Category Archives: Americana

A trip to the mountains west of Death Valley

Americana, California, Camping, Death Valley, Travel

Last Thursday I, along with my wife Michele and our friends Howard Dunair and Basha Cohen, spent the day driving down Highway 395.  Highway 395 runs from Canada to somewhere in the Mojave Desert.  Between Reno, where we got on to Big Pine, where we got off, 395 runs just to the east of the Sierras. Reno is at about 4500 feet and Big Pine is at about 4100,m but, from Reno, the road climbs to a pass of over 8100 feet so Big pine seems much lower.

The Mojave desert is the the UFO desert, the wacko desert, and it seems to have seeped up the 395 corridor.  About an hour south of Reno, we ran into a guy who was pulling a cross from San Francisco to, I think, St. Louis. He had been saved by Jesus and wanted to save others. Like other people I have met who have been saved, he was sincere, open, passionate, and living so far from my reality as to be incomprehensible. I do admire his conviction, however.

 

Miles later, web got to an overlook and view spot with a guard rail. The guard rail has become a poster board for – for lack of a better word – travel stickers. I think that I first saw a bunch of travel stickers stuck on the windows of a a store – for foreigners – at the edge of the Sahara desert. Now I notice them anywhere tourists pass by, such as a guard rail at a view spot. Here – as Michele poinbted out – was an interesting group that showed one evolution of the Keep Tahoe Blue sticker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we moved south, after crossing the high point of Highway 395, we dropped from one basin to another, each one lower and warmer with the Sierras on our right getting higher and higher. Mile after mile.

 

Finally, at Big Pine, we turned left off of the highway and drove towards the deep desert.

And once we reached Eureka Valley, we stopped to drink a toast to the road.

To be continued….

Today – One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago – the Civil War started

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, War

After the last shot was fired, the United States was changed forever.  Up to now – 150 years ago – the United States had always been referred to in the plural as in The United States are not Europe; after the Civil War, the United States will be refereed to in the singular as in The United States is not Europe . In his first inaugural address, Lincoln used the word Union twenty times, he did not use the word Nation once. The Civil War made the Union a Nation.

 

The Escape Trail

Americana, Art, California

In reading Peter Kuhlman and Ophelia Ramirez’s blog – I think 99% Peter now – post about Peter’s reclaiming of his creativity and his posting of Chupacabra From La Habra, I am inspired to post a Haiku and a short  non-fiction piece I wrote in a Meditation and Creativity class I was in over the Weekend. I brought a bookmark – to class- I made from a photo I took while on a trip into Death Valley last year.

Manly died quietly
on his farm near Lodi CA
fruit trees blooming

Remembering The Escape Trail

The first thing to remember is that we went backwards- from Trona to the Panamint. From busy, dirty, mining town to Peace. Up an easy downhill, over the gentle summit, down the road that was such a struggle for Manly to lead the Bennett and Arcane families in the climb out of their hell. The oxen eaten long ago, the wagons left behind.

The Bennetts and Arccanes didn’t want to die, didn’t want to embrace Eternal Peace in the Panamint. Eternal Peace that sounded so good , sitting in the cool shade, inside Pastor Bennett’s church with its hard pews.

Under the glaring sky of the Panamint, Eternal Peace felt too much like Death. Death accompanied by the Angels of Fear, the hounding fear of thirst. Their thirst for a new life in the goldfields of California, turned into a thirst for water. Any little water.

Water we so easily carried; sloshing in the five gallon containers in the back of the truck. Sitting in front, we smiled and chatted; looking for wildflowers, going up and over the Escape Road.

We had red wine with dinner that night, not sacramental, but still welcome. We talked about Manly and how he had saved Bennett and Bennett’s wife and Bennett’s children and how, years later, when they came back to look for silver, Bennett had betrayed Manly. Leaving him for dead. Just up the road from our bright campfire.

 

Egypt and Afghanistan

Americana, Current Affairs, Obama, War

Egypt-protests2

It seems to me that what we are trying to do for the Afghans – free them from a repressive and backward regime – the Egyptians did for themselves. Or, at least, are trying to do for themselves. And because they fought for freedom themselves with some of them dying and a lot of them making sacrifices, they have a much better chance of getting it. Because Americans are the ones dying for freedom in Afghanistan, the Afghans have almost no investment. Why should they.

If, in 1776,  an 100,000 man French army had come to the Colonies and got rid of the English for us, I think our commitment to democracy would be different. If all we did was wait for the French to win and then they said Here is your country, I doubt we could have made democracy stick.

In Egypt, I read, people are cleaning the streets, Tahrir Square is clean. The Egyptians are taking pride in their country.  We had to take control of our country and, I am afraid, the Afghans will have to do the same.  We can't do it for them.

A couple of days ago, Michele and I watched the HBO movie, The Battle for Marjeh. We were both taken by the fact that the Americans were doing most of the heavy lifting, the Afghan Army seemed expert at always being where the action wasn't.

People say that Afghanistan is the graveyard of Empires. I don't think that is true. To quote somebody -Tom Ricks, I think – We'll eventually leave Afghanistan to its fate, but it will be because we've finally figured out that the stakes there aren't worth the effort, especially given the low odds of meaningful success.  It's just taking us longer to figure that out than it should.

I think the real question is If everything were the same in Afghanistan except we weren't there, would Obama commit 100,000 troops? I doubt it. 

The Joy of Informal Language

Americana, Evolution, Psychological Musings

I started out titling this post "The Joy of Simple Language" but, in taking about it with Michele, she pointed out that I was really talking about Informal Language and, infact, what I was looking at as simple is actually complicated. I had it backwards.

I used to be in an men's group. We met every other week for years and we had all sorts of rules on how to be in our group. Among the rules was Anything the we say in the group stays in the group.  When one guy told us he and his wife were expecting a baby, none of us told our significant other. Rules were rules. Eventually, we dropped all the rules except To be in relationship to what we do in the group and to each other. With no rules to slavishly follow, being in the group became much more complicated.

Language is that way.

Intuitively, we all – I – think that the language of primitive people is simple. We all know that cave men said things like Uga or Ugh and not I want to tease out the real meaning in the cave being empty.  And that may be true, but earlier languages are simpler because they are more formal than our language. They have more and harder rules. Latin is almost impossibly complex but it is easy once you memorize the rules.

English – American English – is losing rules every day and it had a lot less to start with.  I think that is so thrilling.

It is easy to follow a rule like Never end a sentence with a preposition, but it results in a sentence like About what are you thinking? rather than What are you thinking about?  As English losses its rules, it becomes more complex as well as less formal. There is more room to play. To understand tease  above, we have to see it in context. We have to be in relationship and that is the Joy.