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
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