My family and I traveled across the country, from one coast to another, in three weeks, leaving behind my blog and often cell phone access as well as internet access. When we camped in National and State Parks, we focused on local phenomena--wild life, fauna and floral: a gray fox quietly passing our tent site, a herd of javelinas, a dusk visit from a pole cat in the Davis Mountains of West Texas; millenia-worth of natural wonders--Carlsbad Caverns, Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley; examples of eons of erosion in the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest; the biggest, tallest, and oldest trees in Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks, Redwood National Parks, and the Great Basin National Park of Nevada; the Milky Way which the lights of cities dim to nothingness in much of the United States. When we stayed overnight in a hotel, we would catch glimpses of what was going on in the outside world. One of us would read a bit of news on the internet; another would turn on the television for weather reports.
I don't think we missed much, actually. The flare-up over Barack Obama's really rather honest response to the arrest of Henry Gates, Jr., in his own house seemed strident, hysterical. (And so, I agree mostly with Frank Rich's assessment of the entire brou-ha-ha: "Small Beer, Big Hangover," in The New York Times, 1 August 2009.) The political fight over health care just reminded us that the political world goes on as usual: the American citizen about to lose his or her job and the health care associated with it gets screwed again by the insurance companies and by our wonderful representatives who are beholden to them and to an ideology that sounds more and more like "I've got what I want: screw you!"
In our own personal lives, we are dealing with jobs that pay poorly or that introduced problems we didn't foresee; with opportunities that seemed to have slipped away as we aged; with paying for our childrens' college expenses; with health issues that make us anxious; with insurance companies that don't want to cover our doctors' bills; with dwindling paychecks and the escalating costs of everything. In short, we are ordinary Americans--well-educated but from humble roots--dealing with the modern world. And on this trip, far from those everyday anxieties, we were free for a while from our usual fears. It felt so good that if our kids were out of college, I think we would pack up everything and move to some place where we could see the Milky Way on moonless nights.
And I agree with Bob Herbert, too: "Anger Has Its Place," The New York Times, 31 July 2009.
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