Up Past the Volcanic Cow Line

 

The telescopes at the top of Haleakala are prominent from the parking lot at the top of the mountain. They are used largely for tracking satellites, we learned from the informational plaques. They are not open to the public.

A view of the island of Maui. The road leads up to the rim of the crater near where the black arrow intersects with the rim. One can look down into the crater. The magical road goes up the slope on the far side of the mountain, which is not visible from this angle.

Tue -- For our first full day of stay in Upcountry, we tackled the big enchilada of tourism in this part of the island---driving up to the top of Haleakala, the massive volcano that pretty much forms the entire land mass of east Maui, and which is of course just the top 10,000 feet of a seamount that rises from the bottom of the ocean, as do all the mountaintops that form the islands of Hawaii, as well the ones now sunken underwater that stretch northwest all the way back to the tip of Siberia.

At breakfast we finally met our host, whose house and horse pasture we passed coming and going from the residence. Following the explicit directions on the chalkboard in the main room, had to ring a small metal bell to summon him from the kitchen when we were ready to be served. He learned the names of his horses and how he obtained them. We ate our breakfast and I drank a double French press of coffee in the cool air of the balcony looking out towards the sea.

Once in the car, we allowed GPS to escort us back through the labyrinth of narrow forest roads until we emerged into the open green pastures of the Uploads outside Makawao, then proceeded southwards long the road until we found the turn off that would lead up the mountain to the summit, which is a national park. The turn off sign was in the form of the familiar brown national park sign, which brings us warm feelings when one sees it, from previous trips going back to childhood and young adulthood, when one first starts to travel on one's one, with the freedom to go to such places on one's own volition. Welcome! , the sign says ,Put aside your daily life, where you travel on roads flanked by fences and power lines past shopping centers and mangy humdrum landscapes. This road is special a magical type road that leads to a magical place. 

The elevation of Makawao town is about 1500 feet, Google tells me. The elevation at the top of the road is over 10,000 fit, so that makes for quite a climb. If you are used to the Rocky Mountains, for example,  a typical climb up a mountain might be 5000 feet at most and would involve a long route with ups and downs through gulches and canyons. Not so for Haleakala. It feels like the kind of road up a mountain that a child might draw with crayons. 

It's the archetype of "mountain"--one long open slope from the summit down to the flats of central Maui. Going up, one winds back and forth on switchbacks up through the ranches, past the "Cow Line", as I called it (as opposed to the Tree line), until the vegetation is too scrub for pasture, and then seeing the jagged rocks only one gets to the visitor center.

At a small visitor center I purchased a couple postcards as has been my habit for many years, going back to when I traveled around the country from 2004-2012, although now I rarely send them, except to a few individuals who still want to receive them. It was one of the things that make me a living anachronism, that I still send postcards to people. If I knew more people who would like to receive them from me, I would send them, because they are a joy to send. Eventually postcards will probably disappear entirely from gift shops entirely, probably when the Boomers die out.

At the top of the mountain, there is a second visitor center, which was closed. One can walk around several trails on the black volcanic rocks to take in the view from various angles, down the mountain and towards West Maui, and also out to sea to summit of the even higher volcanoes on the Big Island, which are still active. One learns from the displays at the summit of Haleakala that it last erupted in 1790, but is expected to erupt again at some point (although not at its summit). In fact the "crater" one sees from the summit is not a caldera but rather a canyon that was filled in through lava flows. It is punctuated with cones in a way that reminds of the recent footage of Iceland.

Descending from the summit, down past the Cow Line again until we found ourselves existing the magical road back onto the normal road. Then we explored parts of the Uplands, going all the way south to the historic Ulupakulua Ranch Store, a landmark in that part of the island, which is a quaint rustic gift shop and a cafe where we had an early dinner. I got a hamburger streak. We ate on the front porch after they called our names to pick up our food.

On the way back is when we detoured off the road into the lush green pasture lands of the historic ranches winding on the rocky lanes lined by black volcanic rock walls that felt like Scotland. Here we located the house of the famous billionaire talk show host who purchased property here a decade ago and has been come to be called "The Queen of Maui." I normally don't care about celebrity sights like this, but the talk show hosts's presence here has been interesting and  bit controversial regarding to purchase of land. Also she was a very open Kamala Harris supporter in the recent electioin, so it feels much better to bask in the sinful schaudenfreude about how these folks are feeling at the moment. I mention this because of course Hawaii went for Harris, but unlike how I might have felt in the past, when showing people my credit card or id, for example, I feel no hint of grumbling animosity.

Yet besides the shop window in Wailuku where I bought my Lahaina t-shirt, I saw no hint of advocacy of the defeated Democratic candidate. It is my firm belief that everyone, even shrieking liberals now losing their minds over the election results, wanted Trump to win, even if they could never admit it.  Almost everything that has happened since the election has confirmed this to me. It feels like we are emerging from a dark dream and things can be "normal" again in some way, even as so many weird things are happening. I love everyone here. God bless Hawaii.

A Tour of the Towns of Maui

 

One of the interesting things that strikes me about Maui, as I reflect on it, is that although the island is small, and thus so is the number of true towns and villages, that each village has a distinctive character depending partly on its location on the island, but more specifically on the degree to which the town has been built or transformed to cater to tourists, and the degree to which it retains some character that pre-dates the explosive growth of tourism in the last several decades. Even a town that caters to tourists in a way that harkens to the 1980s would seem like a throwback now.

Kahului, in the north shore in the central flat part of the island (exactly where you'd expect the airport to be)---we didn't see much of it beyond the Costco and the food trucks, and then used the highway to get out of town. It reminded me of the airport town in Kauai---modern conveniences without an emphasis on leisure, and often the most bustling pat for locals to use.

Wailuku, where I bought my Lahaina t-shirt in the shop downtown--feels like the old "capital" of the island. There is a small state office building downtown. The main street has one- and two-story businesses reminiscent of downtowns in many small towns across the America. Many houses, especially on the north edge of town, reflect a moderate income of their occupants. In some ways it feels like the most authentic of towns on Maui. 

Lahaina, which was the most historic but is now burned to the ground.  The remaining north part of town will be the seed of whatever comes next.

Kapalua is a short drive north of Lahaina on the west coast of the island. Completely untouched by the fire, it is a golf resort community and is the location where we ate our Thanksgiving dinner at Merriman's restaurant. In that way it reminded us much of Princeville on the north coast of Kauai, where even the grocery stores feel upscale. See the movie The Descendants which is partially set (and filmed) there, and which addresses the transformation of Kauai from rising real estate prices. Kapalua feels much the same as that.

Kihei. along the south coast in the central part of the island. Great long beaches here and the town is a hodge podge of apartment complexes of various vintages crammed along the main road, with shopping centers full of snorkeling gear rentals and coffee shops, etc. Busy and very crammed for space. If you came to Maui for the beaches this is probably a good place to stay.

Waihee-Waiehu. A laid back working class community of older small homes on narrow streets of the highway, just north of the "capital" Wailuku, as one proceeds along the highway up the coast. Here there are some primitive beaches accessible down obscure lanes. 

Kahakuloa we didn't get there. Located on a remote cove. This is the "isolated traditional community" where the haole from Scottsdale got beaten up in a "hate crime".  It is accessible only by a long drive on a narrow one-lane road along the cliffs. We turned around because it was getting dicey, especially from oncoming traffic of locals, who clearly don't appreciate too many visitors. Can't say that I blame them too much.

Makawao in Upcountry near our second location. We got to know it well during our stay, as we drove through it almost time we left our second place in the forest, and dined there on one occassion. An old agricultural community with legacy grocery stores and other shops sprinkled in between restaurants and small professional offices. Crowded just still feels quaint and local in character. I hope it remains so. 

