BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY JUNE 27, 2018) — “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.”

So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, author of one of THE PLANET‘s favorite books from a childhood full of them. We speak of Treasure Island. Stevenson’s aphorism works so profoundly that when the fledgling Berkshire Community College began baby stepping in 1960, the school adopted it for its motto. To this day, when The Ol’ Perfessor walks to class and passes by those words so proudly affixed to the administration building, we nod in agreement and thanks.

Arrival too often means anticlimax, let down, disappointment. ‘Tis the quest, man, that fuels dreaming. The accomplishment of arrival, whether figuratively or literally but especially the first, stands alone in its own reality and truth. Arrival can put an end to dreaming, and that, too, is good, as illustrated by two news items on the agenda. The first is as local as Lanesborough, and son, you can’t get more local than that. Green Acres meets Snuffy Smith. It seems that this week at a birthday celebration, a couple of the partygoers, perhaps fueled by soad-dee pop, decided to explore one of the borough’s 58 caves, this one off Silver Street.

Lo, the wobbly walker slipped on wet rock and tumbled head first, got stuck, and stayed a cork for a couple hours contemplating life, death, the stars, the lifetime batting average of Don Buddin, and other assorted mysteries. It took the combined efforts of fire fighters — bless ’em — from the town, Dalton, and Pittsfield to unplug the dude. He got acoustic, you might say. The partier’s fix reminded us of the movie Everest, which we watched with our love a couple nights ago.

In Everest, we follow the adventures amateur climbers who each paid a travel company $65,000 to guide them to the summit. On the way up and down, however, the hikers run into … weather. Can you imagine? A bunch die, and others come back missing hands and noses from frostbite. The film was based on actual events that occurred in 1996. Everest, you see, is a comedy. The dumbasses who risked life and limb got what they paid for. At one point, one of them remarks that she can’t breath. Another points out the cold. Hello?!? McFly?!? There’s little oxygen at 29,000 feet and it’s not balmy. When one of the party becomes delirious from oxygen starvation, he takes off his clothes and jumps over the side We haven’t laughed as much since  the last time Peter Marchetti tried being a competent politician.

And so when we read of the adventures of the wandering birthday partier, we too laughed. Only this one had a sad ending. Rescuers brought the intrepid lad to safety rather than let free will, stupidity, nature, and consequence work out the end result in a more just and maybe final manner. Or do you feel good when some idiot drives his two-ton on the thin ice at Pontoosuc Lake in December, falls through, and then first responders have to risk it to erase the stupidity at taxpayers’ expense?

So you see, ill-advised travel can lead one to undesired consequences, which leads us to the Supremes. The country’s highest court this week upheld President Trump’s ban on immigrants from certain Islamic countries. Trump banned travelers from countries with a track record of terrorism. It seemed reasonable, but lower courts fought it, successfully arguing for the rights of potential terrorists to come here and commit mayhem. The President took it all the way to the top, and the Justices ruled 5-4 along political lines to uphold Trump.

They made the right decision but for the wrong reasons. The ban helps protect the country and secure its borders, same as immigration policy. However, it reveals how justice has become yet another political tool, a lever in which one side can put enormous pressure on the other. Five conservative judges supported Trump. Four liberal judges did not.

Justice … or “just us?”

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“The impossible simply takes a little longer” — Attributed to Gen. George Patton.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.

LOVE TO ALL.

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