Bristow, Oklahoma
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Back on the road, and back at Walmart for the night. This feels familiar. We're moving slowly, owing to a late start Tuesday morning and another late start today. Taking it easy and only doing about 400 to 500 miles a day, stopping fairly early in the evening. Went to a couple of antique malls to buy pocket knives, and tried to see the "world's largest rocker" today, near Cuba, Missouri, but couldn't locate it in spite of signs on the road. Maybe I was looking for the wrong thing. I assume it's a rocking chair, but for all I know it could be a 900 pound guy who looks like Elvis. Actually, they have a guy like that in Las Vegas, called Big Elvis. I don't think he's much over 400 pounds, but you get the idea.
This shakedown cruise with the new motor home has been interesting and pretty predictable so far. One of the things I had hoped for was better gas mileage, but that's not happening. If anything, this one does a little worse than the other one. And when I think about it, that makes perfect sense. It's about the same size as the other one (two feet shorter). Compared to the buslike Class A Holiday Rambler I had before, this Class C model is significantly less aerodynamic--the Winnebago part of it balances on the Ford part of it like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine, as Bob Dylan would say. Also, it's about the same age as the other one (three years older, in fact), and has about the same size engine (461 cubic inches, versus 454, I think, in the other one). So it shouldn't have surprised me that it gets, when everything's going just right and I don't go over about 60, between 6.5 and 7 mpg, which is about what the other one got. And it's got less pickup than the other one, too, especially pulling the car on the dolly behind it. Zero to 60 in a few minutes.
But all of that is okay. It's feeling more like home all the time. By Friday we'll be situated in Hobbs, New Mexico, at the starting point of the resumption of the walk.
Bristow, Oklahoma, where we're spending tonight, is about 30 miles west of Tulsa. Oklahoma so far seems to be filled with some pretty seriously geeky people. I can see why California tried, albeit unsuccessfully and unconstitutionally, to prevent the Okies from entering back in the 30s. They must have definitely brought down the class average, even in places like Ridgemont High.
Here are a couple of factoids about Bristow, so you'll get that up close and personal feeling I try to impart about the places I visit. Although it was dark when we pulled into this town of 4500, I could tell right away I was entering a community where the Walmart is the biggest thing that's happened in many decades. And it is a damn fine Walmart, as these things go. Despite being under cover of the night, I did find out that Bristow was where the folk singer Tom Paxton grew up and graduated from high school. And it's a mere stone's throw from Okemah, the birthplace of another pretty serious folk singer named Woody Guthrie.
It was while working the midnight shift at the Frisco Depot in Bristow that Gene Autry (one of California's most successful Okies) would sing and accompany himself on the guitar, to pass the time. And it was while doing so that he was encouraged to sing professionally by a guy passing through named Will Rogers. And he did, going first to New York to record, and eventually out to Hollywood to become an authentic made-for-the-movies singing cowboy, and much later the owner of the Los Angeles-California-Anaheim-Los Angeles Angels.
Interestingly, one of the songs Gene Autry recorded in 1931, in his much less conservative days, was a labor anthem called "The Death of Mother Jones." And it so happens that yesterday we visited the grave of Mother Jones herself, in Mount Olive, Illinois, where she shares a monument with union miners killed in a strike in Virdin, Illinois in 1898. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was an Irish-born labor organizer, one of the co-founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. She was born in either 1830 or 1837, and died in 1930. At any rate, she hung in there for a good long time, organizing mostly mine workers.
And I've hung in there as long as I intend to for one day.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Stewardess, I Speak Jive
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Monday, October 18, 2010.
This will be my last dispatch from home; leaving tomorrow. My wife and I will be traveling together in the motor home down to New Mexico, and she will depart for work at the end of the week, flying out of El Paso. Then it will be back to walking for me.
Okay sports fans, I think I might have jinxed Jim Tressel with my suggestion last week that he should come and coach at Michigan. I'm not sorry for that, however. Practically the only joy here now in Mudville on Saturday was the victory of Wisconsin over Ohio State. I never get tired of seeing the Buckeyes lose. It just doesn't happen often enough to get tiring.
Despite his loss, my invitation to Tressel still stands. I'm thinking fat Jack McCaffrey (known to some of my readers) could do at least as good a job with Michigan as Rodriguez and his minions have, even though old Jack has probably already departed for that great locker room in the sky. To be sure, it's not all DickRod's fault, as much as I'd like it to be. He doesn't throw the intercepted passes, nor does he kick the blocked field goals that are run back to midfield. But he's the skipper, by God, and the ship is sinking. Again. Before we drown, we might just get lucky against Penn State, Illinois, and Purdue. I have no illusions about Wisconsin or Ohio State. A finish of 8-4 is therefore possible, and would set up my nightmare scenario, in which people would point to the fact that Rodriguez has improved once again from his previous season, and use that to justify his existence in Ann Arbor.
Meanwhile, the Yankees have finished off Minnesota, and are taking a 1-1 tie with Texas into a three-game home stand starting tonight. Right now that's my focus. I know most of you Michigan football fans don't care about Yankees baseball, and vice versa, but I need both these teams, and this is the beautifully brief time when they overlap. There's also a European contingent who are indifferent to both these American sports, not to mention our local politics, and look forward to the resumption of the walk so I'll start talking about something they understand. Soon.
Speaking of Americana, like many of you I am in mourning this week for Barbara Billingsley, who played the mom on Leave It To Beaver. As odd and remote as it seems now, I grew up in a home that was very like that of the Cleavers in many respects. I was about the Beaver's age, and I had an older brother who was more or less a version of Wally. My dad came home wearing his dignified suit and tie and kept it on while he read the paper before dinner, and my mom wore dresses all day around the house, though she didn't have a string of pearls to go with them.
Besides being kind of dumb, the Beaver was the beneficiary of dumb luck, in that his folks were some kind of new parental model that hadn't been tested in the real world yet. It was a rare example of television attempting to lead its audience, rather than pander to it. It was the parents who were new and different on that show, not the kids. Father didn't bellow, he didn't whine, he wasn't an absent-minded clown, he wasn't the center of attention. He didn't even necessarily know best. And mother wasn't bossy or smug; mostly she just stood by and watched, patiently and lovingly, stepping in once in awhile with a glass of milk when things got dicey. Ward and June were sane and in control of themselves in an almost eerie way. Wally was equally self-assured, not to mention athletic and good-looking. The only thing you couldn't figure out about that show was how this little dope Beaver managed to find himself in the midst of such a together family. You were supposed to see his penchant for screwing things up as typical boyish goofiness, but more often than not you were left scratching your head over his stupidity. Even as a kid I thought the hidden key to the show might be that the Beaver was an actual beaver that had somehow been transmogrified into this kid, and the others were trying to make him feel like he fit in. I think of the hearbreak of having that little boy as having been June's biggest challenge. Standing there looking wholesomely beautiful and cultured, every hair in place, every pleat sharply pressed, faithfully serving her family, all the while thinking to herself, "Jesus, how could those people at the hospital have switched my baby for this ... this retard!"
Here's to you, Barbara, for having pulled it off with panache.
Monday, October 18, 2010.
This will be my last dispatch from home; leaving tomorrow. My wife and I will be traveling together in the motor home down to New Mexico, and she will depart for work at the end of the week, flying out of El Paso. Then it will be back to walking for me.
Okay sports fans, I think I might have jinxed Jim Tressel with my suggestion last week that he should come and coach at Michigan. I'm not sorry for that, however. Practically the only joy here now in Mudville on Saturday was the victory of Wisconsin over Ohio State. I never get tired of seeing the Buckeyes lose. It just doesn't happen often enough to get tiring.
Despite his loss, my invitation to Tressel still stands. I'm thinking fat Jack McCaffrey (known to some of my readers) could do at least as good a job with Michigan as Rodriguez and his minions have, even though old Jack has probably already departed for that great locker room in the sky. To be sure, it's not all DickRod's fault, as much as I'd like it to be. He doesn't throw the intercepted passes, nor does he kick the blocked field goals that are run back to midfield. But he's the skipper, by God, and the ship is sinking. Again. Before we drown, we might just get lucky against Penn State, Illinois, and Purdue. I have no illusions about Wisconsin or Ohio State. A finish of 8-4 is therefore possible, and would set up my nightmare scenario, in which people would point to the fact that Rodriguez has improved once again from his previous season, and use that to justify his existence in Ann Arbor.
Meanwhile, the Yankees have finished off Minnesota, and are taking a 1-1 tie with Texas into a three-game home stand starting tonight. Right now that's my focus. I know most of you Michigan football fans don't care about Yankees baseball, and vice versa, but I need both these teams, and this is the beautifully brief time when they overlap. There's also a European contingent who are indifferent to both these American sports, not to mention our local politics, and look forward to the resumption of the walk so I'll start talking about something they understand. Soon.
Speaking of Americana, like many of you I am in mourning this week for Barbara Billingsley, who played the mom on Leave It To Beaver. As odd and remote as it seems now, I grew up in a home that was very like that of the Cleavers in many respects. I was about the Beaver's age, and I had an older brother who was more or less a version of Wally. My dad came home wearing his dignified suit and tie and kept it on while he read the paper before dinner, and my mom wore dresses all day around the house, though she didn't have a string of pearls to go with them.
Besides being kind of dumb, the Beaver was the beneficiary of dumb luck, in that his folks were some kind of new parental model that hadn't been tested in the real world yet. It was a rare example of television attempting to lead its audience, rather than pander to it. It was the parents who were new and different on that show, not the kids. Father didn't bellow, he didn't whine, he wasn't an absent-minded clown, he wasn't the center of attention. He didn't even necessarily know best. And mother wasn't bossy or smug; mostly she just stood by and watched, patiently and lovingly, stepping in once in awhile with a glass of milk when things got dicey. Ward and June were sane and in control of themselves in an almost eerie way. Wally was equally self-assured, not to mention athletic and good-looking. The only thing you couldn't figure out about that show was how this little dope Beaver managed to find himself in the midst of such a together family. You were supposed to see his penchant for screwing things up as typical boyish goofiness, but more often than not you were left scratching your head over his stupidity. Even as a kid I thought the hidden key to the show might be that the Beaver was an actual beaver that had somehow been transmogrified into this kid, and the others were trying to make him feel like he fit in. I think of the hearbreak of having that little boy as having been June's biggest challenge. Standing there looking wholesomely beautiful and cultured, every hair in place, every pleat sharply pressed, faithfully serving her family, all the while thinking to herself, "Jesus, how could those people at the hospital have switched my baby for this ... this retard!"
Here's to you, Barbara, for having pulled it off with panache.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Pity the Fools
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Thursday, October 14, 2010.
Progress. Got the new refrigerator into the motor home a couple of days ago, with help from my neighbor Kevin from across the street. Hooked up the gas and electricity, and everything seems to be working as it should.
After much debating with myself and comparison shopping, I finally bought a generator this afternoon. One thing about a debate with oneself is that there are no clear winners or losers. I held out in my mind for a built-in generator, but the space allotted along the outside of the motor home isn't big enough for one of today's 4000 watt models, although it would hold the next size down, 2800 watts, which would probably be fine for what I have. But when I added the high cost of a Cummins-Onan built-in to the several hundred dollars more estimated for installation (with warnings from the installer that costly "problems" could arise due to the age of the motor home), it aggregated to an amount out of all proportion to the cost and condition of the motor home itself. So I ended up buying a portable one, a very quiet little 3000 watt job with an electric starter. It's still too big to fit in the space along the outside where the original generator was, but it has wheels and I'm going to roll it on a ramp into and out of the motor home. (I could lift it, but it's 130 pounds, and I'm definitely not going to feel like doing that at the end of a long day of walking.) The only other chores will be to plug it in and add gasoline on a daily basis. And I've found a use for that outside generator space--it will hold two 5-gallon gas cans quite easily.
Now I'm beginning the serious aspects of the preparation--putting up my Muddy Waters poster, laying in a supply of books, clothes, pots and pans, and tools. Not too much, though, in case I have to cram it all in the car along with the generator at some point.
Elsewhere in the news, the election campaigns are heating up here in Michigan. Every five minutes or so, we are treated to an assault on our senses and our intelligence in the form of a political ad that makes the rest of the stuff on the tube look almost sublimely literary by comparison. The candidates from both parties have the same profoundly stupid message, too. It's this: we need to control taxes so we can create jobs. How anyone ever got the idea that lowering taxes would mean more jobs is way the hell beyond me. And I'm not just saying that because I had a career in the government tax department of what a contestant on Wheel of Fortune might refer to as "a major New England state."
Of course, I know what the candidates are getting at, or at least what they think they mean. They think the reason there are no jobs in Michigan is because we have business taxes, and that somehow if businesses only could exist tax-free they'd come running into Michigan, dragging their factories behind them, and we'd suddenly be back where we were in the 1960s, with everybody sucking on the old sugar tit and making big bucks and being protected by a union. I've already talked about this in this blog, and I won't go into detail about it again, except to say that taxes are only one, and a relatively small, cost of doing business, and we've already offered to do everything for businesses short of sacrificing our first-born children to them, if they will only locate here. Fixed operational costs, material costs, proximity to markets, and transportation costs are all at least as important, and labor costs are the most important of all. And the truth is, the people of Michigan couldn't work cheaply enough, even at minimum wage, to satisfy the demands of rapacious capitalism at this point in time. But who wants to hear that kind of news from a political candidate? So they all say the same thing--"I'm going to lower taxes and create jobs"--which means about as much as if they said "Jesus loves you" or "Santa Claus is coming to town."
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Taxes pay for absurd and frivolous things like police, fire protection, roads, sewers, water, trash removal, education, courts of law, libraries, and parks. In fact, taxes usually create more jobs in a state than any other piece of the economy does. (Except maybe Walmart.)
I almost pity the fools who get elected. But I don't, because they'll probably be the ignorantly lucky beneficiaries of a market upswing that will, indeed, create some additional prosperity. And they'll take full credit for it, while they're getting paid with ... you guessed it, tax money.
Thursday, October 14, 2010.
Progress. Got the new refrigerator into the motor home a couple of days ago, with help from my neighbor Kevin from across the street. Hooked up the gas and electricity, and everything seems to be working as it should.
After much debating with myself and comparison shopping, I finally bought a generator this afternoon. One thing about a debate with oneself is that there are no clear winners or losers. I held out in my mind for a built-in generator, but the space allotted along the outside of the motor home isn't big enough for one of today's 4000 watt models, although it would hold the next size down, 2800 watts, which would probably be fine for what I have. But when I added the high cost of a Cummins-Onan built-in to the several hundred dollars more estimated for installation (with warnings from the installer that costly "problems" could arise due to the age of the motor home), it aggregated to an amount out of all proportion to the cost and condition of the motor home itself. So I ended up buying a portable one, a very quiet little 3000 watt job with an electric starter. It's still too big to fit in the space along the outside where the original generator was, but it has wheels and I'm going to roll it on a ramp into and out of the motor home. (I could lift it, but it's 130 pounds, and I'm definitely not going to feel like doing that at the end of a long day of walking.) The only other chores will be to plug it in and add gasoline on a daily basis. And I've found a use for that outside generator space--it will hold two 5-gallon gas cans quite easily.
Now I'm beginning the serious aspects of the preparation--putting up my Muddy Waters poster, laying in a supply of books, clothes, pots and pans, and tools. Not too much, though, in case I have to cram it all in the car along with the generator at some point.
