous craters, but the rock comprising the last twenty feet below the peak has been worn smooth by the elements. Though the terrain is low angle, it’s holdless as an asphalt road. This section, I knew from my research beforehand, would require a few moves of open-hand slab climbing. In the absence of tangible features on the cliff, you just paste your hands and feet onto the surface and rely on friction to hold you in place.
Slab is an unnerving, faith-based style of climbing, and those few moves—a thousand feet off the ground, knowing a fall would be fatal—demand a degree of meticulousness I’ve never before needed to summon. To summon it that afternoon is like flexing a new muscle for the very first time. I feel each grain of the gritty matrix as it deforms the skin of my fingertips, fitting the ridges of my fingerprint to match the ridges of the Flatiron’s surface. I attune to the gumminess of my shoe, the pressure of the ball of my foot compressing its rubber sole, filling completely the negative space of the rock’s surface. Death isn’t on my mind. It’s a million miles away. I know I will be perfect, and this perfection will make me invincible. If I fall, my last thought will be I never saw this coming. But I wager; I scurry. I summit. From the top I stare down at the backs of raptors, at the pine and the prairie, and again my spirit prospers.
The next morning from the bus I cast a lingering glance over the Flatirons. I look at the granulated ripples of the cliffs and superimpose my antlike image onto them, watching memories of myself crawl up the faces as if in footage captured by a drone. I’m still up there, forever taking those calm breaths, forever palming those grainy domes. Fellow commuters catch me wearing a moony smile. Now, pen gripped in my teeth, Éloge du risque open in my lap, my gaze drifts a click northward. My newfound muscle twitches. In the notebook for my scraps and outlines I write FOR RISK ESSAY: SOLO THE FIRST? After spending the day on campus I get back on the bus for my evening commute, and that scribbled notion digs into me uncomfortably. The wobble on the highway made my script look manic. It is manic. The idea stands squarely outside of what I consider to be an acceptable level of climbing risk. From the bus window the First dominates the ridgeline as the Flatirons fall into shadow. Morning and evening light seem to fashion two different ranges out of the same rock space. When I try on the idea of soloing the First, it feels like a too-small sweater pulled over my head, grabbing my skull. I know I should rip it off and discard it. But I could also push my way inside. I recall a strong, confident climber-friend whose trip report after soloing the First was simply, “I’m never going to do that again.” I wondered what had happened to turn his face so ashen, but he didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t pry.
These accident reports save lives more directly, more demonstrably, than poetry or scripture.
Climbing culture has a storytelling idiom I call “Close Calls.” They’re an inversion of just-so stories; instead of tales of creation like “How the Zebra Got Its Stripes” or “How the Giraffe’s Neck Got So Long,” Close Calls focus on tales of destruction like “How Rebecca Lost Her Leg” or “How Johnny Lost His Partner.” Years ago at the base of the Incredible Hulk, a gorgeous granite outcrop in the Sierras, Owen and I were preparing to climb the classic Red Dihedral. We’d undertaken the steep approach hike in the evening, stove heated some expired and deeply disappointing beef stew, and established our bivvy beside a picturesque rivulet riffling through a boulder field. Two young women camped at another minimeadow a few hundred feet downstream, and when the stars came up, they invited us down for a sip of whiskey. We splashed a bit of warmish bourbon into our unwashed bowls, resulting in a cocktail like a hot Sazerac with a beef-grease rinse instead of an absinthe one. During that night’s edition of Close Calls, we hear of a time an inexperienced leader led a pitch and built an anchor, and one of the women (now sipping her whiskey between plot points) followed him up, arriving at a worthless nest of protection that, had she fallen, would have sputtered from the wall and killed them both. Next my buddy describes watching a climber follow an outdoor route on top-rope, unclipping each draw along the way, and then, at the top, unclipping the two draws that held the rope, and then, the height of outrageousness, untying his rope and dropping it to the ground, meaning he was now clinging to holds a hundred feet off the deck with nothing else to hold him in place. By some miracle a professional climber was on a route next door and, seeing the disaster unfold, climbed to the stranded kid in minutes with a spare rope to reattach him to the world.
As with any public storytelling genre, there’s a ritual to it. One teller shares the scariest climbing story they’ve heard or experienced, a story of someone’s closest call. The fireside audience takes in the punchline—a survival unscathed, a rescue, an injury, a fatality—in solemn contemplation. After a respectful interval and perhaps another sip of whiskey, the next teller narrates an even closer call. For listeners familiar enough with safety systems to fully appreciate the danger, miscommunication, unpreparedness or negligence in these stories, the tales provide riveting entertainment, in their own grim way. But they serve a deeper purpose, too, in that they circulate these scenarios as a risk-prevention measure. The same could be said of the more formal narratives published by the American Alpine Club. Their style is unadorned, a blow-by-blow sequence of errors that led up to an injury or death on the wall, but safety-oriented climbers read these annual accident reports with biblical devotion. Instead of re-living old traumas, these prudent folks pre-live them, learning to deal with such catastrophes should they arise or, better yet, learning to avoid such catastrophes altogether. These accident reports save lives more directly, more demonstrably, than poetry or scripture.
