Liberals Are More Patriotic Than Conservatives

"Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you've never met and all of a sudden you take pride in accomplishments you had no part in whatsoever...

"'Fuck the French! If we hadn't saved their ass in two World Wars they'd be speaking German right now!'

"Oh, was that us? That was us? That was me and you, Tommy? We saved the French? Jesus - I know I blacked out a little bit after that fourth shot of jagermeister last night, but I don't remember - I remember we went through the Wendy's drive-through... But I don't remember saving the French!

"I don't remember that at all. I went through the last ten calls on my cellphone and there's nothing incoming or outgoing to the French looking for muscle on a project. I checked my pants - it has no mud-stains on the knees from where we're garroting krauts in the trenches at Verdun.

"I think we didn't do anything but watch sports bloopers while we got hammered. I think we should shut the fuck up."

This, from Doug Stanhope back in 2007, is a rather good send-up of the American conservative nationalist. It's the same fraud that angers us, instinctively, when politicians say 'thoughts and prayers' and do nothing. Actions are important - and words without action is, rightfully, seen as worthless, hypocritical, or out-of-touch. Nationalistic statements like Tommy's above are of this worthless stripe.

No, Tommy, you don't get to take credit for the Wars, because you weren't there.

What has happened in America is that we've conflated 'nationalism' with 'tribalism'. It's the same irrationality as sports teams. Unless my blog has an unexpected fan-base you, gentle reader, have never won the World Series or the Stanley Cup or the Superbowl or any of that. You did nothing to make that victory happen. You did not train for years and make the game-winning play. Instead you just so happen to have a certain area code, and therefore identify, wrongfully, with a team that happens to play there.

Sports fans who like teams they have nothing to do with are more pure, to me. If a kid in Austin has a fondness for the Seattle Seahawks, just because she thinks they're a good sports franchise - I can get behind that. But decking yourself in the faux accomplishments of paid professionals, most of whom don't come from your town or are willing to abandon it for money, is not something to be proud of, in any rational sense. By all means do go - enjoy a baseball game, or a basketball game, or a rugby game, any game you like - that's great. But don't say "My team won!" Really? I was unaware of your managerial side-line as head coach for the Lakers. That must be exhausting on top of your commitments as a Guest Supervisor at Wal*Mart.

This sort of stuff is irrational. But it makes perfect tribal sense.  And we get this inculcated since childhood, for example with school sports. We train our kids to feel like the Hawks from area code 924 are so superior to the Crusaders from area code 922 - because in this area code a handful of preteens played basketball better this one time.

Which is crazy.

Tribalism is weird, and I sort of think as a nation we need to get past it. It's one of those deep-seated illogicalities which go typically unquestioned. If it remained sequestered to the multi-billion dollar world of sport I would be annoyed, but I wouldn't mind too much. Unfortunately, it has infected, and overwhelmed, our definition of 'nationalism' - and that I have a problem with.

Now, to be fair, nationalism is almost always geographically-bound. At its roots it is inherently arbitrary in that way. The exceptions to geographic sentiment are equally arbitrary based on things such as race or religion. This is the other edge of the sword we use to strike down racism. If the argument runs, contra racists, that you generalize negative stereotypes about a whole group of people, then you can't generalize positive stereotypes about them either, for the same reason. To do so would be equally ill-thought-out.

We are all individuals, and the fact that we are white, or Jewish, or what have you, cannot be accepted as a defining characteristic for our behaviors. Klansmen aren't racists because they're white - they're racists because they are assholes. We choose our actions, and, yes, for some people the constraints of society are significant based on these stereotypes. A 20-year old American white male has, because of racism, a very different life than a 20-year old American black male.

So this, racial, religious, or ethnic intolerance, is an example of how tribalism is insidious. Tribes once made sense, in the Olduvai gorge of Tanzania. But nowadays they are constructs - grounded on stereotypes that are irrational and harmful. And we need to apply this to geographic stereotypes as well. Just because I live in a certain place gives me no claims to it - positively or negatively.

I live, and grew up in, the Bay Area. I was born in San Francisco. But it's not my city. As Doug Stanhope might point out:

"Really? You built that bridge? I'm amazed. You see, I thought it was some guy back in the 1930s. Clearly either you've aged very well or my memory is rather foggy. And when were you going to tell me you had an engineering degree?"

San Francisco is not my city. I didn't lay the cable car tracks, or rebuild after the fire of 1906. I don't own the Giants or the Warriors franchises. No one elected me Mayor. On a whim my parents decided to live in the Bay Area when I was born. And if they'd chosen to live in say, Westport, CT instead that wouldn't be my city either.

*

Unlike most countries, America actually is fairly unique, in how we got here. We have three basic stories in the United States - the Native American, the slave, and the immigrant. Those are your only options. Other countries have these options, as well - Brazil, for example. But when you consider the demographics of Brazil, most of the immigrants, of Portuguese extraction, did their colonizing around five hundred years ago. In the US our immigrant story is very long and complicated, and is seen as an essential characteristic of our nation. Once we'd slaughtered and stole the swath of continent from the English colonies to Spanish New Spain, we kept letting people in. We kept encouraging immigrants to arrive and populate this new empire. We borrowed and embraced a whole mishmash of cultural ephemera, ideas, language, and bric-a-brac.

From the Germans we got delis, and "American" style beer. From the Italians, famously, we developed pizza, listed by many Americans as their favorite food, and got a taste for pasta. Even the word 'cookie' comes from the Dutch, who weren't exactly a big part of the story, yet historians also believe it was a Dutch immigrant, Louis Lassen, who invented the hamburger. Nowadays in any supermarket you would expect to find "fresh" sushi and no town is complete without Chinese take-out. And what late-night craving can't be satisfied with a tasty burrito (a dish developed by Mexican immigrants not in Mexico, but in California's Central Valley)?

We tell our college students to get by on ramen, watch classic American films about the mafia, and, once again from the Dutch, lift a groundhog out of a hole to determine the weather. (Apparently, in Europe they used a badger, which seems far riskier. Badgers do not like to be poked, I am told.) Christmas wreaths come to us from the Irish, as do jack-o'-lanterns for Halloween. MadTV does sketches about a student who is just an "Average Asian" and commercials advertise southern, black, soul food to predominately white audiences.

Immigration is who we are. But with this new tribalist approach to nationalism there's need of a reckoning.

Nationalism's definition, pretty universally, includes a shared, semi-mythic, historical past. And we've got this down pat, from Disney's "Pocahontas" to Broadway's "Hamilton" we are really good mythologizing and celebrating our shared cultural past. No American is alive today who fought in the Civil War, but standing in the presence of the Lincoln Memorial has become cinematic shorthand for weighing heavy decisions. Cultural inheritance, and a mythic past, we can check off the list.