Hana is an isolated community of the eastern tip of the island. Accessible by a long drive along the coast (the famous "Road to Hana"). I will discuss this in an upcoming post.

Paia a tourist oriented community on the north coast near fabulous beaches where surfers ride the dramatic waves. If Kihei is for middle class families, Paia is a more upscale, with an old downtown transformed to having small art galleries full of hand made gifts. We dined here on our first day at our new place near Makawao, descending from our forest hideout after checking in to eat a fish restaurant, the Paia Fish Market. where one stands in line to order and they bring you your food. Delicious it was. The picture on their website (see link in name) has been sanitized to make it seem like a modern minimal, but it is actually more appealing and rustic than it appears. 

Every time I go to Hawaii, I get more interested in the Hawaiian language, a subject which I have multiple books over the years as part of my huge collection of language literature. I like figuring things out on my own at times, as the insights stay deeply with you. On this trip I realized that many communities and geographical features in Hawaii start with the prefix Wai-, which can be very confusing as all the names begin to look the same. The prefix Wai- means water. The distinguishing part of the word, in the Saussurian linguistic sense of variation, is what comes after Wai-, so one should concentrate only that and the names will become much easier to remember...
WaiMEA, WaiKULU, WaiLUKU, WaiKIKI, etc.

which gives us the variational pattern.

Wai-  MEA, KULU, LUKU, KIKI.

With this in mind, I found it much easier to distinguish places as we drove around the island.

So do you think Lonely Planet might hire me now?

Paradise Comes With Miniature Horses

 

Mon -- This was our day to checkout of the BnB near Lahaina in West Maui and move to our second location for the rest of our stay.  Checkout time was noon. We hung around the house during the morning in complete leisure, reading in the living room. I got through the first half of Vanderbilt, up to the end of the Gilded Age. I wanted to finish it, and I offered to buy it from the host, but he insisted I take it, indicating the crates of books were like a free lending library. Also he said that since no one was checking in that today, that we could stay past checkout, and wanting to be lazy amidst the tropical paradise, we did just that.

It was bittersweet to finally descend the hill one last time, going past the animals (the neighborhood is technically some kind of agricultural compound)and seeing the ocean glistening in the sun below at the bottom of the slope. I burned the image into my memory, wanting to cherish it.

Then we drove across the flatlands of central Maui. Maui is like two islands in one, both mountainous. West Maui is the older  worn-down volcanoes with lush valleys like 'Iao Valley where the Mauians made their last stand against Kamehameha. East Maui is bigger and consists of a single giant dormant volcano, Haleakala rising from the sea. In between in the small flat neck that connects them, swept by the trade winds, and where much of the island population lives, and where commerce and the airport take place, and where some of the best beaches are located.

The populated part of East Maui mostly likes in the "Up Country", which is the long slope of Haleakala as it descends to the flatland portion of the island. Here one finds the old ranches that have been subdivided into smaller ranches, and the homes of folks like the famous African-American billionaire talk show host who owns property there. Her place is easy to find, as we did, on the second day in our new location. The volcanic rock walls along the narrow one-lane roads and the lush green hillsides reminded me of Scotland. I can see why a billionaire would want to own property there. To our delight, we found many cows along the road.

In the Upcountry one also finds older agricultural villages like Makawao, which he had to pass through in order to get to our new location. They are being converted more and more into tourist-oriented places, but still retain their character with vintage grocery stores run by the descendants of Japanese immigrants and such. Of course these legacy businesses are both exactly what visitors cherish, and also what developers love to turn into more lucrative properties through redevelopment. You can't have both. One of the great sadnesses of the Lahaina fire beyond the loss of life was that Lahaina town was the most historic place on the island, in terms of architecture that is currently still used. There were buildings dating to when Herman Melville was here, when it was a whaling port. Almost all of that was burned to the ground. It makes one cherish what remains, as in tiny Makawao in the Upcountry all the more.

All new place was not amidst the green fields but deep in the forests on the north edge of the Upcountry. Finding it made me reflect on the nature of satellite GPS and Google Maps to open up properties for guests, because it would have been very difficult to find otherwise. The forest roads were dark even in the middle of the afternoon and signs not so obvious. I'm pretty sure I could have done it with a good paper map and directions, but compared to most people I have super powers to do that (ones that are, like most of my superpowers, completely useless in the modern world).

We punched in the gate code from the directions and the gate swung open in jerks and let us pass down a rocky lane past a small house and nearby pasture in which were running a single full-size horse and, trotting beside it, a miniature horse. We would later learn from the proprietor that they were both rescue animals, the miniature horse in particular being rescued from a petting zoo.

The actual BnB part was a second house a little further past the pasture. It was deserted when we arrived. We followed the instructions, leaving our shoes at the door as indicated by a sign. Once inside we found a large low-ceiling great room with a long wooden table, and a small area with coolers with drinks. A television on the wall was playing a video with surfers with the sound turned down. On the shelves were books and board games, and in the far back of the room, one found large windows emitting brilliant sunlight, and the entrance to a covered patio balcony with small tables and high top chairs where we would have our breakfasts during our stay. From the patio once can see through the clearing out to the northwest, providing a vista of the ocean and the West Maui mountains beyond. All of it befitting the name of the place, quite well, the North Shore Lookout.

All the rooms in the place had names befitting its location. Ours was the "Paniolo Suite", which refers to the names of the early Hawaiian cowboys. It was down a flight of stairs, below the main room and the balcony. We punched in the key code and found ourselves in a full-size suite apartment with a kitchenette, and patio doors onto a secluded private area with chairs and hammock. Only drawback was the evening mosquitos. Also the bamboo obscured the ocean view from that level. But I didn't particular mind that.  Complaining about that kind of thing in "paradise" is a character defect.

Extremely Blue Hawaii

 Sun -- On Saturday we didn't leave the house at all, but soaked up every moment of day is a Hawaiian home hibernation. Having eaten heartily at the luau the night before, we made a light afternoon meal of the "leftovers" that that we had been gifted at Merriman's at the end of our Thanksgiving dinner---turkey sandwiches handed to us after paying our check to provide the feeling of leftovers at home. Moreover we had been gifted banana bread in a similar way at the end of the luau. Together these provided enough of a meal for the day. 

Sunday was our last full day in Lahaina and we wanted to make the most of our visit to West Maui. Jessica wanted to see 'Iao Valley, a canyon in the lush West Maui Mountains, known for its beautiful waterfalls and vistas. One has to make time-window reservations to access it,as one does in so many places in America (most sadly in Rocky Mountain National Park, where a spontaneous visit to the most beautiful place on Earth felt like a constitutional right if you live in Colorado). It is the new America---parks are crowded and overburdened.

The canyon is famous in Hawaiian history because it where the Maui Islanders made their last stand against Kamehameha, who was the king of the Big Island, and who was attempting to conquer all the other islands (he was successful at bringing them all into his kingdom, with only Kauai being with a bloody battle). At 'Iao canyon, bodies of the slain in the battle were so thick in the gorge that they blocked the stream and it ran red with their blood.

This occurred after contact with the Europeans (the visit by James Cooke in 1777). Up until then Hawaiian history was preserved only by oral traditions. They Europeans, especially the missionaries who came later, were the reason we have any of that preserved. It is a great irony that our knowledge of early Hawaiian history and legends is because of European contact.

Afterwards we drove down into the town of Wailuku, which has a quaint downtown shopping district along its main street. I made Jessica pullover so I could inspect a show I saw, where in the window were painted, in folk style, portraits of both of the recent presidential candidates, clearly indicating support of one (the woman) and condemnation and fear of the other (the man, who had won the election). 