We could easily swap Close Calls all night, but both teams are planning to start our ascents of the Hulk at dawn, so we force ourselves to break up the party before it gets too late. I brush my teeth, taking a gamble on unfiltered river water, and tuck myself into bed. In the sleeping bag, staring up at the densest panorama of stars I’ve seen in months, I wonder what moment, in my life so far, was the moment I was nearest to death. My own closest call, in a statistical sense, when my odds of survival were lowest. At first I think it would land among the instances when I was most afraid. There was a hike to a ghost town called Lundy when I was dead certain I was being stalked by a mountain lion. Or a time at an outdoor concert in Denver when gunshots broke out and the whole crowd stampeded in panic away from the brutal sound. Then I wonder if my closest call fell among the times I sustained an injury: a spinout on the highway from a blown tire, a fainting spell in the Rockies brought on by dehydration and exhaustion, a split forehead from an ice cave collapse that let me see my own skull through the hole in my skin. But in all likelihood, I bet the moment passed by me altogether unnoticed. One of my countless midnights on a two-lane country road, maybe, when the approaching headlights belonged to a drunk driver, or a trucker on the cusp of sleep, or a heartsick teenager composing a text to an ex. So long as they keep their car on the proper side of the yellow line, I never know the peril I’m in.
This evening in Boulder the sky is not its usual bluebird. From the egress window of my cheap-ass basement rental I see bulbous clouds gathering overhead. A handful of months have passed and by now the Second Flatiron scramble has become my go-to after-work workout. I lap it a couple times a week, not bothering with climbing shoes anymore, just using the same busted sneakers I wear for the approach hike. But when it rains, the rock slickens, the lichen sucks up moisture and magically transforms from a crust to a lubricant. Given the inclement weather, it’s shaping up to be a work night. So instead of soloing—sorry, scrambling—at sunset, I’m at my desk with a mug of mint tea, bringing Dufourmantelle into English word by word. Risk, she writes and I translate, “inaugurates an other time, as though traumatic. But a positive trauma.”
“An other time” makes me think, to my discredit, of the movie Donnie Darko. The premise of that film, as I interpret it, is that one night in a freak accident an airplane engine fell through the roof of the protagonist Donnie’s house, and should have crushed him, except that he was somnambulantly chasing a giant nightmare rabbit onto a golf course at the time, and thereby avoided his fate. This sets in motion an alternate universe—the one where Donnie lives—that runs alongside the one in which he rightfully dies. I think this is what Dufourmantelle means: When we take a risk, knowing we’ll either experience a near-miss like the Donnie who lives or a direct hit like the Donnie who dies, we create a narrative fork in the road. I’ve long wondered what wingsuiters, free soloists, and skydivers gain through their constant navigation of risk, and tonight I start to sense it. When carefully and responsibly considered, these dangerous activities let adventurers inhabit innumerable parallel universes. We get to live infinite lives and die infinite deaths as, in preparation, we imagine the outcomes and contingencies of each climb, each jump, each flight. The potential plotlines proliferate and the density of our life experience increases. Time dilates to accommodate not only the life we’ve lived and the life we will lead, but also all the lives we might have lived, and might yet lead.
I turn my attention to trauma positif. It’s an uncomfortable phrase. The language carries a reminder that many people experience risk and precarity only under duress. As far as I’m concerned, the privilege inherent in elective risk is alpinism’s original sin, and a key reason that, despite the vast increase in diversity and gender parity in climbing in the last decade, the sport has been slow to shake its aura of patriarchy and whiteness. But Dufourmantelle’s claims sound right to me. Just as negative trauma has the power to reshape the stories that people tell themselves about themselves and about the worlds they inhabit, so too can a trauma positif rewrite a person’s history, even as it rewrites their future. As a result of the risks I’ve taken, and the trauma positif of surviving them, I’m phasing out the story that I’m a meek person. Now, with demonstrable evidence, I must tell myself I’m capable of being brave. Maybe every time you risk your life, you lose it: You lose the life you had before taking the risk, and supplant that life with a new one. A solo of the First Flatiron feels this way for me. Ever since moving to town I’ve told myself I couldn’t solo it. So if I solo it, the version of me too frightened to try it will die.
