The American West has lots of abandoned buildings. By the American West, I don’t mean the western part of the United States. The western part of the United States has cities and towns, by The American West, I mean the parts in between. The iconic empty West where only cowboys and homesteaders live.

The abandoned buildings are remnants of somebody’s dream that they could carve a living out of a piece of marginal land. The settlement of the West and the dream of making a living on new land started before the Civil War – even Grant tried his hand at it in the 1850’s, facetiously calling the farm Hardscrabble, according to his wife, Julia – but, with the Railroads pushing west and The Homestead Act setting the stage, the pace picked up after the war.

In the Great Plains, most of these settlers were immigrant families from northern Europe. In the Nevada West, many of these immigrants were Basque. I wonder if many of these settlers were Civil War vets with PTSD. I know the Civil War was violent, unbelievable so compared to war now -although not compared to WWI or parts of WWII – and it is hard to believe that many of those battle wrecked veterans, especially Southerns, didn’t go West.

Driving out to the Smoke Creek with Claudia, however, I noticed that some of the abandoned homesteads are being reclaimed. I think that there are several reasons for this. Obviously, it is easier to Live off the grid than it ever has been before. Also, there are more people with two or three homes and one of them might be out in the boonies. But I think that there is another reason, one similar to the post Civil War period. We have been at war for the last decade and, today, there are more people with PTSD than 30 years ago.

I would be very surprised if the guy who lives in the house above also has an apartment in Manhattan. I would be much less surprised if he – or she, but probably he – was a veteran of, say  Fallujah, trying to get away from the chaos of modern America. Moreover, like today’s pot, today’s PTSD is much stronger, with, I think, a component of Moral Injury that WWII vets usually didn’t have.

That why Drone Pilots really do get PTSD even though they they are never in physical danger. Without the draft, the people fighting our wars are easier to hide – or worship from afar – making what what they are doing also easier to hide, but it is no easier for them to hide from themselves. I think that alot of people who have PTSD really have Moral Injures. Killing an unarmed little boy and his, equally unarmed, mother goes against all our moral teaching. The fact that many – if not most – of the Americans doing the killing are conservative Christians only aggravates that Moral Injury.

As I drive by an abandoned farm with a new conex replacing an abandoned barn, I think how tough it must be to try to make a living on land so far away from everything. Then, I think, maybe that is the point.

During a resent hearing on immigration reform, Senator Jay Rockefeller – of the West Virginia branch of the Rockefeller family – suggested that the United States is hurt by the depiction of techies in popular culture. I want to suggest that he is wrong. I want to suggest that techies – Rockefeller refers to them as STEM’s – are doing just fine.

I think what this Rockefeller doesn’t understand is that Hipness is defined by the people who are successful And techies are successful; Beyoncé is hip and so are Sergey Brin and Larry Page and, of course, Mark Zuckerberg. The first time I remember seeing that nerds were becoming hip was in the movie Peggy Sue Got Married in which Richard Norvik, a former class geek, became the richest and most powerful man in the room at Peggy’s 25th reunion.

On my ferry boat ride to Vallejo a week or so ago, I sat near and talked to a young woman who was taking the ferry home after her shift as a security guard with ISI Security. She works as a security guard at high-tech companies like Apple and Google and, when I asked her if she liked working there, she said she loved it. When I asked her Why?, she said it was because the People were nice, and smart, and hip.

I was surprised because I fully expected her to say that they were nerds or geeks and that she couldn’t relate to them. I said something like They didn’t used to be hip, she said, Yes they were, we just didn’t know it. Well said.

Any event with multiple explosive devices – as this appears to be – is clearly an act of terror, and will be approached as an act of terror. White House

Sitting here, nice and safe – looking at my computer monitor – I realize that my only real relationship with this Boston massacre is what I read and see on the screen. There is blood and carnage everywhere and every shot of that carnage has a person helping (usually several people). Every shot of terror also is a shot of Love.

I know that it is smart not to jump to conclusions because any conclusion includes a direction which may be a misdirection – believing IS seeing afterall – and I want so much for there to be conclusions. I want answers, and not just any answers, I want this to be a terrorist act by a Timothy McVeigh, not some Muslim and that makes my thinking and conclusions pretty unreliable.

As I read that the bombs were made from pressure cookers filled with carpet nails and ball-bearings, I wonder how anybody can hate that much and hold that hate long enough to do this. Hold the hate long enough to plan it in detail: to buy daypacks and pressure cookers, hold the hate long enough to assemble everything, hold the hate long enough to bring it to the finish line and look around at the people who will be killed or maimed. It is easy for me to say that They must be nuts. because I want them to be nuts.

I also realize how lucky it is that Trooper Charlie Hanger stopped McVeigh. It is possible that he would never have been caught and it is possible that who ever did this will never be caught. I don’t think so – with all the resources being poured into this case – and I hope not, but it is possible.

What sticks with me is how small the bomb seemed on television and how much damage it did and I hope they catch the Sons of a Bitches.