I love photographing this type of electoral ephermeral. It captures the time and place so well, as it will be soon gone. It turned out to be a t-shirt shop run by a soft-spoken laid-back haole who had been running his small business there, making his own custom t-shirt of the same style as the presidential portraits in the window. His politics were obviously very mine, but like most of our side, we are not bothered by that and do not shun people just because they voted differently. We are "open and accepting" much more than the other side, in my experience. We know that many people change their minds about things after "waking up" and there is no point in browbeating people over differences like that (even as I believe they were voting to destroy America).

I bought a "Lahaina" t-shirt of his original design, showing the old waterfront downtown before it burned. It was in shades of blue and turquoise with a psychedelic influence indicating the lifestyle and preferences of its designer.. "I was in a blue mood when I made that one," said the proprietor. No credit cards accepted, just Paypal and cash. I had the cash on me. It felt right to pay him that way. I didn't bring up politics, and neither did he.

Afterwards we drove a bit up the north east coast of the island, on the narrow road along the cliffs of the sea. I had read about a "traditional Hawaiian" community far up along this road (which eventually connects back around the resorts where we had our Thanksgiving dinner at Merriman's. But the road is tough. It gets vary narrow and feels dangerous. Jessica, who was driving, felt menanced by an oncoming truck that refused to make way for her. So we turned back and head back to Wailuku.

Later I made the connection that the town in the remote cove along the coast that I had wanted to visit the same community as this article. The white man in question here was severely beaten after moving into the community and attempting to change certain things. Even before learning the details, I somehow felt sympathy with the locals (it turns out the guy was from Scottsdale!). 

Clearly the assailants. deserved prison time, but the idea of it being "hate crime" bothered me, not because it was against a white persosn, but because I reject the whole idea of "hate crimes". Next it will be hate speech. As we learned in the recent vice presidential debate, people in the news media already think "hate speech" is a crime. 

For dinner, we drove back to our part of the island one last time and descended the slope into Lahaina, passing the 9/11-type memorial to the dead one last time and descending into the "now oldest part of town" on the north side, where we dined at a cafe on the waterfront that abuts the luau property where we had dined on Friday night, and is owned by the same folks. It was relaxed and the food was tasty. I ate a loco moco bowl, a local favorite confort food of a hamburger steak on rice topped with a fried egg. For once I remembered the deails of a meal. Usually that is Jessica, who remembers food very well.

We then explored a nearby indoor mall, the Lahaina Cannery, converrted from an old industrial facility. I remembered it from the videos after the fire as a landmark. The metal roof of the building is probably one reason it didn't burn, and why the Old Lahaina Luau facility, which was shelted by the cannery, did not catch fire as well. Inside the Cannery was an "ABC", a wellknown local chain of gifts and snacks. I bought a couple more t-shirts and was chagrinned when I received no sack. Sacks and bags are hard to obtain now, because of local laws. I still have a plastic ABC store back from my 2013 visit to Oahu. Maybe next time I go to Hawaii  I will bring it and use it, just for fun.

To conclude the day we drove just a few blocks south to find the beginning of the burn area of the town. One could see several blocks of empty lots cleared of the ruins and debris, an apartment complex with just the old fixtures like an abandoned campground. I told Jessica I wanted to see it again, so I could remember it, so when I come back I have a reference point. After a few blocks the street is blocked. We grabbed some ice cream and a minimall that was spared (waiting in line behind a large Indian family) and then headed back to the house to enjoy our last sunset there. It had been a full day. I even managed to learn a bunch about the Vanderbilts.

Old White Man and the Sea

 Sat -- The day after the Luau we decided to take a day relaxing in the B n B to enjoy the house, the lanai the and the back yard. I took off my shoes and walked around on the grass. Thhere were chickens that come the patio in the morning, and a friendly dog that belongs to the house. An Indian couple was staying one patio over. On Thanksgiving they had a zoom call with relatives. Indians are slowly taking over the American family-travel landscape, as white people stop having children. I noticed this in Arizona at the Meteor Crater last summer. Indians travel the way Americans used to travel in station wagons in the 1970, crossing states to give memorable experiences to their kids.

There was also an engaged couple staying at another patio. Over breakfast, Jessica overheard the bride talking about completing her YTT in Costa Rica. What's that? Yoga Teacher Training. I myself heard her talk about gettting her chakras aligned for her wedding. By her facial features, her demeanor, and her talk about eastern religion, I took her for a Jewess. Also there is something in my ancient memory from living in New York, and learning a lot about American Jewish culture up front (due to my ex-wife's best friend being Jewish), that having a wedding in Hawaii is a Jewish trope. Perhaps I'm imaging that. 

In the afternoon Jessica arranged with the proprietor for us to have massages. She went first, walking around to a secluded patio on the other side of the house, and returned ninety minutes later in bliss to take a nap. Then it was my turn. The masseuse was a lovely Mexican woman with a solid frame and strong arms. I could tell she was Mexican because her accent was almost the same as a well-known Mexican woman with a cooking show on PBS (who is also Jewish) .

The massage was indeed fantastic. She was cheerful and professional, and very effective without being too aggressive.  It made me think getting a massage once a month is probably everyone should do for good health. Jessica had me tip her well.

When the masseuse left temporarily to left me emerge from out under the sheet and put my clothes on, I found myself a naked white man on the lawn in the sun and pleasant tropical air looking out to the vast ocean beyond. It was a moment of some kind of purity. Old man and the sea.

Later, with my clothes on, I found another book to read, from a second box of books in the main room which I hadn't noticed previously. Vanderbilt: the Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe. I read the first half ("Rise") before leaving and the proprietor gifted me the book so I could finish it.

Purple Velvet Evening Gowns on the Waterfront.

 Fri -- We drive to Kihei, a beach town that is part of South Maui, on the other side of the island. We go to Boss Frogs in a mini-mall and rent two beach chairs, and umbrella, and a cooler. The man checking us in is super chill and feels in the spirit of Aloha. When he discovered that they were out of coolers, he calls another outlet of Boss Frogs and finds one for us, and puts it on rental package for free. 

We use all the above items on. a public beach called Makena Beach south from Kihei Town. Jessica knows about this because she has been to Maui previously with her girlfriend while they were both in medical school in Oregon. It was a last minute thing, ginned up by her friend, who loves the beach. They stayed in Kihei. She has been wanting to come back to Maui ever since then. 

Neither of us are huge beach people, however. I absolutely love being on the beach if I sit in a chair with my feet in the soft sand and either be in the sun or below an umbrella as my choosing (mostly the latter). Then one can wade in the surf, maybe go all the way in the water in a dunk, but that's as far I cared to go that day. The beach is famously called "break neck beach" because of those ignore the harsh waters here. 

That evening we have reservations back in Lahaina at the Old Lahaina Luau, which miraculously did not burn, but is along the harbor in the now "oldest part of town" on the north side. 

We are ushered in by an ample staff of young Hawaiians, young part Hawaiians, and other young people who might pass for Hawaiians.  Some will become dancers during the show, but for now they are the greeters and perhaps the other support staff of the food and drink delivery, although I don't know that. One is always curious about how successful live theater operations are run. Hawaii has a still thriving industry. This was our fourth luau together, after two on the Big Island, both at large resorts, and one on Kauai, which is part of a permanent operation on a large acreage that looks like it was a horse farm at one point. 

We both agree that Old Lahaina Luau was by far the best one we have attended, both in terms of the food, the service, the show, and the setting. It is small, but right against the water. The show as actually more intimate and subdued than the others,  and specifically did not include Tahitian fire dancers, as is typical, because it is meant to be "authentically Hawaiian". They did NOT force everyone into a extended lesson in hula-ography by having us stand and do the movements, instead only doing that fleetingly and then moving on. Reliance on such gimmicks in poor showmanship if you ask me.