Elsewhere in the news, the election campaigns are heating up here in Michigan. Every five minutes or so, we are treated to an assault on our senses and our intelligence in the form of a political ad that makes the rest of the stuff on the tube look almost sublimely literary by comparison. The candidates from both parties have the same profoundly stupid message, too. It's this: we need to control taxes so we can create jobs. How anyone ever got the idea that lowering taxes would mean more jobs is way the hell beyond me. And I'm not just saying that because I had a career in the government tax department of what a contestant on Wheel of Fortune might refer to as "a major New England state."
Of course, I know what the candidates are getting at, or at least what they think they mean. They think the reason there are no jobs in Michigan is because we have business taxes, and that somehow if businesses only could exist tax-free they'd come running into Michigan, dragging their factories behind them, and we'd suddenly be back where we were in the 1960s, with everybody sucking on the old sugar tit and making big bucks and being protected by a union. I've already talked about this in this blog, and I won't go into detail about it again, except to say that taxes are only one, and a relatively small, cost of doing business, and we've already offered to do everything for businesses short of sacrificing our first-born children to them, if they will only locate here. Fixed operational costs, material costs, proximity to markets, and transportation costs are all at least as important, and labor costs are the most important of all. And the truth is, the people of Michigan couldn't work cheaply enough, even at minimum wage, to satisfy the demands of rapacious capitalism at this point in time. But who wants to hear that kind of news from a political candidate? So they all say the same thing--"I'm going to lower taxes and create jobs"--which means about as much as if they said "Jesus loves you" or "Santa Claus is coming to town."
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Taxes pay for absurd and frivolous things like police, fire protection, roads, sewers, water, trash removal, education, courts of law, libraries, and parks. In fact, taxes usually create more jobs in a state than any other piece of the economy does. (Except maybe Walmart.)
I almost pity the fools who get elected. But I don't, because they'll probably be the ignorantly lucky beneficiaries of a market upswing that will, indeed, create some additional prosperity. And they'll take full credit for it, while they're getting paid with ... you guessed it, tax money.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Tailgating
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Monday, October 11, 2010.
Nothing in particular to report on the motor home. Still procrastinating on the job of putting in the new refrigerator and buying a generator. Another week to go. One thing about putting things off until the last minute is that those last minutes are busy, and go by quickly.
So let's talk about sports. First the Yankees. Yes, Goliath beat David once again. Money and greatness will out over sentimentality and small markets. In baseball, as in life itself, the underdog isn't supposed to win. Now it's on to either the Rays or the Rangers. My preference would be for the Rangers, because they seem more vulnerable. Also they are from Texas, and used to be owned by George W. Bush, and for those two reasons deserve to be beaten by the team that best represents the North.
Now for the more serious problem, the Michigan Wolverines. We got a look at the Denard Robinson of last year on Saturday. Too bad, because we needed this year's model. And credit is due to MSU on both sides of the ball. They kicked ass fair and square, and those three interceptions and the blocked field goal made the difference in the game.
I told you I was going to the game, but if you didn't see me on TV that was because I never made it into the stadium. Certain people wanted to go to the game, and so we went, and the whole thing turned into a Charlie Foxtrot of the first magnitude. For one thing, there were three of us, making it virtually impossible to obtain seats together from a scalper. In that regard I got very lucky, however, and got a couple of good tickets from a drunk student rather than from a scalper, for a very good price (only $10 apiece over face value). I had to literally elbow a scalper, who also wanted to buy them, out of the way and shove the money into the kid's hands and grab the tickets, but I succeeded. The scalper would have turned a nice profit on them. The professional ticket sellers outside the stadium were asking several hundred dollars apiece, and evidently getting what they asked. Altogether a good day for the underground economy.
After getting the other two members of my party into the stadium I set about trying to obtain a single ticket for myself and quickly realized I had just gotten the bargain of the day, if not the season, from this drunken scholar. Back on the steps in front of Crisler Arena, which is mostly where the scalpers lurk, there were far more buyers than sellers, and I saw that no more good deals were to be had. So, with the first quarter coming to an end, I decided to spend the game wandering from one tailgating party to another, watching on big screen TVs placed in the backs of SUVs, standing behind youthful revelers. Actually a good way to see a game, though I could have done without the beery high fives and trash talking. But at least I saw the action up close. During that time I came to the realization that I don't care if I ever go to Michigan Stadium for a football game again. It might sound like sour grapes, but my favorite way to watch Michigan football is and always has been to sit in my chair in my living room in front of my own TV. The in-person thing is exciting if it's the Rolling Stones we're talking about, but to occupy half-a-butt's-worth of space on an aluminum bleacher with a hundred thousand doofuses watching a game from half a mile away isn't really worth the trouble.
So, whither Michigan? Obviously they're perched pretty much where they were at this time last year, with the rest of the serious Big Ten ahead of them and the easier games behind them. I hate to see them lose, but if they shit the bed again this year, maybe that'll spell Rodriguez's doom, which might just make it all worth it. My personal preference for a replacement would be Jim Tressel, but I don't think he's looking for another job. Get him out of those silly maroon sweater vests and into something more fashionable, in blue. Hey, don't laugh. We had another pretty good coach who came out of the Buckeye State. Why not?
Monday, October 11, 2010.
Nothing in particular to report on the motor home. Still procrastinating on the job of putting in the new refrigerator and buying a generator. Another week to go. One thing about putting things off until the last minute is that those last minutes are busy, and go by quickly.
So let's talk about sports. First the Yankees. Yes, Goliath beat David once again. Money and greatness will out over sentimentality and small markets. In baseball, as in life itself, the underdog isn't supposed to win. Now it's on to either the Rays or the Rangers. My preference would be for the Rangers, because they seem more vulnerable. Also they are from Texas, and used to be owned by George W. Bush, and for those two reasons deserve to be beaten by the team that best represents the North.
Now for the more serious problem, the Michigan Wolverines. We got a look at the Denard Robinson of last year on Saturday. Too bad, because we needed this year's model. And credit is due to MSU on both sides of the ball. They kicked ass fair and square, and those three interceptions and the blocked field goal made the difference in the game.
I told you I was going to the game, but if you didn't see me on TV that was because I never made it into the stadium. Certain people wanted to go to the game, and so we went, and the whole thing turned into a Charlie Foxtrot of the first magnitude. For one thing, there were three of us, making it virtually impossible to obtain seats together from a scalper. In that regard I got very lucky, however, and got a couple of good tickets from a drunk student rather than from a scalper, for a very good price (only $10 apiece over face value). I had to literally elbow a scalper, who also wanted to buy them, out of the way and shove the money into the kid's hands and grab the tickets, but I succeeded. The scalper would have turned a nice profit on them. The professional ticket sellers outside the stadium were asking several hundred dollars apiece, and evidently getting what they asked. Altogether a good day for the underground economy.
After getting the other two members of my party into the stadium I set about trying to obtain a single ticket for myself and quickly realized I had just gotten the bargain of the day, if not the season, from this drunken scholar. Back on the steps in front of Crisler Arena, which is mostly where the scalpers lurk, there were far more buyers than sellers, and I saw that no more good deals were to be had. So, with the first quarter coming to an end, I decided to spend the game wandering from one tailgating party to another, watching on big screen TVs placed in the backs of SUVs, standing behind youthful revelers. Actually a good way to see a game, though I could have done without the beery high fives and trash talking. But at least I saw the action up close. During that time I came to the realization that I don't care if I ever go to Michigan Stadium for a football game again. It might sound like sour grapes, but my favorite way to watch Michigan football is and always has been to sit in my chair in my living room in front of my own TV. The in-person thing is exciting if it's the Rolling Stones we're talking about, but to occupy half-a-butt's-worth of space on an aluminum bleacher with a hundred thousand doofuses watching a game from half a mile away isn't really worth the trouble.
So, whither Michigan? Obviously they're perched pretty much where they were at this time last year, with the rest of the serious Big Ten ahead of them and the easier games behind them. I hate to see them lose, but if they shit the bed again this year, maybe that'll spell Rodriguez's doom, which might just make it all worth it. My personal preference for a replacement would be Jim Tressel, but I don't think he's looking for another job. Get him out of those silly maroon sweater vests and into something more fashionable, in blue. Hey, don't laugh. We had another pretty good coach who came out of the Buckeye State. Why not?
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The RV Gods
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Monday, October 4, 2010
It's getting down to the wire. Just two weeks until the resumption of the trip. Every day I go out and turn the key in the ignition of the motor home, just to hear the sound of the properly-functioning starter, thinking about many more starts to come.
Yesterday afternoon my son-in-law and I pulled the old non-working refrigerator out of the motor home and got it out the door, with a nice fat sixteenth of an inch of clearance on either side. If I didn't already know differently, I'd swear that refrigerator had been installed at the factory before the rest of the thing was built. Talk about a perfect fit. (That's what she said.)
Tomorrow I'll take a trip down to a place near the Indiana line that sells used and surplus motor home equipment, to look for another refrigerator and a generator. After that, if the RV gods continue to smile, there should be nothing left to do but begin packing in provisions. But considering how things have gone so far, I anticipate a comedy of errors between now and time to go.
It's one of those sunny fall days that makes me think of baseball and football simultaneously. For most of my life growing up as a Tigers fan, the beginning of October would mark the end of the baseball season. In fact, it would usually be all over by about the All-Star break. But since I converted to Yankeeism, the dawning of October has come to betoken the beginning of the real season, the one all players wish to be involved in, whether they admit it or not. And the Yankees have played in October more often than any other team in baseball, period. By a wide margin, and not just lately, but for about 90 years now. This year my guys spent September squandering their comfortable lead in the AL east division, and yesterday they finished with a loss to the hated Boston Red Sox, letting Tampa Bay into first place in the division. But New York goes forward as the wild card team, to play the Minnesota Twins, a team that has built a reputation as sort of the anti-Yankees, due to the fact that they manage to do well with a relatively small payroll, while the Yankees of course have the largest in baseball. However, this year I did notice that the Twins have outspent the Devil Rays and are ranked roughly in the middle for money paid to players, not at the bottom. The question is, will that jinx them? Still, I think Minnesota's entire budget only slightly exceeds what Alex Rodriguez pays the guy who cleans his cleats. As for the outcome of the ALDS, well I'm going out on a limb to say that in real life Goliath beats David most of the time. So here we go again. And for for all you Tigers fans there's always next century. (If you're lucky, by then the oceans will have risen enough that there won't be any more competition from New York, Boston, or Tampa Bay.)
And then there's Michigan football. We somehow have to figure a way to clone Denard Robinson so he can play on defense and special teams, then we'll be okay. The guy just doesn't spend enough time on the field. Seriously, I think that's what messed them up against Indiana. Put a shaky defense out there for, literally, almost three-quarters of the game, and it doesn't get any stronger. They have to get Robinson to pace himself, use all four downs, and move the chains like a mere mortal. Naturally it's a temptation to just run thirty yards, then pass for forty yards, and get it done that way. But when it only takes 30 seconds off the clock, well, it just leaves the other team with more time to do its mischief. And that's just not long enough for the big uglies on the U of M defense to catch their breaths, or eat steroid-laced cheeseburgers, or whatever they do. I wouldn't have thought so, but apparently it's possible to have too efficient an offense.
The Spartans will be cocky coming in on Saturday, and that one will be a much bigger test of Michigan than the Indiana game was. I'll be there. Look for me on TV. I'll be the guy wearing the blue shirt with the big yellow "M" on it. You can't miss me.
Monday, October 4, 2010
It's getting down to the wire. Just two weeks until the resumption of the trip. Every day I go out and turn the key in the ignition of the motor home, just to hear the sound of the properly-functioning starter, thinking about many more starts to come.
Yesterday afternoon my son-in-law and I pulled the old non-working refrigerator out of the motor home and got it out the door, with a nice fat sixteenth of an inch of clearance on either side. If I didn't already know differently, I'd swear that refrigerator had been installed at the factory before the rest of the thing was built. Talk about a perfect fit. (That's what she said.)
Tomorrow I'll take a trip down to a place near the Indiana line that sells used and surplus motor home equipment, to look for another refrigerator and a generator. After that, if the RV gods continue to smile, there should be nothing left to do but begin packing in provisions. But considering how things have gone so far, I anticipate a comedy of errors between now and time to go.
It's one of those sunny fall days that makes me think of baseball and football simultaneously. For most of my life growing up as a Tigers fan, the beginning of October would mark the end of the baseball season. In fact, it would usually be all over by about the All-Star break. But since I converted to Yankeeism, the dawning of October has come to betoken the beginning of the real season, the one all players wish to be involved in, whether they admit it or not. And the Yankees have played in October more often than any other team in baseball, period. By a wide margin, and not just lately, but for about 90 years now. This year my guys spent September squandering their comfortable lead in the AL east division, and yesterday they finished with a loss to the hated Boston Red Sox, letting Tampa Bay into first place in the division. But New York goes forward as the wild card team, to play the Minnesota Twins, a team that has built a reputation as sort of the anti-Yankees, due to the fact that they manage to do well with a relatively small payroll, while the Yankees of course have the largest in baseball. However, this year I did notice that the Twins have outspent the Devil Rays and are ranked roughly in the middle for money paid to players, not at the bottom. The question is, will that jinx them? Still, I think Minnesota's entire budget only slightly exceeds what Alex Rodriguez pays the guy who cleans his cleats. As for the outcome of the ALDS, well I'm going out on a limb to say that in real life Goliath beats David most of the time. So here we go again. And for for all you Tigers fans there's always next century. (If you're lucky, by then the oceans will have risen enough that there won't be any more competition from New York, Boston, or Tampa Bay.)
And then there's Michigan football. We somehow have to figure a way to clone Denard Robinson so he can play on defense and special teams, then we'll be okay. The guy just doesn't spend enough time on the field. Seriously, I think that's what messed them up against Indiana. Put a shaky defense out there for, literally, almost three-quarters of the game, and it doesn't get any stronger. They have to get Robinson to pace himself, use all four downs, and move the chains like a mere mortal. Naturally it's a temptation to just run thirty yards, then pass for forty yards, and get it done that way. But when it only takes 30 seconds off the clock, well, it just leaves the other team with more time to do its mischief. And that's just not long enough for the big uglies on the U of M defense to catch their breaths, or eat steroid-laced cheeseburgers, or whatever they do. I wouldn't have thought so, but apparently it's possible to have too efficient an offense.
The Spartans will be cocky coming in on Saturday, and that one will be a much bigger test of Michigan than the Indiana game was. I'll be there. Look for me on TV. I'll be the guy wearing the blue shirt with the big yellow "M" on it. You can't miss me.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Tattooed Lady
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The starter saga continues. Monday I bought another one, and Tuesday I put it in. It started the motor home just fine, but continued to make a sort of metallic ringing noise afterwards. This didn't bode well, so I turned it off immediately. It sounded very much as if metal was still interfacing with metal within the starter, even after the starter's job was done. I looked all around, crawling under the vehicle to make sure the sound was coming from there, and I was pretty sure it was. (I thought of Billy Bob Thornton, in the movie Bandits, looking around desperately, asking "Does anybody else hear that ringing?!")
I slid back under the motor home, where I was starting to get quite comfortable, not to mention rather adept at installing and removing the starter. I took the new one off and had a look at it, not expecting to see anything useful to my investigation. But when I compared the new starter to the old one, it appeared that the bendix gear in the new one wasn't retracted on the shaft quite as much as it was in the old one, by about half an inch. I reasoned that this might have been the problem with the new starter--the nose gear was still making contact, however slightly, with the flywheel, causing that metallic ringing. This kind of detective work is, of course, only necessary for someone like me who doesn't work with cars on a regular basis. Any mechanic probably would have listened for a second and a half and come to the same conclusion I had.
