Real life continues to happen even though we’re on the road. A few weeks ago, Mary got phone calls from various family members telling her that her step mother, Opal, was in the hospital with cancer and had been given only two or three months to live. Opal lived in Phoenix and we weren’t too far away at the time. When we called her step brother Jim, he told us that he thought Opal was failing and might have only a few days.
We dropped all our previous plans and traveled to Phoenix so Mary could be with Opal while she was still alive.
This was always an extremely difficult relationship for Mary; I’ll just say here that Mary experienced many years of verbal and emotional abuse from Opal, continuing even after she left home and after we were married. For many years, Mary has tried to maintain as much distance as possible while still trying to keep at least a cordial relationship, almost entirely for the sake of her father and to keep peace in the family with her brothers and step-brothers and sisters.
All of this made a final goodbye all the more difficult, but by the time we got to the hospital, Opal was no longer conscious, and it was clear that she had at best only a week or so left. Jim wanted us to stay around for the funeral that was to come soon, but we felt that things were too uncertain just to stay in Phoenix, which we don’t like, and wait for a death that would come in its own good time and not before. We ended up traveling to Santa Fe with the idea we could return quickly when it was time.
In fact, Opal lasted about a week longer without ever regaining consciousness, and with a few days’ notice about the funeral, we headed back to Phoenix for Mary’s one last great effort at keeping her other family relationships alive and healthy.
Difficult as it all was, we actually ended up enjoying the reunion, and surprisingly, the funeral itself turned out to be, for me at least, almost fun. Opal, who never believed it was possible to be too lavish, had planned an open-coffin ceremony in a casket that looked a lot like a Lincoln Town Car, not a bad ride to carry her into the afterlife. The pastor from her church turned out to be quite an elderly fellow himself and seemed to mostly lose track of where he was in the eulogy. At one point, he rather fell into an internal theological dispute about whether Opal was greeted in heaven by an angel or by Jesus himself.
First he said it was an angel, but then he said sometimes in a few special cases, Jesus himself actually greeted the Loved One in heaven, though he didn’t seem quite clear on what conditions would trigger the deluxe reception. It wasn’t something you could arrange with the funeral director, but probably you had a better chance on week days when things were otherwise kind of slow in Paradise.
In the end he came down on the side of Jesus. He managed to piece together a few Bible verses suggesting that death was only a passage from this life to the next, though he didn’t always seem sure exactly what his point was.
At least the whole service was blessedly short. After a drive out to the cemetery, the men among the mourners were informed we were going to be the pall bearers, which alarmed me because I’d never born a pall before and I was convinced the mostly old and feeble men in attendance wouldn’t be able to lift the Lincoln and Opal’s earthly remains and make it over to the grave site without tripping.
In the end, though, we were successful, with only a few alarming stumbles, and after a few appropriate words from Pastor, Opal was lowered into the earth for her eternal rest. This final moment made me decidedly claustrophobic, but otherwise, the service had been mostly enjoyable and sometimes amusing.
I doubt Mary saw it all in quite the same way.
We continued on to a fine Italian restaurant where step-brother Jim hosted an excellent buffet, and we all enjoyed spending some light-hearted time together. When we got back to our trailer, Mary was emotionally exhausted but content in having done the right thing and hopeful she could move on with her life now, free of some of the emotional burdens she’s carried all these years.
I wish her the best with that, but we both know that all of us carry stuff for as long as we live, and the best we can do is to try to live well with our stuff. Mary works harder and with more success at that than just about anybody I know, and it’s one of the things I most love and respect about her. Thus, some good comes from bad, and our stuff becomes in part the clay from which we mold our lives, we hope with some success.
Today we stay over one more day in Phoenix to handle the mundane chores of doing laundry, cleaning the trailer, and stocking up on food and supplies. We leave tomorrow for the canyon lands of Southern Utah and point our compass more or less in the direction of Klamath Falls. We might still stay out the final two weeks we had originally planned, or we might make a more deliberate drive straight through to get back to the comforts of life at home.
In any case, there’s a sense that this year’s winter travels are coming to a close. I’m looking forward to getting back on my motorcycle, among other things, and Mary is missing her horse and other good friends.
And weather reports from Klamath Falls suggest it might not be too soon to return. Spring is on its way. Rebirth and all of that.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Bisbee
Bisbee, Arizona is a former mining town turned tourist destination and artists’ colony. As these things go, Bisbee is worth the trip from Tucson for a stay of three or four days.
The town is notable for several things: sitting in a steep valley at about 5,000 feet, it’s especially picturesque. Depending on where we were standing, the small, colorful houses rising up both sides of the canyon reminded us of either Santa Cruz, Ashland, or the town in the Popeye movie.
As a tourist destination, it seems to offer a higher quality of everything normally found in places like this. The restaurants are excellent, galleries offer art of a much higher quality (and price) than usually found in your typical tourist trap, and among the usual antique and curio shops, there are the occasional specialty stores you would expect to find in a large city. I went into Optimo Milliners, for example, to see if I could get my felt fedora cleaned and blocked. The guy was nice about it, but my hat is a piece of crap and I could buy two for what it would cost to have him do triage on it. And there’s a four-month waiting list. So I thought, well maybe I’ll just buy one of his fancy-ass hats, but that would be an even longer wait, during which I could work part time to come up with a down payment. He seems to have a worldwide reputation, and for all I know he makes the Pope's hats, though he specializes in Panamas.
But come to Bisbee for the mine tour, an absolutely fascinating hour and a half underground in a miners’ train. We went down 1,770 feet in a mine that went down8,000 feet underground and has an amazing 2,000 miles of tunnels. Or so the guide said, a former miner with a terrific dry sense of humor and a bucketful of facts, some of which I took with a grain of salt, even though The Copper Queen was not a salt mine.
The day shift reports for work
By about 1955, they figured out it was cheaper and easier just to eat the mountain and sort out the rocks later, so there’s one spectacular hole in the ground. When the mine reached the edge of the next town over, it just kept going. Don’t follow your GPS to any addresses in Warren.
This was a little bit of a pilgrimage for Mary since her father was born and raised here. He graduated from Bisbee high in about 1935 when it really was a rough and tumble mining town. We went to the museum and looked through some old records. Mary had thought her grandfather was a mining engineer, but turns out he was “Chief Clerk” for Phelps Dodge. We don’t know quite what that means but it sounds important.
Still, Mary doesn’t appear to be the rightful heir to anything here in Bisbee, so we’re moving on tomorrow, despite the many interesting things to see we never got to.
Maybe next year.
The town is notable for several things: sitting in a steep valley at about 5,000 feet, it’s especially picturesque. Depending on where we were standing, the small, colorful houses rising up both sides of the canyon reminded us of either Santa Cruz, Ashland, or the town in the Popeye movie.
As a tourist destination, it seems to offer a higher quality of everything normally found in places like this. The restaurants are excellent, galleries offer art of a much higher quality (and price) than usually found in your typical tourist trap, and among the usual antique and curio shops, there are the occasional specialty stores you would expect to find in a large city. I went into Optimo Milliners, for example, to see if I could get my felt fedora cleaned and blocked. The guy was nice about it, but my hat is a piece of crap and I could buy two for what it would cost to have him do triage on it. And there’s a four-month waiting list. So I thought, well maybe I’ll just buy one of his fancy-ass hats, but that would be an even longer wait, during which I could work part time to come up with a down payment. He seems to have a worldwide reputation, and for all I know he makes the Pope's hats, though he specializes in Panamas.
But come to Bisbee for the mine tour, an absolutely fascinating hour and a half underground in a miners’ train. We went down 1,770 feet in a mine that went down8,000 feet underground and has an amazing 2,000 miles of tunnels. Or so the guide said, a former miner with a terrific dry sense of humor and a bucketful of facts, some of which I took with a grain of salt, even though The Copper Queen was not a salt mine.
The day shift reports for work
By about 1955, they figured out it was cheaper and easier just to eat the mountain and sort out the rocks later, so there’s one spectacular hole in the ground. When the mine reached the edge of the next town over, it just kept going. Don’t follow your GPS to any addresses in Warren.
This was a little bit of a pilgrimage for Mary since her father was born and raised here. He graduated from Bisbee high in about 1935 when it really was a rough and tumble mining town. We went to the museum and looked through some old records. Mary had thought her grandfather was a mining engineer, but turns out he was “Chief Clerk” for Phelps Dodge. We don’t know quite what that means but it sounds important.
Still, Mary doesn’t appear to be the rightful heir to anything here in Bisbee, so we’re moving on tomorrow, despite the many interesting things to see we never got to.
Maybe next year.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Scared north
We’re camping again at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, one of our favorite Southwest destinations. At six bucks a night and a three-week limit, it’s also a real bargain and a good way to save money compared to the $35 or $40 fees at state parks and private campgrounds. There are a lot of loyal visitors. The people across from us—possibly the nicest old couple you’ll ever meet—have been coming here for seventeen years.
Still, last year the campground was only half full, about eighty campers and tents on any given day. This year, the number is half that. What’s going on?
Certainly part of the blame has to rest with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona legislature, which have driven away millions of measurable dollars in convention business and probably even more in winter tourism. Not only have they alienated Hispanics, they’ve outraged lots of just-folks who have a low tolerance for intolerance.
But even more than any moral backlash, there must have been considerable harm done by just the rhetoric, highly exaggerated, about how dangerous the border region is. Organ Pipe borders Mexico, and the campground is a scant four miles north of the crossing at Sonoyta. The Fence is clearly visible during the daytime, and the lights of the small town are clear at night.
Brewer has repeatedly fixed on the murder of one borderline cattleman, even though it hasn’t been proven he was killed by illegals. But let’s give her that one. She also stated, though later amended, that there are thousands of headless corpses out in the desert.
Those headless corpses are in Mexico! What’s to worry!
Still, I can see how visitors who thought this might be a nice place to stay for two or three weeks might feel a little uncomfortable and decide to move on. The NatGeo program called Border Wars doesn’t exaggerate by much.
Here’s a sample:
The Border Patrol station in Ajo, about thirty miles north, has grown by a factor of ten in the last few years. They’re currently constructing an even-larger facility that looks about the size of a small prison, and I’m sure that’s partly what it will be.
Border Patrol SUVs are ubiquitous on the highways, sometimes feeling like about one in every three or four vehicles. Many of them pull trailers carrying quads for patrolling out in the desert.
There’s a Border Patrol checkpoint about ten miles north of the park. We pass through with just a few standard questions, but other vehicles get a careful search. It’s common to see vehicles parked on the shoulder before and after the checkpoint, and certainly some of them are picking up and dropping off immigrants and smugglers as they get around the checkpoint on foot.