The seleciton of the show numbers was much better as well.  It is was a Disney show of the origins of Hawaii with a heroic princess, as was the one on Kauai. The coherence of it being "Hawaiian" mean they could extend the usual history of Hawaii all the way up to the Twentieth Century, as they did by first having a number with Hawaiians in white and black Christian missionary dresses dancing in a more era-appropriate fashion (the hula was banned, by the King of Hawaii by the time Christian missionaries even arrived here).

That was followed by my favorite number, which had the women in purple velvet evening gowns with long strings of white shells giving the appearance of pearls (or maybe they were pearls).  They were mean to evoke the feeling of being a lover on the pier of Waikiki during the pre-war heyday of ship travel in the 1920s. I love that kind of artistry to recreate historical time beings that we all love and wish could come back. It's not that hard, people.

Thanks for What Remains of Lahaina Town

 Thu -- Thanksgiving. We have reservations on the north shore of West Maui at McCormick's Merriman's which bills itself as the original "farm-to-table restaurant". Fine dining on the water, with an option for a traditional thanksgiving "harvest plate", which we both order, while looking out to Moloka'i. Jessica reserved a table weeks ago, right when it first became available, so we an optimal view. We didn't mind early dinner because of the time chane.

On the way to the restaurant we had to drive around Lahaina on the bypass highway. One notices the memorial on the chain link fence just as one goes in the underpass. It is poignant and of the same time of display at the one on the iron fence of St. Paul's Church on Lower Broadway after 9/11, smaller of scale.

From the bluff above town on the bypass one can see the burned areas of the town, including the damaged banyan tree, and the smokestack. The bypass then descends from the bluff and comes down into the north side of town. There ones sees what looks to be an intact normal modern village in the Hawaiian islands, with a Shell station and a several mini-malls of various vintage. It could be anywhere in most of California, the way it looks.North of there is more burned areas, including the remnants of a condo complex completely gone, if I recall from previous research.

This will be the "old" part of town now, I think to myself as we drive though it. 

A Wrinkle in Hawaii Standard Time

 Wed -- We leave for the airport, park the car in the garage, check in our bags and fly Southwest to OGG, which is Kahului Airport, which is the main commercial airport for the island of Maui. The airport is fresh and open, and one remembers what Hawaiian airports feel like as one arrives. A special feeling.  We get our rental car, a Jeep SUV, and head first to thing to a pod of food carts in town, to get dinner, Kahlua pig plate, and then drive next door to Costco, where we find the parking lot busy. We sweep through Costco. Mostly I'm interested in how it feels compared to other Costcos. That's what travel in America has become, even in Maui. In Costco I always like to notice the giant rotating metal blade fans in the ceiling. With a load of Hawaiian snacks, which are ample, and with a couple new Hawaiian shirts for me, right off the rack, we drive across the island to our BnB, which outside Lahaina in west Maui. It is a quiet house compound makua (towards the mountain) from the main highway south of Lahaina town, which we do no go into yet. There are automated check-in instructions. We leave our shoes at the door. We fill our breakfast preferences for morning, using the dry erase pen on the laminated menu in the main living area, which looks out to. pool in the backyard and then our to see. Out on the lanai one can see, well,  Lanai, directly across the channel, and from that location in the backyard, the sun of late Novembers sets on the southernmost tip of the island profile.

While there, I found myself wanting to take a break from the news, which is basically my X feed. Over the next six days I successfully did that, scaling back usage to the point where I became interested in the crate of books that the host had placed in the main room. I found one box that was mostly novels in Swedish and German. There were a few English language thrillers, and then I noticed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.  I had never read it, but decided at once it was the perfect thing to do, and I finished it at leisurely pace over the next two days, during our sojourning in the BnB. 

When I Went to Nova Scotia

 Getting away from work was less painful than I thought. I was able to make a soft landing with the current project I'm working on. Ideally it will just stay on pause until I get back, and I can come back in two weeks and pick up exactly where I left off. I will write notes to myself, this evening, for what I should do on the Monday of my return. I will open them like secret instructions.

I have lived my life that way---looking for the secret instructions to one thing or another. One of my favorite things about traveling in the past was simply the logistics challenge of getting from point A to point B. Do this, then this, this. Since 1990 I have "scripted" my travels that way. Getting from home to aiport. How and when. Through the terminal, etc. Upon arrival, do this, and...here the fun begins. Take this bus heading to this direction.

In the old days it was very hard to choreograph the logistics of a trip like that, especially for foreign countries. How did one find out the information? One relied on Guidebooks, discovered in physical form at bookstores. There was a great one next to the UT campus for that.After the world wide web came along and make it a lott easier. The first great trip I took with web research beforehand was in May 1996, when I used the occassion of my sister's wedding outside Boston to make a land voyage up through the Canadian Maritimes, and then loop through Quebec and down to New York City, where I was going to stay with a friend in Manhattan.

I was blown away tht I could fesearch the ferry schedules in Nova Scotia, and the VIA Canada rail timetables.

Of course during every great trip, one departs utterly from the logistical plan and goes rogue. One enters a space of graceful freelancing. I leave room in my schedule for these soft times, when one should travel without time constraints, at least for a couple days, and make decisions on the fly, and see where it takes you.

Dress Rehersal for PTO

 The night before the night before leaving on a trip. Dryer just finished a load. Rolling bag is on the floor, lying flat and the panel zipped open. A few items are already tossed inside, but much space remains.  

Strange to say, this a literal old school "vacation" using earned paid-time-off from work. It's pleasing to take a break in this manner. I feel like a throwback. I'm blad to experience the corporate world one more time, because  it is my chance to achieve certain goals in that regard, mostly spirwith ititual, but a few earthly professsional ones.

Also it is the world so many must live in for their entire adult lives, and I wanted to empathy for them. Many young people are discouraged about the apparent meaningless of life lately, believing that they will never have certain things that were common in previous generations (such as a family, etc.).

People try to derive meaning out of a corporate job, and sometimes they get it, it often seems pathetic, even if is noble somehow to do it. How are we all putting up it?

Lately I just try to follow the rules, the ones from my Creator, and also the corporate handbook, which is not the word of God.

Ferris Wheel Season

 "The feris wheel is back," said Jessica, a couple nights ago, while standing at the kitchen sink and looking out the window into the darnkess of late November evening. 

I knew at once what she meant. We had seen it years back, before COVID, before the holiday. It is quite a distance away. From where our window sits, on the third floor, we can see far across the lowland flats.before the freeway, and then across the populated part s of North Scottsdale, and then onto the mountains on the west side of the Phoenix Valley.

The lights were a pleasant and festiv, every oto notice when finding oneself looking out the window into the darkness. 

The lights puzzled us. What are they?

We guessed ferris wheel immediately, but if so, where was it? Surelyd we would have noticed it's presence somehow while driving around that part of Scottsdal on the elevated 101 freeway. But by daylight we could see nothing that might be a ferris wheel.

It was a mystery. I consulted street maps, both digital and paper. We had guesses, based on a single bearing. If only we could see it somewhere else, I thought, we could triangulate it's location.

Then in the spring it went away. We figured as such. After April, no one wants to do anything outside here, even after dark.

The lights came and went a few more years, always appearing in the autumn and disappearing around Easter.

In 2020 it went away early. Everything was shut down, even our lights.

Later we read an article in the free community monthly newspaper that gets mailed to all local addresses, IT mentioned the seasonal ferris wheel at the a well-known resort we knew, and which was original guess. The ferris wheel was coming back at some point, when the pandemic allowed it, the article said. 

We had it lucky here in Arizona during the pandemic. The governor never attempted a statewide shutdown. He knew people here wouldn't put up with that

We'd been to the hotel, the Fairmount Princess, to dine at the high-end steakhouse for my birthday (of course at Jessica's suggestion, as she researches such things). It was an excellent steak, one of the best I have ever had. We didn't see a ferris whee, but e weren't looking for yet, and it was too early in the season.