Wednesday I went back to the parts store and tried out my theory on the girl who had sold me the other one. She looked thoughtfully at the old starter and at the new starter, back and forth, as I explained that I didn't think the bendix gear had retracted enough on the new one, hence the funny sound emanating from the starter. I thought she was going to tell me that my idea was all wrong, and that all the new ones looked like that, or that the clearance was sufficient on the new one. (I say this because I'd already observed that this girl--which she was, barely out of high school--knew a thing or two about auto parts.) But instead she shook her head and said, sadly, that that was the only starter of its kind they had in stock. She explained that they don't carry many of those starters, because they're for an old model vehicle. I wondered how much starter motors have changed over the years, other than things like the positioning of the attaching bolts. After all, it's a relatively old bit of technology, the direct successor to the crank handle people used to have to employ to get cars started. But what do I know? Except that planned obsolescence has been an integral part of automotive technology at least since Henry Ford stopped making Model T's. Anyway, I had a starter ordered from another location, to be delivered the next day.
Back to the girl at the parts store, though. I remembered her from a week or so earlier when I'd come to retrieve a battery that was being charged. As she came up from the back room I couldn't see her hands and it didn't look like she was carrying anything. Then when she arrived at the counter, up swung her arm with the battery, at least three and a half feet, as if she had been carrying nothing heavier than a loaf of bread. When I pulled the battery off the counter to take it home and felt its weight, I was very impressed--with her youth and strength, and with my lack of both. I took a long look back at her. Smart, bordering on cute, a bit of an attitude, all of her own teeth, no visible tattoos, strong as hell, and with a great knowledge of cars. I was tempted to ask her if she liked college football and the New York Yankees, but if she'd said yes I might have ended up saying something really foolish. But I did tell her that she had a lot going for her, and not to settle for the first grease monkey who came along. She accepted the compliment for what it was--a little meaningless advice (which she no doubt would not heed) from a guy her grandpa's age. Driving away I convinced myself that she probably liked NASCAR and country music, had quit high school because she needed more time to hang out with her boyfriend, and that the tattoos were indeed under there somewhere. So what the hell.
Moving at my usual snail's pace I picked up the new new starter on Thursday, then found other things to do and didn’t get it installed until during halftime of the Michigan-UMass game this afternoon. (Glad U of M won, but was disappointed in the defense and in some of the play calling and coaching decisions by DickRod. When are people going to wake up and realize that the guy is a BAD COACH, who’s just damn lucky he has a hotshot quarterback this year? And why the hell don't they get a foreign soccer player to kick field goals for them, like everybody else?)
The starter went in without a hitch, doing its job with just the right kind of noise and no more, and now it’s on to bigger and better things—a refrigerator and a generator for the motor home. More later. Go Blue.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The starter saga continues. Monday I bought another one, and Tuesday I put it in. It started the motor home just fine, but continued to make a sort of metallic ringing noise afterwards. This didn't bode well, so I turned it off immediately. It sounded very much as if metal was still interfacing with metal within the starter, even after the starter's job was done. I looked all around, crawling under the vehicle to make sure the sound was coming from there, and I was pretty sure it was. (I thought of Billy Bob Thornton, in the movie Bandits, looking around desperately, asking "Does anybody else hear that ringing?!")
I slid back under the motor home, where I was starting to get quite comfortable, not to mention rather adept at installing and removing the starter. I took the new one off and had a look at it, not expecting to see anything useful to my investigation. But when I compared the new starter to the old one, it appeared that the bendix gear in the new one wasn't retracted on the shaft quite as much as it was in the old one, by about half an inch. I reasoned that this might have been the problem with the new starter--the nose gear was still making contact, however slightly, with the flywheel, causing that metallic ringing. This kind of detective work is, of course, only necessary for someone like me who doesn't work with cars on a regular basis. Any mechanic probably would have listened for a second and a half and come to the same conclusion I had.
Wednesday I went back to the parts store and tried out my theory on the girl who had sold me the other one. She looked thoughtfully at the old starter and at the new starter, back and forth, as I explained that I didn't think the bendix gear had retracted enough on the new one, hence the funny sound emanating from the starter. I thought she was going to tell me that my idea was all wrong, and that all the new ones looked like that, or that the clearance was sufficient on the new one. (I say this because I'd already observed that this girl--which she was, barely out of high school--knew a thing or two about auto parts.) But instead she shook her head and said, sadly, that that was the only starter of its kind they had in stock. She explained that they don't carry many of those starters, because they're for an old model vehicle. I wondered how much starter motors have changed over the years, other than things like the positioning of the attaching bolts. After all, it's a relatively old bit of technology, the direct successor to the crank handle people used to have to employ to get cars started. But what do I know? Except that planned obsolescence has been an integral part of automotive technology at least since Henry Ford stopped making Model T's. Anyway, I had a starter ordered from another location, to be delivered the next day.
Back to the girl at the parts store, though. I remembered her from a week or so earlier when I'd come to retrieve a battery that was being charged. As she came up from the back room I couldn't see her hands and it didn't look like she was carrying anything. Then when she arrived at the counter, up swung her arm with the battery, at least three and a half feet, as if she had been carrying nothing heavier than a loaf of bread. When I pulled the battery off the counter to take it home and felt its weight, I was very impressed--with her youth and strength, and with my lack of both. I took a long look back at her. Smart, bordering on cute, a bit of an attitude, all of her own teeth, no visible tattoos, strong as hell, and with a great knowledge of cars. I was tempted to ask her if she liked college football and the New York Yankees, but if she'd said yes I might have ended up saying something really foolish. But I did tell her that she had a lot going for her, and not to settle for the first grease monkey who came along. She accepted the compliment for what it was--a little meaningless advice (which she no doubt would not heed) from a guy her grandpa's age. Driving away I convinced myself that she probably liked NASCAR and country music, had quit high school because she needed more time to hang out with her boyfriend, and that the tattoos were indeed under there somewhere. So what the hell.
Moving at my usual snail's pace I picked up the new new starter on Thursday, then found other things to do and didn’t get it installed until during halftime of the Michigan-UMass game this afternoon. (Glad U of M won, but was disappointed in the defense and in some of the play calling and coaching decisions by DickRod. When are people going to wake up and realize that the guy is a BAD COACH, who’s just damn lucky he has a hotshot quarterback this year? And why the hell don't they get a foreign soccer player to kick field goals for them, like everybody else?)
The starter went in without a hitch, doing its job with just the right kind of noise and no more, and now it’s on to bigger and better things—a refrigerator and a generator for the motor home. More later. Go Blue.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Good Dutchman
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Monday, September 13, 2010
I've enjoyed reading your comments on the last blog posting, and it's good to know the peanut gallery is warming, as I am, to the resumption of the walk.
I wish I could say the starting problem with the motor home is behind me, but it isn't, quite. On Saturday I drove it down to Byron Center to buy a new towing dolly, from the same place where I bought the last one (which went with the other motor home when I sold it). The guy sells motor homes and dollies and other such things from a barn behind his farm house. Born in the Netherlands, he came over here as a boy of seven in the early 50s.
As I mentioned in a posting last year, the majority of the Dutch in western Michigan came earlier, and were mostly right-wing evangelical farmers from Friesland and elsewhere in the north of the country. The Netherlands was no doubt happy to be rid of them. I can only imagine wistfully such an emigration from this country, perhaps to an archipelago in the far Pacific, or in an expedition to enslave and exploit the natives of New Guinea and build the New Jerusalem. Unfortunately, they seem instead to be headed for Washington DC.
Politically, the towing dolly man was no exception to the rule hereabouts. He said his father left their little town in Groningen because he was tired of the government telling him how much he could make and what he could do. "That's not freedom," his father had said. An early refugee from postwar European social democracy. Well, no worries here on that head. The Birchers who seem to control our national dialogue would condemn the very idea of stop signs as a socialist plot if it were proposed today, and if there were any socialists around here to do the plotting.
Meanwhile, back in the driveway of this "good Dutchman," as my father no doubt would have called him (the adjective "good" being by him indiscriminately applied whenever the word following had anything to do with the Netherlands), the damned motor home once again refused to start. This time, however, it wasn't the battery hookup--at least not entirely--but the starter. It made a sort of vrooooming sound nine times out of ten, but finally did start. The good Dutchman opined that it sounded like the bendix gear in the starter wasn't working. He suggested I replace the bendix. I thought, maybe you could do that, but I think I'll splurge and get a whole new (or rebuilt) starter. I can just see me taking the starter apart and ending up with a bunch of extra parts when it's all together again. (Come to think of it, that happened to me one time when I replaced a carburetor. I had a handful of cotter pins and widgets left over, but the car ran. Not well, of course.)
So today it's off to the auto parts store again, where they're starting to recognize me when I come in. Nice bunch of guys, too.
Fix Or Repair Daily.
Monday, September 13, 2010
I've enjoyed reading your comments on the last blog posting, and it's good to know the peanut gallery is warming, as I am, to the resumption of the walk.
I wish I could say the starting problem with the motor home is behind me, but it isn't, quite. On Saturday I drove it down to Byron Center to buy a new towing dolly, from the same place where I bought the last one (which went with the other motor home when I sold it). The guy sells motor homes and dollies and other such things from a barn behind his farm house. Born in the Netherlands, he came over here as a boy of seven in the early 50s.
As I mentioned in a posting last year, the majority of the Dutch in western Michigan came earlier, and were mostly right-wing evangelical farmers from Friesland and elsewhere in the north of the country. The Netherlands was no doubt happy to be rid of them. I can only imagine wistfully such an emigration from this country, perhaps to an archipelago in the far Pacific, or in an expedition to enslave and exploit the natives of New Guinea and build the New Jerusalem. Unfortunately, they seem instead to be headed for Washington DC.
Politically, the towing dolly man was no exception to the rule hereabouts. He said his father left their little town in Groningen because he was tired of the government telling him how much he could make and what he could do. "That's not freedom," his father had said. An early refugee from postwar European social democracy. Well, no worries here on that head. The Birchers who seem to control our national dialogue would condemn the very idea of stop signs as a socialist plot if it were proposed today, and if there were any socialists around here to do the plotting.
Meanwhile, back in the driveway of this "good Dutchman," as my father no doubt would have called him (the adjective "good" being by him indiscriminately applied whenever the word following had anything to do with the Netherlands), the damned motor home once again refused to start. This time, however, it wasn't the battery hookup--at least not entirely--but the starter. It made a sort of vrooooming sound nine times out of ten, but finally did start. The good Dutchman opined that it sounded like the bendix gear in the starter wasn't working. He suggested I replace the bendix. I thought, maybe you could do that, but I think I'll splurge and get a whole new (or rebuilt) starter. I can just see me taking the starter apart and ending up with a bunch of extra parts when it's all together again. (Come to think of it, that happened to me one time when I replaced a carburetor. I had a handful of cotter pins and widgets left over, but the car ran. Not well, of course.)
So today it's off to the auto parts store again, where they're starting to recognize me when I come in. Nice bunch of guys, too.
Fix Or Repair Daily.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Real Thing
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Thursday, September 9, 2010
When it comes to the enduring icons of U.S. culture--the ones people both here and in other countries love to hate but usually can't do without--Coca Cola is sure to be high on the list, along with McDonald's and Ford Motor Company and a few others. So it's fitting that two of these emblems of our culture should have found themselves bound together today in a heartwarming story of American know how.
I mentioned that the motor home wouldn't start, and that I'd done about all I could do within my very limited mechanical means. Bright and early this afternoon, after The Price Is Right was over, I tried the last of my little potential fixes, after having already checked out the starter, the battery, and the solenoid. The piece I replaced this time was the voltage regulator. It didn't seem like the thing that was wrong, but what the hell, it was small and easy to change, so I got a new one and put it in. No luck. The damned motor home (this was now its official name) still wouldn't crank. So I called for a tow truck and arranged to have it taken to a shop, bracing for the usual few hundred dollars in miscellaneous diagnostic fees and repair charges.
When the tow truck arrived the guy suggested that before he took it away it might be a good idea for him to try a couple of things, and he hooked up a booster to the battery and gave it a try. Very quickly he said he knew what the problem was--that the negative battery connection was bad. Here I must say that I felt a bit embarrassed, because one of the things I had already done, quite conscientiously, was to disconnect the battery, cleaning and scraping the lead on the posts and the terminals until they gleamed. No one, I thought, could gainsay my diligence there. But the fact is that while I did what I did quite well, I hadn't done enough. The place where the little bundle of bare wires of the cable bolts to the terminal was where the corrosion was.
Here was the interesting part. He asked me if I had any coke. At first I thought he might just want to get high while he fiddled around with my vehicle. I'm a live and let live type of guy, but, well, I just didn't know about that. Immediately my mind went to that scene from one of the Naked Gun movies where Leslie Nielsen is leaning over O.J. Simpson's bed in the hospital and Simpson whispers, "Heroin, Frank," and Nielsen says, "That's a pretty tall order, Nordberg; it might take a little time, but I'll see what I can do." I gave the tow truck guy a bit of a sidelong glance. Then it hit me like a bolt of refreshment: "Oh, Coke!" "Yeah, what did you think I meant?" "Oh, nothing. I mean, uh, would Diet Coke be okay?" "Yeah, Coke, Diet Coke, whatever."
So I went inside and got a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and took it out to him. By now I knew he wasn't going to drink it, so when he opened the bottle and began to pour it out like a libation over the oxidized bunch of copper wires at the end of the battery cable, I wasn't surprised. The copper began to sizzle and fizz. We poured a little into a dish and dipped the end of the cable into it and let the magical soft drink do its thing. Before long the copper was cleansed of its green patina. A little sanding and scraping of the other contact points and a reattachment of the wire, and once more, for the first time since the day I brought it home, I heard the reassuring sound of the starter. Ignition, blast off!
So here's to the confluence of Ford and Coca-Cola. And here's to simple solutions to all of life's problems. I couldn't help but imagine that in France this would have involved a Citroen, a piece of soft cheese, and some paperwork; and in Italy it might have been a Fiat, some olive oil, and a great deal of noise. Pretty much anywhere in the Third World there would have been a Range Rover, a bribe, and a baby goat. So comparatively speaking, this was a pretty clean fix.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
F.O.R.D.
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
I bought another motor home about two weeks ago, from a private seller. It's a 1988 Winnebago, build on a Ford Econoline chassis. This is a picture of it, and it's appropriate that you should see it in situ, as it were, in my driveway, because it hasn't started since I got it home and backed it into its present spot. It doesn't crank at all. With some help from my son-in-law I've tried to trouble-shoot the problem, removing the solenoid and starter and getting them checked out, and having the battery charged. So far, nothing has helped. I have one more little gizmo to check out and then I think I've exhausted my limited knowledge.
My son-in-law, in an effort to help, asked a friend of his what the problem might be, adding, "I don't know much about Ford electronics." The friend replied, "Neither does Ford." I must say that my lifelong prejudice against Ford products is beginning to come out. Like many of you who read this, I was raised in a GM environment, and we always understood that FORD stood for "fix or repair daily," "frequently overhauled, rarely driven," or "found on the road dead."
Ironic, perhaps, that of the Big Three, as they were once known, the one that should have ended up in the best shape, and in all likelihood most worthy of surviving, should have been Ford. But there it is. Were it not that so many more jobs would have been lost and so many of my old friends probably would have been fucked out of their pensions (even more so than they already have been), I would have been happy to see GM and Chrysler die off completely in this country, as they so richly deserve to, thanks to the incredibly short-sighted and incompetent ways of their ruthlessly greedy and reckless owners and managers.
