East Day 14, Woods Hole MA

6-28-10 0918 Green House, Woods Hole.

Well, this trip is over, ended, finished, done. We rolled into Mast Road around noon yesterday, and by 7:30 were sitting down to dinner with Ruth (who says she gets my emails but never reads them). Fuji celebrated by actually catching a chipmunk; the munk perhaps grown careless after a spring of few predators. Now she is eying the bad squirrels who throng to the bird feeder with a calculating gaze. And of course, there are the rabbits that make going out on the bike with her on a leash a true adventure. She hits the end of the leash in pursuit of a rabbit with all the force of an 11 pound tuna hitting the end of the line, enough to pull me off the bike if I am not read for it. It adds an element of excitement to biking.

The house was kept in wonderful condition by the renter, and most of the green glass jars are unwrapped and doing service as sugar pots and the like. Tirien and family arrive at the end of the week, and we are planning to be dressed as Marsh-ians for the 4th of July parade, to draw attention to the need to protect the Woods Hole Wetlands. I got out kayaking this morning, and actually connected with a dinner sized bluefish. And now its sunny, with the nowadays sounds of summer (powered tools doing jobs that could be done by hand), and the little dog is suspiciously supervising the bird feeder area.

Its a little strange to have the scenery staying in one place and for me to be moving. After to many days of the opposite. The scenery yesterday was green and glowing. It got hot later in the morning, but starting from Great Barrington was very lay back indeed. It was Sunday, a day of brunches, pancake breakfasts, and assembly for family picnics and games. No soccer games; I suppose people are all watching the World Cup games, and now that England has joined Spain, France, and the USA for that matter in being played OUT of the running, we don't really have to worry about outcomes.

So, what did I learn about myself and my relationship this trip? On the last day, we played a book tape by Jonathan Frantzen (The Corrections) which has a family of men who act out, in broadly drawn and very believable permanent states of depressed agitation, some of the worst aspects of my own behaviors. Rigidity, control, punishing the women who love them, they are real exemplars of the kind of paternalistic social interactions that George Lakoff points out is still the dominant paradigm for much of Amurica. Listening to their mean spirited pratings, and the descriptions of their angry and violent actions, its easy to identify which of mine fall into that category. When I automatically disagree with what Sala says, when I make a mistake, reproach myself, and then express myself angrily to her, I feel their terrible example gives me more support for change in myself. What a good book should do, I guess. And of course its all part of this more central struggle, which I think I have more accurately identified as how to accept my own disturbing thoughts, and let them come and go without becoming involved unless they are really where i want to be at that time. Mostly, of course, the outside world scrolls along like passage down a highway. Most of what comes in does not have major emotional tags attached. But then, something does, often something that involves a multimedia contact with material that I already have processed into internally held belief. Thats when it becomes difficult, when the new stuff and the old stuff fit a pattern of reaction.

So i agree, a weekend (or longer) sitting retreat with a teaching I feel is qualified definitely should be on the agenda. In the meantime, thanks for listening, and I will continue to blog at least most of my diary if you want to tune in

http://alantraveling.blogspot.com/

The other blog at that site, entitled The Village Physiologist, represents an ambition to write some brief thoughts about human physiology...will work on that too.

love and kisses

alan

EAst 2010 Day 13: Great Barrington, MA

6-28-2010 0820 Great Barrington MA
Well, there was no internet earlier, so I ended up writing in the old Word diary, and dont know how to copy from that into this blog. So youll have to read the email for todays post.
sooner of later, I will learn now to do this.

Today its on to Woods Hole.

East 2010 Day 12 London, Ontario

6-27-2010 0700 So yesterday we drove from Petoskey by Saginaw and Flint, turned left and headed for Canada, where we are now. We read Zen Mind Beginners Mind by Suzuki Roshi. I must admit that part of the impetus for doing this was Sala's mild exasperation with my mis appropriate of ideas about attachment. She has produced several impromptu perororations on the subject (under the general title of 'why are you saying these things' and 'you are really getting the basic idea wrong'. I think the most dramatic of the many dramatic turn of mind that it produced in me today was the section on the futility of trying to distinguish between what you are doing, and what you would rather be doing. It doesnt matter whether you call what you are doing by the time you are doing it, or the name of the activity. You can't really avoid the present moment. Not only are you whever you are, but what you are doing is exactly what you are doing. Another good section is the discussion of balance. Good art comes from an action out of balance, displayed against a totality of existence that is in perfect balance. He actually uses a construction that is very similar to Hopper's statement regarding creative activity...your own experience of nature.

Its certainly true that the artists I admire most are not trying to balance the whole universe, and not worried about being very assymetric. And when they are working, they are all there, and doing exactly what they are doing. In those moments when it works for me, at least, thats the way I feel.

Suzuki Roshi's thoughts also make contact in so many ways with a lot of what I've noticed in my own life. Its hard to maintain faith that students are able to teach themselves. Its relatively easy to simply appropriate that function, equating 'teacher' with 'controller'...and a slippery slope from there to assuming that therefore you have the responsibility for learning, not for teaching. The central faith needed for small group student centered process is recognizing that students CAN teach themselves...and CAN decide within a range what they prefer to study at a given time.

Before we left Petoskey yesterday, we toured the Bay View Association campus, up the hill fromt he lake and on the northern edge of town. This would be lake Michigan, and Petoskey lies on the shore of Little Traverse Bay. Beautiful sunsets. The end of the rail line, the beginning of another. Those items were all part of the considerations of the Wesleyan Methodists who decided to start an Encampment there for the purpose of cultural advance. Now its independently controlled by the people who own the houses and the land. White wooden buildings in a loop of road, surrounded by private houses, large, gingerbreaded, well kept green lawns. A little more clustered than usual for such large houses. Reminiscent of the little houses in Oak Bluffs on Marthas Vineyard...and indeed, begun with the same purpose. Next time you visit Petoskey, besure to check it out..not on the standard tourist route. And no dogs allowed on campus.

Yesterday we passed rapidly through Sarnia, which is the city just across from Port Huron, but in Canada. The first several miles are completely surrounded by noise abatement walls...like much of urban France...so I dont really know what Sarnia looks like. Sala remarks that there they forgot to add people to this country. I saw plenty of them in the official liquor store, the only place to buy alcohol in this Province. And they looked to be about the same as Amuricans, although the statistics say they are a little less obese. Sala also notes the fast food is different...served in tearooms...but just as nasty. London is an industrial city in central southern Ontario. It makes things...railway train engines and armored military transports to name just two. And yes the river is called the Thames, and yes the county is Middlesex and so on and so forth. The city itself, over 350,000 residents, is way past anything that could be called quaint. But there are lots of green commons, and it feels good to be in this land of freedom. And then down the road, is Toronto and all of the TV coverage you have been watching. I think not, for us.