Once There was a Spot

 

Richard Harris as Arthur in the final scene of the 1967 motion picture version of Camelot. The boy is Tom of Warwick, a stowaway. Although it is not explicitly stated, he might be intended to be Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d'Arthur. 

Tonight on my show I broke down crying--twice, in fact, over the same thing. (link)

It was not over the fact that technically it was my most problematic broadcast to date, out of the 95 episodes I have done during the last two years. First off, I had barely finished preparations before showtime, one of my closest scrapes yet in that regard. I had just finished uploading this week's intro video--about eight minutes long, made in the two hours leading up to broadcast, and had just put the finishing touches on my Keynote slides (my notes without which I am lost), when I looked up and saw by my laptop clock that was bang 5:30 exactly. So I pressed the "Go Live" button on Streamyard and waited to hear the intro background music on the live feed from my desktop. 

Usually that is how I tell if my audience can hear me, by my desktop computer, by earbuds connected to my desktop computer, which passively receives the broadcast as if I am a live viewer of my own show. This week, however, I had been vexed by the web browser on my desktop---I had to restart twicee and it was stubborning refusing to load up Rumble. The page was freezing.

So wasting a minute, I had booted up Rumble on my iPhone browser, to accomplish the same goal. Right at the last minute, literally, the desktop browser began working and so I put the iPhone aside on my desk, with my show playing on it as well the desktop. I have never done this step before, using my iPhone but it saved the show this week.

I played this week's intro video as usual. The right after I came on the air, I realized my Yeti standalone microphone was not working.  The quick fix didn't work, so even though the audience could see me, I was dead in the water as far as audio (which is always more important than video). Then, an even bigger disaster struck. Our home Internet went out. Jessica yelled it from the next room. She saw our router had gone down and was rebooting. There was nothing to do but wait. 

Viewers saw a frozen image of me and no sound. I was helpless, I thought. Then I remembered, I had booted up Rumble on my iPhone and I could see the live chat scrolling there. This was because my iPhone was using the phone network, which was working fine. I jumped into chat and told my audience about my wi-fi  being out, hoping at least a few of them would stick around while I overcame my technical difficulties.

I was off the air for ten minutes at least. To my surprise people who were in the chat hung in there and most seemed to be still listening when the router finished rebooting and the wifi came back. I reloaded the Streamyard page and things resumed again.  A great lesson in coping with live disasters on air.

I had figured that losing wi-fi during a live broadcast would happen to me one day. I almost had to cancel a broadcast last spring because our Internet was out for almost an entire morning and afternoon leading up to the show. But it came back just in time before I had to send the final cancellation message to the Badlands tech people, and more importantly the ad folks, who would have to be notified about the fact that sponsors should not be charged for the ads that didn't run (it's always top priority to get the sponsors into the show). One must be a professional.

When I came back on air this week I was giddy with laughter. All seemed to be well again for the moment. One of my longtime viewers even commented that it was "your best opening ever." Several folks even sent me money via "Rumble rants" during the time I was off the air! 

I was expecting the wi-fi to fail again at any moment, and dreaded what I would have to do at that point, but the network held fast for the rest of the show.  Because of the delay the broadcast wound up running a little bit longer than I wanted, almost to eighty-five minutes out of the ninety I have available to me. But I got through all the material I wanted to cover.

So why did I break down in tears live on the air, two separate times? 

Perhaps all this disaster recovery had me a little euphoric. The topic of the show was that Camelot is back. By that I mean the feeling of the era of the Kennedy Administration, and the 1960s at least up to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in June 1968. My opening video this week was about that, in facct, and used clips of the Kennedys including Jackie giving a White House tour, interspersed with footage from the Broadway show Camelot, and of Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet performing numbers on  the Ed Sulllivan show in 1961, and then clips from the 1967 motion picture starring Richard Harris, and Vanessa Redgrave. 

The original Broadway show ran from just before Kennedy's inauguration in Jan 1961 until about ten months before he was assassinated in 1963. The movie came out right before Robert Kennedy began running for president (which led to his assassination in the spring).

Today everyone associated the stage production and movie, and the concept of Camelot in Arthurian legends, with the Kennedy Era, I told my audience I was not alive for Jack's presidency but that "Camelot" as an era lasted from Jan 1961 until Bobby's death in June 1968. I remember it, I told my audience. "I remember how it felt...and I'm telling you this now, today, feels like Camelot again. It feels like we have gotten back there at last."

I read to my a report of the origins of how the Broadway show became identified with Kennedy. I found it online and seemed credible. It happened only after Jack's death and it was entirely due to Jackie. Two weeks after Jack's death, Life magazine published a special edition covering the funeral, and the Kennedy presidency. The last article in the magazine was by the historian Theodore H. White, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Making of the President 1960, which he wrote covering the entire election, including Kennedy's campaign. Now he was writing the "epilogue" to that presidency for Life magazine. He interviewed Jackie, who told him that Jack had a copy of the Broadway cast recording of Camelot, as did many Americans. By the way, Theodore H. White is no relation to T. H. White who wrote The Once and Future King, upon which the Lerner and Loewe Broadway show was based.

from the article by (Theodore H.) White.

In the December 9th, 1963 issue of Life Magazine, published just a matter of days after President Kennedy's assassination, Theodore H. White wrote one of several articles about the event and all that immediately followed. The final piece in the issue was titled "For President Kennedy, An Epilogue", and in it came the roots of the "Camelot" myth.

Mrs. Kennedy was quoted as saying:

"When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical, but I'm so ashamed of myself, all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy. At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."

She went on: "Once, the more I read of history, the more bitter I got. For a while, I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But then I realized history made Jack what he was. You must think of him as this little boy, sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history, reading the Knights of the Round Table, reading Marlborough. For Jack, history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way -- if it made him see the heroes -- maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view."

She returned to quote the musical again: "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot -- and it will never be that way again."

Reading that lyric Jackie quoted, my voice broke and my eyes got visibly misty. It was too much. 

I also broke down when telling my audience he significance of the clip from the movie, in the final scene, which Richard Harris as Arthur, on the eve of the battle in which knows he will perish, telling a young stowaway that despite his desire to join the Knights of the Round Table, he cannot be warrior in battle the next day. Instead he must survive, and live out his life, and tell people in the future what Camelot truly meant. 

I know the older members of my audience knew what it all meant, the tears. How long have waited for the return of what we once had. And now, for the moment at least, it feels like Camelot is in sight. The Knights of the Round Table are gathering again. There is heroism in the air, like there hasn't been in a long time. What seemed impossible now feels possible.

I'm taking next week off from the show, because we'll be traveling for Thanksgiving. After tonight, I truly feel like I deserve it.

This was our Destiny

 

The 1984 movie Red Dawn, now considered a cult classic, was about a group of small-town Colorado high school students who become guerrilla fighters against a Communist invasion of America. The letter jackets in the photo look almost the same as the ones of my old school. Even I got awarded a gold "C". Back then, all of us would have asserted that we would have been among the ones who fought back. A couple years ago I jokingly told Heather that she and I, and presumably her husband, would be among the only ones among our friends in the resistance.  Her grandfather, I think, was a master sniper in the Finnish Army who fought the Russians in World War II when they invaded Finland.

Among the few people I know among my old friends who shares my political views is Heather. She is also among those who were more resolute than four years ago, and spoke about the this election the way I spoke about 2020. 