Days later I see the headline in the local paper: “17-Year-Old Falls to His Death While Climbing Boulder’s First Flatiron.” There’s a photograph of the formation I’ve spent my daily commute mulling over, and the article below:
Equipped with camping and outdoor survival gear—but no climbing-specific equipment—a 17-year-old died after climbing alone and falling up to 100 feet or more from Boulder’s First Flatiron on Sunday evening.
Climber rescues, and non-fatal falls, are common every summer across the iconic rock formations above Chautauqua Park. But this appears to be the first accidental climbing death on the Flatirons in nine years.
The teenager—whose identity has not yet been released, and who officials initially said was 18—was found by a hiker near the base of the First Flatiron, above the Blue Bell Shelter in Chautauqua Park, according to Boulder County sheriff’s officials.
Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Wagner said the teen was free-soloing—climbing alone, without the use of ropes or gear—on the First Flatiron when he fell possibly more than 100 feet and suffered “massive traumatic injuries.”
Sources report that the climber took a selfie and posted it to Instagram shortly before the fall. There follow, in the next few days, admonishments from the climbing community, the oft-repeated self-assurances that this kid was unprepared but we know better, and more than a few references to a phenomenon known as “Kodak Courage,” where the possibility of taking an impressive photograph pushes a climber past their typical margin of safety. The next time I walk up to the foot of the First Flatiron, a sober memorial sits at the base of a pine tree. Cards, flowers, offerings. A printout of the photo the climber snapped and posted minutes before his death.
Toward the tail end of the same season the paper runs another headline: “Climber Dies After Falling from Boulder’s First Flatiron.” This time there’s a different stock photo of the mountain, now caked with snow. The article reads:
A man climbing on the First Flatiron on Thursday afternoon fell to his death, the second person to die following an accidental plummet off of the iconic Boulder landmark since August but only the second in nearly a decade.
Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Cmdr. Kevin Parker said that the man—who has not been publicly identified—did not appear to be using any kind of climbing gear, but rescuers were searching the area for any signs of a backpack or gear on Thursday afternoon.
By the time a Denver Post article comes out about the incident later that night, investigators have located and interviewed an eyewitness, so the article is able to provide a bit of additional detail: “The witness believed the climber fell about 1,000 feet from the top of the First Flatiron.”
With that, this essay gets shelved for a spell. It’s not just because the weather has shifted, although the snow on the Front Range makes the Flatirons unclimbable through the winter, intermittent warm days sending rivers of melt down the faces, cold storms stacking new layers of powder over the slush. But more acutely, I realize I’ve been lulled into thinking a solo of the First Flatiron would be a casual endeavor, one that wouldn’t really bring me into proximity of any grave risk. The two deaths, in rapid succession, on the route I’ve planned to climb in the same style abruptly extinguish this confidence, leave me not only shaken but also self-admonishing for having been so cocksure in the first place. I take winter walks through Chautauqua. The snow crunches under my feet, sifts from trailside pine boughs. The Flatirons stand above, their features outlined in icy white. Below, the town of Boulder enjoys its bubble of dreamy calm, a hush of distant traffic in the air, interrupted by an occasional siren belting down Baseline or Table Mesa. During these walking meditations my notebook starts to feel suspiciously similar to the luckless young climber’s selfie camera. Moleskine Courage.
What do we stand to win when our ante is ourselves? The chance to make our finite time feel infinite? The chance to make our finite self feel infinite?
The crux of the First comes in its first hundred feet, where the climbing is particularly thin, slabby and insecure. I stand in the snow at the base—where a second memorial is now tucked in the pines—and visualize the climb. My counterfactual imagination invents a worst-case scenario: I’m not far up the route, approaching the gnarled tree that marks the top of the first pitch where a roped party would typically belay. Immediately below this point there’s a delicate section of friction-dependent slab; the first time I climbed the pitch on rope, this stretch clarified for me that I’d never, ever attempt the route as a solo. There aren’t proper holds, just shallow dishes for the hands and feet. I imagine extending my left foot and placing it in one such divot. I reach farther left with my left hand, where a small diagonal rail supports my left fingertips, stacked in a row. My right hand is similarly stacked in a higher-up dish, and as I go to move my right foot toward my body’s centerline, the left foot slips off. My knees strike the rock first, my elbows a moment after. The angle is low, so I don’t go into full vertical freefall. I bounce down the face. After twenty feet a heel catches and I invert, delivering a rolling blow to my shoulder and an impact to the back of my skull. In my chest a depth charge, a low moan as I land in the talus beside the twin shrines. After my death, my writer-friends will wonder what I was working on in my last days. I’ve kept my preparations for the solo secret, but now they will look in my notebook and see I’ve been planning it for months, getting ready to sacrifice myself for no greater purpose than a literal thought exercise.