Yes, and Port Huron was of course the name of the Statement that was the inception document for Students for Democratic Society. To whom I owe an undying gratitude, since if Tom had not drafted the Statement, and he and other other U Michigan and Harvard students had not met way back in '62, then the National Office would never have been established, and Clark and Helen would never have been running it, and Sala, then by a different name, would never have ended up working there after her time in Mississippi doing voter registration, and thus would not have answered the phone when I called to report on the busses I had organized from Rockefeller and Einstein to go to the March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam (March of 1965 I think). The Port Huron Statement hasnt lost any idealism and intentional ambiguity since...its still one of my favorite founding statements...right up there with the Declaration. Thanks, Tom.

Its hot, again. But not yet muggy. Yet. All that lies ahead. The Upper Peninsula looks better already, in hindsight. Perhaps we will be back to college driftwood from Lake Superior, or spend more time at the Pictured Rocks. But today, its more reading of Suzuki Roshi, more driving, and our long awaited (ab out 44 years now) nuptial trip to Niagra Falls.

love in the struggle

alan

East 2010 Day 11 Petoskey, MI

6-26-2010 0720 Petoskey, MI. Wailing softly, we left the Upper Peninsula...apparently residents refer to themselves as Yoopers...with its moderate temperatures, bright sun, massive rains, and overall resiliant intransigence regarding full participation in the consumptive society. It feels like Maine in that regard. There are also Moose, a mark of such places. I am told Alaska is similar. It would be possible to hypothesize that moose pheremones have something to do with it. But distance and poverty probably are a more significant factor.


The big trees are gone. White Pine, which formed a pretty continuous monocrop over much of the Upper Peninsula was the object of the 15 year harvest, with Seney at its center. At the zenity of its life, in the late 1800's, Seney had something like 15 saloons, hotels, boarded sidewalks ( to avoid the deep mud that logging creates) and a raft of brothels. It also had over 3000 residents, plus god knows how many drunken brawling loggers. It burned several times, during the harvest years. But there was still quite a bit of town left when Hemingway returned in 1919, age 21, with a war wound and his brothers. He had changed trains here in Petoskey, then gone, still in the same train car, across Mackinac straits on a train ferry. Now there is a big bridge. He'd been hitched up to a new engine, and gone left to Seney, rather than right and north up to 'The Soo'..the areas around Sault St Marie where locks give access from Superior to Lakes Michigan, Huron, and eventually Erie and the St Laurence.

The scene that Nick describes in 'Big Two Hearted River', is a little more burned than Seney was in 1919, but otherwise pretty much what you see. Today there are no signs of the burns. And no sign of the town, either. Seney is pretty much a couple gas stations and a combined post office cafe and bank, where we had breakfast. But the steel railway bridge is there, and you can walk out on it, as Hemingway/Nick did, and look down. Yesterday, when I did, the clear brown water was up, and the pools that Nick describes, and later fishes in, were a bit washed out. Good, said the locals, we can use the rain.

The short story has been described as 'wandering stream of consciousness'. Reading it, I realize that Hemingway, more than Steinbeck and Faulkner, and maybe even , talks quite a bit about feelings, letting us feel them, as well as showing us the settings and the actions that produce the sensations that lead to the emotions that create the feeling. The story can be found on line these days.
We drove through Seney without going for a Pictured Rocks cruise...it was raining pretty hard, and we had a look the previous day from the shore. It rained harder later on, coming along the top of Lake Michigan. We stopped for a pasty...derived from the same product in Cornwall, England and Kingston Jamaica I guess...this one was more pepper and less spice, and perhaps more potato, but still worth the eating. The bridge looks like the GG Bridge, will have to check later to see if its the same designer. And then were were back in civilization, in Mackinaw City, where Sala tried valiently to find affordable accomodations on Mackinac island. But it was raining heavily by then, and the first Friday of the tourist season. So, after a brief stop to buy fudge from a iconic tourist trade shop near the restoration of Fort Mackinac, and then smoked whitefish and smoked whitefish pate at a store filled with stuffed animal heads and a freezer full of fish, we headed on into lower Michigan...and Petosky
The Petosky stone is a fosillized coral, hexagarnia perconiata, that polishes up into a beautiful usually reddish and patterned rock. I was given one by my great Uncle Al long ago. Al lived in Dexter or Flint, nearer Detroit, but came fishing up here. Petoskey was the end of the rail line, but he, working at Ford, preferred to drive. He probably fished the same streams that Hemingway did, but I imagine thought about them somewhat differently. Or maybe not, Al was pretty close with his feelings...with words in general.
So we stopped here, and ended up, on this busy weekend, settling into a $147/might accomodations, which are not thata different than the $55/might family run motel we stayed at in Musining. Sala really liked the Upper Peninsula. What she liked best...learning about ma jong from a group of ladies who had taken over the back room at the Breezy Point Bar and Grill (down on lake Michigan, on route 41) who had finished their noisy lunch and were commencing their noisy afternoon of games. In the front part, the menfolk were shooting pool, or having a beer. Outside, Fuji and I went for a walk,a nd Fuji got very wet chasing birds. It was a good time for all.
Today I want to learn more about attachment. I have been using the term incorrectly. And most important, I already have learned enough to want to categorically state that I have never intended to impute non-attachment to any teaching of buddhism. I think my problem has been in conflating the term attachment with my own feelings of guilt (and other feelings) about my own attachments. But hopefully, as we roll south towards Saginaw, Flint, and eventually into Ontario, I will become clearer.
la lucha continua siempre

alan

East 2010 Day 10 Musining MI

6-25-10 0645 Musining, MI. Well, we're back to Central Time, which meant that I was lying on the municipal pier at what I thought was 7:30 PM yesterday wondering where all the other people who should be going on the sunset cruise to the Pictured Rocks were...it was a gorgeous early summer evening, cool but not cold. The wind that had been blowing in across Lake Superior had abated, the water was clear and you could even see fish near the bottom off the end of the pier. Now that I was thinking about it, the parking lot had been full of cars...and so....it suddenly occurred to me to look at my iphone, which of course keeps the right time. Yup...it was EIGHT thirty...and we had missed the cruise!

Sala teaches me that there are no mistakes. No wrong turns. No late appointments. No bad days. Yes it may be raining...it is just now..but this is not a mistake, or cause for distress.

