In search of late summer diversion, we watched the hightest ranked James Bond film, 1964's "Goldfinger." The story is appalling, but what caught me was this scene in Switzerland. That's the Hotel Belvedere at the Rhonegletscher (the glacier of the Rhône river) in Switzerland, a place connected to a branch of my family, and one we often visited while hiking in the Wallis valley. My sister had a summer job there and, if I'm not mistaken, it was the destination of my very first trip, shortly after being born. I might be bemused that I'm recognizing family history in a famed movie landscape when, in fact, millions of people - starting even before I was born - must have been recognizing the movie in the landscape! But this unexpected reencounter gave me occasion to confirm something I'd heard - that the glacier of the Rhone, caverns in which you could once enter right from the hotel, has melted so far back that it's not even visible from the hotel any more. A drone film shot a year ago confirms this. Vertigo!