It’s also common to see Border Patrol SUVs right in the campground, the agents parked and looking out over the desert to the south, slowly patrolling, or driving through fast. This is especially common at night when they also shine spotlights into the desert. Some of them carry tracker dogs.
Helicopters are routine, and a few nights ago one of them worked the desert no more than a mile from camp for over an hour, flying back and forth with dual spot lights playing over the ground. I could also see lights from SUVs out there.
Most eerie, just north of the park I watched one night last year as planes dropped parachute flares which cast a bright yellow-orange light creating an unnatural daylight. And not just one plane, but at least three. I watched almost hypnotized for the whole evening, one flare after another so that there were usually three or four in the sky at one time. This brought back a strong memory from Viet Nam—not to be confused with a flashback—because it was routine there, too, for planes to drop flares outside of the base where I was stationed, especially during the occasional rocket or mortar attack, the biggest difference being the lack here of .50 caliber machine guns firing tracers at the ground. It made a sound not like gunfire but more like the steady staccato buzz of an arc welder, and we called it pissing fire.
At least the runners don’t have that to worry about.
With the help of all the electronic devices which include conventional radar, noise and motion detectors, regular and infrared cameras and probably some secret technologies we don’t even know about, it’s common for agents to arrest groups as large as fifty, though smaller numbers are more common.
And still they estimate four to six get through for every one who is caught. Where they get this number I have no idea. The park superintendent estimates an amazing 1,200 runners cross the park every night. Again, I have no idea how they arrive at such numbers, but eighty percent of the park is closed to the public and even to park employees. Only the campground and a few close-in trails are open.
Still, we love it here and feel completely comfortable and safe. There are some magnificent hikes and drives still open, and just walking the dogs around the campground and looking at the desert and mountains is a pleasure. Actually, I’d rather like to see some runners, which is common, just like I like to see coyotes or javelina.
We didn’t bring passports because we have no plans to cross into Mexico itself, although we’ve talked to plenty of people who have and who say that other than the border towns, Mexico is still safe for tourists. Maybe so, maybe not, but tomorrow begins spring break for Arizona college students, and despite the alarmist pronouncements from their elected officials, tens of thousands will cross the border here and drive down to Puerto Penasco.
Out here in the middle of the Sonora Desert, the Pacific Ocean is only seventy miles away. Maybe next year.
Still, last year the campground was only half full, about eighty campers and tents on any given day. This year, the number is half that. What’s going on?
Certainly part of the blame has to rest with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona legislature, which have driven away millions of measurable dollars in convention business and probably even more in winter tourism. Not only have they alienated Hispanics, they’ve outraged lots of just-folks who have a low tolerance for intolerance.
But even more than any moral backlash, there must have been considerable harm done by just the rhetoric, highly exaggerated, about how dangerous the border region is. Organ Pipe borders Mexico, and the campground is a scant four miles north of the crossing at Sonoyta. The Fence is clearly visible during the daytime, and the lights of the small town are clear at night.
Brewer has repeatedly fixed on the murder of one borderline cattleman, even though it hasn’t been proven he was killed by illegals. But let’s give her that one. She also stated, though later amended, that there are thousands of headless corpses out in the desert.
Those headless corpses are in Mexico! What’s to worry!
Still, I can see how visitors who thought this might be a nice place to stay for two or three weeks might feel a little uncomfortable and decide to move on. The NatGeo program called Border Wars doesn’t exaggerate by much.
Here’s a sample:
The Border Patrol station in Ajo, about thirty miles north, has grown by a factor of ten in the last few years. They’re currently constructing an even-larger facility that looks about the size of a small prison, and I’m sure that’s partly what it will be.
Border Patrol SUVs are ubiquitous on the highways, sometimes feeling like about one in every three or four vehicles. Many of them pull trailers carrying quads for patrolling out in the desert.
There’s a Border Patrol checkpoint about ten miles north of the park. We pass through with just a few standard questions, but other vehicles get a careful search. It’s common to see vehicles parked on the shoulder before and after the checkpoint, and certainly some of them are picking up and dropping off immigrants and smugglers as they get around the checkpoint on foot.
It’s also common to see Border Patrol SUVs right in the campground, the agents parked and looking out over the desert to the south, slowly patrolling, or driving through fast. This is especially common at night when they also shine spotlights into the desert. Some of them carry tracker dogs.
Helicopters are routine, and a few nights ago one of them worked the desert no more than a mile from camp for over an hour, flying back and forth with dual spot lights playing over the ground. I could also see lights from SUVs out there.
Most eerie, just north of the park I watched one night last year as planes dropped parachute flares which cast a bright yellow-orange light creating an unnatural daylight. And not just one plane, but at least three. I watched almost hypnotized for the whole evening, one flare after another so that there were usually three or four in the sky at one time. This brought back a strong memory from Viet Nam—not to be confused with a flashback—because it was routine there, too, for planes to drop flares outside of the base where I was stationed, especially during the occasional rocket or mortar attack, the biggest difference being the lack here of .50 caliber machine guns firing tracers at the ground. It made a sound not like gunfire but more like the steady staccato buzz of an arc welder, and we called it pissing fire.
At least the runners don’t have that to worry about.
With the help of all the electronic devices which include conventional radar, noise and motion detectors, regular and infrared cameras and probably some secret technologies we don’t even know about, it’s common for agents to arrest groups as large as fifty, though smaller numbers are more common.
And still they estimate four to six get through for every one who is caught. Where they get this number I have no idea. The park superintendent estimates an amazing 1,200 runners cross the park every night. Again, I have no idea how they arrive at such numbers, but eighty percent of the park is closed to the public and even to park employees. Only the campground and a few close-in trails are open.
Still, we love it here and feel completely comfortable and safe. There are some magnificent hikes and drives still open, and just walking the dogs around the campground and looking at the desert and mountains is a pleasure. Actually, I’d rather like to see some runners, which is common, just like I like to see coyotes or javelina.
We didn’t bring passports because we have no plans to cross into Mexico itself, although we’ve talked to plenty of people who have and who say that other than the border towns, Mexico is still safe for tourists. Maybe so, maybe not, but tomorrow begins spring break for Arizona college students, and despite the alarmist pronouncements from their elected officials, tens of thousands will cross the border here and drive down to Puerto Penasco.
Out here in the middle of the Sonora Desert, the Pacific Ocean is only seventy miles away. Maybe next year.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party
As expected, the new Tea Party Republicans are going after federal spending with a meat cleaver, demanding $61 billion in budget cuts during the current fiscal year, which ends September 30th, and refusing to pass any budget for more than two weeks that doesn’t meet their demands. Mary and I were hours away from getting thrown out of Organ Pipe National Monument, where we’re currently camped and driving up the national debt with our six-dollar a night Senior Pass camping fee, which doesn’t even cover the cost of a howling coyote. Luckily, the two-week budget extension passed, which will cover our time here. After that, we might be reduced to parking in Wal-Mart parking lots again.
But good for the Tea Partiers. It’s what they promised and it’s what they should try to deliver to the voters who elected them. Voters are rightly concerned about the deficit and the reach and role of the federal government, so this is the debate we should have. But before we start talking about how to reduce the deficit and national debt, we should take a look at what did and did not get us into this mess to begin with:
First of all, virtually all of the programs targeted by the Tea Partiers have nothing to do with the current deficit. Public broadcasting did not cause the deficit. If it did, the fifty dollars a year I send to public television would leave me bankrupt. Proportionally, it’s a lot more than what the Feds spend.
Foreign aid did not cause the deficit. We spend less than one percent of the budget on foreign aid, and we rank 22nd in foreign aid as a percentage of GDP. This makes us about the cheapest country in the world when it comes to dropping a dime in a beggar’s cup. Maybe a nickel, but really, get a job.
Aid to the poor for heating assistance did not cause the deficit. I allow my power company to round up my monthly bill to the next dollar in a program to provide assistance to those at risk of freezing in the dark, and those few cents are a much bigger part of my total budget than the federal program is of its total budget. Still, I totally don’t feel it at the end of the month.
The list goes on. Tea Party cuts address only twenty-five percent of the national budget—discretionary spending outside of the military—and focus their wrath on a few programs they’ve always hated, like research on climate change, the EPA, and virtually every program of assistance for the poor.
Curiously, they would also reduce border security, which will not be a big hit here in Arizona. I really don’t get that one except that it shows they truly mean business. But then, so do the Mexican cartels.
Their targeted cuts would do the most harm to the most vulnerable and, equally importantly, they would do little or nothing to reduce national debt in the long run.
It seems obvious that if we’re going to look at reducing the deficit, we need to look first at what caused it. There are three things:
First, a massive tax cut under President Bush that concentrated its largess in the upper and extreme-upper income levels: Not that we in the middle class didn’t get a nice piece of pie out of the deal, but really, nothing that in any way changed our quality of life. More like an unexpected Christmas present, appreciated but soon forgotten. A toaster, maybe, or new pajamas.
Any long-term economic benefit from these cuts failed to materialize. There was, for example, no measurable uptick in employment. Not even billionaires like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet wanted the money. “Really, we have enough already,” they said, but Congress and President Bush made them take more anyway. These silly rich people don’t even understand capitalism.
Second, the war in Afghanistan: Almost all Americans including me supported the president in the invasion of Afghanistan to annihilate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, once we had heard of the Taliban and what a bunch of medieval creeps they are. Ten years later, we’re still in the fight. These fighters are tougher than we thought. We should have asked the Russians.
And third,
The war in Iraq: A majority of Americans, not including me, supported the invasion, but then a majority also believed it was approved by the United Nations. Not to mention the whole WMD thing, but let’s not get bogged down in all that.
The really amazing thing about the Bush budget was that all of the expenditures for our two wars were off the books. They never showed as part of the annual budget. It would be like Mary and me saying all of our spending on horses, motorcycles was not included in our household budget. Things would feel pretty, pretty good until we got a note from the bank that we were overdrawn and now had a fifty dollar fine in addition to our empty savings account which used to have $127 dollars in it. This could cause us to seriously look at our spending on Brussels sprouts.
Maybe Obama’s recovery spending added to the deficit and maybe it didn’t. It saved a ton of jobs and almost certainly kept us out of a genuine depression. Lots of economists think he should have spent more, but I’m no economist, and neither are any of the Tea Partiers. At any rate, that spending is quickly phasing out and we’re even being paid back a lot of it from the banks and GM.