Yeah....well...I did have my more than several moments of distress..but she's right. As Jon has made famous, 'Wherever you go, there you are', and having a small dog who is delighted that you are coming back to the car, no matter what the reason for it may be. And it was a gorgeous evening; we drove out to Miners Castle, which is on top of one of the more famous of the Pictured Rock formations. The rocks themselves are the result of layers of variously permeable sandstone resulting from beach formation back in the Permian and other periods. The colors result from minerals, of course. Copper, Manganese, and Iron, principally. And the visitors center at Miners Castle is really well set up. As everyone who visits Amurica as a tourist, we are becoming critical observers of the way the National Park system does things, and this one is a stylized wooden pole cabin, with exaggerated overlap angles making a very pleasant gehstahlt..the paths are safe, there are benches on steep ascents, and the overlooks are...well..overlooks.

So, I was able to stop cudgeling myself for the stupid (no stupidity!), unforgiveable (no unforgivable!!), typical (no typical!!!!) mistake (no ....well, you've already heard that there are no mistakes, right?...) within a few minutes, helped by Salas purchase of a new set of genuine mooseskin Minnetonka moccasins, and Fuji's uncritical love. Fuji and I had already spent the afternoon galloping up and down the beach at Sandy Point north of Musining...she to bark at the waves, I to appreciate the wrack tossed up by Superior's winter storms, which are truly epic.

Remember, the Great Lakes were the extraction route for all those things that turned out to be more valuable than the spices that Columbus was looking for. Specifically, Lake Superior is connected to most of the iron deposits, and, via Sault St Marie and 'The Soo Locks' to Gary, Indiana and from there to Pittsburg. Swimming yesterday, it was cool and tasted sweet...as fresh water does to those used to salt. Fuji danced around on the beach, but declined to come in. The birch trees whispered in the wind.

Well, we might stay around and go for the Pictured Rock cruise this morning. In a minute, I will crank up the La Pavoni and make a cup of coffee for each of us, and we will do some planning, together. With a little effort, I can investigate the possibilities of travel without doing any stone cutting...and really make the planning a more cooperative process. When I dont, even on a short time base, its problematic. I mean, for my own process. For example, yesterday I had decided to call up and book a motel in Grand Marais (pronounced Marie). Sala hadnt objected, but we didnt discuss the reason. On arrival in this area of the upper peninsula, we discovered that the boat tour started from Musining, not GM. This caused me some internal chagrin...I had booked the wrong city! That meant that when Sala calmly asked me why we were planning to stay 40 miles away from where we wanted to take a boat trip from, I had already piled up enough sense of mistake Mistake MISTAKE to feel it as an attack, not a request for clarification. So I snapped at her, and hated myself, and felt badly and decided we needed a divorce and thought I might kill myself. Luckily, all this lasted for a few seconds, even the worst parts. The reality of a small dog who is waking up from a nap and wanting to go for a walk is a good antidote for self hatred and anger. And yet, I still have the reaction. So...in a few moments, we will look over the information I have found, and Sala will be appreciative that I have found it, and I won't be attached to what we will decide to do, and it will be another wonderful day in Paradise. One way or another.

I've started posting these missives via email. But I encourage you to check the blog, if you want more pictures, and a more detailed discussion of travel constipation and how I have been successfully dealing with it.

So, about Travelling with Human Digestive Systems over age 50.

This is the outline of a chapter for the yet unpublished book 'Travelling with a Partner after age 50' by Sala and Alan.

1. Travel Realities...regularity, irregularity, changes, and so forth

2. Physiologic Realities..the guts outlook on life, its twists and turns, its juicy moments, and the ultimate result.

3. Problems and joys

a. problems

1. diarrhea

2 constipation.

For travelers older than 50, constipation is way more real than diarrhea. Diarrhea is usually the result of eating outside the box, and older travelers are often wiser travelers. We've already experienced the ecstacy of mango ice cream in the Zocalo, and fried banana on the Beach...and the resulting days of gut grinding clothes soiling butt cheek clenching misadventure. So, instead, we fall prey to under hydration, low bulk in the diet (all of the salads are out) and long stretches of inactivity. All these things tend to slow the digestive process. A slow digestion (vide section on physiology) leads to more fluid absorption, and as a result more compact (aka painfully hard) poop production. Aka constipation.

Constipation in kids is a transitory process that the gut usually cures itself of. The distension produced by the compacting mass of poop stimulates the large intestine (see normal physiology) and and produces a reactive increase in motility throughout the gut. If there is an obstruction, there is vomiting. There may be discomfort. But the net result is usually a passage of the poop.

Us older people have less reaciton to the stimulation, and less motility response. As a result, the poop can pile up into quite a lump without our having much pain. A little diffuse discomfort, a little loosening of the belt...and days can go by without any cause for worry.

That results in a solid mass of poop filling up the colon...growing so big it can't fit through the anus, and creating a message to the gut so strong it finally produces pain and nausea and vomiting etc etc.

By that time, its too late. Without some help, eventually the poop and the bowel will interact in a way that lets bacteria make their way from the poop, where they are normally present as part of the digestive process, through the lining of the gut, and into either the blood, or the peritoneal space. And that creates what is generally known as sepsis...or more popularly blood poisoning.

That leads to death.

Sepsis is a leading cause of death in people our age.

So, OK, what to do?

About two days into this trip, I realized I hadn't pooped ( I am using that word rather than defecation, or shit...the boundary words defining polite and impolite usage. Poop is a kind of midway term...not compltely acceptable, not gross and unacceptable.) This usually happens when I travel, no big deal. Morning of the third day, and I tried a little harder. And increased water. Morning of the fourth day, a tiny hard pellet, and the beginning of some mild discomfort in the abdomen. Bought psyllium and started stirring 2 tsp of the powder into 8 oz of half strength juice twice a day. Morning 5 day, better diet and still no urges. Usually, coffee and a walk with the dog will produce...but now now. Discomfort more noticeable, and I just wasnt enjoying life as much. So I added Magnesium citrate and checked to see if Ex Lax was still the cheapest source of sennacides...the active ingrediant of the herb senna. Senna seems to stimulate bowel activity. Magnesium probably helps by holding water inside, and also relaxing some of the stress induced tightening of the bowel muscle. And psyllium adds bulk, keeps in water, and generally helps reassure the bowel its time to move along.