No doubt this was partly due to Trump's embrace of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, in particular because of RFK's stance regarding childhood vaccines.  Fighting against mandatory vaccine laws for her children has long personal crusade, long before COVID. It caused our mutual group of friends to shun her,.  Unlike me, she is still in regular contact with them. because of her husband Randy, whom I consider to be like a brother, and who serves as a point of universal neutral contact among all of us. It is from Randy I still get my news of the people I once considered almost like family members. 

I last saw many of them in May for the wedding of Randy and Heather's eldest son. Even then a few were missing---not invited because they have said hateful things to Heather on Facebook regarding her politics. One declined the invitation because of bad feelings regarding COVID. Another of them lived only a hour away from the wedding in the Bay Area but was purposefully excluded from the invitation list because of hateful comments of Facebook. This is exactly why I left Facebook---I saw it coming, and I didn't want to see old friends saying the things I knew they were going to say, wishing death and violence on others, all in the name of (ugh) "love is love". Some things cannot be unsaid.

I have long since realized that this separation was my choice and preference, but it is too late to go back, even if I wanted.

 It is probable I'll see Randy and Heather again, but as for the others, I thought in May that maybe it could be the last time I would see them all. It is hard to see such an occasion arising. They were cordial and friendly to me, but I know they do not think of me anymore and my name does not come up when planing mutual get-togethers. I am not invited to any of their personal events, and have not been so for years. I will not be invited the weddings of their children. I will hear of them only through Heather. Lately she communicates to me mostly through the Telegram app. Now her grown (and married) son communicates with me using Telegram as well.

After Jessica and I went to see RFK and Trump in Glendale right before the election, I was excited to tell her about it via Telegram. I was happy to tell her the biggest applause line of the night was when RFK said he hoped the new Trump administration would prohibit pharmaceutical ads. Everyone in the audience knows that the mainstream media basically lives off Big Pharma money.

The morning after the election she sent me a follow-up message: "It was a glorious day, thank God!"

I replied that my favorite factoid of the night was that the only age cohort to vote for Trump was not Gen Z, or Millennials, or Boomers, but Generation X. They did so with such a margin as to offset Harris's victory among all the other age groups. She gave me a "heart" on that comment and I immediately followed up with: This was our destiny.

Her: "Agreed. Interesting that so many of our friends did not join us."

Me "It is a source of great sadness to me"

Her: "Agreed".

Hamlet's Question

 

Years ago in college, I took an English literature course about adaptations of Shakespeare. In a sense every production even on stage is an adaptation, but often we focus on movie adaptations. I recently watched a video by one of my favorite cinema Youtubers arguing that the greatest movie of all time is Kenneth Brannagh's 1996 adaptation of Hamlet. I saw the movie when it first came out and like it, but have generally prefer the 1948 version with Lawrence Olivier. The video may be consider watching the 1996 version again. "Don't worry that's just the murdered prime minister's daughter hitting the walls of her room." genius.

How quiet things seem compared to four years ago, at least in my soul. The election mattered much to me. I found myself asking why it should matter so much? I spent much of the year convinced Trump would win, but all the while knowing that as Election Day approached, I would lose that confidence because the reality of it would, well, trump any of my expectations and desires.

God will take care of things, I told myself, as far as the outcome. The Spirit would move people in the right way. Worrying was pointless. Anxiety nothing but a distraction.

But what about voting? What advocacy? What about telling other people who I was voting for? I have been politically aware, and active in expressing political opinions, since I was a young child. What was the point? Do such worldly things matter?

I recognized this as the same question every man must confront at various times in his life. It is, in essence, the same question that Hamlet famously asks himself in Act II Scene 2 of the Shakespeare play, the most famous words of English literature.  There are as many versions of it as there are human beings, and an infinity times that, because it can be asked in an infinite number of circumstances in one's life.

To this day, whenever I watch a movie, I will call out Hamlet's Question when it appears in the story, at the point the hero is confronted by the type of choice found in Shakespeare.

Of course Hamlet is speaking about his particular circumstances within the story, and refers to a literal "death" but as great literature it evokes a universe of possible meanings. Should one go to war as a soldier, and possibly kill to defend one's homeland, or refuse to participate in it? Christian tradition has endorsed the idea that at times it is necessary to do so---with humility and prayer (see Our Lady of Victory, funny how the date of that has been now usurped by commemoration of a more recent war, one that I care to steer very clear of).,

My resolution before Election Day this year was that no matter what happened, I would not let it wreck me up, as it did four years ago. Even if it was blatantly stolen again (and certain races were almost certainly stolen), I would not let it disturb my inner peace. 

Ironically I noticed that people I know were much more into the outcome than four years ago, expressing the sentiment that this was a Flight 93 Election, that if we did not prevail this time, we would lose America as we know it forever. We would never get another chance. I believed that. I believed that four years ago too, and then watched the nightmare unfold. We felt like outlaws, pariahs. We had to build from scratch. We got another chance, and we won.

I love to watch old broadcasts of election night coverage on Youtube, both from lifetime and before I was born. I have been doing this frequently for my weekly podcast with my audience, because being a time machine traveler seems to be what I do well, and the audience likes it. I did a series of shows about the 1968 election, which is slightly before my awakening to the world of current events, but I remember being the most recent American election. 

In the old news coverage, there was much less punditry and more factual reporting of the myriad results. But every news room during an election cycle had the "old guy" they would trot out to give opinion based on their decades of experience. For example in 1980 on NBC, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw were the younger "blow by blow" anchors of the coverage. The "old man" was played by David Brinkley, who had once been an anchor, but who now came out several times in the evening to give his "veteran perspective" from a more detached historical slant. I delight in noticing such things about the past and telling my audience about them. 

I think if I posed Hamlet's Question to my audience in regard to the election, even the ones older than me (I don't know if any young folks ever watch my show), I would get a solid answer of "take arms against a sea of trouble." Otherwise they probably wouldn't be watching my show. It's the gist of the "network" on which I broadcast, and I am ever conscious of the show business aspect of what I do, to the point of being a comical throwback at times.

As a note about Shakespeare is that Hamlet never answers his own question. He seems to do so,  by his actions in the rest of the story, but ask yourself: how does the story end? What was the answer after all?  Such is life on the Earthly plain, both on a personal level, and in the history of nations. Give me that man who is not passion's slave.

I have an affection for the old Signet Classic paperback editions of Shakespeare's well, and first read Shakespeare using these. They first appeared din 1963 and used to be plentiful on the shelves of  used book stores for less than a dollar. They had the splendid typography and design of that era, and later editions show the decline of such quality in our civilization. As such it is harder to find the older Signet Classics editions and whenever I find one, they are more expensive than the original cover price. I snapped up my copy of Hamlet during a trip to New Mexico last year, in a little general store next to the Albuquerque museum, which had a shelf of "free books."