So if the tea party boys and girls want to seriously chop away at the deficit, they should go after the programs that caused it in the first place and that could make a significant difference in reducing it: bring the troops home from the longest wars in American history and end the Bush-era tax cuts, or at least reduce them at the highest income levels (exactly what Obama and congressional Democrats proposed for the current budget, but it was promptly shot down by the Republicans.)
In the meantime, I have to give Mary the bad news about the Brussels sprouts.
But good for the Tea Partiers. It’s what they promised and it’s what they should try to deliver to the voters who elected them. Voters are rightly concerned about the deficit and the reach and role of the federal government, so this is the debate we should have. But before we start talking about how to reduce the deficit and national debt, we should take a look at what did and did not get us into this mess to begin with:
First of all, virtually all of the programs targeted by the Tea Partiers have nothing to do with the current deficit. Public broadcasting did not cause the deficit. If it did, the fifty dollars a year I send to public television would leave me bankrupt. Proportionally, it’s a lot more than what the Feds spend.
Foreign aid did not cause the deficit. We spend less than one percent of the budget on foreign aid, and we rank 22nd in foreign aid as a percentage of GDP. This makes us about the cheapest country in the world when it comes to dropping a dime in a beggar’s cup. Maybe a nickel, but really, get a job.
Aid to the poor for heating assistance did not cause the deficit. I allow my power company to round up my monthly bill to the next dollar in a program to provide assistance to those at risk of freezing in the dark, and those few cents are a much bigger part of my total budget than the federal program is of its total budget. Still, I totally don’t feel it at the end of the month.
The list goes on. Tea Party cuts address only twenty-five percent of the national budget—discretionary spending outside of the military—and focus their wrath on a few programs they’ve always hated, like research on climate change, the EPA, and virtually every program of assistance for the poor.
Curiously, they would also reduce border security, which will not be a big hit here in Arizona. I really don’t get that one except that it shows they truly mean business. But then, so do the Mexican cartels.
Their targeted cuts would do the most harm to the most vulnerable and, equally importantly, they would do little or nothing to reduce national debt in the long run.
It seems obvious that if we’re going to look at reducing the deficit, we need to look first at what caused it. There are three things:
First, a massive tax cut under President Bush that concentrated its largess in the upper and extreme-upper income levels: Not that we in the middle class didn’t get a nice piece of pie out of the deal, but really, nothing that in any way changed our quality of life. More like an unexpected Christmas present, appreciated but soon forgotten. A toaster, maybe, or new pajamas.
Any long-term economic benefit from these cuts failed to materialize. There was, for example, no measurable uptick in employment. Not even billionaires like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet wanted the money. “Really, we have enough already,” they said, but Congress and President Bush made them take more anyway. These silly rich people don’t even understand capitalism.
Second, the war in Afghanistan: Almost all Americans including me supported the president in the invasion of Afghanistan to annihilate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, once we had heard of the Taliban and what a bunch of medieval creeps they are. Ten years later, we’re still in the fight. These fighters are tougher than we thought. We should have asked the Russians.
And third,
The war in Iraq: A majority of Americans, not including me, supported the invasion, but then a majority also believed it was approved by the United Nations. Not to mention the whole WMD thing, but let’s not get bogged down in all that.
The really amazing thing about the Bush budget was that all of the expenditures for our two wars were off the books. They never showed as part of the annual budget. It would be like Mary and me saying all of our spending on horses, motorcycles was not included in our household budget. Things would feel pretty, pretty good until we got a note from the bank that we were overdrawn and now had a fifty dollar fine in addition to our empty savings account which used to have $127 dollars in it. This could cause us to seriously look at our spending on Brussels sprouts.
Maybe Obama’s recovery spending added to the deficit and maybe it didn’t. It saved a ton of jobs and almost certainly kept us out of a genuine depression. Lots of economists think he should have spent more, but I’m no economist, and neither are any of the Tea Partiers. At any rate, that spending is quickly phasing out and we’re even being paid back a lot of it from the banks and GM.
So if the tea party boys and girls want to seriously chop away at the deficit, they should go after the programs that caused it in the first place and that could make a significant difference in reducing it: bring the troops home from the longest wars in American history and end the Bush-era tax cuts, or at least reduce them at the highest income levels (exactly what Obama and congressional Democrats proposed for the current budget, but it was promptly shot down by the Republicans.)
In the meantime, I have to give Mary the bad news about the Brussels sprouts.
Friday, February 25, 2011
An island of sanity, sort of
No sooner had I finished writing my somewhat-critical overview of Arizona politics than I came across the headlines of the local Tucson paper: “Pima County wants to secede from state.” Pima County being Tucson and much of Southern Arizona, which is generally considered more liberal than Phoenix and the rest of the state.
I use the word “liberal” guardedly.
This is not something that will ever happen, but the effort is serious, with a number of local representatives and county officials saying they just can’t take it anymore. Actually, one said exactly that: “we can’t take it anymore.”
Politically, such a move is possible but in practical terms, it’s impossible. Still, it’s a good sign of sorts that significant numbers of people in Arizona agree with the rest of the country that Arizona has mostly lost its mind.
I use the word “liberal” guardedly.
This is not something that will ever happen, but the effort is serious, with a number of local representatives and county officials saying they just can’t take it anymore. Actually, one said exactly that: “we can’t take it anymore.”
Politically, such a move is possible but in practical terms, it’s impossible. Still, it’s a good sign of sorts that significant numbers of people in Arizona agree with the rest of the country that Arizona has mostly lost its mind.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Arizona Loco
If you’ve been following the House Republican Follies since the Tea Party takeover, you might be forgiven for thinking that Washington has become the new rabid-bat-crazy center of the political universe, but you’d be wrong. With so much competition coming from the federal level, Arizona has decided to ramp up its claims to being not yet ready for democracy with a flood of new legislation, all of which is aimed at anything but its hopelessly out-of-balance budget. Arizona legislators have apparently decided if they ignore it, the budget deficit will go away—or maybe they could just bury it in the Grand Canyon—but in the meantime, there are a lot of issues more important than a silly operating budget, such as:
In light of its recent mass-murder tragedy, it’s time to do something about Arizona’s ultra-liberal gun laws; we need to make them even more liberal, so one proposal, for example, would allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus. I wish I could have carried a gun when I was a faculty member because it would have cut short a lot of student griping about grades.
And if Arizona students or faculty stop in for a drink after a tough day in the classroom, they can also take their guns into the bar with them, as long as they are not legally intoxicated. In which case I don’t know what. I wouldn’t want to be the bar tender who had to tell someone he was now legally intoxicated and had to turn over any guns he might be carrying. Here in Arizona that might be considered a completely unreasonable request. But could you call me a cab?
Also, Arizona will always resist federal efforts to curtail their gun rights, so they’ve passed a resolution not to comply with new ATF regulations that would require gun dealers to report purchase of more than two assault weapons in a given week. Lots of legitimate gun owners might want to purchase assault weapons for all their friends and family at Christmas. They make great stocking stuffers.
ATF is upset because thousands of assault weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities in their war on drug cartels turn out to have been sold in US border states, with some buyers making purchases in the hundreds. Arizona, with full support from the NRA, says it won’t comply because such reporting would be burdensome on gun dealers.
But what about illegal aliens? It’s been literally a couple of months since Arizona did something to crack down on illegals, so now a new law says that any illegal alien stopped for any traffic violation at all will serve one month in jail for illegally driving in Arizona. Also, they lose their car, confiscated and sold to help reduce the budget deficit. (See, I was wrong about the lack of concern over the budget deficit.) And only then do they get sent back to Mexico.
I assume all illegals are sent to Mexico, even if they’re from, say, Iceland. Let the Mexicans sort it out.
More on illegal aliens: schools are now responsible to check the legal status of suspicious students, such as students who speak Spanish or English with a Spanish accent or have skin darker than Jimmie Smits. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that schools cannot deny an education to any students based on citizenship, Arizona assures us that this law is only intended as record keeping. Although school administrators who don’t report suspicious students to Immigration are committing a crime. Maybe they could lose their car.
Speaking of varmints, a new law now allows Arizonans to shoot varmints at night within city limits, because, of course, most varmints only come out at night so you can’t shoot them during the day. Varmints include skunks, jack rabbits, coyotes and raccoons and the like, although since coyotes are the single-best population control for jack rabbits, it’s unclear if you can shoot a coyote while it’s actually eating another varmint. But safety is always the first concern, so you can’t shoot varmints within ¼ mile of a residence. Which strikes me as a little overly restrictive because most people bring their kids in before dark anyway, so if it’s moving around the neighborhood after dark, it’s probably a varmint.
How about those darn abortions? If a woman wants an abortion for reasons of genocide, the doctor must refuse or go to jail without collecting his two-hundred dollars. Genocide by abortion would include, for example, having an abortion because you don’t like your embryo’s race or gender. So doctors I guess would have to ask “What race would your baby be if it actually became a baby?” and then if the woman said maybe “Chinese,” the doctor would have to say “And how do you feel about that?” and if the woman gave the wrong answer the doctor would have to tell her she would have to have the baby after all and maybe try to adopt it out to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But if she said she actually liked the Chinese, which is how she got pregnant in the first place, but still wanted the abortion, then that would be okay.
Speaking of babies, Arizona has repealed birth-right citizenship by declaring that babies born on American soil are no longer automatically American citizens, but only in Arizona I guess because the Constitution still confers birthright citizenship on anyone born on American soil, although lots of people don’t like that. Thus, you might be an American citizen in Texas, for example, but not in Arizona. Then, if you got caught speeding in Arizona, they could put you in jail and sell your car to lower the deficit and send you back to Mexico, even if you’re from Texas.
You can see how this would be a good deal for Arizona. But still, there are all these burdensome federal laws and regulations, so Arizona has now declared that it no longer has to abide by any federal dictates it finds to be unconstitutional. Is it just me, or does this amount to about ninety percent secession from the union?
Which brings me back to an idea I first expressed here some time ago, which is that states should be legally allowed to secede. At first I thought we could revisit the whole civil war thing, but now I can see it should be on a state-by-state basis. Where in the Constitution does is say you can’t decide you don’t want to be a state anymore? After two hundred years you still can't change your mind? This is like the worst ever cell phone plan. No one would stand for it.
Seriously, I think we’d all be better off if a few states like Arizona and Texas and Alaska could just drop out. Then all the tea partiers who don’t like it here any more could move to one of the new sovereign republics and the rest of us could get serious about everything else again.
Stupid idea? Let’s float it in the Arizona legislature.