Well, this time, that all worked. The steps I suggest, in order, roughly, of days without a poop, are like this

1. Add psyllium 2 tsp twice a dayin 8 oz of water each time. NEVER use capsules without taking that much water.

2. Continue psyllium

3. Add sennacides

4. Add magnesium salts

5. Add osmotic agent (OTC long chain alcohol or sugar)

6. Add enema, repeat magnesium salt, increase osmotic agents.

More on this at a later date.

alan

later

alan

East 2010 Day 9 Appleton, WI

6-24-2010 0615 Appleton WI. Well, to quote the colllege age driver of our recreational vehicle, 'Now you can tell your friends that we've viewed the world out of the rear end of a duck'. Yes friends, yesterday we realized a childhood ambition, and did a tour of the Dells in a Duck. That would be the Wisconsin Dells, near Baraboo...names from the magical migration my family made from wherever the heck we lived in the winter to the dependable quantity in my life, Woods Hole. My father rarely displayed anxiety, but as the day of our departure approached, he would want us to stay 'pretty close to home' as he put it. He later confessed that if he could have anesthetized us and hung us in a closet for the week before leaving it would have suited him. He was afraid that we would break a bone, or otherwise render ourselves unsuitable for travel. The travel itself consisted of minor and transitory modifications to the current family vehicle (some special board or cushioning or netting that created more storage space while preserving our own private lairs), getting whatever he was using as a roof storage on the Pontiac or Plymouth or Ford or whatever station wagon we were using, and finally getting us four kids, 1 or 2 dogs and cats, himself and Susie into the vehicle and getting us down the road. We traveled in multiples of $2 worth of regular gasoline; about the distance that $20 would get you now. And from Minneapolis, the Wisconsin Dells were at the right distance IF we started early (he used it as an incentive for this). We stayed mostly in tourist cabins...really little houses with noisy heaters or none, and usually extra cots for the extra us. It got me really hooked on bright excitement of the night sounds of long hall trucks passing on the road outside, train whistles from the distance, and rising early, damp asphalt highways, banquettes in small diners, pancakes and bacon, and lunch stops in rest areas alongside reed bordered lakes. I just assumed that EVERYONE wanted to be up early and on the road..that it actually WAS morally superior to morning book reading and a more leisurely later start. And the Dells were a part of this...due to my fathers need to move us steadily along the road, although we did stay in the Dells, and did swim in the then pretty pristine waters of the Wisconsin River or Lake Delton, we were never there during Duck operating hours. And I loved the idea of the amphibious truck called a 'Duck'. The Army actually made a jeep sized version of this, and it was my teenage dream to find one of these in operating order and affordable price (Never happened). Something about just being able to drive into the water and continue until you wanted to drive out was totally appealing.

So yesterday we left Madison after Sala's trip to State Street and an electronic adventure with Gracey, our on board GPS system who had her going in circles around my brothers neighborhood without ever quite directing her to the house. Gracey does this sometimes...but this time, our i-phone backups were neither amused nor confused, and eventually got her home. From Madison its only a hour to the Dells. But what a change!! Its become a huge water park cum jet boat ride cum all you can eat plus antique malls, crafts stores and multiple stores selling genuing indian moccasins. The bright side, if there is one, is that almost all the attractions are NOT part of a chain store. Of the several 'Ride the Ducks in the Dells' options, we chose 'The Original'. And it was. The vehicles are vintage WW II, maintained in a shop and operated entirely on water and private trails..thus no requirement for seatbelts. They're driven at exciting speeds and create exciting water entries(just as they tell you at the Shamu show, don't sit in the front row if you don't want to get wet, don't sit at the back of the Duck!!) Our driver had a well practiced patter, complete with good bad and politically correct jokes, and had been working at the concession for 8 years, was a Junior in a local college. And the rock formations and trees of the Dells are still beautiful, although the water of the Wisconsin seems to have become somewhat less pristine.

It was a satisfactory finish to a long quest. The video will be posted when I get around to editing it. Today its on to the Upper Peninsula, Grand Marais, the Pictured Rocks and then Sault St Marie and Canada.

I'm doing well in the recognition and admission of being wrong when I am. Fuji is happily recovering from a day of playing more or less non stop with Skunk, the small Havanese belonging to Christina and my brother.

alan

East 2010 Day 8 Madison WI

6-23-2010 0700 Madison WI.
Well, here it is, big as life. The center of the nutritional universe, celebrated by ADM as 'The Golden Dome'. It was worth traveling up the Mississippi on the Iowa side on rt 67 to take in this vista, which is the main event on the southern side of the city of Clinton. Archer Daniel Midland..which modestly lists itself as a processor of wet seeds, with an income of between $500M and $1B per year, (see http://adm.com ) is discussed on crocodyl (a corporation watch site, http://www.crocodyl.org ) as having net income of $1.7B on a total revenues of $62.97B in 2009. The corporate site lists the many countries where ADM is the largest oil seed processor...many. Its number 93 on the Fortune 500. Its as big as the 'Golden Dome'. And its in the center of the 'Obesity Epidemic' just as surely as Blue Cross is at the center of our health care problem. Yes, ADM is an American Success Story...just as Blue Cross and all of the other 500's whose business practices are studied and taught at business schools throughout the world. Unfortunately, just as in health care, there is an assumption in American Success that someone else is watching the moral compass...and in that regard, the old American song applies:

'the man at the wheel was made to feel
contempt for the wildest blow..oo..oooh
But it often appeared when the gale had cleared
that he'd been in his bunk below'

So as we sleepily become fatter and poorer, ADM becomes more successful. Ah well. We gotta get those younger mate's among us up on deck and watching the horizon. No, not the VERizon, the HORizon!!

So we spent yesterday comin' up the Mississippi. Green green green fields of oilseed of various kinds. Waterfronts, such as Dubuque IA, that have museums and places to walk and sit and enjoy the wide sweep of water. A sweep of about 600 B cubic meters per year, or half a million cubic feet per second. Yes, and there's a riverboat museum and aquarium on the waterfront at Dubuque, right next to the Ice Harbor, created by the Army Corps of Engineers to hold the riverboats wintering over while the Mississippi froze. And we passed barges, pushed by towboats, doing what they've been doing for centuries. Interesting to think we could paddle our kayaks from here to Pittsburg...or for that matter, Lake Itaska or Lake Ponchartrain. Or anywhere on the Missouri, the Platte, the Ohio or the Red rivers...all part of the Mississippi basin. But we are at the edge, here in Madison. Not much further north and east and water will be running into the great lake system.
We talked about a lot of stuff with brother James and Christina, because that's one of the benefits of family, its OK to talk about a lot of stuff. Now they are off to work...and I am left thinking about the stuff successful adult relationships are made of. The couples that I have asked generally agree that they kept on listening...not necessarily doing everything the partner wanted, but listening with intention to understand. And successful couples seem to remain curious..which I believe is where compassion begins. Curious about each other, and about the world. Keep it up guys!!
Well, Sala expresses a desire to go down to State Street and sip coffee and shop. I kinda wanna get on to the Dells and from there towards the Upper Penninsula.. The doppler radar suggests that there's a high coming later in the day...wha hoo!!
love in the struggle

Alan

East 2010 Day 8 Quad Cities

6-22-2010 0700 Davenport IA. And for those of you who know, one of the Quad Cities (originally Tri Citys of Davenport IA, and Moline plus Rock Island across in Illinois, became the quad cities in the war era, when East Moline became big enough, and includes Bettendorf.) Since there are 5, you might think...but 'quint cities' never caught on....