One Day an Armistice

Four years ago today I declared* it to be D-Day, the day of the counterattack against the attempt to overthrow the constitutional republic, by the fraudulent theft of a national election. As of today we have taken back that beach head. We are now picking up where we left off, but in accelerated fashion. It had to be this way. Some astute people knew at the time, that it would have to be that way. Thomas Wictor told us years ago: "Trump is a showman. He produced Broadway plays and wanted to go into Hollywood. Later on he had the number one show on prime time television. He knows the heroes journey. He knows all must seem lost, and that people root for the comeback in the third act." He mapped it out this way, his future, in his book The Art of the Deal. Most people have no idea who he really is. They are going off a character he plays, that he invented, or maybe a series of characters. He is a Postmodern as they get. They never same him coming because they believed themselves to be the masters of the Postmodern. They known tehy own the stage, the theater, the players, and the rights to the script. It was beautiful. Wictor was right. Now it involves bare knuckles politics. Or it will seem to. Those who think they know Trump will tell you that most likely he has already won the current battles involving setting up the new government, that folks are talking about on Twitter, and frettng over, as if haven't seen a whole thing of miracles happen. Does that mean he purposefull "threw" the 2020 election? That is, did he let them steal it, and did he even encourage the backlash that made him an "outcast from decent society" for a season (like Batman). That's an interesting question to consider. He knew it would take having a losing hand in 2020, being overwhelmed by the mail-in avalanche, and making himself look bad, then invoking certain continuity of government operations (the socalled PEADs) that had been put in place by Eisenhower (in secret at the time) to preserve the constitution in case of nuclear attack. Trump saw what happened in 2020 to be a foreign attack (he said so explicitly in public), and invoked those measures, as would be his right to do so, and arguably his duty as he wore in his oath of inauguration. It was attempt by the globalist government (let's just admit such a thing exist already and be done with it) against the "conquered province" called the United States, which was trying to revolt. Certainly it was a gamble. We had to come through, and actually vote for him. In the end, that's how we want things to happen in America. It has to be real. We can use theater as a weapon, a strategy agaist them (what are the so-called "color revolutions' of recent years than a form of theater coupled with covert kinetic action to seize governments?). We thought we were immune from it in America because we are more sophisticated. But they underestimated us. They thought the energy and genius of America was spent. It was time for America to come home to the old world, and be ruled from afar again, with the participation of American voices but not under its own destiny anymore. We know who we are, the ones who oppose them. We call ourselves patriots in honor of the ones from two and half centuries ago, who established our current form of government. We recognize authenticity in each other. We look at Trump and see he is one of us. He is a mortal man. He seems to have some kind of mission from God. I'm proud to be a distant cousin to him. Pride in the sense of admiration of someone else, and the assertion of obligation to uphold a tradition, a legacy, or a human bond. The blackpillers think Trump will sell us out in the end, sell us back to their hegemony. "He will never let you down" --Melania, in 2016, speaking at the RNC.

*Sounds pompous. I know none of what happened that I just described is due to my "declaration" for four years ago. That was an observation of an onlooker. I was a a journalist, merely tagging along with the troops. I deserve no wartime honor from this, only the satisfaction from direct experience that sometimes an Appeal to Heaven works, when the people humble themselves before God.

Round Number Birthday Under Ground

 

The above ground entrance to the Salt Cellar, a classic "old Scottsdale" standby we have long wanted to visit. Reservations absolutely necessary

Over the course of the last month, the odometer of my years rolled over to a zero-ending year. My Fifties are over and have Sixties have begun.

Birthdays are typically a time of melancholy reflection for me. I think part of it is the time of year I was born. The first week of October is typically the last embers of summer--the last days that can be considered hot. This was true in the Midwest and Colorado, where I grew up, but strangely as well in Arizona. It is the cusp when warm nights give way to chilly ones, and I move indoors during my morning prayers, even turning on the heater. It is part of my character to feel as if I was born into a world of things that are passing away right as I arrive---things being whisked away just as my eyes notice them.  I have felt this way from childhood.

During the years I traveled alone as a nomad, when my birthday arrived, I felt a need to distract myself by doing something out of the ordinary, to avoid brooding about people and things from the past. I particularly remember my 48th birthday, visiting Sequoia National Park as a remarkable day.  I have noticed the joy I get in recollecting what I did on previous birthdays, going back to childhood. As such I strive to do this. It creates a narrative upon which I can hang other events in my life, and help me recall the passage of time.

This year I felt a greater burden in this regard because of it was a round-zero age. I don't remember much what my 10th birtday, but can reconstruct what I probably did that day (I do remember birthdays 3, 4, 5, 6, ad 7, but not 10).

On my 20th birthday, I walked over to the mall with my mother and we had lunch and she bought me a pair of shoes. On birthday 30, my then-girlfriend Laura arranged a surprise party of my friends in Fort Collins event though we lived in Austin. She blind folded me as she drove me to the old Austin airport. She was sure the machine that dispensed parking tickets would give it away, but I was totally suprised. My friends Cara and Torger hosted in the event in the host they used ot own, across the street from the old library. My Colorado friends where there, the ones from one I have been estranged. I didn't know about the party. I suggested we stop and say hello as we were driving by, and got taken by surprise when we walked in the door. That was 30 years ago. 

Twenty years ago I was driving across the country after leaving Laura, whom I had married. I was on my way to Oregon, following the Oregon Trail. I woke up in Wyoming at a campround with a nascent tooth abcess and and detoured down to Fort Collins to see my mother and father, and also some of my friends. We were all excited about John Kerry in the election. When I got to Oregon, I watched Kerry lose in the Melody Ballroom in east Portland. It foreshadowed some tough times ahead, as my old self died.

Ten years ago, Jessica and I were in Stockholm. We went to the ABBA museum and had a wonderful luxurious dinner.

This year there was nothing I particularly wanted to do, but I didn't want the day to pass without doing something to mark the day in my memory. So I went over the swimming pool of our complex and took a dip and then sat in the cabana, reading a book about Joe Kennedy, enjoying the lingering heat of an Arizona autumn. We watched Trump and Elon Musk at a rally in the same place where he had recently been shot by a would-be assassin. 

Then we went out to dinner at a well-known seafood place in south Scottsdale, the Salt Cellar, that is located completely underground. Afrer entering one goes down a winding ramp that reminded me of Casa Bonita in Denver.  The Salt Cellar is a well-known "birthday" location, we learned. The waiter asked us "whose birthday is it?" without us even telling him. 

Sixty was good, the most relaxed round number since 20. But my thoughts have evolved. Across the street from the restaurant is a cemetery. I wondered about the coincidence, and if I'll make it to another round number. If I don't, I don't. I've had a good run. 

Trump in Person

 

The gentleman who wrote the original post is a journalist has inspired a rather profane entry in the urban dictionary, largely thanks to the cartoonist and podcaster Scott Adams. Of course his statement here is hyperbole, but one recognizes that it is uttered with contempt. As for me, telling people "I love being White" is one of my favorite things to tell people, whenever the subject of race comes up. I always say it cheerfully, just as I would say, "I'm proud of my German-American background. I'm proud of my Trump ancestors who were pioneers, two of who were the first white couple married in the Iowa Territory. 

It was Jessica who got tickets to the Tucker Carlson Live event that was held at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale on Thursday evening. Going to public events with crowds is usually not something I seek out. But if anything, Jesssica is more enthusiastic about voting for Trump this year than I am. She loathes Harris.

It was fun to attend, although it was in the evening, and anything past 9 PM is usually well past my bedtime.

It was the first time we had visited this. part of the metro area, where many of major arenas are located. Until recently, the local pro hockey team played here (and practiced on the facility near us on Bell Road), but the only sporting events we have attended are spring training baseball games.  

After parking in the large adjacent ot, and paying via QR code,  we walked towards the buildings, which include not only the arena, but a casino, and a large outdoor plaza with multiple floors of restaurants and loud music. It reminded me of downtown San Diego--the kind of contemporary "entertainment" districts that cluster around sports complexes. It's a slice of the modern American urban landscape that usually appeals to me not at all, but in this case I felt a joy at experiencing it under these circumstances.

Since this was a paid event for charity (Hurricane relief in Appalachia) we had assigned seats and there was no line to get inside, as there would be in a normal Trump rally, which is free and is general admission. 

Our seats were on the arena floor, about fifteen rows in, on narrow chairs. packed together. Somehow I managed to avoid being severely uncomfortable while sitting in place for seven hours.  

The lights and sound were what one would expect for an arena show---overwhelming, but I enjoyed it very much once it started.  When the show stared, Trump himself was still in Nevada, at a normal Trump rally in Henderson outside of Las Vegas.  The Glendale appearance would be his third event of the day.

