The Wall Street Journal - 13.03.2020

(C. Jardin) #1

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, March 13, 2020 |A


Himalayan


Heroes


The World Beneath Their Feet
By Scott Ellsworth
(Little, Brown, 393 pages, $30)

BOOKSHELF| By Gregory Crouch


E


normous crowds of people thronged the sidewalks of
London on June 2, 1953, as they waited for the
coronation procession of Queen Elizabeth II. Many had
stood in the rain overnight to secure the best vantage points.
Then, at a few minutes before 8 a.m.—hours before anyone
would catch their first glimpse of the new monarch—thrilling
news electrified the multitude: British mountaineers had
become the first to climb the 29,029-foot Mount Everest.
People “cheered and danced,” Scott Ellsworth tells us in
“The World Beneath Their Feet.” The triumphant finale to a
30-year quest to summit the world’s tallest mountain
delivered “a glorious, unforgettable moment,” a “crowning
touch” to the young queen’s ascension.
The feat accomplished by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund
Hillary brings to a climax Mr. Ellsworth’s fast-paced survey of
Himalayan mountaineering history from the end of the Great
War to the early 1950s. Mr. Ellsworth argues that two tensions
added to the man-against-nature drama of early high-alti-
tude mountaineering. The
first was between nations—
predominantly the Teutonic
alliance of Germany and
Austria, on one hand, and
Great Britain, on the other.
The second tension was
between climbing “styles,”
contrasting the massive
national undertakings organized
along military lines—with their
hierarchies and designated
leaders—against the lightweight
expeditions launched by small
groups of friends operating as
equals. The former achieved Hima-
layan mountaineering’s first successes on
the giant peaks. The latter were much more fun.
As a foil to Britain’s attempts on Mount Everest, Mr.
Ellsworth tells of Germany and Austria’s deadly obsession
with the 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat, the westernmost of the
14 peaks taller than 26,240 feet, located in what is now
Pakistan. In 1934, a massive storm caught many German and
Sherpa climbers high on the mountain. Struggling to descend,
Erwin Schneider and Peter Aschenbrenner unroped them-
selves from their Sherpa companions, “strapped on their skis,
and took off.” They emerged from the storm unscathed, but
of the three Sherpas they deserted, only one survived.
Elsewhere on the mountain, three other Germans and four
Sherpas died in the storm. An even worse disaster hit the
Germans during a 1937 effort on the same mountain when
an avalanche entombed seven Germans and nine Sherpas.
Several superb small-scale efforts counterbalance the
massive national expeditions. Mr. Ellsworth’s best anecdote
concerns Maurice Wilson, an eccentric, obsessive English
veteran of the Great War. With hardly any mountaineering
or flying experience, in 1933 Wilson piloted a biplane from
England to India, infiltrated Tibet with three Sherpas and
set out alone to climb Mount Everest. “Only another thirteen
thousand feet to go!” he wrote in his diary. A British
reconnaissance expedition found his body in 1935, “curled up
and lying on its left side,” not far from the high saddle known
as the North Col. Wilson’s final diary entry read, “Off again,
gorgeous day.”

To help readers follow his whipsaw tale, Mr. Ellsworth
provides a chronological appendix of expeditions, a glossary of
mountaineering terms and a top-shelf collection of descriptive
endnotes. He has done excellent primary research, particularly
with German sources, but most of Mr. Ellsworth’s anecdotes
are reduced from classics of mountaineering literature,
amongthem “Men Against the Clouds” by Richard Burdsall
and others, “The Siege of Nanga Parbat” by Paul Bauer and
“The Ascent of Nanda Devi” by H.W. Tilman. Mr. Ellsworth’s
revisionist touches help 21st-century readers see the Sherpas
as individuals and give the traditional narrative of Himalayan
conquest a fairer reading through the lens of imperialism.
The Sherpas, especially Tenzing, are undoubtedly the book’s
heroes. Unfortunately, Mr. Ellsworth’s narrative compressions
are so extreme that his book reads like a summary of
mountaineering history for the easily distracted.
Nazi affiliations stain the reputations of most of Mr.
Ellsworth’s German and Austrian protagonists, including
Heinrich Harrer, famous today thanks to the Brad Pitt film
based on Harrer’s classic memoir “Seven Years in Tibet.” In
1938, Harrer was a member of the four-man teamthat first
ascended the north face of Switzerland’s Eiger. Thattriumph
brought him to Hitler’s attention and opened the door to his
participation in the 1939 German-Austrian Nanga Parbat
expedition, for which Harrer and his partner, Peter
Aufschnaiter, pioneered a steeper but safer route. Harrerand
Aufschnaiter didn’t reach the summit on that occasion but
planned to return the following year to complete the job.
The outbreak of World War II spoiled those plans.
Summiting Nanga Parbat in 1940 would have been a genuine
triumph—the first 26,240-foot summit wasn’t reached until a
French team climbed Annapurna 10 years later.
And therein lies the fallacy of Mr. Ellsworth’s dramatic
“race,” which could have been won by Germans reaching the
top of Nanga Parbat, by Americans climbing K2 or by British
climbers summiting Mount Everest: They weren’t competing
for the same prize. They weren’t making cooperative efforts,
either, but they all contributed to the elevation of the
mountain arts. Hermann Buhl climbed Nanga Parbat in a
spectacular effort about a month after the first ascent of
Mount Everest. (One of the stalwarts who’d deserted the
three Sherpas in 1934 led the expedition.) An Italian team
succeeded on K2 in 1954. A Swiss expedition aided by
Tenzing nearly reached Mount Everest’s summit in 1952.
The following year, Tenzing carried that experience with him
during his successful ascent with Hillary.