People have lots of weird explanations for why GM, especially, has tanked in recent years, almost none of which bear much relationship to reality. For instance, I'm always amazed at how many otherwise smart people have bought into the palpably ridiculous idea that the American car companies have done poorly because they are saddled with more expensive safety regulations than, say, the Japanese. There are only a few things wrong with that argument. First, it doesn't explain why Ford is still solvent and only GM and Chrysler are moribund. Second, it ignores the fact that most foreign cars for the U.S. market are assembled right here in this country, subject, I daresay, to the same wicked regulations that the rest of the companies are. And third, even if they weren't, who in their right mind would imagine that places like Japan and Europe would have less stringent safely regulations than we do? We're talking about modern social democracies that actually feel responsible for the welfare of their workers and citizens, not places like the U.S. that only pretend to.
Which is not to say that I think Ford has been doing everything right. Probably they have succeeded in getting a larger number of their component parts made outside the country, where labor is cheaper. But just maybe they did give some thought over the past two decades to trying to compete with the Japanese for the small and mid-sized car market, instead of just selling gas guzzling SUVs to suburban housewives for a quick profit. I don't know. It does seem that all three of the U.S. car companies make a hell of a lot of their money dealing ridiculously large vehicles of all kinds, including selling lots of oversized pickup trucks to guys who otherwise would be buying male enhancement products on late night TV.
In saying I wouldn't mind seeing GM and Chrysler go down the tubes I don't mean that I'm opposed to the government having become involved in the situation. Not me. I love the idea of the government owning car companies. I think all industry should be nationalized. But of course we didn't go about it that way. We just gave the money to the same pigs who have been running things all along, and said "Go and sin no more." Give me a government bureaucrat over a capitalist or a bushy-tailed entrepreneur any day of the week. Those business guys are the ones who scare the hell out of me. At least the bureaucrat works for the people, and not for himself.
Well, you're thinking, leave it to Pete to turn his motor home troubles into a political screed. But hey, the right wingers find a way to twist everything their way, so what the hell? And we can all, when the chips are down, blame everything on the Chinese.
Back to the motor home, I think I'm just about at the point where I'm going to have to get it towed somewhere and get the starting problem fixed the right way. After that I have to get a couple more things taken care of. It needs a new refrigerator and a generator, as well as a minor tweak here and there. But getting the vehicle is a start, and has me thinking about the open road.
P.S. If any of you gearheads out there have any last minute advice about the starting problem before I bite the bullet and send it to the shop, I'll be happy to receive it.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Concentration Of Mind
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Some followers of the blog might remember that I began the walk almost exactly a year ago. It was the day after Labor Day, as today is, but it was September 8. The first hopeful 10.1 miles, which seemed like a lot of walking at the time, commenced from the house and ended just down the road, practically in my own back yard. Over time I gradually (too gradually, in hindsight) increased the length of each day's walk until I reached a daily distance of about 21 miles, which was both manageable and filled the day up nicely, still leaving time for all the necessary driving back and forth followed by blogging.
Looking back after over two thousand miles I can say that some things went just about the way I thought they would, and some didn't. For instance, I figured I'd walk about five days a week, for a hundred miles total, and I did. I thought I'd walk five days and rest for two, whereas I usually walked three days and rested for one, which came out to a little more than a hundred miles a week. However, I didn't plan on taking as much time off from walking as I did. Trips back home for holidays and other rest aggregated to over ten weeks away from the walk--two and a half months. As a result of all that off time, when I stopped at the end of April I was almost a thousand miles short of where I originally thought I might be at that time. That meant that I wouldn't get to the west coast before summer. Contributing to that shortfall in distance was something else I hadn't anticipated--how tired I would get of being out there on the road alone. The solitude, in fact, was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. It was my friend and my enemy. Eventually the loneliness of the trip would defeat my love of solitude, and I would begin to long for the company of family and friends and the comforts of home. Then a little bit of home would make me wish I were out on the road again. A cycle of discontentment. I think I'm stuck with that, and it'll only be the looming of the end of my life that will make me appreciate both things simultaneously. As Dr. Johnson said about the man who knows he is to be hanged soon, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." I do not yet possess that concentration of mind.
Another aspect of the walk that went just about the way I'd hoped it would was the vehicular logistics. The motor home performed very well, except for the brake problem in Texas, and was a reasonably pleasant home away from home. Also, my car ran like a champ (270,000 miles and counting), and the towing dolly worked perfectly, except for some trouble with the lights. Even more importantly, the daily tasks of finding a place to park the motor home and my car, and the driving back and forth, almost always went off smoothly, especially after I learned to trust my instincts about spots that were both safe and inconspicuous. To be sure, in 118 days of walking I made a few parking mistakes, but to my surprise they involved the car and not the motor home. The closest I came to having my car towed was on a Sunday on the north side of Jackson, Mississippi, and fortunately for me my nephew was in a position to intervene on my behalf. As for the motor home, almost every night I parked it safely and for free in a Walmart parking lot, and never once did anyone complain. Even when I finally decided to sell the motor home and dolly, everything went off just as I'd hoped it would.
I can't say I had any firm expectations about the people I would meet along the road, but soon after I began I came to the conclusion that most folks want to mind their own business, or to be helpful. I have yet to cross paths with any of those few who wish to do harm to their fellows. Knock on wood there.
I mention all these things in case some of you might be wondering how you would do on a walk like this. I don't figure I'm much different from anyone else, except that I happen to be fortunate enough to have the desire, means, ability, and opportunity to take a trip like this, which I know some do not.
In the next post I'll tell you how my preparations for the resumption of the walk are going.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Enemy Within
Burnsville, Minnesota
Sunday, August 22, 2010
As the Westboro Baptist Church would say, Welcome, depraved sons and daughters of Adam! In the news recently has been the controversy over the construction of an Islamic center near the former site of the World Trade Towers in New York City. Good old fashioned picketing and demonstrating, in what passes for a political issue in the post-intellectual, religion-obsessed 21st century. On one side are believers in the myth that all religions are entitled to respect in this country, and on the other side are believers in the myth that Ground Zero is a sacred shrine to the onslaught of Islamic extremism against innocent Judeo-Christian America. Both groups are of course wildly deluded. If these people were arguing the relative merits of syphilis and AIDS they couldn't be more off base, but at least then we would all understand how wrong they are.
The problem of course is that no one recognizes what an incurably evil presence ALL organized religion is in the world today. We shouldn't be promoting religion, or even tolerating it. We should be working to eradicate it! A pox on all houses, I say.
I just finished reading a biography of George Washington. In it the authors discuss the attitude of our first president (and of most of the founding fathers) toward religion. What led to the strong feelings of these men in favor of the freedom and equality of religion was their conviction that religion of any stripe had the virtue of assisting the government in maintaining moral order for the good of an essentially secular society. In the words of Washington himself, a nonreligious man of vaguely deist convictions, "I care not if men are Mahometans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or Atheists." He believed that mere tolerance was not enough, since tolerance implied "the indulgence of one class of people" in permitting others to practice what that class in fact had no right to abridge, or even to pass judgment on, in the first place.
But what happens when religions do not benignly promote moral order for the good of all? What happens when religions teach things that are anti-democratic and basically intolerant? The truth that no one wants to admit is that all religions, in claiming to reveal rules and creeds handed down by the Master of the Universe, teach something that is fundamentally antithetical to the principles of a free, majoritarian society. In a nutshell, how can you fall prostrate at the feet of an absolute monarch of the heavens and earth on Sunday and reject dictatorship the other six days of the week? Even the imagery of religion--king, ruler, lord, master, father--militates uncompromisingly against free thought and mature action.
What Washington and his contemporaries didn't fully grasp at the time (although they certainly should have, given the history of Europe which they all knew well) was the infinite capacity of religion to do evil in its own name and in the name of God, and to undermine the republic they had devised. Maybe they were cockeyed optimists, or maybe the penny-ante religions of North America just hadn't fucked with them as much as the Pope and the Church of England had. What they were perhaps attempting to do by treating all religions equally in a hands-off way was to thumb their noses at the religions that presumed they were better than the others (all of them, in other words), and to neutralize the potential for any single religion to work its will on American society in anything but the most harmless and platitudinous way. If so, the 21st century would have scared the shit out of them and probably caused them to rethink the First Amendment.
Most people forgive religions for the excesses of their most radical adherents by blaming individuals, rather than the creeds themselves, for the damage they do. But a religion is only as good as its worst and most reckless adherents. Most were founded by reckless and intolerant people. One of the pernicious things about all religions is that they have the inherent tendency to adopt the conviction that they are paths to truth, rather than paths to self-perpetuation through mumbo jumbo, bullshit, and the collection plate. The more intolerant religions believe they are the ONLY path to truth, and the more liberal believe they are one of several, or perhaps many, paths to truth. Either way, religions all commit the same absurd error, namely, thinking that they know anything at all about the cosmos outside or beyond the narrow, palpable confines of mother earth. William James, Alfred Adler, and others who studied the positive aspects of religions believed that they are useful to help us achieve balance and strive for goodness. Some people believe religion exists as a manifestation of the inherent human quest to know the unknowable. Others, no more or less off-base, believe the gods are aliens from other planets. Most people can't be satisfied that the unknowable is indeed just that, so they use religion to help them arrive at empirical conclusions about things that simply cannot be ascertained. Then they systematically view all other ideas in the light of their religion, including or excluding them on that basis. All that would be bad enough if religions existed solely on the high plane of intellectual inquiry. But most people are, alas, not too bright. One of the most difficult realities to face in this vale of tears is that an IQ of 100 is the average within our species, and not at the lower end. Thus inadequately armed against the forces of illogic, we let religions take on lives of their own. Even worse, we let individual nut jobs, like the Hebrew prophets, St. Paul, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith, write manifestos which we then call the word of God and swallow whole.
Which leads us back, somehow, to Ground Zero in New York City. It is a symbolic place, to be sure. First, it's where two of the most architecturally uninspired large commercial buildings of the late 20th century once stood. Second, it's where a dozen or so dedicated men got more bang for their buck than in perhaps any other single military operation, causing a country of 300 million to fall into panic and disarray, then to embark on a pointless, endless, financially ruinous, and dispiriting war. And finally, it's where the real face of religion has found its modern expression--in the self-righteous act of the bombings themselves (which, let's face it, would have been the envy of medieval Crusaders, Zionist freedom fighters, and Catholic IRA partisans alike), and now in the posturing of Jews and Christians and Muslims, all of whom seem to be oblivious of the real enemy, which is their own sick conviction of the correctness of their beliefs--beliefs which do not stop harmlessly at the doors of their houses of worship, but invariably intrude into the realm of secular public discourse, where they can do no good, and much harm.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
As the Westboro Baptist Church would say, Welcome, depraved sons and daughters of Adam! In the news recently has been the controversy over the construction of an Islamic center near the former site of the World Trade Towers in New York City. Good old fashioned picketing and demonstrating, in what passes for a political issue in the post-intellectual, religion-obsessed 21st century. On one side are believers in the myth that all religions are entitled to respect in this country, and on the other side are believers in the myth that Ground Zero is a sacred shrine to the onslaught of Islamic extremism against innocent Judeo-Christian America. Both groups are of course wildly deluded. If these people were arguing the relative merits of syphilis and AIDS they couldn't be more off base, but at least then we would all understand how wrong they are.
The problem of course is that no one recognizes what an incurably evil presence ALL organized religion is in the world today. We shouldn't be promoting religion, or even tolerating it. We should be working to eradicate it! A pox on all houses, I say.
I just finished reading a biography of George Washington. In it the authors discuss the attitude of our first president (and of most of the founding fathers) toward religion. What led to the strong feelings of these men in favor of the freedom and equality of religion was their conviction that religion of any stripe had the virtue of assisting the government in maintaining moral order for the good of an essentially secular society. In the words of Washington himself, a nonreligious man of vaguely deist convictions, "I care not if men are Mahometans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or Atheists." He believed that mere tolerance was not enough, since tolerance implied "the indulgence of one class of people" in permitting others to practice what that class in fact had no right to abridge, or even to pass judgment on, in the first place.
But what happens when religions do not benignly promote moral order for the good of all? What happens when religions teach things that are anti-democratic and basically intolerant? The truth that no one wants to admit is that all religions, in claiming to reveal rules and creeds handed down by the Master of the Universe, teach something that is fundamentally antithetical to the principles of a free, majoritarian society. In a nutshell, how can you fall prostrate at the feet of an absolute monarch of the heavens and earth on Sunday and reject dictatorship the other six days of the week? Even the imagery of religion--king, ruler, lord, master, father--militates uncompromisingly against free thought and mature action.
What Washington and his contemporaries didn't fully grasp at the time (although they certainly should have, given the history of Europe which they all knew well) was the infinite capacity of religion to do evil in its own name and in the name of God, and to undermine the republic they had devised. Maybe they were cockeyed optimists, or maybe the penny-ante religions of North America just hadn't fucked with them as much as the Pope and the Church of England had. What they were perhaps attempting to do by treating all religions equally in a hands-off way was to thumb their noses at the religions that presumed they were better than the others (all of them, in other words), and to neutralize the potential for any single religion to work its will on American society in anything but the most harmless and platitudinous way. If so, the 21st century would have scared the shit out of them and probably caused them to rethink the First Amendment.
Most people forgive religions for the excesses of their most radical adherents by blaming individuals, rather than the creeds themselves, for the damage they do. But a religion is only as good as its worst and most reckless adherents. Most were founded by reckless and intolerant people. One of the pernicious things about all religions is that they have the inherent tendency to adopt the conviction that they are paths to truth, rather than paths to self-perpetuation through mumbo jumbo, bullshit, and the collection plate. The more intolerant religions believe they are the ONLY path to truth, and the more liberal believe they are one of several, or perhaps many, paths to truth. Either way, religions all commit the same absurd error, namely, thinking that they know anything at all about the cosmos outside or beyond the narrow, palpable confines of mother earth. William James, Alfred Adler, and others who studied the positive aspects of religions believed that they are useful to help us achieve balance and strive for goodness. Some people believe religion exists as a manifestation of the inherent human quest to know the unknowable. Others, no more or less off-base, believe the gods are aliens from other planets. Most people can't be satisfied that the unknowable is indeed just that, so they use religion to help them arrive at empirical conclusions about things that simply cannot be ascertained. Then they systematically view all other ideas in the light of their religion, including or excluding them on that basis. All that would be bad enough if religions existed solely on the high plane of intellectual inquiry. But most people are, alas, not too bright. One of the most difficult realities to face in this vale of tears is that an IQ of 100 is the average within our species, and not at the lower end. Thus inadequately armed against the forces of illogic, we let religions take on lives of their own. Even worse, we let individual nut jobs, like the Hebrew prophets, St. Paul, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith, write manifestos which we then call the word of God and swallow whole.
Which leads us back, somehow, to Ground Zero in New York City. It is a symbolic place, to be sure. First, it's where two of the most architecturally uninspired large commercial buildings of the late 20th century once stood. Second, it's where a dozen or so dedicated men got more bang for their buck than in perhaps any other single military operation, causing a country of 300 million to fall into panic and disarray, then to embark on a pointless, endless, financially ruinous, and dispiriting war. And finally, it's where the real face of religion has found its modern expression--in the self-righteous act of the bombings themselves (which, let's face it, would have been the envy of medieval Crusaders, Zionist freedom fighters, and Catholic IRA partisans alike), and now in the posturing of Jews and Christians and Muslims, all of whom seem to be oblivious of the real enemy, which is their own sick conviction of the correctness of their beliefs--beliefs which do not stop harmlessly at the doors of their houses of worship, but invariably intrude into the realm of secular public discourse, where they can do no good, and much harm.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Where's The Hate?