...Until you hit the 1950s. That's when the shared cultural past splits, and it has never really come together since. I began to notice this as an American History teacher. Consider the difference between how we portray the 1930s to the 1950s: When talking about the 30s the tone is compassionate and respectful of the sub-groups of Americans. Textbooks take a plaintive tone regarding tenements in New York, as well as an approving commentary on the Harlem Renaissance. The plight of the Okies fleeing the dustbowl is rendered empathetically. Textbooks and curricula render a respectful tribute to minority cultures and movements up through the War.

But the 1950s are different. Instead of multiple stories of how Americans lived during this period there is, instead, a debate on what is "real" America - a debate that continues to this day. Is it the suburban, " Mad Men", white, view complete with atomic family? That certainly wasn't the America Martin Luther King lived in. Or Allen Ginsburg.

The problem with the 1950s was that the atomic family was the culmination of an ideal - an ideal that had been inherited from hundreds of years of European-American culture, norms, and traditions. The goal had been, at least since the Enlightenment, to have enough money for a nice house, not too much work, a family, and good food on the table. The 1950s was the middle class ambition: satisfied. Except, of course, for African Americans. Hispanic Americans. Asian Americans. Native Americans, Gay Americans...

Demographically, when Truman was President for the 1950 census, there were 151 million Americans. 134 million of those were white. Only 10% of America was categorized (by the census takers as opposed to the self-identification of those being counted) as black. (Still, in America today, as of the 2010 census only 12% of Americans are black.)

We've not yet decided the victors of the culture wars that began with the end of segregation. I mean, after all, some states are still debating what to do about Confederate flags, and whether the Black Lives Matter movement is "too radical". Lats time I checked, Huey P. Newton hasn't appeared on a postage stamp.

Do we celebrate the George Wallaces or the Jack Kerouacs? The Joe McCarthys or the Grateful Dead? These are not hyperbolic - twenty percent of Donald Trump primary voters in South Carolina think slavery shouldn't have been abolished, and Trump himself took lessons from the noxious Roy Cohn, who served as McCarthy's main legal mind. Meanwhile President Obama grew up in Hawaii and did inhale. The contrast is pretty stark, and in some sense is the inheritance of the Supreme Court.

From 1953-1969 Earl Warren was Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. His court determined the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision helping end segregation, established 'one man one vote' during the early 60s, got rid of mandatory school prayer, determined that there is a right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, and saw the appointment of Thurgood Marshall.

Then, from 1969 to 1986, we hard Warren Burger, who, despite certain conservative strains, decided that the New York Times could publish the Pentagon Papers, favored abortion rights 7-2 in Roe .v Wade, said that Nixon's executive privilege does not extend to felonies, upheld affirmative action practices, and saw the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor.

I could have chosen other examples - economic, military, social - from which to draw out the distinctions. But the court cases are so often cited in our social debates it seemed apropos. From 1953 until 1986 we had liberal justices making huge gains for social and civil rights. From 1986 to the present, under the Rehnquist and Roberts courts, we've had the reversal of that trend.

The culture wars playing out since the 1950s are our inheritance. So, by definition, it is harder to make a nationalist semi-mythical past if the recent past is a story of cultural divide int he wake of racial integration.

*

"Make America Great Again" is a tribalist-nationalist approach to our problems. It is ignorant, and exclusive - obviously coded language. But for some time now conservatives, selling the middle-class achievements of white Americans from the segregated 50s, have laid claim to nationalism, and by extension patriotism, as theirs.

We disagree on nationalism and patriotism in the United States, and there are two flavors to choose:

1) Tribal-conservative. Everything Stanhope was making fun of. We're great because we're mainly white and Christian. We're great because of what our ancestors did. It's a backwards system - literally looking over your shoulder to that semi-mythic past - when white middle class dreams were realized - and taking credit for it. It is irrational and divisive.

2) Liberal nationalism. But what is liberal nationalism?

Liberals are the true nationalists, and it goes back to our unique immigrant histories. More so - because liberals also embrace our other two stories, those of the Native Americans and the narratives of a population enslaved. Liberals are the big-tent people, a coalition of people working together to make America great tomorrow. And that tomorrow won't look like yesterday. Most isn't good enough - we need to look forward to a time when all Americans have equal opportunities, not glory in the past when, numerically, most did - based on race, sex, and other arbitrary factors.

Liberals want equal opportunities so that your patriotic pride can be from your own accomplishments, not those of your great-grandfather. Everyone needs to have a say in our country, because every voice matters, and we all have certain rights, like voting, that cannot be denied. Liberals are more nationalist than conservatives, because liberals value the stories and worth of all Americans - not just whites, or Christians, or certain geographic groups. Southern African Americans and Western Asian Americans and Southwestern Hispanics and New England Whites - we can all come together under the very basic adoption of human dignity as a guiding principle.

Isn't it sort of self-evident that the group who acknowledges the potential worth of the largest group of Americans is, in the true sense, the most nationalist?

The conservatives say that liberals are hypocrites because they don't respect the opinions and statements made by conservatives, so where's the inclusiveness? But this is a false paradox - liberals are united by a pledge to human dignity and the worth of all American narratives. By rejecting those who reject this premise there is no hypocrisy, it is merely a double negative: we don't accept intolerance, but that does not make us intolerant.

It is one of the great failings of the Democratic Party, supposedly representing the liberals, not to play offense on this. It is insufficient to say we are the Americans who accept the broadest, and therefore most representative, views of this nation. They need to start pointing out that tribalism and nationalism are not the same - and the conflation of the two is particularly dangerous in an egalitarian and complex rights-based country like the Unite States. They need to say that making America great again is to return to a time when sodomy was outlawed, Jews couldn't buy houses in certain neighborhoods, women didn't have have many reproductive rights, and blacks couldn't drink at the same water fountains.

Patriotism - the emotions aroused from one's national homeland - needs to be inclusive, rather than exclusive. Exclusive emotions are dangerous, as history has shown - and fundamentally irrational. Liberals, instead, need to be recognized the real nationalistic patriots - with inclusive sentiment prevailing over the tribalists like Trump.

Guns

Prologue: Inspiration

Somewhere, along the way, I forgot why I started this.

It was feeling like a diary, and a not particularly good one, instead of what I'd originally intended, reflected in the name of the blog, a "column". The early archives are a journey of whetting my style against the columns of Jon Carroll, San Francisco editorial writer who retired in December of 2015, after 8,700 articles.

He'd write about television ads. He'd write about the magnolia tree in his yard. His cat, Bucket. Going to a sports game. The homeless.

The point of his articles was that you were interested in his particular take - no matter the content. An excerpt of his prose, from an article in 1996, entitled "The Old Guy at the Wedding":

"NICE WEDDING last weekend. Very fine pizza; always a plus at a wedding. Lovely couple. Sweet music. Chocolate wedding cake -- why doesn't everyone think of that? Fans.

"I don't mean to be immodest, but try and stop me. I am standing there in my extremely lovely Italian suit (the kind that causes people to involuntarily finger the sleeve and say, 'I had no idea that you owned a suit like that, or at all'), eating a nectarine and gazing benignly into the mystic, and people are coming up and saying:

"'I know you hate this, but I really want to say how much I enjoy your column.'