In light of its recent mass-murder tragedy, it’s time to do something about Arizona’s ultra-liberal gun laws; we need to make them even more liberal, so one proposal, for example, would allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus. I wish I could have carried a gun when I was a faculty member because it would have cut short a lot of student griping about grades.
And if Arizona students or faculty stop in for a drink after a tough day in the classroom, they can also take their guns into the bar with them, as long as they are not legally intoxicated. In which case I don’t know what. I wouldn’t want to be the bar tender who had to tell someone he was now legally intoxicated and had to turn over any guns he might be carrying. Here in Arizona that might be considered a completely unreasonable request. But could you call me a cab?
Also, Arizona will always resist federal efforts to curtail their gun rights, so they’ve passed a resolution not to comply with new ATF regulations that would require gun dealers to report purchase of more than two assault weapons in a given week. Lots of legitimate gun owners might want to purchase assault weapons for all their friends and family at Christmas. They make great stocking stuffers.
ATF is upset because thousands of assault weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities in their war on drug cartels turn out to have been sold in US border states, with some buyers making purchases in the hundreds. Arizona, with full support from the NRA, says it won’t comply because such reporting would be burdensome on gun dealers.
But what about illegal aliens? It’s been literally a couple of months since Arizona did something to crack down on illegals, so now a new law says that any illegal alien stopped for any traffic violation at all will serve one month in jail for illegally driving in Arizona. Also, they lose their car, confiscated and sold to help reduce the budget deficit. (See, I was wrong about the lack of concern over the budget deficit.) And only then do they get sent back to Mexico.
I assume all illegals are sent to Mexico, even if they’re from, say, Iceland. Let the Mexicans sort it out.
More on illegal aliens: schools are now responsible to check the legal status of suspicious students, such as students who speak Spanish or English with a Spanish accent or have skin darker than Jimmie Smits. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that schools cannot deny an education to any students based on citizenship, Arizona assures us that this law is only intended as record keeping. Although school administrators who don’t report suspicious students to Immigration are committing a crime. Maybe they could lose their car.
Speaking of varmints, a new law now allows Arizonans to shoot varmints at night within city limits, because, of course, most varmints only come out at night so you can’t shoot them during the day. Varmints include skunks, jack rabbits, coyotes and raccoons and the like, although since coyotes are the single-best population control for jack rabbits, it’s unclear if you can shoot a coyote while it’s actually eating another varmint. But safety is always the first concern, so you can’t shoot varmints within ¼ mile of a residence. Which strikes me as a little overly restrictive because most people bring their kids in before dark anyway, so if it’s moving around the neighborhood after dark, it’s probably a varmint.
How about those darn abortions? If a woman wants an abortion for reasons of genocide, the doctor must refuse or go to jail without collecting his two-hundred dollars. Genocide by abortion would include, for example, having an abortion because you don’t like your embryo’s race or gender. So doctors I guess would have to ask “What race would your baby be if it actually became a baby?” and then if the woman said maybe “Chinese,” the doctor would have to say “And how do you feel about that?” and if the woman gave the wrong answer the doctor would have to tell her she would have to have the baby after all and maybe try to adopt it out to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But if she said she actually liked the Chinese, which is how she got pregnant in the first place, but still wanted the abortion, then that would be okay.
Speaking of babies, Arizona has repealed birth-right citizenship by declaring that babies born on American soil are no longer automatically American citizens, but only in Arizona I guess because the Constitution still confers birthright citizenship on anyone born on American soil, although lots of people don’t like that. Thus, you might be an American citizen in Texas, for example, but not in Arizona. Then, if you got caught speeding in Arizona, they could put you in jail and sell your car to lower the deficit and send you back to Mexico, even if you’re from Texas.
You can see how this would be a good deal for Arizona. But still, there are all these burdensome federal laws and regulations, so Arizona has now declared that it no longer has to abide by any federal dictates it finds to be unconstitutional. Is it just me, or does this amount to about ninety percent secession from the union?
Which brings me back to an idea I first expressed here some time ago, which is that states should be legally allowed to secede. At first I thought we could revisit the whole civil war thing, but now I can see it should be on a state-by-state basis. Where in the Constitution does is say you can’t decide you don’t want to be a state anymore? After two hundred years you still can't change your mind? This is like the worst ever cell phone plan. No one would stand for it.
Seriously, I think we’d all be better off if a few states like Arizona and Texas and Alaska could just drop out. Then all the tea partiers who don’t like it here any more could move to one of the new sovereign republics and the rest of us could get serious about everything else again.
Stupid idea? Let’s float it in the Arizona legislature.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Tucson Blues
Friday night, I had my second opportunity to see and hear Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in concert. I had high expectations and wasn’t disappointed.
Marsalis has won more awards, from Grammies to a Pulitzer Prize, than probably any other jazz musician living or dead, with the possible exception of Ellington. Opinion is divided among aficionados, though, about whether he warrants all the honors. I’ll just say that while he’s not my favorite musician, composer, or band leader, I’d never miss a chance to see him in a live performance. And the JLCO is comprised of fifteen of the finest musicians in jazz today, and together they put on a stunning performance of technical virtuosity and improvisational brilliance that leaves me dazzled and drained by the end of an evening.
The first time I saw them about two years ago, they performed a mix of jazz standards and a few compositions by different band members, but Friday night they only performed eight movements of Marsalis’ twelve-movement suite Vitoria, based on his experiences playing with various Basque musicians in Northern Spain. A Marsalis composition is generally very complex rhythmically and wickedly difficult to play, all the more impressive because he uses a lot of high-speed unison passages within his sections. I bought the CD set and have given it one listen. As always, a recording is a disappointment after a live performance, but I’ll give this one several chances. There are certainly lots of brilliant solos, even if the overall emotional effect can’t equal a live concert. And good CDs tend to grow on me, as they should.
Couple of interesting things: I saw the concert at the U of A concert hall in Tucson, where we’re camped in the desert a few miles out of town for all of February. We wanted to include a bit of an urban experience in our travels this year, and though a nice enough small city, so far Tucson hasn’t quite delivered on expectations. It’s no Portland (which is no San Francisco, which is no New York), but then Arizona is Arizona, and politically and culturally, it’s probably worse than you think.
The concert sold out, but I was surprised at the general age of the audience, which in and of itself constituted a drain on our already weakened Social Security System. Other jazz concerts I’ve been to have had a much more diverse audience. What’s wrong with the U of A student body? With small exceptions, this seems a decidedly less-than-hip college town. Basketball is big, though.
Another interesting note: I had dinner before the concert just outside the university main gate, and when I went outside onto the sidewalk, I was amazed to hear a very fine performance of Tuvan throat singing by two street musicians: a singer, also playing a guitar, accompanied by a young woman on cello. Talk about harmonic possibilities.
I had to leave for the concert but waited for them to finish a song so I could tell them how delighted I was to stumble on such an extraordinary thing in the streets of Tucson. I also bought their CD, which is nothing like I expected: either a very authentic folk music with which I am completely unfamiliar, or something very avant garde. Or both.
If you know even less about throat singing than I do, you can check out the entry on Wikipedia. Better yet, get a hold of the documentary film Genghis Blues about blind American blues singer Paul Pena, who discovered throat singing on a short wave radio and learned he had a knack for it. The film documents Pena’s trip to Southern Siberia to meet some of the native musicians and the warm welcome he received there. I got it from Netflix some time ago.
Finally: A total mix of weather here in Tucson in February: two nights in a row it got down to 17 degrees, and I thought we’d never left home.
Wind and rain. But mostly sunny and warm and wonderful on my old bones.
No snow here, but in the mountains around town a little.
Marsalis has won more awards, from Grammies to a Pulitzer Prize, than probably any other jazz musician living or dead, with the possible exception of Ellington. Opinion is divided among aficionados, though, about whether he warrants all the honors. I’ll just say that while he’s not my favorite musician, composer, or band leader, I’d never miss a chance to see him in a live performance. And the JLCO is comprised of fifteen of the finest musicians in jazz today, and together they put on a stunning performance of technical virtuosity and improvisational brilliance that leaves me dazzled and drained by the end of an evening.
The first time I saw them about two years ago, they performed a mix of jazz standards and a few compositions by different band members, but Friday night they only performed eight movements of Marsalis’ twelve-movement suite Vitoria, based on his experiences playing with various Basque musicians in Northern Spain. A Marsalis composition is generally very complex rhythmically and wickedly difficult to play, all the more impressive because he uses a lot of high-speed unison passages within his sections. I bought the CD set and have given it one listen. As always, a recording is a disappointment after a live performance, but I’ll give this one several chances. There are certainly lots of brilliant solos, even if the overall emotional effect can’t equal a live concert. And good CDs tend to grow on me, as they should.
Couple of interesting things: I saw the concert at the U of A concert hall in Tucson, where we’re camped in the desert a few miles out of town for all of February. We wanted to include a bit of an urban experience in our travels this year, and though a nice enough small city, so far Tucson hasn’t quite delivered on expectations. It’s no Portland (which is no San Francisco, which is no New York), but then Arizona is Arizona, and politically and culturally, it’s probably worse than you think.
The concert sold out, but I was surprised at the general age of the audience, which in and of itself constituted a drain on our already weakened Social Security System. Other jazz concerts I’ve been to have had a much more diverse audience. What’s wrong with the U of A student body? With small exceptions, this seems a decidedly less-than-hip college town. Basketball is big, though.
Another interesting note: I had dinner before the concert just outside the university main gate, and when I went outside onto the sidewalk, I was amazed to hear a very fine performance of Tuvan throat singing by two street musicians: a singer, also playing a guitar, accompanied by a young woman on cello. Talk about harmonic possibilities.
I had to leave for the concert but waited for them to finish a song so I could tell them how delighted I was to stumble on such an extraordinary thing in the streets of Tucson. I also bought their CD, which is nothing like I expected: either a very authentic folk music with which I am completely unfamiliar, or something very avant garde. Or both.
If you know even less about throat singing than I do, you can check out the entry on Wikipedia. Better yet, get a hold of the documentary film Genghis Blues about blind American blues singer Paul Pena, who discovered throat singing on a short wave radio and learned he had a knack for it. The film documents Pena’s trip to Southern Siberia to meet some of the native musicians and the warm welcome he received there. I got it from Netflix some time ago.
Finally: A total mix of weather here in Tucson in February: two nights in a row it got down to 17 degrees, and I thought we’d never left home.
Wind and rain. But mostly sunny and warm and wonderful on my old bones.