Mr. Crouch is the author, most recently, of “The Bonanza King:
John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the
American West.”

Crowds thronged the streets of London to see the
new queen when news broke out: British climbers
had become the first to scale Mount Everest.

It May Not Be the Virus That Kills Me


W


ith each passing day,
the coronavirus pan-
demic reveals that
many of our lives hang by a
thin fiber-optic thread that
can snap at any time. As more
people are quarantined and
businesses grind to a halt,
supply chains will break
down. While this will have
negative economic conse-
quences for all, for many of
us it will be a matter of life
and death.
My life depends on an arti-
ficial pancreas I wear on my
belt. Without the insulin it de-
livers 24/7, I would die within
a few days. I’m not sure where
the insulin and components
for my pump and the related
sensors, transmitter and con-
tinuous glucose monitor are
produced. The supply chain of
the world’s largest insulin
producer, Novo Nordisk, runs
through the U.S., Brazil, Den-


mark, France, China, Russia,
Algeria and Japan.
When I started a different
insulin pump two years ago,
the company could send me
only three sensors at a time,
each of which lasted a week,
because its factory in Puerto

Rico had been damaged by
Hurricane Maria. Today Bei-
jing is the problem. If insulin
or anything related to my
pump comes from China, I am
in trouble.
But if it hadn’t been
Covid-19, it would have been
something else. The advent of
the internet made it much
easier for companies to out-

source production to foreign
countries where labor costs
are lower. Combine this with
the popularity of just-in-time
production, which minimizes
excess inventory, and you
have long, vulnerable supply
chains. Like many other cor-
porations, large drugmakers
have engaged in extensive
outsourcing. Though this sys-
tem may be economically effi-
cient, it is perilous for people
whose lives depend on reliable
delivery of medical materials.
In a crisis, timely deliveries
are all the more important,
while the supply chain is un-
der all the more strain.
The coronavirus crisis will
likely highlight this problem
for many, but the issue is more
complex than fragile supply
chains. Even if drugs and med-
ical supplies are available, pa-
tients can’t always accumulate
a backup supply because of
limitations imposed by insur-
ance companies, pharmacies

and government regulators.
My provider, for instance, al-
lows prescriptions to be re-
filled only every 30 days.
I have a one-month supply
of insulin and other materials
for my pump. It will be 3½
weeks before my insurance
company will pay for more.
Even if I could order backups,
I don’t know if the drug com-
pany and pump manufacturer
have what I need. If the sup-
ply chain has snapped, I’ll
have only a few days after my
insulin runs out before I could
die.
My situation isn’t unique.
In coming weeks, it won’t just
be Covid-19 that kills people
but the havoc it has wreaked
on the global medical supply
chain.

Mr. Taylor is a professor of
religion at Columbia and au-
thor of the forthcoming “Inter-
volution: Smart Bodies, Smart
Things.”

By Mark C. Taylor


Many lives depend
on the medical supply
chain, which Covid-
will severely test.

OPINION


Coming in BOOKS this weekend
Farewell, Cromwell: The end of the ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy •
The elusive Harry Houdini • The hunt—and the market—
for historical documents • Rose Pastor Stokes, from rags to
riches to revolution • Sam Sacks on new novels • & more

The Actors’
Chapel was
teeming as a
recent Sat-
urday vigil
mass began.
Tourists and local residents
filled pews in Manhattan’s
Theater District alongside
performers, ushers and stage-
hands. But there weren’t any
famous names. “The stars
only come out at night,”
joked Father John Fraser,
pastor of the church, formally
known as St. Malachy’s.
“Come back at 11:00.”
St. Malachy’s is one of
many niche congregations in
the U.S.—from skate
churches to heavy-metal
houses of worship. They
aren’t gimmicks but serious
religious projects with clear
goals: to reach those who
feel unwelcome in traditional
religious settings or those
whose crowded calendar oth-
erwise would keep them
away.
Well over a century ago
“the archbishop of New York
saw that there was a group
of people who worked in
vaudeville and in music and
who had spiritual needs just
like everyone has spiritual
needs, so it was decided we
would put a church here,”
Father Fraser said in an in-
terview. It wasn’t long before
worship times at St. Mal-
achy’s began to accommodate
rehearsal and performance
schedules: “We wanted to
evangelize people we were
worried might otherwise slip
through the cracks.”