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
I'm feeling very left out. Dissed, in fact.
I know I don't command a very large audience; even when I was walking there were only a dozen or two followers, and now that I'm off for the summer I'm writing for myself and a small handful of friends. Okay. That's not what I'm complaining about.
Here's the thing. Today on the AOL home page I read that the Westboro Baptist Church is picketing Justin Bieber's concert in Kansas City tonight. That led me to do a little research. I knew a bit about the Westboro Baptist Church already--a fundamentalist, predestinarian outfit out of Kansas who have become famous as the traveling "God Hates Fags" picketers. They're also the folks who show up at military funerals holding signs saying "God Hates Dead Soldiers," and the like, in order to spread their message that God hates America for being wicked, and that that's why soldiers are dying.
What I didn't know much about was Justin Bieber. I looked him up on Wikipedia, then sampled a few of his songs. As far as I can ascertain, he's a 16-year-old boy from Canada who sings love songs in a girlishly high voice to teenage girls who also, no doubt, have girlishly high voices. In that respect he's pretty ordinary. But according to the Westboro Baptist Church web site, they're protesting him because he "has a platform given to him by God to speak to this world," and a "duty to teach obedience by his actions and words." But instead he teaches sin and rebellion, and worse that that, poses with President Obama, who is the Anti-Christ Beast. The two of them are leading us all to hell.
Okay, okay. Take a deep breath. I know what you're thinking. How could the Westboro Baptist Church condemn a nice, innocuous young man like Justin Bieber--a Canadian, no less!--just because he hung out a little with the Anti-Christ Beast Obama? Does one photo-op have to ruin your whole life? And furthermore, by what superhuman power do they think that Justin, or anyone else, could teach anything to a bunch of teenage girls?
In the AOL home page article they mentioned that Westboro Baptist Church also has condemned Lady Gaga. Here again I was caught flat footed. I did have a vague idea that she is a sort of latter-day Madonna. First, I took advantage of the presence at my house this summer of my 16-year-old grandson, and asked him for more information. He says that it has been widely rumored that Lady Gaga has a penis. Why this should be such a big deal I don't know. I mean, Justin Bieber probably has a penis. Is that a bad thing? Then I checked her out on Google and played a few of her songs, and my original understanding was pretty much confirmed. Lady Gaga might be a bit more postmodern than Madonna was in her time, and has more cultural threads to unravel, but she seems to have nailed the tacky Italian girl look about as well as Madonna ever did (perhaps because both of them are, after all, tacky Italian girls). Westboro Baptist Church's take on Lady Gaga is pretty straightforward, in any case. They call her a "simple slut," which isn't as far off the mark as I would have expected.
Well, I said I have a complaint, and so I do. Here I am, toiling in the Devil's vineyard on a regular basis, and I'm being totally ignored by the Westboro Baptist Church! I deserve some hate, here! Aren't I at least as much of an abomination in the sight of God as some boy singer from Ontario or some cheesy Material Girl wannabe? I like to think I've strayed pretty far from the paths of righteousness. And I have a platform I could be using to teach obedience to the world. But do I? No.
I know it might just be that the folks at Westboro Baptist Church haven't caught on to me yet. Or it might be something else again. When I read their web site I was struck by a couple of things. First, I couldn't take issue at all with their attitude toward the war America is fighting and toward the so-called "heroes" who come back in boxes from our vain and counterproductive military adventures. True, Westboro Baptist Church and I might have reached the same conclusion about the war for different reasons. They believe that America has condemned itself by tolerating homosexuality, worshipping the flag as a false idol, and supporting debauchery and wickedness in all its many forms. I wholeheartedly agree with the bit about the flag worship, but mostly I believe we are trying to fight a war against one idiotic ideology while clothed in the raiment of an equally idiotic ideology of our own. Either way, the Westboro Baptist Church's own words say it better than mine ever could: "When you step out onto the battlefield for a rebellious nation who daily lifts up her finger to flip off God, you are walking into the cross hairs of that raging mad God." Amen, and duck!
Another thing that strikes me is how correct the Westboro Baptist Church is in its belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality. I defy you to find one passage in either the Old or New Testament that states otherwise. But you won't have to look far to find verses that say things like this one, from Leviticus 20:12--"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death." Or, if you're partial to the more enlightened New Testament, how about this one, from I Corinthians 6:9--"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind."
So what's a girl to do? If, like me, you don't believe there's anything wrong with homosexuality, but your so-called "holy book" tells you otherwise, there's really only one thing to do. Shitcan the holy book, and for that matter, all the rest of the holy books in the world that lead people down twisted paths toward hatred and destruction of one another. Don't try to pull items out of context and ignore inconvenient things to make the scripture make sense to you. And don't try to turn your religion into a kinder, gentler version of its true self. That's a complete waste of time.
There. If all that doesn't earn me some hate, I don't know what will.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
I'm feeling very left out. Dissed, in fact.
I know I don't command a very large audience; even when I was walking there were only a dozen or two followers, and now that I'm off for the summer I'm writing for myself and a small handful of friends. Okay. That's not what I'm complaining about.
Here's the thing. Today on the AOL home page I read that the Westboro Baptist Church is picketing Justin Bieber's concert in Kansas City tonight. That led me to do a little research. I knew a bit about the Westboro Baptist Church already--a fundamentalist, predestinarian outfit out of Kansas who have become famous as the traveling "God Hates Fags" picketers. They're also the folks who show up at military funerals holding signs saying "God Hates Dead Soldiers," and the like, in order to spread their message that God hates America for being wicked, and that that's why soldiers are dying.
What I didn't know much about was Justin Bieber. I looked him up on Wikipedia, then sampled a few of his songs. As far as I can ascertain, he's a 16-year-old boy from Canada who sings love songs in a girlishly high voice to teenage girls who also, no doubt, have girlishly high voices. In that respect he's pretty ordinary. But according to the Westboro Baptist Church web site, they're protesting him because he "has a platform given to him by God to speak to this world," and a "duty to teach obedience by his actions and words." But instead he teaches sin and rebellion, and worse that that, poses with President Obama, who is the Anti-Christ Beast. The two of them are leading us all to hell.
Okay, okay. Take a deep breath. I know what you're thinking. How could the Westboro Baptist Church condemn a nice, innocuous young man like Justin Bieber--a Canadian, no less!--just because he hung out a little with the Anti-Christ Beast Obama? Does one photo-op have to ruin your whole life? And furthermore, by what superhuman power do they think that Justin, or anyone else, could teach anything to a bunch of teenage girls?
In the AOL home page article they mentioned that Westboro Baptist Church also has condemned Lady Gaga. Here again I was caught flat footed. I did have a vague idea that she is a sort of latter-day Madonna. First, I took advantage of the presence at my house this summer of my 16-year-old grandson, and asked him for more information. He says that it has been widely rumored that Lady Gaga has a penis. Why this should be such a big deal I don't know. I mean, Justin Bieber probably has a penis. Is that a bad thing? Then I checked her out on Google and played a few of her songs, and my original understanding was pretty much confirmed. Lady Gaga might be a bit more postmodern than Madonna was in her time, and has more cultural threads to unravel, but she seems to have nailed the tacky Italian girl look about as well as Madonna ever did (perhaps because both of them are, after all, tacky Italian girls). Westboro Baptist Church's take on Lady Gaga is pretty straightforward, in any case. They call her a "simple slut," which isn't as far off the mark as I would have expected.
Well, I said I have a complaint, and so I do. Here I am, toiling in the Devil's vineyard on a regular basis, and I'm being totally ignored by the Westboro Baptist Church! I deserve some hate, here! Aren't I at least as much of an abomination in the sight of God as some boy singer from Ontario or some cheesy Material Girl wannabe? I like to think I've strayed pretty far from the paths of righteousness. And I have a platform I could be using to teach obedience to the world. But do I? No.
I know it might just be that the folks at Westboro Baptist Church haven't caught on to me yet. Or it might be something else again. When I read their web site I was struck by a couple of things. First, I couldn't take issue at all with their attitude toward the war America is fighting and toward the so-called "heroes" who come back in boxes from our vain and counterproductive military adventures. True, Westboro Baptist Church and I might have reached the same conclusion about the war for different reasons. They believe that America has condemned itself by tolerating homosexuality, worshipping the flag as a false idol, and supporting debauchery and wickedness in all its many forms. I wholeheartedly agree with the bit about the flag worship, but mostly I believe we are trying to fight a war against one idiotic ideology while clothed in the raiment of an equally idiotic ideology of our own. Either way, the Westboro Baptist Church's own words say it better than mine ever could: "When you step out onto the battlefield for a rebellious nation who daily lifts up her finger to flip off God, you are walking into the cross hairs of that raging mad God." Amen, and duck!
Another thing that strikes me is how correct the Westboro Baptist Church is in its belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality. I defy you to find one passage in either the Old or New Testament that states otherwise. But you won't have to look far to find verses that say things like this one, from Leviticus 20:12--"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death." Or, if you're partial to the more enlightened New Testament, how about this one, from I Corinthians 6:9--"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind."
So what's a girl to do? If, like me, you don't believe there's anything wrong with homosexuality, but your so-called "holy book" tells you otherwise, there's really only one thing to do. Shitcan the holy book, and for that matter, all the rest of the holy books in the world that lead people down twisted paths toward hatred and destruction of one another. Don't try to pull items out of context and ignore inconvenient things to make the scripture make sense to you. And don't try to turn your religion into a kinder, gentler version of its true self. That's a complete waste of time.
There. If all that doesn't earn me some hate, I don't know what will.
Monday, July 26, 2010
So Many Channels, So Little News
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Monday, July 26, 2010
The news gets stranger all the time. I already take it for granted that the line between fluff news and "real" news has been smudged beyond recognition, with the top stories being things like whether Angelina Jolie's new movie is outgrossing Leonardo di Caprio's, and all that. (When, exactly, did the public start caring about how much money a film makes? Movie tickets aren't shares of stock, after all.)
I've talked about the way this marriage between reality and pure silliness has visited the political scene, with the Sarah Palin phenomenon. One of my faithful readers suggested that it took some brains for Palin to become governor of Alaska. But seriously, Alaska? The mayor of Anchorage probably has a tougher job than the governor does. (With over a third of the state's population, it's still only the 75th largest city in the U.S.) The state is mostly owned by the federal government and pretty much all the rest is run by oil companies and native American tribes, and its enitre population is less than that of Kent County, Michigan. The few white people who do live there all believe that government shouldn't govern any more than absolutely necessary. So Bullwinkle the Moose could handle the job. The fact that Palin got elected governor says a lot more about Alaska than about her.
Right away you're probably remembering that California, a state to be taken much more seriously than Alaska, has been governed by not one but two movie actors. But really, folks, they were celebrities in their own right before they became politicians. They were already part of the news, just like Lindsay Lohan and Kourtney Kardashian and the president of BP are. But Sarah Palin, who was she? A nothing. It's a matter of timing, above all. It would be like if I tried to become a serious politician without first having been on my own reality show or having played a forensic pathologist or a cop. I mean, c'mon guys. No chops, no votes--I think we can all agree on that.
So back to how it got this way. In part, it has to do with the fact that there are too many channels and home pages chasing after too little news. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, AOL, Yahoo, and some that I'm forgetting. Oh, and CSPAN, for those of you who like your inanity straight from the horse's mouth without the intervening drivel and mock concern of an anchorman. When TV started back in the late 40s and early 50s newscasts were shorter and there were fewer of them. The people who ran the stations knew that on any given day there's only about fifteen minutes of real news the American public cares about or needs to know. Well, maybe back in the olden days, you say, but surely today's world is more complex. Just what was happening in the world at the time? The Nuremberg Trials, the Korean War, the formation of NATO, the Communist takeover of China, and McCarthy's witch hunt come to mind immediately. It still took only a few minutes to recap those stories on a daily basis without repeating anything. Today any one of those events would practically generate its own channel, for God's sake. Katie Couric wouldn't know whether to shit or go blind. In fact, there are few daily news stories now that could hold a candle to those I just mentioned, particularly since the media has made a conscious decision--with the encouragement of the government, I'm sure--not to cover the war in Iraq/Afghanistan too closely, but instead only to celebrate the brave "heroes" who die in it and to mention Osama bin Laden's name once in awhile. (The lesson of Vietnam was learned well; if you show people on a daily basis what happens in a war, they begin to recoil in horror and want to end it. And we certainly can't have that.)
In 2010, to cover that fifteen minutes of real news (i.e. important political happenings and miscellaneous natural disasters throughout the world) we have half a dozen 24-hour news channels in addition to the three old tired networks. Immediately the problem is this: assuming it's reasonable to broadcast this fifteen minutes of news maybe four times a day, what do you do with the remaining 23 hours? Enter the pundit, the analyst, the scrolling bottom line, the news special--in short, repetition. Enter celebrity news. News about celebrities who make news. News about news stories celebrities are interested in. News about celebrities who don't care about the news. News about news stations that try to get celebrities to make news even when they don't want to make news. Etc. More channels mean more space to fill, which somehow leads to even more channels.
True enough, we have been fascinated by stars for decades. We followed famous people who joined the war effort back in WW2, and ones who may or may not have been commies, and ones who married each other. In '64 Barry Goldwater ran a series of ads in which movie stars--Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan--endorsed their man. And sports has always had its own sort of info-tainment niche. But at one point we used to think that something had to happen to someone first, and then it would become a news story. Now an individual can be, by virtue of his or her very existence, an ongoing news and entertainment story.
Some think our attention span is shorter than it used to be because of TV, but I'm not so sure. Fifty years ago could we have stayed interested for over five years in the story of Angelina taking Brad away from Jennifer? Yet there it is on the covers of the tabloids to this very day. Back then the equivalent stories involved Liz Taylor, Eddie Fisher, and Richard Burton, or Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, but those dramas had relatively short shelf lives. I think if anything our appetite for such shit has become greater and more indiscriminate, just as our appetite for food has grown in the same way. How else could an individual with a personality as utterly vapid as that of Sarah Palin have held the public's attention for as long as she has without having done anything at all? Not even so much as a movie, or a L'Oreal commercial, or an endearing sitcom role, or a dance contest, or an arrest.
Monday, July 26, 2010
The news gets stranger all the time. I already take it for granted that the line between fluff news and "real" news has been smudged beyond recognition, with the top stories being things like whether Angelina Jolie's new movie is outgrossing Leonardo di Caprio's, and all that. (When, exactly, did the public start caring about how much money a film makes? Movie tickets aren't shares of stock, after all.)
I've talked about the way this marriage between reality and pure silliness has visited the political scene, with the Sarah Palin phenomenon. One of my faithful readers suggested that it took some brains for Palin to become governor of Alaska. But seriously, Alaska? The mayor of Anchorage probably has a tougher job than the governor does. (With over a third of the state's population, it's still only the 75th largest city in the U.S.) The state is mostly owned by the federal government and pretty much all the rest is run by oil companies and native American tribes, and its enitre population is less than that of Kent County, Michigan. The few white people who do live there all believe that government shouldn't govern any more than absolutely necessary. So Bullwinkle the Moose could handle the job. The fact that Palin got elected governor says a lot more about Alaska than about her.