"Why do they think I hate it? Have I ever given the slightest indication that the admiration of strangers would be anathema to me? I suppose it's flattering, this assumption about my innate modesty, but it flies in the face of almost everything we know about human nature.

"People like to hear good things about themselves. You want to make a friend? Say something nice. This is not exactly a state secret.

"So this happens a few times and I'm maybe just a little full of myself. Maybe I'm going, 'These are my people and I shall protect them from need and want.' Maybe it's a movie called 'Mr. Hotshot Goes to a Wedding.'"

It's not amazing social commentary - but you could read it for hours. In 2007 I started archiving his articles, and stopped, after sporadic intervals, in 2010. My initial "columns" that became the kernel of this site were called "Jonish" and numbered. Jonish 50 - Reflections on September 11th. Jonish 07 - On the Purchasing of Pornography. Jonish 69 - Confronting Global Hunger. 

The first part of this post, then, is a belated au revoir to a writer who got me into all of this in the first place. He taught me something very valuable - it doesn't matter what you're writing so long as the voice is yours, and the voice contributes something.

Part One - Purpose

The other night I bought myself a copy of Watchmen, which I read a long time ago and somehow never ended up owning. So now I own it. And that same night I reread it. And, a day later, I started re-reading Transmetropolitan.

If I have any long-time readers, which is doubtful, they may or may not remember my initial post on the subject back in 2012. For the uninitiated: Transmetropolitan is a comic that tells the story of Spider Jerusalem, the mid-future analogy of Hunter S. Thompson, wreaking journalistic havoc on a City that is the wet-dream of Koch brothers' free-market anarchism. And, analogous to Doc Thompson, Jerusalem cares deeply about politics.

Since I was a kid I wanted to be a politician. I always ran for office. I always wanted to fix things. I figured my contribution - my voice - was worth adding. Eventually I even got elected to student council - my senior year.

It was not until I had some time on my hands, though, wandering around the country, reading the next issue of Transmetropolitan in every library I came across, that I became interested in politics. I'd always wanted the position of politician, and figured whatever the problems of the day were I'd take a principled, moral, stance. But actually engaging politics had hither-to-fore not really crossed my mind.

No coincidence, then, that my initial forays into the serious issues of our generation and our problems were written once I'd just finished Transmet and had also just finished my travels across the country - sleeping on couches from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, Cleveland to Worcester, Portland, OR to Portland, ME. From that time on I've been a political junkie - increasing my understanding, following primary races, studying gerrymandered maps, doing research on super PACs at the Berkeley Law Library, I watched The West Wing and The Newsroom, and on, and on.

My project of a book on campaign finance reform started in 2012. That October I wrote that I admired Jerusalem, but didn't quite want to be him:

"I don’t want to be a hero – yet. I don’t want to change the world just now. Someone else can take it up and deal. Right now I’m busy, though, on the more than off-chance no one will step up to the plate."

And that, gentle readers, is why this blog lost its way. Because for the first time since I became a junkie, I found a hero. And instead of my doing all the talking, someone else could take the mic for a while.

Part Two - Reform

Fourteen months and two weeks ago, to the day, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, announced his Presidential campaign. Now, for all but the delusional, it is over.

A year and more has gone by where I didn't have to be a hero. And that goes a long way in explaining why I've written little of substance.

Six months ago, though, I reminded people why campaign finance was important, and why I supported Sanders. Sanders was going to do my job for me. I wouldn't need to fix the world - he would. He was going to fix the broken political system. He was going to deal with income inequality. He was going to manage an out of control Congress. It was under control.

Last Tuesday he lost. I voted for him, and the final results were 43 - 55, against. I saw him deliver a speech. It said all the things I agree with.

*

Two months and two days after Sanders announced I posted that my first draft of the book on campaign finance reform was:

"DONE. Clocking in at a slight, but still respectable, 104 pages, with over 30 cited books and scholarly sources, taking three years to write first as blogs, then as a draft of something more, unknown hours and days in libraries tracking stuff down and reading articles, books, and pouring over data, edited three times (undoubtedly still full of mistakes and badly in need of alpha readers) and formatted the way I like it - the manuscript is fucking DONE. Now I need to have other eyes look it over and work with me for the next few months to get it ready for submitting.

soreallyitsabitprematurebutstill... DONE!"

This was when Sanders was a total joke. No hope of winning. Last Tuesday that didn't seem so funny. The year in between had turned him into a serious candidate, and last Fall I began to help his campaign with contributions and phone banking.

...Anyway. He lost.

While I agree with Clinton on quite a lot, I doubt sincerely that we'll have serious campaign finance reform during her term. I know we won't have any if the living troll Trump gets into office.

The book will need to be taken up again. Rewritten, heavily, after this campaign. There's work to do.

Once again, then, I feel the need to act. I've been passive, pleased to be a follower, part of a movement, letting someone else hold the mic. But the ride has returned to the greasy kid with the lever, and it's time to get off. Fun while it lasted - stepping onto the platform you remember the reality of the world around you, the obligations as the sensation returns of ground beneath your feet.

Part Three - Guns

It may be rereading Transmetropolitan.

It may be that I've eaten six pieces of pie for breakfast. (Unlike Spider Jerusalem, I don't need drugs beyond refined sugar.)

It may be Sanders' loss.

But here I am, blasting my 'Pumped Up' mix, and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels were just usurped by the Isley Brothers:

"You know you make me want to shout!"

That's how I feel. It's how all of America should feel.

Fifty people slayed in a nightclub in Florida. Fourteen in San Bernadino last December. Twenty-seven in Newtown, in 2012. Twelve more that same year in Aurora, Colorado. Thirteen in New York in 2009, thirty-two at Virginia Tech in 2007, nine in Minnesota on a reservation in 2005, thirteen - Columbine - 1999, twenty-two - Texas - 1991, twenty-one - California - 1984.

...The fact of the matter is that we cannot continue to have gun ownership in America. And the term "responsible gun owner" is the biggest lie since "clean coal" or "intelligent design".

*

In 2012 I wrote about guns, but never shared it on here. After this slaughter in Orlando, I decided to revisit the piece, but it's unusable now. So here's my new take.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Fine. I'll even go a step further and add that some states have a serious hunting culture, and that's something we don't want to infringe upon either.

Nor should we forget the sport. Shooting for fun, gun ranges, all that.

These are the three legitimate uses of guns. You can form a citizen's militia, you can hunt, you can shoot for sport. I mean, if it's an Olympic event, we don't want to stamp out our chance at the gold, right? We got three gold medals in shooting categories in 2012! U!S!A! U!S!A!

And we're even better at shooting ourselves!

Take a look at those numbers of mass shooting deaths up there - those are some of our stats. We are way ahead of any other country in this. 91 people die every day due to guns. But it's spread across thousands of cities, in fifty states, and not located in a single nightclub. So it's not on the news.