Niche Congregations Are No Gimmick


But niche churches aren’t
only an urban phenomenon.
There are an estimated 1,
cowboy churches around the
country, and many hold ser-
vices in barns, stables and
rodeo arenas. Most attendees
have spent their lives around
cows and horses. Some sim-
ply like cowboy culture.
“Jesus talked to the
woman at the well about wa-
ter. He talked to the fisher-
men about fishing. God gave
me a horse and I use it to
glorify his name,” said Jeff
Smith, executive director of
the Cowboy Church Network
of North America, a consor-
tium of 80 Southern Baptist
congregations. “We’ve at-
tracted a multitude of people
who are not going to go to a
high-steeple, big-stained-
glass-window church.” Mr.
Smith uses equine-centric
similes in his sermons at
Central Station Cowboy
Church, a metal structure
next to a tractor supply store
in Midland, N.C. He baptized
four people in a trough dur-
ing the inaugural service at
his first cowboy church—a
bull-riding ring.
Other congregations focus
on hobbies or personal inter-
ests rather than vocation.
Salty Church is a nondenomi-
national surf congregation in
Ormond Beach, Fla., founded
by Pastor Robbie O’Brien
more than 15 years ago. He
started the church for surfers
looking to get closer to God
but also come as they were—
tattoos, shorts, flowing hair
and all.

“It was kind of ‘nobody
wants us so we’ll start our
own place that welcomes
people like us.’ ” Mr. O’Brien
said. He now ministers to
about 1,700 people every
weekend. There’s commu-
nion, prayer, music, offering
time and a half-hour Bible
message. “We don’t worship
surfing,” Mr. O’Brien said
firmly. “It’s a sport, but it
creates its own culture and
DNA, which is why it fosters
this kind of church.”

Are these narrowcasting
churches the future? “You
may go to a church because
somebody brought you, but
you’ll stay only because you
get to know other people and
create your own connec-
tions,” said Gerardo Martí, a
professor of sociology at Da-
vidson College. “The easiest
way to do that is tying into
lines of affinity.”
The rise of niche and spe-
cial-interest congregations
may just be part of a natural
evolution. “Early on,
churches were town-based or
parish-based, and oftentimes
were based on theological
denominations that had built
into them class, education
and race categories,” said
Scott Thumma, director of

the Hartford Institute for Re-
ligion Research. “But that
has really broken down as
the denomination reality has
weakened and diffused.”
A congregation like a surf
church with a discrete, well-
defined membership is akin
to a specialty store or a bou-
tique, Mr. Thumma said. A
megachurch is more like a
mall, he continued, capable
of offering the mass-worship
experience and several other
styles of worship—all under
the same roof. “This is an ex-
tension of what it means to
be religious in the United
States today,” Mr. Thumma
added. “When you become a
competitive marketplace in a
capitalist system, the volun-
tary organization serves a
particular audience of con-
sumers.
“For a while it was only 10
or 15 audiences, and now it’s
hundreds of audiences with
different interests. The result
is that you get these lifestyle
enclave churches. They ha-
ven’t necessarily discarded
the religious message.
They’re just wrapping it up
in a different package for the
tastes of their people.”
Niche church leaders say
they aren’t offering “religion
lite.” But the packaging—
from cowboy boots to san-
dals—is critical. It may well
mean the difference between
people turning up for ser-
vices or choosing to hang
out. Or hang ten.

Ms. Kaufman is a writer in
New York.

Cowboy churches?
Heavy metal houses
of worship? Don’t call
them ‘religion lite.’

HOUSES OF
WORSHIP
By Joanne
Kaufman


Lawmakers
are debating
waystopre-
vent the Fed-
eral Bureau
of Investiga-
tion from
abusing its
surveillance
authority
again. While
they’re at it,
they have an obligation to
address their own privacy
transgressor, Rep. Adam
Schiff.
That’s the gist of a
pointed letter from Federal
Communications Commis-
sioner Brendan Carr, which
landed Thursday at the
House Intelligence Commit-
tee. Chairman Schiff spent
months conducting secret im-
peachment hearings. His en-
suing report revealed that
he’d also set up his own sur-
veillance state. Mr. Schiff is-
sued secret subpoenas to
phone carriers, to obtain and
publish the call records of
political rivals. Targets in-
cluded Rudy Giuliani and an-
other attorney of the presi-
dent, the ranking Republican
on the Intelligence Commit-
tee (Rep. Devin Nunes) and a
journalist (John Solomon).
Impeachment is over, but
Mr. Carr hasn’t forgotten this
abuse of power, and his let-
ter, which I obtained, calls
for answers and reform. The
FCC takes call privacy seri-
ously, only recently having
proposed some $200 million
in fines on phone carriers for
failing to protect customer
data. Mr. Carr’s message to
Mr. Schiff is that Congress
doesn’t get a pass. It is not
automatically entitled to “a
secret and partisan process