Moline, of course, is headquarters of the John Deere company...the green tractor guys...how much more Amurican can yu be?

The best story on my quick check of Wikipedia happened in 1856, just after the Rock Island Line built the first bridge across the Mississippi between Rock Island and Davenport. Seems a steamboat tried to bash one of the bridge supports. Industrial sabotage...or just a steamboat captain, used to having his way with sandbars, taking things into his own hands?

The rocks in the river, that prompted the name of the Illinois side city, have been under water for years, due to the installation of locks.

But this is it: today we cross the Mississippi and are truly in the East. Weak tepid sunlight seeping in around the clouds. All day yesterday it was clouds and the increasingly deep green of Eastern America. We are heading out of the praries, and into what used to be the Eastern Forest. I remember reading, somewhere, that it was said a squirrel could travel from Boston to Kentucky without leaving the trees. Well, the praries are still sure here, and very green with planted crops in these first few days of summer.

And its hot and humid. Well, not hot for those who are enjoying Washington DC or for that matter Flagstaff Az, poor people in Flagstaff. I don't feel so sympathetic for those in DC...only little children can claim to any innocence there.

About noon yesterday we stopped for Sala to have something to eat. The Fazoli'sItalian Fast Food she chose was apparently a new nadir of such fare. But Fuji liked the newly rained on lawn full of robins and promise. About 3 we stopped for gas, and Sala was told the next town, Newton, had an antique store in the town center. Sure did; the Jasper County Courthouse in the middle of the full block, surrounded by well tended grass and flowers and a square of mixed for rent, upscaling, and just hanging on stores...including Pappys Antique Mall...in a building where you can still see the marks of the anchors that held the department store name in days of yore.

And Pappys, run by two blue haired ladies, was definitely a positive shopping experience.I scored a $10 shoemakers last, for pounding jewelery metal at a comfortable level for sitting, and Sala managed to strike a mother lode of green glass screw top mason jars. The car is now in a state where there seems to be room for just one more thing, so the jars are now distributed into various nooks and crannies from which they will surely cascade into ruin if we ever have to unpack hurridly. But we survived, and rolled along through the green countryside.

Yes, and it's FIFA World Cup Football time, which is playing on all the TV's of the breakfast rooms of the Inns we stay at. This is one time when the older guys have to listen to the smaller girls to find out what a Yellow Card is. Jimmy Dean has apparently just died, but his legacy of sausage lives on in the upper end of the Inns...the middle range features biscuits and gravy, and at the lower end we have frosted flakes and lumpy orange juice.

Returning to the self help section of this blog, consider the issue of being right and being wrong. Yesterday, after driving through the rolling green corn fields, it became painfully clear that the most erosive part of this eternally occurring stressor is not my being wrong, but my not immediately admitting that I was. We had arrived at Davenport, and suddenly there was a large body of water on the right hand side. We hadn't cross anything big, so it couldnt be the Mississippi, could it? But Sala knew that it was. And yes, it turns out that at Davenport the river meanders enough so much that Illinois is South of Iowa. But as it became clear that it WAS the Mississippi, did I think of saying 'Yes, darling, you are right, and I am wrong'?

Yes, one of the many signs of infirmity is memory loss, so I can expect to continue to be wrong at an ever increasing rate. Seems the only destressing alternative is to really make an effort to admit it when it happens...as soon and as much as possible.

So..today we march on towards Madison, and then, perhaps, the Upper Penninsula.

Aloha

alan

East 2010 Day 8 Lincoln NE

6-21-10 0710 Lincoln Nebraska.
What better way to celebrate arrival in the next time zone, and the midwest, than to run into a major thunderstorm complete with car denting hunks of hail? We arrived here at the local La Quinta Inn (definitely more for your money than any other chain we've encountered, and dog friendly) just as the major rain started. It was coming down hard enough so I decided to wait to move important and essential items such as the La Pavoni coffee maker into the room. But finally, driven by hunger and Sala's need to wash clothes, I went out into it and managed to transfer the stuff onto a dolly (another thing this chain of motels has that others don't, along with an elevator to move it in), whereupon it began to the hail part. Now you Californians may not know that hail can really get big enough to dent cars and star windows, but as an old Minnesotan, I certainly do. So I drove to the nearest covered spot, a gasoline station. Which thought occurred to 7 other cars. Within a minute or so, a pleasant but determined young woman was knocking on the window, to remind me that in order to be parking there I needed to be getting gasoline. Of course, the wallet and the cell phone were both back in the room, to avoid getting wet you know. The young woman got conked pretty good going back to her post inside the service station, and I found some emergency money to buy a token amount of gasoline. And of course the hail only lasted for 15 minutes, and melted within a few more.
However, the storm system is still raining and pouring all around us, and it looks like more in the direction of Madison.
Yesterday we left the greenbelted and prosperous amazement of Boulder. Ranks of new buildings, steel and glass and stone. Vast swaths of green, apparently purchased by the City using the County as a purchasing agent. Major names like Oracle. Multiple malls, with all the right names of all the right stuff. And its all in good taste. The curbs have cutdowns. The trashcans have recycle components. The people are young and healthy. The families are often multicolored. Its only by contrast with other less prosperous places that its possible to identify any problem with all this. By calculating the square footage of the average house. The average household income. The average level of secondary education. And there IS no problem, not using the criteria of the so called free market. People who can live and work in Boulder are the ones who are successful in our current economic system. They have, either through sheer intellectual brilliance, or careful planning, or choosing their parents well, managed to create enough connections to people and things to integrate into the system that accumulates money for private use. Hmm, guess we should call it something like...well, something to do with power and money...how about capital-ism?
Well, I definitely don't feel I have any special rights to take nips at the hand that is feeding me. Its just that I've always had difficulties accepting that the only way to achieve happiness and a sense of achievement as well as material security is to make more money than other people. But as I pump my gasoline, or stay in my nice motel, on my way across country on a trip that is mostly for my own enjoyment, its hard not to be mindful of the fisherfolk in Alaska or the Gulf, or the homeless in Berkeley, or those who can't afford or are too ill to get on a crosstown bus to visit the clinic.
The countryside from Denver East to Lincoln is, of course, the Plains. Laced by waterways, blessed by rainfall and alluvial soils, it starts sprouting corn pretty soon after you enter Nebraska, and here in Lincoln we are in the heart of it. 250 thousand residents, 89.8%listed as 'caucasian' in the 2004 census. Hilary Swank was born here. And its not a river town...most of Nebraska develoment stuck pretty close to the Platte or the Missouri rivers, but Lincoln's major water was a swamp. In fact, browsing through Wikipedia, Lincoln has the metaphorical look of a a healthy cornfield; good growth, healthiest city in the US award, but nothing that really stands out. It is a college town, of course. Specifically, Huskerville, which came into existence in WWII to house people working for the airbase, and then became student housing that led to a polio epidemic in the 1950's, that probably led to the neighborhoods demise. But no great battles, no major triumphs of industry or civil rights. Insurance companies, surrounded by the green immensity of the corn.
Well, perhaps its time to get this blog out into etherspace and get us on the road. Onwards towards Madison.
best