Here's how you fix it.

1) Hunting. With proof of a hunting license, obtained courtesy a background check, you get to rent a gun for the season. There is a certain allotment of rounds of ammo. Go kill all the deer you're allowed. Shoot ducks. Then give it back when the season is over. Close watch will be kept in a national registry. In small towns you could claim the same rifle year after year - there's a shelf with masking tape on the edge that says "Sam" with your favorite gun chained to it. This is not too difficult. Failure to return unused guns or ammunition will result in a prison sentence of no less than five years.

2) Heritage pieces. Keeping your great-great-grandaddy's musket from the Civil War? Fine. Keep it. I don't honestly think there's any harm in you holding on to that in your home. The likelihood of you killing anyone with it is practically zilch. Any non-automatic, non-military weapon manufactured prior to 1920 you may keep. Special permits can be allowed for military or automatic weapons owned from before that time - in case you want to keep your WWI Browning, for example. All of these will be registered, of course. And background checks.

3) Shooting for sport. You rent the gun of choice at the shooting range. Safety class mandatory. Failure to return the gun, or if you remove it from the premises - five year prison term. This, by the way, will help out a lot of the gun shops scared of going out of business - they turn themselves into ranges (where applicable) and they rent out weapons instead of selling them. If marksmanship is your deal, this plan has you covered. Just like the hunting, you could even rent a specific gun you liked - effectively yours whenever you wanted to use it.

4) The militia. Even if the Canadians did get uppity and try to cross the border again, I really don't think our civilian militia will be much match for them, compared to what our federal troops will do. But, of course, a number of Americans see the federal troops as the real enemy. For those who see the militia as a means of protecting yourself against the government? You're doomed. Your rifle isn't protection against drones. An automatic weapon is useless against military-grade hardware. If the big bad government actually wanted to impose a king-like tyranny your firearm ownership wouldn't do jack. Unless they legalize civilian drone ownership your argument bears no correlation to reality. Since 1951 the Supreme Court has rejected claims by "insurrection" militias, which cited a mandate to exist to preserve freedoms as a bulwark against the U.S. government - with the Court stating that by providing free elections and trials by jury their rights were sufficiently accounted for.

Still, the Second Amendment stands. So - if you pass the safety class, the background check, and are officially registered as a member of a militia you, too, can own a gun. Most militias require that you swear a military-style oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. In the future all registered militias would be required to do so. Failure to abide by the Constitution while a member of an active militia in possession of a firearm - fifteen years imprisonment. The usual laws about murder would apply - perhaps a little more harsh, due to the compounding of owning a firearm while a militia member.

Could militia members keep the guns in their homes? There are roughly 300 militias in America, and maybe 60,000 members - by comparison there are 1.3 million active military personnel. 120 million Americans are deemed "Fit for military service". Militias, really, wouldn't do much if Ottawa decided to rise again. As for keeping the guns in their home I'd say tentatively... no. In rural areas, perhaps, they could. In urban areas there could be militia-run (and state inspected) armories. You wouldn't need your gun unless involved in an uprising, right? So it would be there, under protected lock and key. You could visit it whenever you wanted. Oil it. Brush it. Stroke it. Suck...

*ahem*

5) Guns in the home. No.

We're done here. This has to end. There are no "responsible gun owners". Because humans aren't static, unchanging things. Let me repeat: HUMANS ARE NOT STATIC UNCHANGING THINGS. We are changing all the time. People get depressed. People get radicalized. People go "temporarily insane" and commit "crimes of passion". Just because you are a responsible gun owner today, and passed your background check, does not mean you will be in five years! Who knows what will happen? No one sets out on life's journey saying "In five years I see myself becoming suicidally depressed." Or, "In five years, after a bad breakup, the loss of my job, and an extended period of 'not acting like myself' I intend to kill a large number of people whom I wouldn't have dreamed of harming six months prior." 

No one plans for this. And, I'm sorry "responsible" gun owners - you can't either. They're like smokers - no one picks up a cigarette with the intent of becoming addicted. "Responsible" gun owners don't intend to have their weapons cause crimes. But, like the smokers, there's no way to tell which ones will end up being deadly. 

No more guns in homes.

What's the "safe" alternative? Monthly psychological background checks? Can you even imagine? I don't like going to the DMV - picture showing up to such a government bureaucracy monthly. The cost would be enormous. It would be far too impractical.

Here are the statistics, once again, for violence of guns in the home:

43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend, or acquaintance.

22 times more likely to kill yourself than an intruder.

Homicide, suicide, accident - all of these would drop by huge margins if we took guns out of the home. For every story of a home invasion stopped by a gun, there are 22 suicides by gun. For every criminal shot in self-defense, 43 unneeded homicides.

How to implement this ban, then?

It would not be easy. You, the President of the United States, would make an address:

"Good evening. Last night we as a nation experienced a terrible tragedy in [place]. So far the death toll is at [number] - a number which we hope will not rise, but which we must be prepared for in case it does. For the victims our prayers are with your friends and families, and for the wounded, you are in our thoughts, as we collectively hope for a full, and speedy, recovery of everyone who has been touched by this terrible event.

"This shooting was different. While local police authorities are still attempting to determine the killer's motive we must ask ourselves if this is the sort of country we want to live in. Regardless of their motive, there should be no possible reason why we, as citizens, allow this sort of gun violence to continue, and to continue to escalate."

So far: boilerplate. Then:

"That is why I am enacting Executive Order 13,840 - That all guns owned in homes are to be turned over to the United States Government within a period of two weeks from this time. I have taken the liberty and, at 8:35 Eastern Time, federalized the National Guard in all fifty states and territories until this crisis is over. Local military and police units will be helping in these efforts to collect the remaining guns in American homes.

"Over the next two weeks American streets will not look the way we are used to. They will not look the way we want them to. Although we pray for it to be otherwise, there will likely be senseless violence, and good men and women, in the line of duty, may lose their lives in freeing us of this deadly scourge. This is the price we must pay for decades of inaction. By failing to get this crisis - the ongoing national tragedy of gun violence in America - under control, we have reached the brink of disaster. And I would be remiss in my duties as President, in my sworn protection of the people of these United States, if I did not respond, actively and forcefully, to the deadly drumroll of over ninety innocent Americans being shot every day. 

"You may turn your guns in to your local police station or military base if there's one nearby. Special collection points will be devised in urban areas, and mobile units in rural ones. At the end of two weeks, that is June 26, 2017, the possession of a firearm in the home will be illegal, and  you will be guilty of a Class C Felony, of no less than 10 years, and no more than 25 years imprisonment for illegal ownership of a deadly firearm."