I shift my weight in the snow, shake the spectacle out of my head. I return to the trail, the car, the comforts of home.
The winter months pass, long nights, a bomb cyclone that buries my basement windows in snow and leaves me to lurk in the dark like a slumbering bear, and then spring arrives abrupt and clanging and golden. Overnight the Flatirons slough off their snowy coats. Still ambivalent about soloing the First, I go to Chautauqua with two friends, planning to rope up and climb with them as a party of three. This will give me a chance, I figure, to scope the route once more and make a final call. Reassess those dishes and divots, determine whether I can trust my life to them. We spend a long time at the base, not rushing, just racking up and rearranging our packs, sipping water and snacking, enjoying the gorgeous day. The sun dips behind the ridge and the temperature gets perfect, just on the cooler edge of pleasant. The rock won’t be greasy, there’ll be plenty of friction, but it won’t be so cold I’ll get chilly and misinterpret my shivers as fear. Plenty of daylight, light spirits, and for once in my life, I don’t overthink. I know deep in my soul that I don’t need the rope today. So I don’t tie in. I just climb alongside my friends. It’s easier than walking because I get to use my hands, and everything goes perfectly, which means in the end there’s no story at all.
I won’t solo the First again, but not because I hated it. I won’t solo it again because I loved it too much. Since then, I haven’t exactly become a soloist, but I’ve heard the bell-clear siren song from routes a number of times, Johnny Vegas in Red Rocks, the Capstan on Flagstaff Mountain, a few choice cracks in the Sierra, a handful of highballs like Airwolf and High Plains Drifter in various deserts of the West. I am measured and studious, with my books and dictionaries and writing routine and mint tea. I also, when called, enjoy something categorically deadly. Soloing puts me in touch with the multitudes I contain. On insomniac nights I relive the memories of these ropeless ascents, with every detail of every hold seared in my mind in everlasting high resolution, and the perfection of my movements lulls me to sleep. It must sound counterintuitive, but nothing in this world makes me calmer.
The phrase “to risk one’s life” conjures in my mind’s eye a kind of scale, like the one Anubis uses to weigh a heart against a feather. On one of its golden dishes sits your wager, your life; on the other there must be something of equal or greater value in order for the risk to seem worthwhile. What do we stand to win when our ante is ourselves? The chance to make our finite time feel infinite? The chance to make our finite self feel infinite? The satisfaction of saving our own life? Is that payoff enough?
I discovered Anne Dufourmantelle’s work on the university library search engine, under keywords “philosophy” and “risk.” At the time I didn’t look into her biography, just went straight to the primary text. But I’m curious to see what she’s working on now, so I check the regular internet instead of the university database. The first hit is an article from the New York Times, headlined “Philosopher Who Praised Risk Died Trying to Save Children from Drowning.” It reads:
PARIS—A French philosopher and psychoanalyst, known for her work that praised living a life that embraced risk, died last week as a result of following her own bold philosophy.
The philosopher, Anne Dufourmantelle, 53, drowned on Friday as she tried to save two children who were struggling to swim off the coast of Pampelonne beach, near St.-Tropez, France, according to a report from French public television.
Ms. Dufourmantelle was on the beach when the weather began to change and the previously safe swimming area became treacherous. She saw two children who were in danger and leapt into the sea to help, according to France 3, before being caught in the rough surf.
She was pulled unresponsive from the water by two other swimmers, and attempts to resuscitate her failed.
Both children survived.
I’m stunned by how recent the news is: Dufourmantelle died days before the first soloist fell from the First Flatiron. Another search result, an obituary, quotes an English-language lecture she’d once given: “Being completely alive is a task, it’s not at all a given thing. It’s not just about being present to the world, it’s being present to yourself, reaching an intensity that is in itself a way of being reborn.” Having only experienced her work, up until this point, through the veil of translation, there’s something uncannily intimate about reading her words in my own language for the first time. The clarity of it is painful, the poetry self-evident, breaking out of human time and into the mythic. She saw the children, the danger. She saw the swift water. She went in.
Brian Laidlaw is an author of the two collections of poetry, The Mirrormaker and The Stuntman. A songwriter and musician, he has released several albums, most recently This Aster. He writes for outdoor magazines including Outside, Climbing, Alpinist, and Orion. Based out of Moab, Utah, he moonlights—often by literal moonlight—as a rock climber.
di Cesare Sacchetti In principio fu Crimen Sollicitationis, il noto documento pubblicato da Giovanni XXIII, il cosiddetto “Papa buono”, secondo la vulgata di una certa stampa, da alcuni definito come la pietra dello scandalo. Crimen Sollicitationis nasce per affrontare la questione degli abusi pedofili all’interno della Chiesa già all’inizio degli anni’60, quando stava nascendo una […]
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