No snow here, but in the mountains around town a little.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Sixty-three
Sometime this week (I’m not sure what day this is), I celebrate my 63rd birthday. I don’t know what life stage this puts me in. We can quickly rule out young and old. I am not sixty-three-years young.
I am also not old. Petroglyphs are old. Coprolites are old. Catfish can live to be one-hundred.
I am, though, no longer middle-aged. I haven’t been middle-aged for some time now, which is good because I never liked middle-age.
This leaves a short list of euphemisms such as “senior,” which I reject, and active-retired, which isn’t too bad. In the end, though, I prefer to just think of myself as sixty–three and not worry about a general category. I’m sixty-three, which is a lot older than I ever expected to live to and which seemed ancient when I was only middle-aged. I think of sixty-three as the age at which, no matter what the question, the answer is always, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Physically, it’s not a great age to be but it could be a lot worse. Wait for sixty-four.
For the last few weeks, Mary has been asking me what I want for my birthday. I try to be spontaneous and genuine in my answers.
-A tommy gun.
I get the stare.
Seriously. Every real man wants a tommy gun. I’m not talking about some girly assault weapon, probably a 9mm that folds up to fit in your pocket and which here in Arizona is more popular than rattlesnake anti-venom. I’m thinking more of one of those fine old firearms gangsters used to shoot at The Untouchables, .45 caliber fully automatic lettuce shredders you can fire in extended bursts and yell manly things like, “Eat lead, Ness!”
It’s clear I’m not getting a tommy gun, so I give it a few more days thought, and when Mary asks again, I say, “a Jeep.” Mary recently invented the word “jeeping” to describe the off-road fun lots of people have out here in the desert. I may not approve of such activities but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want one for myself. We could jeep around together. Also, with a second tow vehicle I could bring down a motorcycle, which I’ve been missing. Lots of guys find ways to bring down a motorcycle for the winter, but our configuration of truck with a canopy and a travel trailer won’t allow it.
I can see right away that I’m not getting a Jeep either.
Finally we settle on a pretty good present, above the arbitrary and capricious limit of one-hundred dollars that Mary originally set, but less than a year in Mexico studying Spanish, which was my third wish: we agreed on a three-day rental of a Gold Wing. Last year I rented a big Harley tourer. Since I can’t have my own bike here, I decided each year I could rent some other bike I never would buy but which I’d like to have a chance to take out once before age-related vertigo makes it impossible to ride and I have to switch to a trike.
This year, it’s going to be a Gold Wing, the Honda luxo-tourer which weighs in at over eight-hundred pounds and is so comfortable it’s reputed to be better than a massage therapist. I noticed that if you rent for two days they throw in the third day free, which should allow me to cross the country and return without ever getting off except to pee. (See above.) Mary said that sounded like a pretty good present, the extra day which becomes two, and I said I thought so, too. About $150.
So sometime next week, right around my birthday, we’re moving down to Tucson where we’re going to stay for a full month in a funky little RV park we found last year, and I’ll call around and see what color Gold Wing I can find to rent. I’m thinking red like the Harley so I can make a fair comparison.
I’ll need something fun to cheer me up, because this sixty-three thing is kind of depressing me. I’m determined to age gracefully, but I don’t have to like it.
I am also not old. Petroglyphs are old. Coprolites are old. Catfish can live to be one-hundred.
I am, though, no longer middle-aged. I haven’t been middle-aged for some time now, which is good because I never liked middle-age.
This leaves a short list of euphemisms such as “senior,” which I reject, and active-retired, which isn’t too bad. In the end, though, I prefer to just think of myself as sixty–three and not worry about a general category. I’m sixty-three, which is a lot older than I ever expected to live to and which seemed ancient when I was only middle-aged. I think of sixty-three as the age at which, no matter what the question, the answer is always, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Physically, it’s not a great age to be but it could be a lot worse. Wait for sixty-four.
For the last few weeks, Mary has been asking me what I want for my birthday. I try to be spontaneous and genuine in my answers.
-A tommy gun.
I get the stare.
Seriously. Every real man wants a tommy gun. I’m not talking about some girly assault weapon, probably a 9mm that folds up to fit in your pocket and which here in Arizona is more popular than rattlesnake anti-venom. I’m thinking more of one of those fine old firearms gangsters used to shoot at The Untouchables, .45 caliber fully automatic lettuce shredders you can fire in extended bursts and yell manly things like, “Eat lead, Ness!”
It’s clear I’m not getting a tommy gun, so I give it a few more days thought, and when Mary asks again, I say, “a Jeep.” Mary recently invented the word “jeeping” to describe the off-road fun lots of people have out here in the desert. I may not approve of such activities but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want one for myself. We could jeep around together. Also, with a second tow vehicle I could bring down a motorcycle, which I’ve been missing. Lots of guys find ways to bring down a motorcycle for the winter, but our configuration of truck with a canopy and a travel trailer won’t allow it.
I can see right away that I’m not getting a Jeep either.
Finally we settle on a pretty good present, above the arbitrary and capricious limit of one-hundred dollars that Mary originally set, but less than a year in Mexico studying Spanish, which was my third wish: we agreed on a three-day rental of a Gold Wing. Last year I rented a big Harley tourer. Since I can’t have my own bike here, I decided each year I could rent some other bike I never would buy but which I’d like to have a chance to take out once before age-related vertigo makes it impossible to ride and I have to switch to a trike.
This year, it’s going to be a Gold Wing, the Honda luxo-tourer which weighs in at over eight-hundred pounds and is so comfortable it’s reputed to be better than a massage therapist. I noticed that if you rent for two days they throw in the third day free, which should allow me to cross the country and return without ever getting off except to pee. (See above.) Mary said that sounded like a pretty good present, the extra day which becomes two, and I said I thought so, too. About $150.
So sometime next week, right around my birthday, we’re moving down to Tucson where we’re going to stay for a full month in a funky little RV park we found last year, and I’ll call around and see what color Gold Wing I can find to rent. I’m thinking red like the Harley so I can make a fair comparison.
I’ll need something fun to cheer me up, because this sixty-three thing is kind of depressing me. I’m determined to age gracefully, but I don’t have to like it.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Anza-Borrego
For the most part so far, our trip has been distinguished by bad weather, or rather, probably normal weather which has often been less than pleasant. We left Klamath Falls in bitter cold and with a foot or so of standing snow on the ground. We had to have a tractor tow our truck and trailer out onto bare gravel so we could even get under way.
We had heavy rain our first two nights at Shasta Dam. When we got to Mount Madonna County Park in the redwoods between Gilroy and Watsonville it was raining again and wet and densely foggy when it wasn’t raining. In fact, so much water was incessantly dripping off the trees.
After two days of driving, we finally arrived at Anza Borrego Desert State Park in the California desert east of San Diego. It was a beautiful desert after noon as we were setting up, but in the late after noon, a wind came up that hit us without warning as if we’d stepped in front of a train. The wind lasted three days, strong enough rock the trailer and make it difficult to open and close the door. The noise was intense, and after hours and days of it, it felt like the trailer was being ripped apart.
In fact, only minor damage was done. I’d estimate the wind at about forty miles per hour, not that much in the comfort of your home, but in the trailer we began to feel we were adrift in a small boat. And three days of it. It left us ragged, right up to the moment just before bed last night when it suddenly stopped like a switch had been thrown. This morning I was up at dawn for the usual spectacular desert sunrise, and at the moment, I’m outside with the laptop and thinking it’s time to go back in for a few minutes to make a second cup of coffee.
Despite the initial difficult weather, we’re happy to be back on the road. We’re camping on private land about five miles outside of Borrego Springs, surrounded by mountains on three sides. There are about a dozen RVs out here, spread out over maybe a square mile. Our closest neighbor is over a hundred yards away, a nice guy from Idaho staying by himself in a small older trailer. Behind him sits Larry in his truck. Larry is one of the odd fellows you expect to meet in the desert. After him sitting up there for two days, never leaving the cab that I had noticed, I went up and introduced myself. Larry lost his mother and the apartment they shared about eight months ago, and he’s been living on the road since then, sleeping in the cab of his truck since he doesn’t even have a canopy on it. He talked for some time and twice mentioned suicide—in rather graphic detail involving a .45 caliber pistol—but I told him it would be a better idea to get a canopy so he’d have a more comfortable place to sleep and see how he feels then.
I’m worried about the guy but there’s nothing I can do for him.
We’re getting to know the wildlife. We were sitting outside our first afternoon here and had to lift our feet up to let a tarantula walk by. Brazen coyotes call to each other and hunt kangaroo rats just a few yards from our trailer. We have to be careful with our dogs, small dogs being a coyote’s favorite food. Rats are gamey, and rabbits are tough and stringy, and not that easy to catch.
If you look on Google Earth, you can see us here: N33.17.915; W116.17.011. Or not. I’m not sure how often the photos are updated and it’s been cloudy, but that’s where we are, and you should be able to get a feel for the terrain and see some widely scattered trailers, ours possibly being one of them.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
The Great Escape
Winter came early to the Klamath Basin this year, with record low temperatures and heavy snow in late November. We had sub-zero temperatures and plenty of packed snow and ice on the roads. The prospects for getting out of town with our trailer weren’t looking good any time soon. Finally, on December 2nd, we had a break in the weather; we finished packing and prepping the trailer, grabbed the dogs, and, like last year, made a break for it. And like last year, as soon as we got out of town, the weather improved considerably. Still, we were in Redding at a modest RV park waiting out a heavy rain and taking an extra day to organize things.
This roadside RV park is just one piece of evidenceof how bad the economy is. More and more, parks that used to cater to travelers have converted to mobile home parks that accommodate full-time residents, mostly in old trailers and beater cars and trucks. Pit bulls are the pet of choice. This park was still well-cared for, but with fewer travelers on the road and plenty of people looking for the cheapest place to live where they can still stay warm and dry and cook their own food, many RV parks make for a vivid snapshot of how real people are being affected by the economic downturn. Once again, Mary and I feel lucky to enjoy our good fortune and glad that we can be out there spreading our limited bounty around.
After we left Redding we drove down to Mt. Madonna county park in the coastal mountains between Gilroy and Watsonville. I’ve stayed at Mt. Madonna several times when I’ve come down for the Moto-GP races at Laguna Seca, and it’s a nice little park, situated in mixed redwood and oak trees. In the summer, it’s full of families enjoying the cool setting above the heat of the valley to the east and the persistent fog along the coast. In the winter, as is often the case, we have the campground to ourselves. With improving weather coming over the next week, we plan to enjoy some of the hiking trails and dramatic views of Monterey Bay. We’ll also visit some old friends in Santa Cruz and some of Mary’s family in San Jose. Then it’s on to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in SoCal just above the Mexican border.