At this point the issues of militias, hunting, sport, and heirlooms would be addressed. Gun and ammunition sellers would be categorized as Class B felons if they continue to sell during or after the two-week period. Criminals who possess a gun, even if not on them at the time while they committed a crime, would get an automatic five years added to their sentences. Finally, you close with this:

"Moving forward, America will see a dramatic decrease in violence. A decrease in homicides; suicides; and accidental deaths, like the one that took the life of [recent child victim's name] who was only [age] years old. We can't shrug our shoulders and say 'Oh, well, this is how it is in the United States.' We're better than that. We owe it to the families, not only the thousands who've had their loved ones torn away from them in these devastating mass shootings, but the families of every victim of gun violence, every day. We owe it to the survivors who have had to piece their lives together and make sense of living through one of these horrific tragedies. We owe it to ourselves: so that we never have to face the fear, the uncertainty, the shock sensation of a punch to the gut getting a phone call at three in the morning saying your daughter is in the hospital, she's been shot... This is when America says 'No more. I will not be a victim.' We are taking back our future from gun violence. We are protecting our homes from the madman's bullets. We are vowing that in these United States this will never, ever, happen again! 

"God bless you and God bless America!"

And then, for two weeks, it would be a carnival of horrors. But after a month, say... it would be over.

Humans are not static. There are no responsible gun owners; and so we cannot be permitted to own guns.

Epilogue: Writing

So there you have it. My Spider Jerusalem-esque take on guns in America. A rant into the wind. 

Unlike the fictional protagonist of the future, I do not have circulation. My words are seen by only a very few. More unfortunately, I don't think my little speech, above, will be given anytime so soon. 

Bernie Sanders and I disagreed on gun control. He was from Vermont - and there guns are a big deal. It was virtually the only thing we didn't have in common.

But that didn't matter to me. Because Sanders was fighting for campaign finance reform. 

Wouldn't it be nice if we could have a national discussion, or even better, national action, without the NRA butting in? But we can't because, as of 2014, they spent $974,000 in direct election donations, $3,300,000 in lobbying, and a disgusting $27,000,000 in super PACs, ranking 10th in the nation for contributions.

You want to fix gun violence? Fix campaign finance. It's true of virtually every other issue, as well.

For a year I've been watching and waiting, seeing if Sanders could pull off the nearly impossible and do the heavy lifting for me. But it hasn't happened. And I need to get back to work.

*

Thus this blog is going to wrap it up for today. Looking to the future: I will endeavor to post only things of value on this site. Instead of lists, commentary. Instead of drivel, editorials. 

Even when there is nothing much to say, though, I will try and post regularly. Even if the topic is only a tulip tree, or television ads, or being the old guy at a wedding. Writing keeps one sharp - and sometimes the walls aren't tumbling down. (Although, I suspect, if you think everything is fine it means you just aren't paying close enough attention.) Instead, sometimes, I may only be able to offer some insight on the homeless, or a cat named Bucket. So be it.

3,900 words. For the time being - I'm done. I will return with more to say.

Dating, Lists, and Updates

As the school year winds down, I've been busy, and so May has had only a single post. The past few months have been a bit taxing, though, for a couple of mundane-to-you / interesting-to-me reasons.

Between February and April I had to spend a lot of money on my car. This is a car from 2011, not some ancient hunk of junk. And so because my disposable income (and then some) was eradicated by these repairs, all of a sudden I had a lot of free time and no money: I couldn't make plans and do things, ('cause I had no money). My weekends were oddly long, sans plans.

One thing I did to pass these long spells of timefulness was not update my list of favorite movies and television shows, as I've done every two years, since March of 2010. A big part of the reason why is because I started seeking out movies on my list I'd only seen once before, of which there were a good many. And, on second viewing, some of these uncritically adopted favorites broke down. 'Notorious', by Hitchcock, didn't impress as it had the first time. Bresson's 'Mouchette' I found to be downright embarrassing. And could I really keep justifying the inclusion of the lumage animation 'Twice Upon a Time' alongside the likes of Kurosawa, Fellini, and Scorsese?

The same went for television. 'The Singing Detective' had wowed me at Bennington. Would it still now, almost a decade after first viewing? (As it happens, it did.) Or 'Brideshead Revisited' - I'd not seen that since I was a child. 'Pushing Daisies' was included after a single viewing as well.

So while I continue to track down television to review, such as 'Dekalog', along with hard to find movies, for example 'Ulysses' Gaze', the updates will have to wait. The benefit, of course, is that they will be far more accurate and discerning.

Without money these past months, spending more time in libraries was not the only adaptation. I also had to essentially stop dating. If I had $75 to cover a week's worth of food (typical for me, in a given week, with Bay Area grocery prices), then I can't easily justify spending $40 of it on a single dinner with someone. Single since the Ides of February I've had two dates, both ranking among my two most disastrous, ever.

It would seem the reason for these utter failures is that sitting around by yourself not doing anything except watching obscures movies and miniseries, and, although not previously mentioned, scouring up obscure vinyl and CDs, makes one a bad conversationalist.

Part of me is reverting to an earlier manifestation. I never used to be a story-teller, for I was more interested int he stories of others. Then, for popularity, flirting, and prestige, I honed the craft. But disuse has mean that I'm not very good at it, and more to the point, disinterested. On the more recent of the two terrible dates, I was given the following opening:

"You've taught all over. You must have some interesting stories."

My response teetered between the phlegmatic and outright biliousness: "Well that depends. What sort of stories do you want to hear? Funny stories? Quirky stories? What sort?" Note - this was not sarcastically intended. It was the response of one who'd lost interest, a sort of storied-out ennui. It was genuine inquiry: if I'm going to have to do this, tell me what you want, at least. Would I had approached the line conventionally I could have easily trotted out an anecdote to show off my amusing side - but these stories are ashes in my mouth, now. They don't interest me much at all, and enough life experience has passed under the bridge to mean most people have a similar set of stock tales to regale company with, not requiring me to add facilely to it.

At school I talk to no one. I have no prep period, and thereby have no encounters with the other faculty. I show up, go in to my room, teach, rest and work during lunch while remaining in my room, teach the afternoon session, and leave. In the typical Monday-Sunday, not including phone calls, my most sociable time, weekly, was about an hour and a half for a weekly meeting with my department on Wednesdays. The number of social visits I had outside of school during the three months of car-maintenance is fewer than ten.

Such lack of social conduct has not always been the case, as alluded to before. The issue, again, is money. April ended with a disgraceful $30 in my account. With one day left in May you may wonder what has become of all this? Have my routines changed? Have I been having such a lot of fun during this madcap month that I've no time to post updates on this sweet, forgotten blog?

Not quite. May, being absent of money woes, meant I had to save like nobody's business. So the same pattern of life was embraced as the months prior. By not doing anything, I was able to put two months' worth of savings aside, making up at least for the loss of March and April's ability to do so. This still meant I'd no money for dating. It still meant I was continuing to work on these old lists, in lieu of utter and total boredom.

June, then, is looking up, slightly. But it is offset by July. During that month I am paid almost nothing, since I am not teaching. This is problematic, obviously, because it demands frugality or savings. I have a big trip planned, and so the money I was supposed to have for the Big Trip went instead to the Car, and that means money wasn't saved for July. It's something of a juggle - but I should come out alright.