alan

East 2010 Day 7 Lost Angel Road, CO

6-20-2010 0610 Lost Angel Road, Boulder, CO.
Sunrise in paradise..big long wavelength orange rays of it, making words like suffusing and bathing and filling and exploding even inadequate for the event that brings life to the world. The little aspen grove that survived the fire 21 years ago (aspen is apparently one of those organisms that is actually one big tree genetically) is quaking and shimmering in the morning breeze. And meadowlarks abound now that the forest is gone. Her garden is heavily protected against critters with nicotine bearing flowers to detract them from attention. The paths between the cooking and living house, the various workshops, and the sleeping and laundry house are human sized. They go around boulders and follow natural contours. They are made wide enough for feet. They are the paths we followed in Ladakh, along Black Bear Creek, and across college quadrangles despite the administrations attempt to discourage them. They are a pleasure to follow, particularly behind an adventurous little dog. But we keep the little dog pretty close in the early and latish hours. There are bigger critters than she at large.
Sala now knows the difference between a fir and a pine, and has the cones to prove it. We are re-acquainted with chokecherry and flax, and have bent to smell the wild rose. We've been informed on subjects ranging from global warming to the use of a road grader as a snow plow. If someone told me that I would have to spend my life here, it would be no burden. And yet....this morning after the coffee and the conversation, we will pack up the car, and the dog, and head down the hill and out onto US I 70.
We talked, or rather I asked and was answered, more about the Boulder Magic...Roland was born here, and is on a first name basis with the various mined out gold lodes, the various City and County commissioners, and about 75 miles of dirt roads that he maintains. He feels things are now at a point where they are circling the wagons (or to be exact, have bought up the land for the green belt) and beginning to tax new arrivals. I'm still not exactly sure how they did it, but he feels a lot has to do with being so closely East of the Continental Divide in location, location, location. Probably so...
There goes the meadowlark again. Time to pack up.
best regards

alan

East 2010 Day 6 Lost Angel Road CO

8-19-2010 1930 Lost Angel Road, Boulder CO.
Our first approach to this overlook of the Sugarloaf Basin was last evening, and my immediate first impression was arrival at a farm in The Shire, Middle Earth. Although the road, just graded by Roland, probably driving Melissa with her 14 foot blade, was much more than any hobbit could ever wish for. Melissa is only one of the several graders in the machinery yard here, hidden behind the hill. In the foreground are a collection of small buildings, several built into the earth, and one, a root and battery cellar, completely underground. That structure survived the fire 21 years ago that cleared out all the timber. In the minds of our hosts, the tree squirrel family that built a nest within earshot of the marine clock, the shade and the plants that grew there, and the security of living under the big trees is still a bright reality. The new reality, huge green views and vistas, is pretty good too.
What looks like middle earth is the small buildings, stuccoed to resist any future fires, large enough for their needs and not any larger than needed. One building for watchmaking, one a studio for body work, one for laundry and bathing with a sleeping loft, another the outhouse and then there is the machine shop and several sheds thrown in.
The electricity is solar, and everything except the printer runs on DC 24 volts. Roland on the subject of AC electricity as a convenience only to the big producers is one of the many positive talks that I've heard. Makes sense; had solar generation been available, perhaps we would have grown a world of local electricity production. Now we have 'the Grid', with all of its problems, plus big hydroelectric, coal fired power plants, and all the vested interests that will make it harder to ever make the conversion back to local DC.
We arrived here in paradise after a really pleasant day travelling from Green River Wyoming to Laramie then past Cheyanne and then South to Boulder. Yes, and Green River is the home of the Green River Ordinance, used to banish door to door solicitation. From Green River we took Wyoming 53 up into the hills East of town, and had 26 miles of high speed dirt road worth of wild horses. Beautiful animals, several herds with foals and a group of mixed gender teenagers hanging out around one of the viewpoints, clearly wanting to bum cigarettes and get in trouble. And antelope as well. And miles of rolling sage and other low vegetation. For Wyoming, there were almost no wind, bright blue sky, and a lot of silence.
And on to Laramie. Because of the name(given to a child by friends long ago) , because of Matthew Shepherd, and the brutality of what can happen in a beautiful college town (like Kent State) when our internalized oppression suddenly is given free rein, and because we needed to stop for gas. Laramie is a university town, but its also a town without a very secure attachment to the economic events that are sweeping towns like Boulder forward into the age of informatics. The houses in Laramie are small, and look somewhat needy. Hey, they look poor. The downtown is being regenerated with antique stores, and shops selling outdoor equipment to students. But the Salvation Army store stock is pretty thin and pawed over. And theres no sign of the kind of growth that we saw 100 miles down the road.
In Laramie, the construction looks to be Title 8. In Boulder, the construction looks to be condominiums for people who got their job through the internet, and will be staying maybe 8.9 months. The farmers market Betty took us to today was full of fresh vegetables, artisan youghurt, and multiracial families out shopping. The intersection where I pulled over to GPS the Whole Foods Store was Tek Storage and Tape streets. Whole blocks of newly sodded corporate yards around new buildings with imaginative single word names. The party we were taken to could have been in Marin..or Palo Alto...or maybe more likely outside Sonoma. Somewhere prosperous anyway.
And I don't mean to belittle Laramie; I like the looks of the town, and they are clearly working hard to make it even nicer. Its as far ahead of Lee Vining as Boulder is of Laramie. And I dont even know if I want more Boulders. But it sure is impressive to see a community that seems to be inventing itself in a big way.
So...from the small scale beauty of Lost Angel Road, where our friends live in a energy footprint sized to their liking, to the burgeoning success of Boulder as a whole...its quite a contrast to the relative neglected poorness that we've seen in many towns on the way here.
Tomorrow...on towards Madison WI...but theres a lot of Iowa between now and then.
I promised to write about 'infirmity'. Weak, feeble, uncertain or vascillating of mind...decrepitude brought on by aging. Well, I think as good as any a way to describe whats happening to me.
Oh its not any one major thing. Just stumbling a little more, forgetting a bit more, not leaping up from sitting on the floor, and being careful navigating to the bathroom at night. It all adds up to becoming infirm. And looking ahead, since we are constantly provided with great examples of where we are going, all of these things clearly will become more and more a fact of daily life. If we are fortunate enough to have one. I remember Sybil in response to my question as to whether she every was resentful about lugging cold water, chopping wood to warm the house, and doing dishes in a pan, smiling and saying 'well, I think of the alternative'. Today I met a young woman whose spinal infection has resulted in constant chronic pain and legs so weak she can walk only a few steps. 'Well', she said in response to a similar question about coping, 'most of the time I get by and sometimes i feel like shooting myself'. Age, accident; events that produce infirmity produce major branch points in lives that hitherto may have seemed to be difficult, but suddenly are clearly 'you ain't seen nothing yet!!' But, well, I think of the alternative.