I don’t really consider our winter travels to have begun until we actually get down to the desert.
Btw, as I’m writing this I’m sitting in the customer lounge of the Watsonville Dodge dealer while I have the truck transmission serviced. When we started up the long hill into the campground, I remembered from my motorcycle trips how steep and winding the road is. Of course, it’s a quick zip up on a bike, but pulling our 9000-pound trailer, even our Dodge Cummins Diesel bogged down to the point I was only holding at five miles per hour and not at all confident we would make it to the top. Had I thought about it, I would have shifted down to 4WD low, but I wasn’t about to stop and try to make the shift on that hill.
We finally made the top with the red transmission light on and the smell of overheated fluid. The light went out just like it should as soon as I pulled over and let the truck idle in neutral for a minute, but to be on the safe side, I’m laying out $300 dollars to tune up the tranny. Just one more opportunity to make a little contribution to the local economy.
(Oops: make that $350. The service tech just told me the transmission fluid looked a little dark from over-heating, so they're going to do a complete flush. If I stay around much longer, they'll sell me a new truck.)
This roadside RV park is just one piece of evidenceof how bad the economy is. More and more, parks that used to cater to travelers have converted to mobile home parks that accommodate full-time residents, mostly in old trailers and beater cars and trucks. Pit bulls are the pet of choice. This park was still well-cared for, but with fewer travelers on the road and plenty of people looking for the cheapest place to live where they can still stay warm and dry and cook their own food, many RV parks make for a vivid snapshot of how real people are being affected by the economic downturn. Once again, Mary and I feel lucky to enjoy our good fortune and glad that we can be out there spreading our limited bounty around.
After we left Redding we drove down to Mt. Madonna county park in the coastal mountains between Gilroy and Watsonville. I’ve stayed at Mt. Madonna several times when I’ve come down for the Moto-GP races at Laguna Seca, and it’s a nice little park, situated in mixed redwood and oak trees. In the summer, it’s full of families enjoying the cool setting above the heat of the valley to the east and the persistent fog along the coast. In the winter, as is often the case, we have the campground to ourselves. With improving weather coming over the next week, we plan to enjoy some of the hiking trails and dramatic views of Monterey Bay. We’ll also visit some old friends in Santa Cruz and some of Mary’s family in San Jose. Then it’s on to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in SoCal just above the Mexican border.
I don’t really consider our winter travels to have begun until we actually get down to the desert.
Btw, as I’m writing this I’m sitting in the customer lounge of the Watsonville Dodge dealer while I have the truck transmission serviced. When we started up the long hill into the campground, I remembered from my motorcycle trips how steep and winding the road is. Of course, it’s a quick zip up on a bike, but pulling our 9000-pound trailer, even our Dodge Cummins Diesel bogged down to the point I was only holding at five miles per hour and not at all confident we would make it to the top. Had I thought about it, I would have shifted down to 4WD low, but I wasn’t about to stop and try to make the shift on that hill.
We finally made the top with the red transmission light on and the smell of overheated fluid. The light went out just like it should as soon as I pulled over and let the truck idle in neutral for a minute, but to be on the safe side, I’m laying out $300 dollars to tune up the tranny. Just one more opportunity to make a little contribution to the local economy.
(Oops: make that $350. The service tech just told me the transmission fluid looked a little dark from over-heating, so they're going to do a complete flush. If I stay around much longer, they'll sell me a new truck.)
Friday, December 03, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
God of Winter and the North Wind
Last year, Mary and I planned to leave for our Southwest winter safari on December 15th. It seemed a safe bet since even if we got some snow before then, it usually doesn’t start to stay on the roads until sometime in January. Not that you can’t pull a trailer over a snowy pass—big-rig drivers do it all the time—but given a choice, I prefer bare and dry, even with our itsy-bitsy 10,000-pound trailer.
Of course, you can always chain up, but no real man would ever willingly chain up no matter what the conditions. I’d rather ask directions.
But winter surprised us with a series of early storms arriving back to back. I had the trailer at the house and the truck and trailer chained up, if only to get down our steep hill to the highways. But then we saw a brief break in the weather on December 12th, not anticipated in the forecasts, so we threw the dogs in the truck, took off the chains, and made a run for it. It was windy going around Mt. Shasta before we got to I-5, raining and the temperature only 34 degrees, but we had only wet pavement and made it out of the mountains on I-5 without incident and only moderately sweaty palms.
So this year we decided to get an even earlier start and leave December 8th to be safe, but again, Boreas surprises us with his early arrival, and we’re looking out the window at conditions like those in the picture. Nuts.
So it looks now like our best shot is tomorrow, the 2nd, with more snow in the forecast but daytime temperature forecast to rise to 38. By afternoon, there’s a good chance the pass will be clear down to Weed and I-5. (For some reason, highway 97 to Weed is often clear when 140 to Medford has packed snow and ice, despite them both being at about the same elevation, 5500 feet.)
If we don’t get out tomorrow, the forecast is back to more snow and temperatures at or below freezing. We might have to wait who knows how long, and I might even have to chain up.
Dammit. I’m thinking next year, November 15th.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Vexed!
George Will has found another indication that—well, here he quotes Bill Buckley, who was inconvenienced one day by having to endure a train commute during which he suffered a long delay:
“Buckley, who was gifted at discerning the metaphysical significance of the quotidian, thought that he saw civilization tottering on its pedestal. He was not mistaken:
‘It isn't just the commuters, whom we have come to visualize as a supine breed who have got onto the trick of suspending their sensory faculties twice a day [they probably read a book or the newspaper] while they submit to the creeping dissolution of the railroad industry. It isn't just they who have given up trying to rectify irrational vexation. It is the American people everywhere.’”
Okay, a long delay on the train is now civilization tottering on its pedestal. What would George or Bill have done to rectify these irrational vexations? Would they have lobbied the government to invest more money in infrastructure? Insist that government get completely out of the mass transportation business so it can be privatized and run more efficiently by private enterprise? Buy a helicopter (the latter probably being the only real solution to this problem and available only to the super-rich, so I’m going with 3)?
George doesn’t say. He just knows he’s vexed.
Of course, George is writing today about the invasive new pat-down procedures at airports for those who refuse to go through the full body scan which allows screeners to see through our clothes.
First of all I’d like to say, it’s finally arrived! The x-ray glasses that allow me to see through people’s clothes, advertized in all the comic books and reputable periodicals like Mad Magazines I read as a kid, are here! Oh, how I dreamed of being able to look through the clothes of all my little female classmates in junior high school. (In grammar school I was still dreaming mostly about a new bike. In high school, well, in high school my sexual fantasies had evolved in directions I’m not yet prepared to discuss publically.)
Me, I can’t say about the pat downs. Apparently the threat of carrying on explosive devices taped to your penis or hidden in a lady’s butt crack is real, so the TSA is doing what it thinks necessary to keep us safe. Let’s face it: if someone gets through and brings down a plane, it won’t be a sign of civilization tottering, it will be just one more example of the monumental incompetence of the Obama administration. Remember, Bush kept us safe, at least if you’re not in the military serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, and he did it through a few noninvasive ways such as tapping our phones, screening our email, and waterboarding the occasional actual suspect.
The solution to the airport vexation, though, is obvious in three parts: get in the boarding line and either walk through the scanner or let some stranger of the same sex (damn it!) pat you down; turn around and walk away from the security checkpoint and stay home for Thanksgiving; or charter your own plane.
Again, for George, I’m going for 3. I'm staying home anyway.
For another perspective on the subject, Kathleen Parker today is more amusing and instructive than Will while being far less popinjay. And I'm with her, really. I'd rather fly and assume the small risk that another passenger has mastered the technology challenge of the TNT butt plug than have a complete stranger with no medical training check me for hernias and prostate cancer (although I can get a note from my doctor testifying that both have been remedied.)
But that's the trade off, and interestingly, the same people who found the Bush-era concessions to security to be reasonable and necessary find the same errors on the side of safety to be excessive under Obama. Something about black men with Muslim names wanting to put their hands on our white women, I suppose.
“Buckley, who was gifted at discerning the metaphysical significance of the quotidian, thought that he saw civilization tottering on its pedestal. He was not mistaken:
‘It isn't just the commuters, whom we have come to visualize as a supine breed who have got onto the trick of suspending their sensory faculties twice a day [they probably read a book or the newspaper] while they submit to the creeping dissolution of the railroad industry. It isn't just they who have given up trying to rectify irrational vexation. It is the American people everywhere.’”
Okay, a long delay on the train is now civilization tottering on its pedestal. What would George or Bill have done to rectify these irrational vexations? Would they have lobbied the government to invest more money in infrastructure? Insist that government get completely out of the mass transportation business so it can be privatized and run more efficiently by private enterprise? Buy a helicopter (the latter probably being the only real solution to this problem and available only to the super-rich, so I’m going with 3)?
George doesn’t say. He just knows he’s vexed.
Of course, George is writing today about the invasive new pat-down procedures at airports for those who refuse to go through the full body scan which allows screeners to see through our clothes.
First of all I’d like to say, it’s finally arrived! The x-ray glasses that allow me to see through people’s clothes, advertized in all the comic books and reputable periodicals like Mad Magazines I read as a kid, are here! Oh, how I dreamed of being able to look through the clothes of all my little female classmates in junior high school. (In grammar school I was still dreaming mostly about a new bike. In high school, well, in high school my sexual fantasies had evolved in directions I’m not yet prepared to discuss publically.)
Me, I can’t say about the pat downs. Apparently the threat of carrying on explosive devices taped to your penis or hidden in a lady’s butt crack is real, so the TSA is doing what it thinks necessary to keep us safe. Let’s face it: if someone gets through and brings down a plane, it won’t be a sign of civilization tottering, it will be just one more example of the monumental incompetence of the Obama administration. Remember, Bush kept us safe, at least if you’re not in the military serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, and he did it through a few noninvasive ways such as tapping our phones, screening our email, and waterboarding the occasional actual suspect.
The solution to the airport vexation, though, is obvious in three parts: get in the boarding line and either walk through the scanner or let some stranger of the same sex (damn it!) pat you down; turn around and walk away from the security checkpoint and stay home for Thanksgiving; or charter your own plane.
Again, for George, I’m going for 3. I'm staying home anyway.