On a side note, can you think of a better example of the lack of middle class in America? The amount of money that went into the car was around $1,000. That quantity is going to throw off, in the end, six months of my life. Since I've returned to the Bay Area I've done nothing but wipe my savings again and again. As soon as I have a couple thousand saved up, it disappears on me. The car, health costs, moving costs, rent increases - it's always something. I'm fairly well off, all things considered, and that's worrisome - because at 30 you shouldn't be in a position where $1,000 wonks up half a years' finances. Compared to many of my Millennial compatriots, though, at least I can handle this stuff without going into debt. Or do so while not having to live under my parent's roof. Or do so and manage to make on-time, reliable student loan payments.

For the past few months, then, that's all its been - obscure art and Bernie Sanders-style socio-economic concerns. And, as my dating life has now proven, I can't make conversation when my only topics are unknown art house and political data.

Cyclically I spend my idle time on lists, and working on things I can control, all the while waiting: to get some money, to balance my social life, to update this blog.

Museums

So here's a list I've never made. The museums I've been to.

Deep breath.

I am only including museums, not zoos or aquariums, but that can get blurry. (I also am not including little exhibition spaces / visitor centers for attractions which are not obviously museums.) Nor do I include houses or buildings which are now museums (The Alamo, John Adams' home); I'm only interested in spaces that were built more or less with the intention of being a museum. I think it makes sense to do this by category. So let's start with the easy and obvious - art museums.

It is almost certainly incomplete. Here goes.

Art Museums

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). California.
de Young Museum. California.
Palace of the Legion of Honor. California.
Cartoon Art Museum (*currently decommissioned*). California.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). California.
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. California.
Oakland Museum of California.(*also a science and history museum*). California.
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). California.
J. Paul Getty Museum, including the Getty Villa. California.
San Diego Art Museum. California.
Portland Art Museum. Oregon.
Seattle Asian Art Museum. Washington.
Nevada Museum of Art. Nevada.
Denver Art Museum. Colorado.
Carnegie Museum of Art. Pennsylvania.
National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, including The Cloisters. New York.
Frick Collection. New York.
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). New York.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York.
Institute of Contemporary Art. Massachusetts.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Massachusetts.
Museum of Fine Art. Massachusetts.
Peabody Essex Museum. Massachusetts.
Yale University Art Gallery. Connecticut.
Yale Center for British Art. Connecticut.
William Benton Museum of Art. Connecticut.

Tate Modern. London, United Kingdom.
National Gallery. London, United Kingdom.
National Portrait Gallery. London, United Kingdom.
Scottish National Gallery. Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park. West Bretton, United Kingdom.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Venice, Italy.
Gallerie dell'Accademia. Venice, Italy.
Museo Correr. Venice, Italy.
Galleria dell'Accademia. Florence, Italy.
Vatican Museums. Vatican City.
Uffizi Gallery. Florence, Italy.
Tokyo National Museum. Tokyo, Japan.
Studio Ghibli Museum. Tokyo, Japan.
Prefectural Art Museum. Hiroshima, Japan.
Islamic Arts Museum. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Singapore Art Museum. Singapore.
NUS Museum. Singapore.
ArtScience Museum. Singapore.

Science/Interactive Museums

California Academy of Sciences. California.
Exploratorium. California.
Randall Museum. California.
Lawrence Hall of Science. California.
Bay Area Discovery Museum. California.
Oakland Museum of California.(*also a science and history museum*). California.
CuriOdyssey (*formerly Coyote Point Museum*). California.
California Science Center. California.
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). Oregon.
Pacific Science Center. Washington.
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (frankly, I think this should count as a zoo.). Arizona.
Milwaukee Public Museum (*also a history museum*). Wisconsin.
Cleveland Museum of National History. Ohio.
Carnegie Museum of National History. Pennsylvania.
Museum of the Earth. New York.
American Natural History Museum. New York.
Harvard Museum of Natural History. Massachusetts.
Museum of Science. Massachusetts.
Peabody Museum of Natural History. Connecticut.
Connecticut Science Center. Connecticut.
International Cryptozoology Museum. Maine.

Science Center Singapore. Singapore.

History/Culture Museums

San Diego Museum of Man. California.
Oakland Museum of California.(*also a science and history museum*). California.
Musee Mecanique. California.
Walt Disney Family Museum. California.
Computer History Museum. California.
EMP Museum and Science Fiction Museum. Washington.
National Automobile Museum. Nevada.
Milwaukee Public Museum (*also a history museum*). Wisconsin.
Civil War Museum. Wisconsin.
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Indiana.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Ohio.
Newseum. Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Washington, D.C.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, D.C.
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Massachusetts.
Mystic Seaport. Connecticut.

British Museum. London, United Kingdom.
The Beatles Story. Liverpool, United Kingdom.
World Museum. Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Naples National Archaeological Museum. Naples, Italy.
National Archaeological Museum. Athens, Greece.
Delphi Archaeological Museum. Delphi, Greece.
Ephesus Archaeological Museum. Selcuk, Turkey.
Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. Bodrum, Turkey.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Hiroshima, Japan.
National Museum of Cambodia. Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Maritime Museum. Malacca, Malaysia.
Asian Civilizations Museum. Singapore.
Chinese Immigration Museum - Haw Par Villa. Singapore.
National Museum of Singapore. Singapore.

Five Music Videos

Here are five of my favorite, criminally underrated, music videos:

Wizard of Meh, Pogo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fk2BaM1la0

When thinking of Pogo, if at all familiar with the artist who slices together clips of movies to make songs such as 'Upular' and 'Alice', the accompanying video brought to mind is of choppy animated clips. Here we get Pogo himself, and an interesting display of light and shadow.

Me and Mr. Wolf, Real Tuesday Weld

A delightful (but possibly NSFW-gruesome) homage to old cartoons. I'm a big fan of this band's other music videos, including 'Bathtime in Clerkenwell', which, if you watch the rest, seem to suggest they are all set in their own little universe.

It's a Hit, Rilo Kiley

https://vimeo.com/7726124 

It as this incredible little video that brought Rilo Kiley to my attention. I was so surprised by the content, and the aesthetic, that I sought out more of their music afterwards, like 'Portions for Foxes'. Whatever happened to them?

Wraith Pinned to the Mist, of Montreal

And sticking to the 'whatever happened to them' file, what became of of Montreal? This was a big hit not just musically, but aesthetically as well. For a while there this style of animation and illustration was very popular. Gone now.

A Short Film by Spike Jonze / "Humanism", Jon Batiste and Stay Human

If you're not paying attention to Colbert's Late Show, you may want to reconsider. They're doing some interesting things, and the band especially - there's a reason why folks like Arturo Sandoval are appearing on the show to play with Jon Batiste. I can listen to this endlessly.