Right away you're probably remembering that California, a state to be taken much more seriously than Alaska, has been governed by not one but two movie actors. But really, folks, they were celebrities in their own right before they became politicians. They were already part of the news, just like Lindsay Lohan and Kourtney Kardashian and the president of BP are. But Sarah Palin, who was she? A nothing. It's a matter of timing, above all. It would be like if I tried to become a serious politician without first having been on my own reality show or having played a forensic pathologist or a cop. I mean, c'mon guys. No chops, no votes--I think we can all agree on that.
So back to how it got this way. In part, it has to do with the fact that there are too many channels and home pages chasing after too little news. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, AOL, Yahoo, and some that I'm forgetting. Oh, and CSPAN, for those of you who like your inanity straight from the horse's mouth without the intervening drivel and mock concern of an anchorman. When TV started back in the late 40s and early 50s newscasts were shorter and there were fewer of them. The people who ran the stations knew that on any given day there's only about fifteen minutes of real news the American public cares about or needs to know. Well, maybe back in the olden days, you say, but surely today's world is more complex. Just what was happening in the world at the time? The Nuremberg Trials, the Korean War, the formation of NATO, the Communist takeover of China, and McCarthy's witch hunt come to mind immediately. It still took only a few minutes to recap those stories on a daily basis without repeating anything. Today any one of those events would practically generate its own channel, for God's sake. Katie Couric wouldn't know whether to shit or go blind. In fact, there are few daily news stories now that could hold a candle to those I just mentioned, particularly since the media has made a conscious decision--with the encouragement of the government, I'm sure--not to cover the war in Iraq/Afghanistan too closely, but instead only to celebrate the brave "heroes" who die in it and to mention Osama bin Laden's name once in awhile. (The lesson of Vietnam was learned well; if you show people on a daily basis what happens in a war, they begin to recoil in horror and want to end it. And we certainly can't have that.)
In 2010, to cover that fifteen minutes of real news (i.e. important political happenings and miscellaneous natural disasters throughout the world) we have half a dozen 24-hour news channels in addition to the three old tired networks. Immediately the problem is this: assuming it's reasonable to broadcast this fifteen minutes of news maybe four times a day, what do you do with the remaining 23 hours? Enter the pundit, the analyst, the scrolling bottom line, the news special--in short, repetition. Enter celebrity news. News about celebrities who make news. News about news stories celebrities are interested in. News about celebrities who don't care about the news. News about news stations that try to get celebrities to make news even when they don't want to make news. Etc. More channels mean more space to fill, which somehow leads to even more channels.
True enough, we have been fascinated by stars for decades. We followed famous people who joined the war effort back in WW2, and ones who may or may not have been commies, and ones who married each other. In '64 Barry Goldwater ran a series of ads in which movie stars--Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan--endorsed their man. And sports has always had its own sort of info-tainment niche. But at one point we used to think that something had to happen to someone first, and then it would become a news story. Now an individual can be, by virtue of his or her very existence, an ongoing news and entertainment story.
Some think our attention span is shorter than it used to be because of TV, but I'm not so sure. Fifty years ago could we have stayed interested for over five years in the story of Angelina taking Brad away from Jennifer? Yet there it is on the covers of the tabloids to this very day. Back then the equivalent stories involved Liz Taylor, Eddie Fisher, and Richard Burton, or Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, but those dramas had relatively short shelf lives. I think if anything our appetite for such shit has become greater and more indiscriminate, just as our appetite for food has grown in the same way. How else could an individual with a personality as utterly vapid as that of Sarah Palin have held the public's attention for as long as she has without having done anything at all? Not even so much as a movie, or a L'Oreal commercial, or an endearing sitcom role, or a dance contest, or an arrest.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Can They Handle It?
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I think I've figured out the whole Sarah Palin thing. So far it has pained me to even think about Sarah Palin, so I've dismissed any such thoughts. But the media, in particular the AOL home page, has kept her photo out front on an almost daily basis, and today there was a bit about her daughter's plans to marry.
I know I'm not the only one who's thought along these lines, but I often have to convince myself that I've arrived at conclusions all by myself in order to feel that they're valid. Only later do I discover that it's all been written up, more comprehensively and eloquently, in an article in The New Yorker.
Politicians and would-be politicians have long been creatures of the media, going back on this side of the ocean to the very beginning of the nation. George Washington's image was in large part the creation of his media handlers; Parson Weems's biography created the myth of the cherry tree, among others. In the election of 1800 the newspapers backing Adams and Jefferson furiously slung mud, hoping some of it would stick. Adams was accused of being aristocratic and anti-democratic largely because of the definitely undemocratic Alien and Sedition Acts passed during his term; Jefferson was accurately accused of having fathered children by one his slaves and of being an atheist (maybe, maybe not, but definitely not a Christian). And on it went, up to the present day. Senators and Congressmen get caught in men's rooms. Governors say they're going hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Presidents sit at their desks.
The thing about Sarah Palin is that she seems to be almost completely a creature of the age of the "reality" television show. Other pols get their share of coverage, but it's mostly stump stuff--where did they speak, what did they say. But it was clear from the start, when she was nominated for the vice presidency last summer, that Palin's role was to be largely symbolic--that she would represent the banality of ordinary people--former cheerleaders who talk with whiny twangs and don't have IQs much above average (c'mon guys, let's get goin'); folks who have to put up with getting divorced and with their kids getting knocked up and with their own unexpected pregnancies and with tattoos, piercings, dope, embarrassments on facebook and all the rest. The problem in 2008 was that there was already too much banality at the top end of the Republican ticket. We don't want the guy who gets shot down and captured and held prisoner to be our president. We want the guy who shoots other people down and captures them. In comic book terms, we might elect Gladstone Gander or Uncle Scrooge, but never Donald Duck.
The Republicans have always had more of a knack for propaganda than the Democrats have, no doubt about it. For a long time they were like Avis, trying harder, because they were number two. When it comes to telling lies and repeating them over and over for strategic purposes, they're the masters, and have been since the days of Reagan, at least. Democrats are too diffuse and unorganized to be much good at the Big Lie. They don't so much want to govern as they want to include, which makes them nicer human beings, to be sure, but less effective as rulers and far less ruthless. As for the GOP, when your party essentially peddles hatred, religious bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and finger-pointing, it's counter-productive to greet the public with open arms. At this point I'm reminded of that great line from the movie The Usual Suspects, taken in turn from Baudelaire: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." The greatest trick the Republicans ever pulled was convincing average Americans that the interests of unfettered capitalism are entirely compatible with the welfare of the working class. That no taxes or responsibility or consequences for the rich somehow equals utopia for all. On the face of it an absurd idea, one against which common sense would seem to militate, but one with an amazingly large number of adherents. Anything the government does, however tepidly, to try to help the least among us gets labeled socialism and dismissed out of hand--as if anyone in this country has any but the most muddled notion of what socialism is. The idea of government-funded medical care for everyone, for example, is derided as impossible to achieve and unacceptably leftist, unless, of course you happen to be 65 or over, in which case it's just good old American Medicare. To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, no Republican ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
Which brings us neatly back to Sarah Palin and the age of reality TV. Reality television is the fairly logical outgrowth of the Oprah/Jerry Springer/Judge Judy genre, where everyday yahoos and freaks parade their pathetic shortcomings and lack of circumspection for all to see. The idea is that when we watch such folks we relate to their situations but feel at least a little superior, and therefore not quite so hapless ourselves. "Man, I may be fat, but she's really fat." "He has no idea what a pompous ass he's being." "If she only knew what a ridiculous slut she looks like in that outfit." After years of putting these losers on talk shows and in front of actor-judges, the television people got a brilliant idea: why not build entire shows around groups of unselfconscious nimrods competing with one another in some elaborate game on a desert island, or for a husband or a wife. Then, after that idea had been wrung for all it was worth, the TV people said, "Let's see if they can dance, or sing. Let's do the Gong Show, but play it straight."
Out of all this emerged, quite seamlessly, yet another idea. I can almost hear it being pitched, in Hollywood or Washington DC, those entertainment capitals of the two coasts. Let's take a dull tool with lots of camera appeal and political aspirations, set her up as the front for a manufactured political movement, and follow her for the entire four-year presidential term, culminating in her triumphal march into the Republican convention in 2012. Work her family into it, even in ways she might not approve of. Keep her connected to the audience at a human level. Let them feel her pain. Like Kate from Jon and Kate, or Vienna from The Bachelor, or the fuckups from Celebrity Rehab. It'll be like Legally Blonde meets Triumph of the Will! (At this point the Hollywood and Washington types scratch their heads. "Triumph of the whaaaa?" The pitchmen quickly regroup. "Okay, okay. Imagine Julia Roberts starring in a remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)
The deepest secret fear of some, of course, is that Sarah Palin might actually get nominated, or worse yet, elected. In Europe they're used to this sort of thing, having a centuries-old tradition of being ruled by simpletons and preening megalomaniacs. In general, the American electorate prefers presidents whom they perceive to be smarter than they are, and more blessed by fortune in various other ways. Good looks go a long way, true, even coupled with mental mediocrity. Look at Warren Harding. Or Gerald Ford. But there's a fine line between mediocrity and downright idiocy which the voters don't generally cross. Still, it would be interesting. And not really all that scary. The republic would survive. In fact, if she's nominated, whether she's elected or not it might turn out to be the greatest gift the Democrats have had dropped in their laps since Watergate. The question is, can they handle it?
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I think I've figured out the whole Sarah Palin thing. So far it has pained me to even think about Sarah Palin, so I've dismissed any such thoughts. But the media, in particular the AOL home page, has kept her photo out front on an almost daily basis, and today there was a bit about her daughter's plans to marry.
I know I'm not the only one who's thought along these lines, but I often have to convince myself that I've arrived at conclusions all by myself in order to feel that they're valid. Only later do I discover that it's all been written up, more comprehensively and eloquently, in an article in The New Yorker.
Politicians and would-be politicians have long been creatures of the media, going back on this side of the ocean to the very beginning of the nation. George Washington's image was in large part the creation of his media handlers; Parson Weems's biography created the myth of the cherry tree, among others. In the election of 1800 the newspapers backing Adams and Jefferson furiously slung mud, hoping some of it would stick. Adams was accused of being aristocratic and anti-democratic largely because of the definitely undemocratic Alien and Sedition Acts passed during his term; Jefferson was accurately accused of having fathered children by one his slaves and of being an atheist (maybe, maybe not, but definitely not a Christian). And on it went, up to the present day. Senators and Congressmen get caught in men's rooms. Governors say they're going hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Presidents sit at their desks.
The thing about Sarah Palin is that she seems to be almost completely a creature of the age of the "reality" television show. Other pols get their share of coverage, but it's mostly stump stuff--where did they speak, what did they say. But it was clear from the start, when she was nominated for the vice presidency last summer, that Palin's role was to be largely symbolic--that she would represent the banality of ordinary people--former cheerleaders who talk with whiny twangs and don't have IQs much above average (c'mon guys, let's get goin'); folks who have to put up with getting divorced and with their kids getting knocked up and with their own unexpected pregnancies and with tattoos, piercings, dope, embarrassments on facebook and all the rest. The problem in 2008 was that there was already too much banality at the top end of the Republican ticket. We don't want the guy who gets shot down and captured and held prisoner to be our president. We want the guy who shoots other people down and captures them. In comic book terms, we might elect Gladstone Gander or Uncle Scrooge, but never Donald Duck.
The Republicans have always had more of a knack for propaganda than the Democrats have, no doubt about it. For a long time they were like Avis, trying harder, because they were number two. When it comes to telling lies and repeating them over and over for strategic purposes, they're the masters, and have been since the days of Reagan, at least. Democrats are too diffuse and unorganized to be much good at the Big Lie. They don't so much want to govern as they want to include, which makes them nicer human beings, to be sure, but less effective as rulers and far less ruthless. As for the GOP, when your party essentially peddles hatred, religious bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and finger-pointing, it's counter-productive to greet the public with open arms. At this point I'm reminded of that great line from the movie The Usual Suspects, taken in turn from Baudelaire: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." The greatest trick the Republicans ever pulled was convincing average Americans that the interests of unfettered capitalism are entirely compatible with the welfare of the working class. That no taxes or responsibility or consequences for the rich somehow equals utopia for all. On the face of it an absurd idea, one against which common sense would seem to militate, but one with an amazingly large number of adherents. Anything the government does, however tepidly, to try to help the least among us gets labeled socialism and dismissed out of hand--as if anyone in this country has any but the most muddled notion of what socialism is. The idea of government-funded medical care for everyone, for example, is derided as impossible to achieve and unacceptably leftist, unless, of course you happen to be 65 or over, in which case it's just good old American Medicare. To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, no Republican ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
Which brings us neatly back to Sarah Palin and the age of reality TV. Reality television is the fairly logical outgrowth of the Oprah/Jerry Springer/Judge Judy genre, where everyday yahoos and freaks parade their pathetic shortcomings and lack of circumspection for all to see. The idea is that when we watch such folks we relate to their situations but feel at least a little superior, and therefore not quite so hapless ourselves. "Man, I may be fat, but she's really fat." "He has no idea what a pompous ass he's being." "If she only knew what a ridiculous slut she looks like in that outfit." After years of putting these losers on talk shows and in front of actor-judges, the television people got a brilliant idea: why not build entire shows around groups of unselfconscious nimrods competing with one another in some elaborate game on a desert island, or for a husband or a wife. Then, after that idea had been wrung for all it was worth, the TV people said, "Let's see if they can dance, or sing. Let's do the Gong Show, but play it straight."
Out of all this emerged, quite seamlessly, yet another idea. I can almost hear it being pitched, in Hollywood or Washington DC, those entertainment capitals of the two coasts. Let's take a dull tool with lots of camera appeal and political aspirations, set her up as the front for a manufactured political movement, and follow her for the entire four-year presidential term, culminating in her triumphal march into the Republican convention in 2012. Work her family into it, even in ways she might not approve of. Keep her connected to the audience at a human level. Let them feel her pain. Like Kate from Jon and Kate, or Vienna from The Bachelor, or the fuckups from Celebrity Rehab. It'll be like Legally Blonde meets Triumph of the Will! (At this point the Hollywood and Washington types scratch their heads. "Triumph of the whaaaa?" The pitchmen quickly regroup. "Okay, okay. Imagine Julia Roberts starring in a remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)
The deepest secret fear of some, of course, is that Sarah Palin might actually get nominated, or worse yet, elected. In Europe they're used to this sort of thing, having a centuries-old tradition of being ruled by simpletons and preening megalomaniacs. In general, the American electorate prefers presidents whom they perceive to be smarter than they are, and more blessed by fortune in various other ways. Good looks go a long way, true, even coupled with mental mediocrity. Look at Warren Harding. Or Gerald Ford. But there's a fine line between mediocrity and downright idiocy which the voters don't generally cross. Still, it would be interesting. And not really all that scary. The republic would survive. In fact, if she's nominated, whether she's elected or not it might turn out to be the greatest gift the Democrats have had dropped in their laps since Watergate. The question is, can they handle it?