For another perspective on the subject, Kathleen Parker today is more amusing and instructive than Will while being far less popinjay. And I'm with her, really. I'd rather fly and assume the small risk that another passenger has mastered the technology challenge of the TNT butt plug than have a complete stranger with no medical training check me for hernias and prostate cancer (although I can get a note from my doctor testifying that both have been remedied.)
But that's the trade off, and interestingly, the same people who found the Bush-era concessions to security to be reasonable and necessary find the same errors on the side of safety to be excessive under Obama. Something about black men with Muslim names wanting to put their hands on our white women, I suppose.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tweet
I used to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy on PBS when his show was on in the 90s. I don’t even like science, but his delivery was so entertaining that I didn’t care if the subject was asexual reproduction in newts or the birth of black holes, between which there is probably some connection. I even taped several episodes and took them with me when I went to Japan to teach English, expecting that Japanese students would think he was as funny as I did.
They didn’t.
So it was interesting to read just now that he still does public appearances and speeches at colleges. Yesterday he was speaking to an audience of hundreds at USC when he collapsed at the podium. He made it to his feet and even joked about it a little before he collapsed again.
The most interesting part of the story to me was that one student reported nobody went to his aid because they were all busy posting tweets about what was happening: “Hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy just died!” Except it probably looked like, “BN SciGuy xxx!” I don’t actually speak tweet.
Thus does the next generation confuse digital life for what we used to call real life. Imagine what George Will would say since he first said that digital watches marked the end of civilization. Then it was the designated hitter rule. Then blue jeans. Most recently John Stewart calling Barack Obama “Dude.”
No report yet on how Bill’s doing. Can’t we get a tweet from somebody in the hospital?
They didn’t.
So it was interesting to read just now that he still does public appearances and speeches at colleges. Yesterday he was speaking to an audience of hundreds at USC when he collapsed at the podium. He made it to his feet and even joked about it a little before he collapsed again.
The most interesting part of the story to me was that one student reported nobody went to his aid because they were all busy posting tweets about what was happening: “Hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy just died!” Except it probably looked like, “BN SciGuy xxx!” I don’t actually speak tweet.
Thus does the next generation confuse digital life for what we used to call real life. Imagine what George Will would say since he first said that digital watches marked the end of civilization. Then it was the designated hitter rule. Then blue jeans. Most recently John Stewart calling Barack Obama “Dude.”
No report yet on how Bill’s doing. Can’t we get a tweet from somebody in the hospital?
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
And he died in a fiery crash. . . .
My friend Broschat [ http://www.michaelbroschat.com/MontlakeBlog/ ] is buying a new Miata after fifteen years without a car. This is not a midlife crisis since we’re neither of us midlife anymore, (we're more like “zesty sexagenarians”: I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a sexagenarian?) And why put a negative spin like “midlife crisis” on a spontaneous exaltation of the life force? Not that anybody has, but just in case.
The second comment to his blog announcement, though, while well-meaning I’m sure, is exactly the kind of response I often if not usually get when I mention that I ride a motorcycle: “I think the closest I ever came to dying in a car [his respondee responds] was in a Sprite when I was 16. I wasn't driving. The throttle stuck and we went over the edge of a road with a 5' drop off. We ended up on top of and in line with a stone fence that was below the drop off. If the car had rolled we would have had our heads driven into the ground.”
People can’t seem to not make statements like this about motorcycles and apparently sports cars. It’s a curious, almost instinctive response. If I say I take frequent showers, nobody ever responds that showers are one of the most dangerous things you can do in your home. If I say I have to get out my ladder and clear out the rain gutters, no one asks if this scares me more than the thought of a home invasion by Islamic terrorists looking for evidence that I eat pork and read Salmon Rushdie. (Yes and no.)
So I just say something like, “I try to be careful.” I’m very superstitious, so I would never mention that I’ve ridden since I was seventeen without an accident or injury, which wouldn’t be exactly true anyway but too complicated to explain further. (Knock on wood.)
I don’t mention that my wife rides horses and has had numerous accidents, one serious enough to put her in a hospital and wheelchair, followed by months in a cast and on crutches. But no one ever says to her, “Oh, horses are so dangerous. My husband has been in a coma for eight years, ever since he fell off his horse and hit his head on a fence post.”
I never point out that when these folks pick the kids up in the minivan after school and drive them to karate lessons, they’re risking the whole family’s life and are at far greater risk of calamity than I am on my motorcycle. Not mile for mile, but over the course of their lives. Yet I think almost no one puts their kids in the car with a sense of impending doom. They’re more like, “I hope nobody says “Happy Meal” before we get to karate lessons."
Not to mention karate lessons.
None of these fatalistic responses to riding bothers me particularly; I just find them peculiar. But I would like the world to know that if I get squashed like a bug under the wheels of an eighteen-wheeler, I’d rather it happen on two wheels than four. And that I consider horses to be four-legged killing machines, secret carnivores that will run you into the low branches of a juniper tree and feed on your broken corpse until the paramedics arrive, but I’m glad my wife rides and has so passionately enjoyed it these several decades. And I hope Broschat loves his Miata to death (I could have chosen a better expression here) and drives it safely without a scratch on either it or himself for a long as he can still pass the vision test when he renews his license.
But if the unthinkable should happen, I’ll feel better on learning that he was out driving a little too fast on a beautiful spring day with the top dangerously down, rather than getting jostled on the Metro platform and pushed in front of a train. Also, I’ll hope he was with a beautiful woman, no older than forty-two, and miraculously uninjured.
Now rock climbers, though, those people are fucking nuts.
The second comment to his blog announcement, though, while well-meaning I’m sure, is exactly the kind of response I often if not usually get when I mention that I ride a motorcycle: “I think the closest I ever came to dying in a car [his respondee responds] was in a Sprite when I was 16. I wasn't driving. The throttle stuck and we went over the edge of a road with a 5' drop off. We ended up on top of and in line with a stone fence that was below the drop off. If the car had rolled we would have had our heads driven into the ground.”
People can’t seem to not make statements like this about motorcycles and apparently sports cars. It’s a curious, almost instinctive response. If I say I take frequent showers, nobody ever responds that showers are one of the most dangerous things you can do in your home. If I say I have to get out my ladder and clear out the rain gutters, no one asks if this scares me more than the thought of a home invasion by Islamic terrorists looking for evidence that I eat pork and read Salmon Rushdie. (Yes and no.)
So I just say something like, “I try to be careful.” I’m very superstitious, so I would never mention that I’ve ridden since I was seventeen without an accident or injury, which wouldn’t be exactly true anyway but too complicated to explain further. (Knock on wood.)
I don’t mention that my wife rides horses and has had numerous accidents, one serious enough to put her in a hospital and wheelchair, followed by months in a cast and on crutches. But no one ever says to her, “Oh, horses are so dangerous. My husband has been in a coma for eight years, ever since he fell off his horse and hit his head on a fence post.”
I never point out that when these folks pick the kids up in the minivan after school and drive them to karate lessons, they’re risking the whole family’s life and are at far greater risk of calamity than I am on my motorcycle. Not mile for mile, but over the course of their lives. Yet I think almost no one puts their kids in the car with a sense of impending doom. They’re more like, “I hope nobody says “Happy Meal” before we get to karate lessons."
Not to mention karate lessons.
None of these fatalistic responses to riding bothers me particularly; I just find them peculiar. But I would like the world to know that if I get squashed like a bug under the wheels of an eighteen-wheeler, I’d rather it happen on two wheels than four. And that I consider horses to be four-legged killing machines, secret carnivores that will run you into the low branches of a juniper tree and feed on your broken corpse until the paramedics arrive, but I’m glad my wife rides and has so passionately enjoyed it these several decades. And I hope Broschat loves his Miata to death (I could have chosen a better expression here) and drives it safely without a scratch on either it or himself for a long as he can still pass the vision test when he renews his license.
But if the unthinkable should happen, I’ll feel better on learning that he was out driving a little too fast on a beautiful spring day with the top dangerously down, rather than getting jostled on the Metro platform and pushed in front of a train. Also, I’ll hope he was with a beautiful woman, no older than forty-two, and miraculously uninjured.
Now rock climbers, though, those people are fucking nuts.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
No comment
I have nothing to say about last Tuesday’s election. Nothing.
It’s all been said by the zillion pundits of the many media, including the blogosphere, and since I’m just a freelance pundit, I don’t feel a need to jump in.
Not one word.
(Bunch of assholes.)
It’s all been said by the zillion pundits of the many media, including the blogosphere, and since I’m just a freelance pundit, I don’t feel a need to jump in.
Not one word.
(Bunch of assholes.)
Friday, October 29, 2010
??!!
Back when I taught writing, I told my students to avoid nine out of ten of their rhetorical questions. They get annoying, don't they?
Also, give yourselves ten exclamation points for the rest of your life and use them wisely. Don't use them all up in your next paper! Never be wasteful and use two in the same sentence!!
So I don't know what's come over me. I need to take an oath. I need to get myself into rehab!
Also, give yourselves ten exclamation points for the rest of your life and use them wisely. Don't use them all up in your next paper! Never be wasteful and use two in the same sentence!!
So I don't know what's come over me. I need to take an oath. I need to get myself into rehab!
Lazy blogging
I try not to post too many links to other stuff on the Web. People can find their own stuff on the Web. My job--which I take on with the utmost seriousness--is to publish my own content and make it available to my fanbase in an easily accessible format. Letters to the editor, I can't even get one for ten into the
Oregonian.
But here's a particularly good piece on immigration, which I mentioned in my last post some eight minutes ago.
My comments to Shumacher-Matos, other than you really have to do something about your name:
"My god! a rational critique of immigration policies, complete with concrete suggestions for workable solutions? Are you mad?
And then what would you do about all the Martians? Amnesty for Martians, too?"
Decide for yourselves here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102803904.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Oregonian.
But here's a particularly good piece on immigration, which I mentioned in my last post some eight minutes ago.
My comments to Shumacher-Matos, other than you really have to do something about your name:
"My god! a rational critique of immigration policies, complete with concrete suggestions for workable solutions? Are you mad?
And then what would you do about all the Martians? Amnesty for Martians, too?"
Decide for yourselves here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102803904.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
The blur
Mary and I thought Barack did a terrific job on John Stewart last night: assertive about his accomplishments without being strident. Confident. Relaxed. Engaging. I think he knocked the ball out of the park with one of his core constituencies that need to be knocked on the head: younger voters.
I'd read two reviews of the interview before I even saw it. One was critical, saying the president lowered himself by appearing on a comedy show and sneering that Stewart actually called him Dude at one point. The other said mostly what I said above, but took his alloted 500 words to say it. I'm guessing the reviews pretty much reflected the author's previous attitudes.