Middle Schoolers Are Revolutionizing the Planet

I have a better than average understanding of world history. It has gaps, and I’m still learning all the time, but my grasp of content, forces of change, and angles of observation is rather wide. Cultures and civilizations I am unfamiliar with I take pains to study.

Usually this directly translates to my being a better teacher, teaching courses such as AP World, AP Europe, World History and U.S. History or World Religions and Art History. But for the past two years I have been teaching technology to middle school children.

These are children born 2003/2004. And this fact has some very interesting repercussions, in a world historical context, which aren’t being discussed. To explain that, a quick word on my own childhood.

The music I listened to, on LPs, were my mom’s records – mostly Broadway and oldies. The VHS we had were ones my parents had bought, same with the books on the shelves. When a show my dad wanted to watch on TV came on, we would watch it with him. So when The Simpsons did the Monorail Episode I got the joke – because my mom was a fan of The Music Man, which I’d seen and listened to.

Culture was inherited from our parents.

There was some chip-away over the years. It was usually child-centered, though. For example, Saturday morning cartoons, a tradition begun in 1960, represents an example of culture not inherited from parents, but it was certainly dictated by society’s elders – network executives and advertisers who wanted to reach the kids, the kids, dammit! In the realm of audio, many decried the Walkman as being the death of the family unit – kids buying cassettes without supervision and listening to that terrible rap/metal/rock and roll/Elvis Presley… Comic books, too, weren’t as much the purview of adult readers as they were for young ‘uns.

But in a way these don’t contradict the point of culture being inherited from parents/elders. Youth have always had their own idiosyncratic traditions, games, and mores. The knowledge that the Ol’ Jennings House on the corner was haunted – inherited knowledge from older siblings, this is not new. Nor does it preclude, or in any way, contradict my point. Despite knowing the age-exclusive neighborhood kid-culture, parents still commanded a significant measure of control over other cultural inheritance. After talking about the Jennings House we can picture a young boy running home because at dusk prayers begin.

As we get older we select our own culture. We decide what clothes we want to wear, posters to have on our walls, groups to hang out with, identities to try on. We watch what we want to watch, read what we want, consume what we want, and browse the internet for what we want. And it is this latter point that is the critical aspect for children I am teaching born in 2003/2004.

To say these kids are “digital natives” is true, but insufficient. There are post-Web 2.0 kids. They have never been without YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Vine has been around since they were in elementary school. They know of no other way of living. The iPhone was released when they were three years old. They don’t remember a time before smartphones.

Much has been discussed of this obvious fact, but not much, I don’t think, of a very important issue:

This is the first generation, in the history of the world, which selects its own culture since childhood.

And that is significant. My middle schoolers have favorite YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, Tumblr accounts, and Vine stars. They have owned smart hones since they were ten years old – the internet in their pocket, and private. They have to make their own culture, and are embracing whatever they like. They are not just creating their own child’s culture. This is not the same as choosing to watch Nick or PBS for Saturday morning cartoons before your parents are awake. These devices are how they consume almost all culture. To put it another way: culture is not being inherited from elders in the same way as before. And that is revolutionary.

To step back for a moment, I want to make clear this is not some alarmist call to ‘fix’ anything. Nor am I making the ridiculous claim that they aren’t inheriting anything. The boy mentioned before still needs to put away his phone for Hebrew lessons. However, the cultural inheritance of prior generations has undoubtedly changed, with as of yet unforeseen consequences.

What happens when a generation privately selects their culture, from when they are ten years old? We can’t yet say. The obvious issue, I think I can safely predict, though, will be shared culture – references, common idea/ideologies, values. It’s hard to stand around the water cooler talking about last night’s shows if every person standing there was watching something distinct. Imagine how much more difficult for people who have no shared…anything. Tumblr, Instagram, and YouTube – these are self-selecting culture machines. You never need to see anything you don’t want to. Moreover, each is so deep that you never really have to leave them to be satiate in your culture.

Meat-space culture will be drastically effected, but it is too early to say in which way. Either this youthful age bracket will grow up and seize upon the importance of meat-space interaction – just so they have something to talk about with others – or it will become increasingly obsolescent. What is clear is that it won’t be the same as it is now. Is this just superfluous commentary? Of course, as time marches on, the future is never the same as the past!

But allow me to return to world history. All societies, since the first mud hut congregations, have had culture inherited by elders. This is not the passing of some incidental aspect of our society. This cultural-shift is far more profound than flivvers eclipsing horse-and-buggies or the Constantine’s adoption of Christianity in 312 C.E. Globally, all societies, have had a control in the culture inherited from elders since time immemorial. Whether that culture is Polynesian, Mayan, Edo, Scotch, or Navajo – parents and elders dictated the amount of culture, and what culture, you ingested. The slow fraying of this, begun with universal education and the rise of the mass market book in the Industrial Revolution, began picking up speed only when industrial technology became commonplace in the farthest reaches of the Earth. As smart phone technology penetrates to these same corners, the middle school class I teach is crest of a coming wave – the first glimpse of what will likely become a planet-wide trend. The internet is not like a paperback – which can be easily suppressed and not stocked on a bookseller’s shelf. To have the internet in your pocket from childhood means you select your own culture – and no one can dictate what you consume. It is private, it is limitless, and it ranges from pictures to movies to music to literature. The slight resentment of the preteen who didn’t get to watch South Park, or The Simpsons, or stay up and watch Letterman or Leno – will have no counterpoint. A parent, short of taking the child’s phone, can’t stop them from watching anything.  The arguments of the 1980s about children listening to morally reprehensible music, foolish enough at the time, have moved beyond quaint – if raised today it would be hopelessly out-of-touch and naïve.

The outcome of this cultural revolution? Who can say? But that it is a revolution happening right beneath our noses is undoubtable. And no one seems to be talking about it.

Spring Break Road Trip 2016

Oh, what a time was had. Let’s start at the beginning…

Wednesday: The drive was long, stressful, and tedious. I didn’t get out the door until 9-ish. The strip of road to get from Berkeley to 5 was quite nice, but 5 was unpleasant. It was hot and went on forever, with me sticking to the right lanes. I’d started out with about half a tank, and in some stretch of nowhere I filled it up from two bars. I stopped a second time due to needing to use the bathroom/stretch at some little kitschy orchard-barn place. Besides these two breaks I kept plowing on, with my handy-dandy GPS telling me where to go. A couple of wrong turns were made, but nothing devastating. When I got into Twentynine Palms I needed gas again, for the next day’s driving. By then it was around 6-something, I’d already missed the check-in time, and so I got to the Indian Cove campground, and after a bit of finagling, found my site and set up camp.

I had never been camping by myself prior to this trip. It was something of a mistake. With no one to talk to, play cards with, or build a fire with, there’s very little to do at all. My campsite was great, #90, surrounded by impressive boulders and such. I thought of wandering over to other campsites and being neighborly, but they were all families, and I figured that’d be weird. Perhaps if they’d been inhabited by other groups of sociable twenty and thirty-somethings my experience would have been very different. Perhaps not. Anyway, after a dinner of rolls with cheese I headed to bed around 7:30, very tired from the day’s drive, and read a bit of Naipaul’s A Bend in the River. Fell asleep around an hour later, not particularly comfortable, and with very heavy winds.