Adam Schiff ’s Surveillance State


that deprives Americans of
their legal right to maintain
the privacy of this sensitive
information.”
Mr. Carr doesn’t dispute
that Congress may, “in at
least some circumstances,”
have the legal authority to
obtain call records under the
Communications Act. The of-
fense, he writes, was denying
his targets the right to fight
the subpoenas: “Courts long
ago established a process for
Americans to seek judicial re-
viewbeforeCongress obtains
and then publishes docu-
ments in response to a con-
gressional subpoena.”
As a lawyer and congres-
sional lifer, Mr. Schiff knows
this. It’s expected that Con-
gress give notice of demands,
as it did when it issued sub-
poenas to Deutsche Bank and
Mazars for Donald Trump’s
financial records. That notice
allowed the president to file
suit to block those institu-
tions from responding. The
Supreme Court in December
issued stays, halting
Deutsche Bank and Mazars
compliance while it considers
Mr. Trump’s appeal. Oral ar-
guments are scheduled for
March 31. Congress isn’t enti-
tled to everything.
This history is what made
Mr. Schiff’s subpoenas so de-
vious and abusive. He issued
them secretly. He didn’t no-
tify his targets, and Republi-
can committee members
were barred from telling the
public what they knew about
the subpoenas.
Worse, he deceived one of
his targets. He sent a sub-
poena for call records to Mr.
Giuliani on Sept. 30 and
suggested Mr. Giuliani had
two weeks to work with the

committee, even as Mr.
Schiff was already secretly
demanding Giuliani call re-
cords from a phone carrier.
House Democrats suggest
this cloak-and-dagger was
necessary for their investiga-
tion. Mr. Carr punctures that
absurd claim. Yes, law en-
forcement sometimes needs
secrecy in surveillance war-
rants, so as to freely monitor
“real time” on continuing

communications. But Mr.
Schiff was seeking past call
data. Telling Mr. Giuliani
about the carrier subpoenas
wouldn’t change the call-re-
cord history. The only reason
to keep him in the dark was
to strip him of the right to
litigate.
Mr. Carr details how many
legal issues Mr. Schiff denied
his targets the opportunity
to test. He notes that the Su-
preme Court is considering
the limits on congressional
subpoena authority inTrump
v. Mazars and Trump v.
Deutsche Bank, and that the
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia
last month dismissed a
House lawsuit to compel tes-
timony from former White
House counsel Don McGahn.
Mr. Carr also points out the
heightened First Amendment
questions that accompanied
Mr. Schiff’s acquisition and
publication of records for an
investigative journalist—one

who was writing stories crit-
ical of Mr. Schiff.
And he asks whether Mr.
Schiff exceeded his authority
by publishing call records
that lack “any apparent
nexus to the Committee’s le-
gitimate work.” That includes
a drive-by smear of Mr.
Nunes. In Watkins v. U.S.
(1957), the Supreme Court
held that “there is no con-
gressional power to expose
for the sake of exposure,” es-
pecially when “the predomi-
nant result can only be the
invasion of the private rights
of individuals.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Carr asks:
Is Mr. Schiff continuing to is-
sue secret subpoenas? And
what else is he sitting on?
The impeachment report in-
dicates the committee ob-
tained “nearly 4,000 pages of
confidential call records,”
nowhere near what Mr.
Schiff published. Who else’s
life is getting ransacked at
this moment?
“The Committee created
out of whole cloth a secret
and effectively unreviewable
and unchecked mechanism
for obtaining call records on
any and all Americans,” Mr.
Carr writes. He holds out the
possibility the FCC will mod-
ify its rules to check such
abuse.
But he also suggests Con-
gress take the question up as
part of its surveillance de-
bate. That’s the better forum,
and it ought to be as big a
priority for Republicans as
reform of the Foreign Intelli-
gence Surveillance Act. The
House has little credibility to
lecture the FBI on surveil-
lance abuse if it won’t rein in
its own snoopers.
Write to [email protected].

An FCC official calls
him out for obtaining
call records without
judicial review.

POTOMAC
WATCH
By Kimberley
A. Strassel

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