greetings from paradise

alan

alan

East 2010 Day 5 Green River WY

6-18-2010 0730 Green River Wyoming. I kinda like to write the states name out all the way, since places like Laramie (later today) and Green River figure in my childhood repertoire.
From Laramie the Deserts are my sorry lot
Just me and my hoss and the deserts are hot
This part of a song about the pony express that came on a small 78 record that arrived in the mail each month. I also got a small box from something called 'Things of Science', which sometimes had an owl pellet, and sometimes rocks with trilobites.
I dont appreciate my mother often enough. Not that my father objected to such things, perhaps he even came up with the idea, leafing through one of his physiology related journals, but I dont think he would have arranged the actual arrivals. And when I was sick, usually with something diagnosed as ear infection, and being treated with heat, terpenhydrate with codeine, and perhaps some early sulfa drug, it was of course my mother who held me and rocked me...traveling slowly in that rocker express from one end of the long front room in St Louis to the other.
Well, yesterday we got a chance to appreciate all parents, at the Family Research Center right there on Temple South in Salt Lake City. We parked in a double meter parking space under some plane trees right in front, and thus right next to Temple Square, the geographical mathematical and fully planned center of SLC. We, like all new arrivals, were unobtrusively labeled ( 'First Time Visitor) with name tags, and encouraged to watch a video. Around the comfortable viewing room were tableaux of various families that had found their relatives, with if not an emphasis at least a fair balance of non European and native appearing peoples. Then into the computer room, with its banks of computer, looking for all the world like a cross between the largest net cafe you've ever seen in Paris or London, and a library (which it actually is of course). But it lacked the hushed atmosphere of the average library. Experienced users ( yes, several I asked said they were spending days doing their searches, or were coming back on second trip) working by themselves. First timers each with a Elder as docent. Elwood was ours, a fattish friendly perhaps sl fussy man, equipped with an expanding pointer (to help orient me to where to click on the screen) and an agenda; to be of assistance.
Basically, the LDS church have subscriptions to every major geneological search engine, and make it available for free. We didnt visit the stacks, but they also have reams of hard copy, and even more squirreled away in a rock bound vault (they mention this prominently).
Its clear that they (a) consider who you come from important and (b) have a strong belief in record keeping.
And its very rewarding!! I scored Zerah Burr's Civil War Pension record, and of course the 1910 and 1920 census data showing Helen M Burr as head of the household in Dexter MI, with Grandpa listed as 'son in law'. He was 46 at the time. I found out that Great Uncle Otto had a first name beginning with K ( he only used the initial) and that Great Aunt Emilie used the stage name of 'Ruha Solis' when she went to Paris in 1928. And Sala had equal success hunting down the Bridgeforths in Alabama. At least in 1030, Sylvester lived with his parents and two cousins, and on her mother's side, Grandmother Lollie was head of household, and all the aunts and uncles names seem to be accounted for.
As a more than before sentimental older guy, I watered up a little big actually seeing the marriage record of my mothers parents in Louisville KY, and the whole experience was quite amazing. And the whole room was filled with excited engaged people doing something on computers other than buying more stuff. Go LDS!!
You can't seem to delete your saved searches, but I think thats just to avoid mistakes. You can do CD copies of larger documents and photos. They say theys scrub the computers every day, and if there is any unstated motive other than helping people find people (and perhaps finding an LDS) I didnt pick up on it. It fits with their wandering tribe and generally lost and found beliefs, I guess.
Wyoming is greener, and more up and down. Green River itself was intended to be the middle of the Western railroad. Apparently people found this out and speculated the land up to a population of 2000 before the railroad arrived. So the railroad people moved on to 14 miles west, and GR dwindled to about 200 people before they had to move it back when the river at the other location dried up. Today its still a rail town, with high bluffs along the NE side of town and a river still flows through it.
I felt a little sickish yesterday, but today feels fine. A new time zone so I late start. Today its on to Boulder to encounter Betty and Roland. And more ruminations about the meaning of the term 'infirm', as it applies to an accurate descriptor for what I am experiencing as life rolls along.