After a little live music and a g-rated Trump friend Vegas comedian,  the first speaker was Nicole Shanahan, who had been RFK Jr's running mate before he dropped out and endorsed Trump. I didn't know at the time it was first time speaking in support of Trump in public. She broke down in tears several times apologizing for having once been a Democrat. The crowd loved and went wild for her. Everyone knows that a Trump rally is a great place to feel love. She concluded her speech by filling out her own California mail-in ballot, voting Republican for the first time,  and bypassing her own name, which is still on the ballot (because California, like other "blue" states", wouldn't take it off after she and RFK dropped out, hoping to sabotage Trump). 

RFK jr. soon followed, and of course he got a massive reception of love and applause from the packed arena. Watching him I couldn't help wonder what my late mother, who passed away seven years ago today, and who adored his uncle and his father, would think about this. Her JFK autograph, signed directly to "Maureen", who her prize possession, which she misplaced shortly before she died, but which my sister recently found, wedged into the pages of a book.

I think she would find all this confusing. I don't she ever hated Trump. She's not the type. But she knew she was supposed to hate him, and would gone along with my sisters in expressing it. But it was never an issue between her and me. She would tell me she understood my point of view somewhat. Back then it was dangerous to express any support for him at all. Now none of us give a fuck about what anyone thinks. 

Sometimes I think it is a mercy that my parents passed away when they did. My father spent his final days in the hospital in Fort Collins, leading up to the 2016 Iowa Caucus, telling the cancer ward nurses that he was not related to the "awful" guy running for president. To my late father, Trump's manifest "meanness" was disqualifying. In his mind, Trump represented everything he had spent his life fighting against---hatred, bigotry, bullying, etc. 

As it happens, we are related to President Trump. We have a common ancestor from the same little town in the Rhine-Palatinate in German. My sisters actually knew this, I think, but concealed it. Someone else researched it out of curiosity and discovered it.  I forgive them.

Trump himself came on stage at the climax of the event, after Tucker Carlson, who is very entertaining, speaking about how he left mainstream news. Of course the crowd went wild. Trump did not give a normal "MAGA" address to the crowd like at his rallies, but instead did a sit-down interview in lounge chairs with Tucker. It was during this moments that he said the lines about Liz Cheney that the media would pounce on. It was clear at the time that he referred to her being in a war zone, not that he wanted her to be executed.

But I will tell you there are many on our side who think many on the Left have committed high reason and deserve to be executed. We all know the Leftists would kill us if they could. We know what is at stake. 

Civil War Brewing

 The mood of X turned very dark today. A widespread realization that they want us dead, sooner rather than later. They are closing on the last of America before they finish us off. Let us pray that the peace is continued as long as possible.

When Garden of the Gods Was Divine

I found this online via Google image search just now. I happen to own a specimen of this card in my collection. Almost all my postcards from long ago, however, are postmarked and have real messages, from one family member to another, nearly always in beautiful cursive hand. During my travels from 2004-2013, when I wandered the country in my Bimmer, I obsessively bought and sent postcards to people, especially to my nieces, but also to old high school and college friends. I refused for several years to join Facebook, and told people that sending postcards was my version of Facebook. Finally I caved and joined Facebook and it was an absolutely disaster, as I've mentioned. I called myself "The Last Postcard Writer". I felt great connection to the unknown people, now long dead, who wrote and received the postcards in my collection. I stopped sending postcards because I became convinced people didn't care anymore, or thought it was weird, especially the frequency at which I sent them.  I know my sister saved the many dozens of cards I sent during the height of my postcard sending mania, from 2008-2011. I love my old collection, although I don't collect anymore cards from estate sales, etc.  But I am super appreciative of those who conserve this parts of our past. One day, perhaps in a future generation, young people will wander through them, marveling at the treasures of "real artifacts" from the past. It's a scene almost straight out of The Hunger Games first movie, when Katniss is walking through the flea market.  I hope all the postcards currently in existence surive until then, although I know that is not possible. The weirdest thing is knowing that in the future, they will see how the frequency of cards being sent dropped of a cliff at the Millennium and never came back, and that a nontrivial portion of the ones written and sent in the current epoch will have been sent by yours truly. If that is the only contribution I make to humanity, a postcard writer named "Uncle Matt" whose identity is mostly unknown, then I think I will be happy over it. In fact, I am beginning to think it's not a bad thing after all. 

 Last weekend we flew up to Colorado Springs to spend three nights in Colorado. The trip was copletely arranged by Jessica. Thanks to her, I mostly went along for the ride. It was a very nice weekend, although it difficult for me to let go of the stress of job. 

Colorado Springs has a nice accessible airport. The rental car desk was painfully slow, but finding the car was easy once we had our eyes. The drive from the airport into downtown reveals what a "small town" the city is, which is a definite plus.

We stayed the night in a hotel that was created recently by renovating a century old mining exchange building. At checkin, they gave us a a free dinner in the hotel restaurant for no reason whatsoever.  The next morning we walked through downtown to have breakfast at place that had homemade biscuits.

Then we drove up to Garden of the Gods, which Jessica had never seen. It was pleasant to drive through. I warned her that it might not be as overwhelming as one would think. It was a tourist attraction that had its peak in the middle Twentieth Century. I used to collect historic postcards from estate sales when I was kid (I still have collection), and there is no shortage of postcards of the Garden of the Gods. It was rather iconic. But it has long since been eclipsed by destinations deeper in the mountains. This is due to the improvement and expansion of highways, and by air travel, which let people access mountain destinations immediately. In the old days, Colorado Springs was a destination unto itself.  This made a relatively easy destination for Midwesterners in the days when Americans took their children on road trip vacations. 

Afterwards we drove through downtown Manitou Springs, which similarly had a heyday as a family tourist destination that began declining in the 1960s as people sought more authentic experiences in the high country. Now it has a distinctive nostalgia appeal because of the quaint buildings that survive, which delight young children to see. 

Not surpisingly, because everyplace has been "rediscovered" and will never be "undiscovered" again, the real estate prices in Manitou Springs are no doubt very high. People seek out anything remotely unique in order to harvest its uniqueness, either to sell as a commodity by developing property there, or by living there in order to associate with other folks who are seeking such unique communities. Of course they inevitable change what they come to find.

I don't know the situation in Manitou Springs, but judging by the smattering of rainbow flags being displayed along the main route through town, it would seem this process is well underway. All this is a metro area that is supposedly "conservative." In some ways, it is the same thing that has happened across the entire state of Colorado. 

Seeing the remnants of the mid 20th century family roadtrip era made me happy. It reminded me of good times with my grandparents long ago, and the kind of society they built and lived in. It is all going away. Mostly it is gone already. Never again will American highways be teaming with the family road trippers. Almost every aspect of that culture has already been dismantled to the point where only superficial representations of it still exist. I can't say I much like it. 

We Went to Flagstaff

 Spent Labor Day weekend at a B and B. It was glorious. Air was fresh and cool. In the evenings after dinner we sat outside on the lounge chairs and watched the poplars swaying against the dark night sky after twilight.

On Thursday night it rained. We saw the storm clouds come down off the mountains. On Friday I worked from the hotel. Ginger took the take off from her job. On Saturday we drove out to Sunset Crater and visited Wukoki again---the ancient settlement on the fissure in the earth. The last time we were there it was blazing hot and sunny, and Ginger melts in that, so it was less than enjoyable. This time was overcast and cool. A much different experience. On Sunday we went to the Meteor Crater (will have to do a post just on that).

Today we drove home via Sedona, descending the canyon on the state highway instead of going by the Interstate, where you come to the edge of the Rim like a cliff.  We were lucky to catch the traffic going the other way through Sedona. Probably lots of folks still coming down now as I write this. 

Now we are back in the hot Valley and tomorrow is a normal work day. Thank God for Labor Day.