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
8,000 Miles From Graceland
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
I went to the movies this evening with two of my grandsons. They’re 13 and 6 years old. We saw The Last Airbender which, for those of you without young kids (boys especially) or grandkids, is a live-action film based on a popular television cartoon show called The Avatar. And as some of you certainly know, the movie title Avatar was already glommed, last year, and given to an elongated version of the Blue Men routine, so that this, the real Avatar story, had to choose another name. The TV program, from my superficial knowledge of it, features a young boy of indeterminate race, but leaning toward Asian, who possesses supernatural powers and is, somewhat against his own will, the Chosen One, or something like that. He’s sort of like a young Dalai Lama, with liberal doses of ninja fighter and magician thrown in. Basically your typical reluctant boy-hero-demigod, on whom the fate of the world hinges. Sound familiar? It should.
In the movie I sat between my boys, offering grandfatherly comments, as is my duty. To the thirteen-year-old I whispered, “If he’s an Airbender, does that mean he can fart around corners?” With the six-year-old I kept it more on the up-and-up. “Are you cold? Do you want any more popcorn?” As we were exiting the theater I asked for first impressions, since both are avid followers of the cartoon. The little guy loved it. The big guy, being older and more discerning, thought the movie lacked the requisite blood, mayhem, and high body count of a quality production, and was thus unable to give it the Ebertian thumbs up. So, mixed reviews.
My own impressions are as follows. The dialogue was about a millimeter deep and the acting was amateurish. The little kid who played the Avatar was pretty good at conveying that quintessential amalgam of angst, fear, and anger you see on the faces of actors either in the kabuki theater or in choppy-choppy movies, but with a bit more gentleness and perplexity, since he was only slowly coming to the realization that he was destined to master the bending of all four elements (air, water, earth, and fire, for those of you who didn’t take medieval chemistry in high school). The young man who starred in Slum Dog Millionaire, Dev Patel, had a key role, and was probably the most professional member of the cast. The movie also featured a large woolly beast on which the good guys rode, which resembled a cross between a gigantic fat musk ox and the creature played by John Candy in Spaceballs. (“Hi, I’m Barf. I’m a Mog—half man and half dog. I’m my own best friend!”) M. Knight Shama-lama-ding-dong directed this dubious offering, confirming that he is truly a one-hit wonder whose only decent movie was The Sixth Sense, and that probably more because of Bruce Willis and the kid than because of him.
My other impressions were, I suppose, equally superficial. For instance, I noticed that all the principal good people were very white, and that many of them had blue eyes. Not everyone to be sure—the Avatar himself had brown eyes. But the most virtuous character, a beautiful and slightly cross-eyed young princess who sacrificed herself to reinvigorate a carp, no less (all right, a spirit in the form of a carp, but most definitely a fish) had the bluest eyes of them all. And all the bad guys, the fire benders, looked like Arab Elvis impersonators, with jet black hair and long pointy sideburns and stylized costumes. And brown eyes. As brown as shit. As dark as crude oil. You expected them to all fall prostrate facing Mecca at any moment.
So what does that tell you? Well, if it isn’t already obvious to every American, it should be. It’s not bad enough that they knocked down the World Trade Towers. Now they’re trying to look like our most sacred icon, the King himself. When is someone going to do something? For the answer to that we’ll have to wait for the sequel to the Airbender movie or for the end of the seemingly interminable war in Iraq/Afghanistan. Until then, keep supporting our troops, who, I’m pretty sure, are over there for the express purpose of fighting these fire-bending, would-be hunks of burning love, 8,000 miles from Graceland.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
I went to the movies this evening with two of my grandsons. They’re 13 and 6 years old. We saw The Last Airbender which, for those of you without young kids (boys especially) or grandkids, is a live-action film based on a popular television cartoon show called The Avatar. And as some of you certainly know, the movie title Avatar was already glommed, last year, and given to an elongated version of the Blue Men routine, so that this, the real Avatar story, had to choose another name. The TV program, from my superficial knowledge of it, features a young boy of indeterminate race, but leaning toward Asian, who possesses supernatural powers and is, somewhat against his own will, the Chosen One, or something like that. He’s sort of like a young Dalai Lama, with liberal doses of ninja fighter and magician thrown in. Basically your typical reluctant boy-hero-demigod, on whom the fate of the world hinges. Sound familiar? It should.
In the movie I sat between my boys, offering grandfatherly comments, as is my duty. To the thirteen-year-old I whispered, “If he’s an Airbender, does that mean he can fart around corners?” With the six-year-old I kept it more on the up-and-up. “Are you cold? Do you want any more popcorn?” As we were exiting the theater I asked for first impressions, since both are avid followers of the cartoon. The little guy loved it. The big guy, being older and more discerning, thought the movie lacked the requisite blood, mayhem, and high body count of a quality production, and was thus unable to give it the Ebertian thumbs up. So, mixed reviews.
My own impressions are as follows. The dialogue was about a millimeter deep and the acting was amateurish. The little kid who played the Avatar was pretty good at conveying that quintessential amalgam of angst, fear, and anger you see on the faces of actors either in the kabuki theater or in choppy-choppy movies, but with a bit more gentleness and perplexity, since he was only slowly coming to the realization that he was destined to master the bending of all four elements (air, water, earth, and fire, for those of you who didn’t take medieval chemistry in high school). The young man who starred in Slum Dog Millionaire, Dev Patel, had a key role, and was probably the most professional member of the cast. The movie also featured a large woolly beast on which the good guys rode, which resembled a cross between a gigantic fat musk ox and the creature played by John Candy in Spaceballs. (“Hi, I’m Barf. I’m a Mog—half man and half dog. I’m my own best friend!”) M. Knight Shama-lama-ding-dong directed this dubious offering, confirming that he is truly a one-hit wonder whose only decent movie was The Sixth Sense, and that probably more because of Bruce Willis and the kid than because of him.
My other impressions were, I suppose, equally superficial. For instance, I noticed that all the principal good people were very white, and that many of them had blue eyes. Not everyone to be sure—the Avatar himself had brown eyes. But the most virtuous character, a beautiful and slightly cross-eyed young princess who sacrificed herself to reinvigorate a carp, no less (all right, a spirit in the form of a carp, but most definitely a fish) had the bluest eyes of them all. And all the bad guys, the fire benders, looked like Arab Elvis impersonators, with jet black hair and long pointy sideburns and stylized costumes. And brown eyes. As brown as shit. As dark as crude oil. You expected them to all fall prostrate facing Mecca at any moment.
So what does that tell you? Well, if it isn’t already obvious to every American, it should be. It’s not bad enough that they knocked down the World Trade Towers. Now they’re trying to look like our most sacred icon, the King himself. When is someone going to do something? For the answer to that we’ll have to wait for the sequel to the Airbender movie or for the end of the seemingly interminable war in Iraq/Afghanistan. Until then, keep supporting our troops, who, I’m pretty sure, are over there for the express purpose of fighting these fire-bending, would-be hunks of burning love, 8,000 miles from Graceland.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
And Then What?
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Sunday, June 27, 2010
I was saddened recently to learn that bachelor Jake and his fiancee Vienna have called it quits, even though they appeared happy on the last episode of Dancing With the Washed Up Network Reality Goofballs, or whatever it is called. Allegations of betrayal abound. Is there no faithfulness anywhere? The president's approval rating slipped a bit today, as well, on the perception that he hasn't done enough to try to keep Jake and Vienna together. If the leader of the free world can't do even a simple thing like that, then what good is he, anyway? Wall Street reacted to the news by closing on a down note, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its seventh lowest finish of the month.
Elsewhere in the realm of reality TV, the Republicans are battling one another for the chance to run the state of Michigan. The commercials all go (or should go) something like this, and you out-of-staters will recognize the patter, if not the names: “As we are all aware, the Michigan economy is in shambles. Putting aside the fact that the big three auto makers allowed their market share to erode by building shitty products they hoped would sell anyway based on the entrenched habits and knee-jerk patriotism of the public, and ignoring the fact that these same corporations have been systematically moving jobs elsewhere for several decades, Michigan’s mess is nevertheless entirely the fault of our current governor, Jennifer Granholm, whose extravagant tax and spend policies (wasting the public's money on repairing roads and meagerly staffing the state government, for instance) are the direct cause of Michigan's record-high joblessness. Hi, I'm Mike Cox/Pete Hoekstra/Mike Bouchard/Homer Simpson/Daffy Duck. When I was in the Marines/Army/Navy/Boy Scouts/Brownies, polishing my brass belt buckle and touching my sword to my nose, Governor Granholm was in Canada or California or somewhere, avoiding military service by wearing a skirt and hiding behind her foreign nationality, like you’d expect a Democrat to do. When I become your governor, I will attempt, as so many of my predecessors already have, to bring jobs back to Michigan by offering to assess no taxes whatsoever on businesses, a promise that will make my corporate masters happy, but will be to absolutely no avail, due to the immutable fact that the savings achieved by sending labor south or to Asia far exceed any tax benefits that any state is capable of conferring. After I have failed at this fool’s errand, I will pass the baton to yet another mealy-mouthed meat puppet, who will blame me for fucking up the economy and will promise you, the voters, that by decreasing taxes on businesses we will once again make our state strong. Thank you. God Bless Michigan, God Bless the United States of America, and God bless God.”
I just finished reading a book called The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, from about 2006. It concerns the last bad cholera epidemic in London, in the early 1850s, and how they figured out what was causing the disease (water contaminated with cholera-infected human waste) and how to stop it (removing the pump handle from one particular well on Broad Street in Soho, for starters). As often happens, it was a matter of supplanting a superficially logical theory (that the disease was carried in the stench, or "miasma" coming from the contaminated Thames River and from the profusion of shit, human and animal, everywhere in the densely-packed city) with a more logical, and ultimately correct, theory (that the disease’s cause was a water-borne pathogen). It turns out, quite reasonably, that the correct theory was the one that explained all the cases of the disease, not just most of them. But for the most part medical science (one uses the term almost ironically in this context) was content with a theory that explained the majority of cases, then ignored the rest as purely anomalous or tried to shoehorn them into the dominant theory. Of course this was before medical folks fully understood that diseases like this are caused by by microscopic organisms, and all that, so they must be excused on that basis. But, microscopes and other modern gizmos aside, the study of logic—the application and extension of known facts to the unknown so as to develop solid bases for predicting things—has been fully developed since well before the days of Aristotle. Which means that as learned as were the great minds of Victorian medicine, they still fell prey to sloppy and fallacious reasoning, despite the availability of the almost mathematical templates of formal logic, which has been among the few almost universally-taught disciplines in the western world throughout the past several millennia. These latter conclusions are mine, not the author's. He just tells the story, and does it quite well. But it gets me to thinking about logic, generally, and, apropos of the gubernatorial election, how incredibly easy it is to persuade ourselves and others of illogical things on a quadrennial (and indeed daily) basis. It's odd, almost. People don't routinely try to make 2 plus 2 equal 5. They know better. But when it comes to perceiving basic logical fallacies—argumentum ad hominen, begging the question, red herrings, circular reasoning, to name a few—they generally can't navigate the murky waters of bullshit on which we all must sail. Granted, logic employs a greater set of variables than does arithmetic—2 is after all pretty much always 2 on an everyday basis. And like higher mathematics, higher and more abstract theories of logic can get pretty abstruse for the average person. But on the whole, and in certain contexts invariably, basic logic should govern our thinking, helping us to realize that a single politician among many will not be able to bring about the extravagant changes he or she promises. And that all the monies used to build bridges, protect citizens and their property, educate children, and so on must come from a common fund, and that that fund derives itself primarily from taxes of one kind or another, and therefore, that taxing and spending are not the evils of a government run amok but rather the essence of why governments exist at all. These are things that every adult should know. And yet .....
Getting back to the medical aspect of The Ghost Map, though, two really chilling things struck me. One was how very recently we have been delivered up into the relatively safe confines of what we consider to be modern medicine, founded on the microbial disease theory and armed with antibiotics, and based also on the assumption that hygiene, especially among medical personnel, is essential to keeping patients alive and well once they are sick, mostly because all those microbes are out there. Less than 150 years ago, which is really nothing in human history, everyone was at the mercy of people we would today consider to be quacks and incompetents--little better than witch doctors. President James Garfield died unnecessarily in 1881 because distinguished men of medical science stuck their unwashed fingers into his bullet wound and helped it to become infected, then could do nothing at all to stop the infection. The wound itself was far less serious than the one Ronald Reagan received a century later in 1981, from which he pretty easily recovered. And even at that Garfield lived on for a couple of months, fighting with his natural immune system until the infection overwhelmed him. During the cholera epidemic, people died of acute dehydration within 12 to 48 hours, when merely drinking lots of water while they were sick would have saved the majority of them. But medical science hadn't figured out even that simple little thing. Instead they tried giving laxatives and sometimes bleeding the patients (guess what--it didn't work). But as amazing as all that seems in the light of today's everyday knowledge, the other scary thing to contemplate is how profoundly stupid we must be today in certain medical matters, compared to where we'll be in another 150 years. I think that's a safe and logical assumption. Many people have laundry lists of complaints about doctors and treatments and are more than willing to subscribe to the theory that modern western medicine is all messed up. That I don't buy, personally. Especially the bias in favor of treatments from other parts of the world where, if you look at how the people in those places are living (and dying), you have to say, "Who would ever assume that anybody around here knows jack shit about medicine?" Yeah, grind up a dessicated tiger's penis and drink it in your tea. That'll work, all right. Get in touch with you holistic inner blah blah blah. Put a few needles in it. No, I'm not talking about what folks call "alternative" medicine. What I'm referring to is what might be called "undiscovered" medicine--the extension of what we know now, cleaned up and freed from illogical and sloppy thinking based on the misapplication of shoddy research. It's nothing I could figure out, any more than I could have discovered the cure for cholera if I'd been living in the 1850s. But it's out there. Cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, spinal injuries--all the stuff we haven't figured out yet. So let’s get busy and start thinking logically! Jerry Lewis ain’t gonna be able to put on telethons forever, you know. And then what?!?!?
Sunday, June 27, 2010
I was saddened recently to learn that bachelor Jake and his fiancee Vienna have called it quits, even though they appeared happy on the last episode of Dancing With the Washed Up Network Reality Goofballs, or whatever it is called. Allegations of betrayal abound. Is there no faithfulness anywhere? The president's approval rating slipped a bit today, as well, on the perception that he hasn't done enough to try to keep Jake and Vienna together. If the leader of the free world can't do even a simple thing like that, then what good is he, anyway? Wall Street reacted to the news by closing on a down note, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its seventh lowest finish of the month.
Elsewhere in the realm of reality TV, the Republicans are battling one another for the chance to run the state of Michigan. The commercials all go (or should go) something like this, and you out-of-staters will recognize the patter, if not the names: “As we are all aware, the Michigan economy is in shambles. Putting aside the fact that the big three auto makers allowed their market share to erode by building shitty products they hoped would sell anyway based on the entrenched habits and knee-jerk patriotism of the public, and ignoring the fact that these same corporations have been systematically moving jobs elsewhere for several decades, Michigan’s mess is nevertheless entirely the fault of our current governor, Jennifer Granholm, whose extravagant tax and spend policies (wasting the public's money on repairing roads and meagerly staffing the state government, for instance) are the direct cause of Michigan's record-high joblessness. Hi, I'm Mike Cox/Pete Hoekstra/Mike Bouchard/Homer Simpson/Daffy Duck. When I was in the Marines/Army/Navy/Boy Scouts/Brownies, polishing my brass belt buckle and touching my sword to my nose, Governor Granholm was in Canada or California or somewhere, avoiding military service by wearing a skirt and hiding behind her foreign nationality, like you’d expect a Democrat to do. When I become your governor, I will attempt, as so many of my predecessors already have, to bring jobs back to Michigan by offering to assess no taxes whatsoever on businesses, a promise that will make my corporate masters happy, but will be to absolutely no avail, due to the immutable fact that the savings achieved by sending labor south or to Asia far exceed any tax benefits that any state is capable of conferring. After I have failed at this fool’s errand, I will pass the baton to yet another mealy-mouthed meat puppet, who will blame me for fucking up the economy and will promise you, the voters, that by decreasing taxes on businesses we will once again make our state strong. Thank you. God Bless Michigan, God Bless the United States of America, and God bless God.”