alan

East 2010 Day 4 Elko, Nevada

6/17/10 0640 Elko NV.
Hugely bright desert sun washing all over the window of this meat and potatoes motel. Actually, I managed to buy some TVP nuggets rather than chicken nuggets at the Albertsons where we shopped for our TV dinner. TVP is 'textured vegetable protein', which was developed about 40 years ago...its the basis of a lot of inexpensive veggie dinners, and can be organic, too. Caveat Emptor.
Elko is where you stay if you want to avoid Wells, an hours drive to the East on I 80. Yes, you do want to avoid Wells, although our gasoline stop yesterday afternoon actually now holds the prize for Epitimization of the term 'Godforsaken'. Avala, as its actually called on the sign, was so windy that Fuji refused to walk back to the car against it. Sala wondered where the young woman who sold her the Dove ice cream bar might live. We decided it was probably in the Western section of Godforsaken. Huge wind, cold, high desert and the implacable interstate going by at 75 mph.
Elko has a lot more than that. Founded in 1868, it was the western end of the railroad for a while, and now is the county seat, hope to miners and mine owners. 80 percent listed 'white' on their census forms, and about 20% listed Latino, leaving little room for anyone else...Black and NA are down in the 1-2%. Yes I know it doesnt add up, I am just reporting what I read.
Home to the Cowboy Poet Annual. Huge green watered lawns around the Convention Center and municipal playing fields. Lots of dog friendly motels to choose from.
We came down the West Fork of the Walker River after lifting up out of the Mono Basin yesterday morning. The river is greyish yellow with sediment, but all white on top from its rapid passage. It rages right along, and the information sign in the day use area quotes a Major Patten who recommended that no emigrants should use this route...'strewn with bones and broken wagons'. Now, of course, we zip through in a matter of minutes. Then it took months. We think of getting wagons over the alluvial boulder field that lies along the busy little river, the days when dough twisted on sticks or barley soup with a soupstone for flavor were all you ate. And the blue sky and brilliant sun...well, you've seen Sheltering Sky probably...
Yes, and we came back to civilization in the form of Carson City NV, and stopped at a store called A to Zen, but the stock wasnt as good as the name. We intend to continue the policy of at least one such stop a day. And at least one really good ball tossing running jumping Fuji stop.
Between such times, the high desert rolled by. Some salt pans, and Bonneville ahead today. Folorn wind banged sun scoured human habitation remains, and the ongoing pointiliste landscape of aromatics flowing by. At any stop, no matter how apparently godforsaken, if you crush a bit of green, you get a sudden flood of smelling that brings back all of the ceremonies, all of the sleeping bags laid on the sand, all of the big star nights of all of the desert camping of the past...and hopefully the future.
A restless night..maybe altitude, or lack of exercise. My knee doesnt want to run, and no bicycle to exercise with. Maybe more walking today.
Speaking of that, its on to Wyoming, Jackson Hole and the Natural History Museum, or perhaps Yellowstone and Old Faithful.
muchos besos

alan

East 2010 Day 3 Lee Vining towards Wyoming

6/16/2010 0656 Lee Vining CA. The sky at night is big and bright here just like the heart of Texas. There is a Lee Vining Avenue, buried back in the 3 street thick mixture of rural and urban poverty that seems to be most of the town, West of 395, but its the main highway, 7 lanes wide that really sets the tone. Smooth yet subtly textured, basic black, marked tastefully with yellow and white pinstripes, the highway fills the little town's gullet spring through fall. The motels are all full; we rented the last room in Murphy's Motel, the only dog friendly place in town. (Some of the others are positively dog hostile, with 'dog walking not allowed' signs ...presumably replacing the 'white's only' or 'no Irish need apply' signs they used to hang). The Golden Fried chicken was of that recipe that seals the bits of bird in a shell of dough hardened by deep fat..but Fuji greatly enjoyed her portion. Walking this dawn, with Mono glistening in the background under the rising sun, Fuji and I admired the large yard of snow equpment. A small boys paradise. There are small and large plows, bucket loaders with head high rugged rubber baby bumper wheels encased in 3 inch link chains, and, that machine of all machines, the mighty snow blower. Not even seasonally rusty yet. The High School is small but modern. The sign on a small brightly painted building next door says HS and Public Library. Alas, it was not yet open to sample what Lee Vining was reading last winter.
We Saved Mono Lake. I mean we the present generation; beginning in 1941 it was diverted to fuel LA's water needs (brackish though it is). Some Davis students noticed that the falling water levels endangered gull rookeries, and successfully pursuaded the Audubon Society to make it a cause celebre. Now its future seems pretty secure, as futures go. At least no one has discovered oil underneath. And it is beautiful, although most in winter, when its hard to get here.
Lee Vining is about 8000 feet high, and between incipient reactive airways and mild travel induced slow bowels, Sala and I pay homage to this. The little dog seems fine, and slept well. And its great to get up into a smogless bright new day.
Today we head towards Yellowstone and Old Faithful...maybe arriving on Thursday.
aloha

alan

East 2010 Day 2

6-15-2010 2100 Lee Vining Ca.
Well, this is the first post of my life as a blogger. So far, I've discovered that I dont know how to paste previously written content into this space.
Lee was one of the two Vining brothers who settled this area in the hopes of striking it rich. They didnt. Also known as Poverty Flat, because of its limited agricultural possibilities, you may already know Lee Vining as the town nearest Mono Lake. Its also the home of the Nicely Family Restaurant,where Sala and I just ate dinner as Fuji waited in the car. We've arrived here by way of Tioga Pass , Tuolome Meadows, Arch Rock Entrance, Mariposa and routes 156 and 140, starting at Pt Lobos at a comfortable 10 AM. Cynthia and Molly were just about to leave to meet the possible little dog addition to the household. Hope they luck out, as we seem to have. Fuji had another great day of travel, meaning that she mostly slept. But stopping at Casa de Frutas alongside East 156 in the Santa Clara valley at Pacheco Pass gave her a peacock chasing experience. The Casa de Frutas is a genuine home grown destination, established by matriarch Clara Bisceglia Zanger as series of orchards and fruit stands, but amalgamated into the present miniature railway, duckpond, restaurant, fruit stand, coffee shop and antique (aka junk) agricultural machinery collection by among other Eugene Zanger, one of her children and alive although retired. Eugene is celebrated by a painting in the foyer of the restaurant which shows him in the act of flipping a coffee cup off its saucer (and presumably catching it unscathed). The plaque asserts he did this action 3 million times over a career of 30 years, earning his 15 seconds of fame on Letterman in 1987. The machinery is worth stopping for if you like rusting agricultural machinery, but do not go out of your way for the home fries.
Travelling across the Central Valley is always a humbling experience. 20,000 square miles, 17 percent of America's irrigated land, $17 billion productivity yearly. Farmworkers bending over plants outlined against the skyline of fields. Cars parked along service roads. Repititive rows of greens, browns, purples. Acres of fruit trees left to die and be burned. Acres of new crops ready to replace them. The Delta Mendota aqueduct, the Sacramento Delta flowing South into a desert made to flower. And then the acres of turkey sheds, the rolling yellow hills laced by delicate dark greens of small oak trees. And then the rockbound immensity of Yosemite, the roaring white water exuberance of the Merced River. It all unrolled under a blue sky. Up past White Wolf, Tuolume Meadows with patches of snow, and at just under 10,000 feet, Tioga Pass, just opened 10 days ago. Across California, from the gleaming surf break off the beach at Seaside to the barren rock of the Eastern Sierra, and the gleaming isolation of Mono Lake.
More tomorrow morning. Hope this new format works.