Mary and I were talking about how unable Republicans and conservatives in general are to say anything the least positive about Obama. I absolutely can't stand George Bush, but we both recalled that we thought he put forward a very good plan for immigration reform. If anybody had bothered to ask, we would have had no problem saying so at the time.
I also thought he was unusually good at clearing brush for a president, and I wasn't afraid to say so. For a Texan, though, he looked decidely uncomfortable on a horse.
A large majority of Democrats worked with him on getting immigration reforms passed, but they were defeated by his own party. These days, though, it's political suicide for a sitting Republican to say anything remotely in agreement with Obama. Even some Democrats are running on how much they opposed his initiatives. I can only hope people will grow out of this all-or-nothing politics and get back to an era when cooperation and comity were considered to be virtues, not vices.
In any case, as the blur of the last four days before the election gets more and more crazy, Mary and I are heading out for a few days in our new trailer. (Built in Oregon and bought in Klamath Falls: once again, we're doing our part for the recovery, but do we get a huge tax break? No. Damn you Top Two Percent!!)
I'm glad we'll be missing out on all the news and commentary, though I'll miss the ongoing coverage of the various Tea Party crazies: Christine O'Donnel! Who needs parody?
When we get back, it will all be over but the year or so of post-election parsing. Then we can start the campaigns for the next election, including the presidential. Sarah Palin says she's in unless someone else wants it. Hell, make that two of us.
Can't wait.
(Eugene Robinson is very good today:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102805899.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
)
I'd read two reviews of the interview before I even saw it. One was critical, saying the president lowered himself by appearing on a comedy show and sneering that Stewart actually called him Dude at one point. The other said mostly what I said above, but took his alloted 500 words to say it. I'm guessing the reviews pretty much reflected the author's previous attitudes.
Mary and I were talking about how unable Republicans and conservatives in general are to say anything the least positive about Obama. I absolutely can't stand George Bush, but we both recalled that we thought he put forward a very good plan for immigration reform. If anybody had bothered to ask, we would have had no problem saying so at the time.
I also thought he was unusually good at clearing brush for a president, and I wasn't afraid to say so. For a Texan, though, he looked decidely uncomfortable on a horse.
A large majority of Democrats worked with him on getting immigration reforms passed, but they were defeated by his own party. These days, though, it's political suicide for a sitting Republican to say anything remotely in agreement with Obama. Even some Democrats are running on how much they opposed his initiatives. I can only hope people will grow out of this all-or-nothing politics and get back to an era when cooperation and comity were considered to be virtues, not vices.
In any case, as the blur of the last four days before the election gets more and more crazy, Mary and I are heading out for a few days in our new trailer. (Built in Oregon and bought in Klamath Falls: once again, we're doing our part for the recovery, but do we get a huge tax break? No. Damn you Top Two Percent!!)
I'm glad we'll be missing out on all the news and commentary, though I'll miss the ongoing coverage of the various Tea Party crazies: Christine O'Donnel! Who needs parody?
When we get back, it will all be over but the year or so of post-election parsing. Then we can start the campaigns for the next election, including the presidential. Sarah Palin says she's in unless someone else wants it. Hell, make that two of us.
Can't wait.
(Eugene Robinson is very good today:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102805899.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
)
Friday, October 08, 2010
Why Dinesh D' Sousa is a neo-colonialist
Talk about irony: Dinesh D’Sousa accuses President Obama of being anti-colonialist, his evidence being that Obama’s father was an anti-colonialist from Kenya. Never mind that Obama’s father deserted the family when he was two. In his autobiographical Dreams from My Father, Obama writes, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself."
There you go.
Also, Obama's father wrote an article defending socialism.
We knew it all the time.
The result, says D’Sousa, is a president who evidences all the basic attitudes of the socialist anti-colonialst: “Do the views of the senior Obama help clarify what the junior Obama is doing in the Oval Office? Let's begin with President Obama, who routinely castigates investment banks and large corporations, accusing them of greed and exploitation. Obama's policies have established the heavy hand of government control over Wall Street and the health-care, auto and energy industries.”
Also, he wants to raise taxes on the rich.
Those of us not in the know might have confused these policies and attitudes with those of, say, a moderate Democrat coming to the presidency in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression—let’s call it the Pretty Good Recession—brought on in large part by the greed and lack of regulation on Wall Street. How this amounts to anti-colonialism, D’Sousa does not quite make clear.
I think the more interesting question is why, since he clearly opposes everything Obama believes and does, D’Sousa is such an advocate for colonialism, an –ism that pretty much died out in the mid-last-century when Britain and France lost the fight in places like Kenya and Algeria. The answer lies in the small italicized print at the bottom of his column in today’s Washington Post: “Dinesh D'Souza is president of King's College in New York City.”
King's College! Talk about a smoking scepter.
Also, let’s just ask ourselves how a native of India got the name “of Sousa” if he was not named for the famous composer of rousing pro-colonialist marches such as “The Stars and Stripes Forever”?
Coincidence? I think not. There's your irony.
If one of my students back in freshman comp had handed in an essay as logically weak-kneed as D’Sousa’s, I’d have required a rewrite that goes beyond Superman-scaled leaps of reason based on five or more of the logical fallacies covered in our textbook. In fact, I used to use D’Sousa himself as a good example of bad reasoning from a few crumbs of evidence found on the floor since his essay criticizing Rigoberta Menchu's’ book I, Rigoberta was the first selection in the anthology I used for the class.
Menchu, an indigenous Guatemalan, had written a book detailing some of the horrific crimes committed by the Guatemalan government during that county’s civil war from 1960-1996. American anthrolopoigist David Stoll discovered that a few of the claims in the book were dubious since, for example, Menchu said she never went to school when in fact she had finished 8th grade.
As it turned out, most of Stoll’s charges proved to be false, although Menchu did acknowledge that she fudged a little and included a few experiences of her brothers and sisters, a crime never equaled in the long tradition of “nothing but the facts, Mam” truthiness to be found in all previous autobiography.
D’Sousa regurgitated the claims of Stoll and wrote an essay claiming Menchu was a fraud and therefore none of the terrible things she said about the Guatemalan army were true. That’s why it were no crime that the U.S. trained and supported the Guatemalan army. The whole thing, D’Sousa said, was a cleverly constructed fantasy designed to discredit the U.S. and its wholly owned subsidiary, the United Fruit Company.
When the dispute was submitted to an independent fact-finding agency, it ruled in favor of Rigoberta and gave her the Nobel Peach Prize.
Wait. Typo. “Nobel Peace Prize.”
D’Sousa’s current essay first appeared as the cover story in Fortune magazine and was instantly trounced by just about everybody but Christine O’Donnell for its self-levitated reasoning, so apparently D’ thought he had to defend himself by saying the same thing all over again in a brief column that even the liberals over at the Post could understand.
Anyway, since I'm also named after my father, you’re probably wondering what clues can be discovered about my own anti-colonial bias. Here’s your answer:
"Ross
Gender: Male
Origin: Latin
Meaning: Red Rose"
Red rose!
There you go.
Also, Obama's father wrote an article defending socialism.
We knew it all the time.
The result, says D’Sousa, is a president who evidences all the basic attitudes of the socialist anti-colonialst: “Do the views of the senior Obama help clarify what the junior Obama is doing in the Oval Office? Let's begin with President Obama, who routinely castigates investment banks and large corporations, accusing them of greed and exploitation. Obama's policies have established the heavy hand of government control over Wall Street and the health-care, auto and energy industries.”
Also, he wants to raise taxes on the rich.
Those of us not in the know might have confused these policies and attitudes with those of, say, a moderate Democrat coming to the presidency in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression—let’s call it the Pretty Good Recession—brought on in large part by the greed and lack of regulation on Wall Street. How this amounts to anti-colonialism, D’Sousa does not quite make clear.
I think the more interesting question is why, since he clearly opposes everything Obama believes and does, D’Sousa is such an advocate for colonialism, an –ism that pretty much died out in the mid-last-century when Britain and France lost the fight in places like Kenya and Algeria. The answer lies in the small italicized print at the bottom of his column in today’s Washington Post: “Dinesh D'Souza is president of King's College in New York City.”
King's College! Talk about a smoking scepter.
Also, let’s just ask ourselves how a native of India got the name “of Sousa” if he was not named for the famous composer of rousing pro-colonialist marches such as “The Stars and Stripes Forever”?
Coincidence? I think not. There's your irony.
If one of my students back in freshman comp had handed in an essay as logically weak-kneed as D’Sousa’s, I’d have required a rewrite that goes beyond Superman-scaled leaps of reason based on five or more of the logical fallacies covered in our textbook. In fact, I used to use D’Sousa himself as a good example of bad reasoning from a few crumbs of evidence found on the floor since his essay criticizing Rigoberta Menchu's’ book I, Rigoberta was the first selection in the anthology I used for the class.
Menchu, an indigenous Guatemalan, had written a book detailing some of the horrific crimes committed by the Guatemalan government during that county’s civil war from 1960-1996. American anthrolopoigist David Stoll discovered that a few of the claims in the book were dubious since, for example, Menchu said she never went to school when in fact she had finished 8th grade.
As it turned out, most of Stoll’s charges proved to be false, although Menchu did acknowledge that she fudged a little and included a few experiences of her brothers and sisters, a crime never equaled in the long tradition of “nothing but the facts, Mam” truthiness to be found in all previous autobiography.
D’Sousa regurgitated the claims of Stoll and wrote an essay claiming Menchu was a fraud and therefore none of the terrible things she said about the Guatemalan army were true. That’s why it were no crime that the U.S. trained and supported the Guatemalan army. The whole thing, D’Sousa said, was a cleverly constructed fantasy designed to discredit the U.S. and its wholly owned subsidiary, the United Fruit Company.
When the dispute was submitted to an independent fact-finding agency, it ruled in favor of Rigoberta and gave her the Nobel Peach Prize.
Wait. Typo. “Nobel Peace Prize.”
D’Sousa’s current essay first appeared as the cover story in Fortune magazine and was instantly trounced by just about everybody but Christine O’Donnell for its self-levitated reasoning, so apparently D’ thought he had to defend himself by saying the same thing all over again in a brief column that even the liberals over at the Post could understand.
Anyway, since I'm also named after my father, you’re probably wondering what clues can be discovered about my own anti-colonial bias. Here’s your answer:
"Ross
Gender: Male
Origin: Latin
Meaning: Red Rose"
Red rose!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)