I just finished reading a book called The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, from about 2006. It concerns the last bad cholera epidemic in London, in the early 1850s, and how they figured out what was causing the disease (water contaminated with cholera-infected human waste) and how to stop it (removing the pump handle from one particular well on Broad Street in Soho, for starters). As often happens, it was a matter of supplanting a superficially logical theory (that the disease was carried in the stench, or "miasma" coming from the contaminated Thames River and from the profusion of shit, human and animal, everywhere in the densely-packed city) with a more logical, and ultimately correct, theory (that the disease’s cause was a water-borne pathogen). It turns out, quite reasonably, that the correct theory was the one that explained all the cases of the disease, not just most of them. But for the most part medical science (one uses the term almost ironically in this context) was content with a theory that explained the majority of cases, then ignored the rest as purely anomalous or tried to shoehorn them into the dominant theory. Of course this was before medical folks fully understood that diseases like this are caused by by microscopic organisms, and all that, so they must be excused on that basis. But, microscopes and other modern gizmos aside, the study of logic—the application and extension of known facts to the unknown so as to develop solid bases for predicting things—has been fully developed since well before the days of Aristotle. Which means that as learned as were the great minds of Victorian medicine, they still fell prey to sloppy and fallacious reasoning, despite the availability of the almost mathematical templates of formal logic, which has been among the few almost universally-taught disciplines in the western world throughout the past several millennia. These latter conclusions are mine, not the author's. He just tells the story, and does it quite well. But it gets me to thinking about logic, generally, and, apropos of the gubernatorial election, how incredibly easy it is to persuade ourselves and others of illogical things on a quadrennial (and indeed daily) basis. It's odd, almost. People don't routinely try to make 2 plus 2 equal 5. They know better. But when it comes to perceiving basic logical fallacies—argumentum ad hominen, begging the question, red herrings, circular reasoning, to name a few—they generally can't navigate the murky waters of bullshit on which we all must sail. Granted, logic employs a greater set of variables than does arithmetic—2 is after all pretty much always 2 on an everyday basis. And like higher mathematics, higher and more abstract theories of logic can get pretty abstruse for the average person. But on the whole, and in certain contexts invariably, basic logic should govern our thinking, helping us to realize that a single politician among many will not be able to bring about the extravagant changes he or she promises. And that all the monies used to build bridges, protect citizens and their property, educate children, and so on must come from a common fund, and that that fund derives itself primarily from taxes of one kind or another, and therefore, that taxing and spending are not the evils of a government run amok but rather the essence of why governments exist at all. These are things that every adult should know. And yet .....
Getting back to the medical aspect of The Ghost Map, though, two really chilling things struck me. One was how very recently we have been delivered up into the relatively safe confines of what we consider to be modern medicine, founded on the microbial disease theory and armed with antibiotics, and based also on the assumption that hygiene, especially among medical personnel, is essential to keeping patients alive and well once they are sick, mostly because all those microbes are out there. Less than 150 years ago, which is really nothing in human history, everyone was at the mercy of people we would today consider to be quacks and incompetents--little better than witch doctors. President James Garfield died unnecessarily in 1881 because distinguished men of medical science stuck their unwashed fingers into his bullet wound and helped it to become infected, then could do nothing at all to stop the infection. The wound itself was far less serious than the one Ronald Reagan received a century later in 1981, from which he pretty easily recovered. And even at that Garfield lived on for a couple of months, fighting with his natural immune system until the infection overwhelmed him. During the cholera epidemic, people died of acute dehydration within 12 to 48 hours, when merely drinking lots of water while they were sick would have saved the majority of them. But medical science hadn't figured out even that simple little thing. Instead they tried giving laxatives and sometimes bleeding the patients (guess what--it didn't work). But as amazing as all that seems in the light of today's everyday knowledge, the other scary thing to contemplate is how profoundly stupid we must be today in certain medical matters, compared to where we'll be in another 150 years. I think that's a safe and logical assumption. Many people have laundry lists of complaints about doctors and treatments and are more than willing to subscribe to the theory that modern western medicine is all messed up. That I don't buy, personally. Especially the bias in favor of treatments from other parts of the world where, if you look at how the people in those places are living (and dying), you have to say, "Who would ever assume that anybody around here knows jack shit about medicine?" Yeah, grind up a dessicated tiger's penis and drink it in your tea. That'll work, all right. Get in touch with you holistic inner blah blah blah. Put a few needles in it. No, I'm not talking about what folks call "alternative" medicine. What I'm referring to is what might be called "undiscovered" medicine--the extension of what we know now, cleaned up and freed from illogical and sloppy thinking based on the misapplication of shoddy research. It's nothing I could figure out, any more than I could have discovered the cure for cholera if I'd been living in the 1850s. But it's out there. Cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, spinal injuries--all the stuff we haven't figured out yet. So let’s get busy and start thinking logically! Jerry Lewis ain’t gonna be able to put on telethons forever, you know. And then what?!?!?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Rest of the Story
Cedar Springs, Michigan
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Paul Harvey, that folksy beloved right-wing radio geezer-icon, used to do a show called The Rest of the Story. It featured looks at mysterious or obscure aspects of commonly-known stories of famous people and events. Old Paul was on the radio so long that he outlived a couple of generations of listeners. I remember my grandfather listening to Paul's jingoistic version of reality back in the '50s, and assumed he was old back then, since grandpa was old. Maybe it was also that creepy, creaky timbre his voice had even when he was relatively young. Paul Harvey died last year at 91, an age many thought he had attained long since, having become, over more than half a century, a sort of animated rendition of the Reader's Digest--an American version of the Word Become Flesh if ever there was one.
All that has nothing to do with the rest of my trip, except for the coincidence of the name I chose for this entry. I left readers hanging in the middle of Nebraska, that vast and uneventful chunk of land in the center of the country. On the final day I traversed Nebraska and Iowa, merging onto what might be the most tedious route in the country, or at least in the midwest--Interstate 80 across northern Illinois from the quad cities to Indiana, then the familiar but equally boring I-94 and I-196 in Michigan.
Did my heart leap up when I reentered the Great Lake State? Of course I was happy to be home and reunited with Laurine, but I must say that this state as a destination or a choice of a place to live leaves me cold. During my absence I tried to muster wistful memories of my home state, something that would make me say to myself as I passed the welcome sign, "Ah yes, Pure Michigan." Nothing doing. In fact, I didn't miss it at all. More than that, as I thought back over sixty years I had to admit I've never really liked Michigan very much. It's possible that I'm incapable of attaching myself emotionally to a spot on the map. But I'm not so sure about that. Much of the west is beautiful and alluring, as is New England, where I resided for many years. No, I think Michigan itself produces the geographic ennui I'm feeling. But on the positive side, at least it isn't Nebraska or Iowa.
One bright spot during my last day of driving was an hour-long detour into the Nebraska capital. I try to tour statehouses when I can. They're open to the public and usually contain a surprise or two. In Lincoln is one of the most interesting capitols going. Built in the 1920s in the grand and muscular art deco-influenced style I love, this building isn't the usual imitation of the U.S. Capitol, but a small skyscraper, rising fourteen stories out of a block-square granite base, topped with a small gold dome and a statue.
Inside and out it is reminiscent of a secular synagogue, devoid of religious icons but reaching mightily toward the sky in a salute to the gods of justice, democracy, and good government we used to revere in this country before our eyes were dimmed by the cataracts of religious fundamentalism and before we commenced our unabashed worship of capitalism. The arched hallways of the interior, rising three stories and covered with murals and stained glass windows above mosaic-tiled floors, are filled with a combination of sinewy Romanesque personifications of civic virtues and more modern depictions of the great natural and human resources of the Cornhusker State. Standing in the midst of all this it's possible to breathe in the vapors of the national mood that gave birth to the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center in New York, the Fisher Building in Detroit, and many others. As a nation our aspirations certainly overreached our realities, especially in the area of civil rights, but the very fact that we chose to showcase our ideals rather than just our tawdry lust for money bespoke a different set of priorities, at least for the common man.
Of course I visited the locus of the nation's only unicameral legislature, which is housed in the old state senate chamber. It wasn't until the 1930s that Nebraska adopted one-house, nonpartisan rule, so there's still a state house of representatives chamber, now used as an auditorium. Having spent my career working for states, and the latter part of it interpreting and administering the newly-minted products of the state legislature, I can't overstate my contempt for the citizen lawmakers who inhabit these chambers. Words like moron, nitwit, scallywag, blowhard, and poltroon come readily to mind, but don't really describe the combination of ignorance, ambition, and puffery that prevails inside these chambers when they're open for business. Imagine Ted Knight from the Mary Tyler Moore Show being in charge of the government and you begin to get the picture. So the idea of having a one-house parttime state legislature consisting of only 49 persons seems eminently sensible to me, or at least a step in the right direction.
I wouldn't recommend a trip to Nebraska for the express purpose of seeing the capitol in Lincoln, but if, God help you, you're there on business, by all means drop in.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Comedown
North Platte, Nebraska
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
This morning as I drove north out of Moab, Utah I was convinced that I was in the midst of the most beautiful mountain scenery I was likely to see on this trip. But as I hopped on the interstate and headed east into Colorado it was obvious that the Kodak moments weren't over. For this comparative flatlander it was hard to resist stopping every ten miles or so to take pictures, even when I realized that at some point all these photos were going to look pretty much alike.
Then I drove through Denver, and things began to change dramatically. Suddenly I wasn't in the Rocky Mountains any more. As they receded in my rear view mirror I was greeted by low hills and plowed fields and the overwhelming stench of manure. I'd gone from beauty to bullshit in a matter of a few miles. What a comedown, literally and figuratively. I thought about the hundreds of miles of driving I had ahead of me through terrain that was, if anything, even less attractive than this. My impulse was to turn around.
People don't write songs about Nebraska, nor should they. To tell you the truth, certain people shouldn't have written songs about the Rocky Mountains, either, but they did, and I guess their exuberance was understandable.
Now I'm in the middle of a state that has only one thing to distinguish it as far as I know. Well, two. The country's only unicameral legislature and a pretty damn good college football team. That just doesn't seem like enough.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Uranium and Cigarettes
Moab, Utah
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Coming up through the Navajo reservation, which is mostly in the northeast corner of Arizona but also spills into Utah a little, I was convinced that the Indians had the best scenery all to themselves. But Utah is no slouch when it comes to photo opportunities.
I said southern California looked familiar, but it turns out this spot is almost as much so. With its red rocks, snow-capped mountains, and natural bridge formations, southeastern Utah has been used in movies for years. The director John Ford first filmed Stagecoach near Monument Valley in 1939, then did several more around Moab, including Rio Grande, in 1950. If you saw Thelma and Louise or Once Upon a Time in the West or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or City Slickers II, you saw Moab. And also The Greatest Story Ever Told, which is either about Jesus or the invention of Viagra.
The real boom took place when they started mining uranium here for nuclear bombs and electricity in the 50s, and Moab began to call itself "The Uranium Capital of the World." Not sure that's what I'd want my town to be famous for, but there it is. Then those pinko wide-eyed one worlders and tree huggers started scaling back the weapons and power plants and the radioactive bubble burst. Now Moab is back to trading on its scenery.
In terms of media exposure, perhaps the most familiar images of the Moab area are from the Marlboro Man advertising campaign. It was here that the rugged cowboy, astride his horse, paused to survey the breathtaking scenery and light a smoke. For a whole generation of TV watchers this was cigarette central, and the theme from The Magnificent Seven was the musical accompaniment to pure rich tobacco pleasure.
When the town was first settled back in the last quarter of the 1800s and given the name Moab, some folks objected because in the Bible the city of Moab was known for incest and idolatry. Feathers were ruffled and petitions were signed. Evidently, though, the cooler heads of the golden calf worshippers and sister rapers prevailed, and the name stayed the same.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
No Past Necessary
Flagstaff, Arizona
Monday, May 3, 2010
Spent three days in Palm Springs, California, then over to the Los Angeles area and after that a quick stop in Las Vegas. Each state deserves its own blog entry, but things are moving too fast for that.
I'd like to thank Uncle Ed for his Palm Springs hospitality. Besides showing me around the city, he took me out to the Salton Sea and up into the mountains to a town called Idyllwild.
If you're famous in Palm Springs, when you die they name a street after you. I got off the freeway onto Gene Autry Trail in the middle of a dust storm. On the way in I passed Dinah Shore Boulevard and Bob Hope Road. In Palm Springs and all the neighboring municipalities along California 111--Palm Desert, Cathedral City, Ranch Mirage and so on--the motto is Live Long, Play Golf, and Die, sort of a riff on the Vulcan benediction from Star Trek. In fact, driving along i11 is sort of a star trek of its own. Surrounded by mountains.
There's something about Southern California that an outsider can't put his finger on. Not that there are anything but outsiders there. Or rather, insiders who came from somewhere else. It would take about a week and a half to fit in as if one had been born there. No past necessary. I've lived in places where you don't officially belong unless you've been in town for five generations. Not in California. No accents to speak of, no traditions to uphold, no mysteries to penetrate. Just get in your car and hop on the freeway and drive. Get there, get out, and stay.
Maybe it's the feeling you get that you've been there already, all your life. In the movies and on TV. With the Lone Ranger and Tonto and John Wayne in the dusty desert back lots, with Sean Penn and Robert Duvall in the hot ghetto streets of LA, with Eric Estrada on the endless miles of crowded highways, with Jed Clampett and Granny in the terraced hills of Beverly.
A twisted two hundred fifty miles to the northeast, past arid mountainsides and flat empty deserts, lies Las Vegas, the strangest city in America. There's no excuse for it, really, especially now that there are Indian casinos in every corner of every state. But it keeps getting bigger and more bizarre and outdoing itself for unmitigated tastelessness year after year. This is a city that simply could not have been imagined by the likes of Nero and Caligula and one that would have seemed like a fond pipe dream to the denizens of Sodom and Ninevah. Beside the gluttonous and greedy neon and steel of the Vegas strip Walt Disney's goofy imaginings look trite and amateurish and comparatively classy. Illegals stand on the sidewalks handing out cards advertising call girls. Senior citizens with walkers pump Social Security money into slot machines. Vacationing middle Americans galumph through the streets sipping brewskis and looking for the next buffet. Las Vegas is a city that celebrates shlocky former boy sopranos, louche German animal tamers, washed up comedians. And of course Elvis. Elvis the bloated, the purple, the dead on the toilet. Michael Jackson's death was the perfect career move for him, Vegaswise. He's just getting warmed up.
Having said all that I hasten to add that I had a great time in Las Vegas. I met Laurine, who was there on a business trip, and daughter Katie. We stayed in a modest suite in the Venetian, which was only about the size of a small Cambodian village. And I won more than I lost in the casinos.
After all that the utter practicality of the Hoover Dam seemed trivial. Hydroelectric power? Is that all? No gambling? No decadence? I slipped over it and out of Nevada and up into the mesas of Arizona and it was like shutting the door on a frat party and walking over to an ivy-covered library. Quiet and meaningful and clean, at least by comparison.
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