Indian Cove. As usual, the photos are not mine.

Thursday: I woke up with my alarm, around 8:15, well-ish rested. Near my campsite was a trail off into the rocks. I followed it, a short thing, prior to breakfast and got some nice pictures of flowers and morning light. I’d decided on the road I wanted to take earlier and headed out around 9:45 into Twentynine Palms to enter the Park at the Oasis Visitor’s Center. I was being very careful to drink plenty of water. After a quick stop in the center to buy a magnet I drove into the Park and headed towards the Ocatillo Patch – on the way stopping frequently for signs, exhibits, and miniature side-hikes. It was very photogenic, but even at my leisurely pace I’d reached the patch before noon. Lots of interesting rocks, yucca, Joshua trees, and some nice flowering things, though not quite as many as expected for the Spring season. I decided to take in Keys View, which was a little busy, and stopped there to have lunch (polishing off the cheese and more bread). I was debating whether to take the Western fork or backtrack to the Oasis where, incredibly, I’d forgotten to look at the oasis. Having never seen one in real life, I decided on the latter option.

When I got back to the visitor’s center the oasis was dry. And cordoned off. And dying. I’d gone with the sentiment, ‘you regret the things you don’t do, not the things you do’ but admittedly this was disappointing. It was too hot to hike and to backtrack all the way to the road not taken seemed silly – not to mention that I’d chosen my initial road for the reasons of its being what I thought was coolest. Perhaps Twentynine Palms had a movie theater where I could cool off for a couple of hours? Alas it did not. So, hot and tired, I went to the one public place I could find I knew would have air-conditioning, the library. By now it was 2:30 or so. I waited around for a good while, wondering what to do next during the heat of the day. I decided on Fortynine Palms – but when I got there it said it was a three hour hike, and strenuous – something not mentioned in the literature. I’m a decent hiker, but I trusted its claims, especially given a steep ascent it promised. So once again I was flummoxed, and thus headed to Joshua Tree, the adjacent town. Another visitor’s center provided more air-conditioning and rest, and finally I found one kitsch-tastic little shop near the center, since Twentynine Palms had none. The whole afternoon, however, had been an exercise in using up time. The book had recommended half a day, and they weren’t kidding. Eventually it was late enough I could go back to Indian Cove and eat supper, bread with sardines, before retiring around the same time as the night before. This time, however, since I was not tired out from a very long drive I didn’t go to sleep until around 11, and read much Naipaul, as well as enjoying the desert’s stars.

Night in the desert.

Friday: I got up a little later, and after breakfast (granola and dried pineapple) began driving towards Vegas. The drive was excellent – I went through the Mojave and on Kelbaker Rd (I think) drove through a veritable forest of Joshua trees – as far as the eye could see. Very cool. It took just about four hours on delightful back roads to get to the Mardi Gras Hotel and Casino. (There was a big accident near my hotel’s off-ramp, so that took a while.) I got there around 1:00, I think, a bit early for check-in, but they said no problem and put me up in  nice room. Spacious, clean linens, no surprises. Walls a little thin, but all in all a nice enough place. After resting for a bit – and, more importantly, showering for the first time in days – I headed out on the town. I was staying not far from a monorail stop. Apparently Las Vegas has a monorail, which was unknown to me prior to my arrival, and which I decided to take advantage of for the duration of my stay, not driving once. (I’d made it to Vegas from Twentynine Palms on the same tank of gas I’d filled up with on arriving to the Park, and, thanks to the monorail, didn’t need to fill up again until a decent distance outside of town on Sunday.) I got on the rail around 4 in the evening, and headed to the Strip, where I wandered from the Flamingo, the point at which I’d alighted, down to the Excalibur. I took a great many photos, of course, and wandered in and out of the casinos and resorts. I was struck by the number of shops, especially for high-end wares. The sheer cash value of stuff on display in that short distance was somewhat mind-boggling, and this is not coming from some back-country rube. Also worrisome was the number of people being paid to stand around and do nothing. For example, at a fancy watch store, there were five vested people standing there willing to assist your purchase of a $2,000 watch. No one was in the store. And what sort of rush could ever be expected that would require five people to be engaged simultaneously? I thought of Veblen, and conspicuous consumption. This city should not exist. At all. It is capitalism at its most primitive, base, and wasteful. It is an environmental atrocity.

As night came on I decided to get dinner and the highly-praised Bacchanal Buffet. I figured it would be weird to go to a buffet alone, but not quite as weird as a restaurant, since I could hop up and grab more food and not be forced to stare into the void of the empty chair in front of me/my soul. Besides, in casino towns the buffets are part of the experience, I feel.

So I wandered over to the Bellagio again and got in line, for about 45 minutes, and paid the Friday night fare, which was around $75. I certainly got my money’s worth, though – after three trips I’d consumed plenty of peking duck and dim sum, huge ribs, cocktail shrimp, rabbit, truffle soup, crispy pork tacos, and a whole plate of desserts ranging from crème brulee to sago and jasmine puddings, to chocolate cake and ginger squares. Excellent food, I must say. Satiated, I wandered through the Linq and called it a night around 8:30, heading back to my hotel after four hours of walking and standing and weaving through crowds of spring breakers. More Naipaul was read, and then sleep.

Vegas.

Saturday: Having seen much of the Strip the day before I woke up late and left my room around 11, walking up the road to Circus Circus. There I took in a free show, a foot juggler who was quite good, at noon, and explored their weird ‘adventure dome’ before continuing on to explore the north end of the Strip, from Circus Circus to the Flamingo/ Harrah’s.  It was very much the same, and I was beginning to tire of taking the same sorts of photos over and over. Leisurely heading on past the Venetian and the rest of them I’d ended up at the Linq again, and since it was before 6 pm (it was around 2:30), and my feet were tired, I forked over $26 to ride the world’s tallest observation wheel, the High Roller. Not surprisingly I got some nice photos of the surrounding desert, and with two brief (less than five minute) stops we made the rotation in just about 30 minutes, as promised. By now, back at Harrah’s around 4, and decided to take the free shuttle to the Rio, and maybe get a haircut. First I had an early dinner, at what I thought was an average American restaurant in the casino, but turned out to be fabulous as well – some of the best pork ribs I’ve ever had. Then off to the barbers to kill time and get a much-needed cut, but alas! I was too late, they all closed around 6. So I now had an unexpected quantity of time to kill in the Rio until the theater opened at 8:00 for Penn and Teller – the reason I had come to Vegas. I don’t drink or gamble, so I’m pretty low on vices for ‘sin city’ – it had all been leading up to this show. I sat around, wandered, looked in at the shops, and eventually the time to enter rolled around.

The theater was nice, and my seat was great. I was in D 11, exactly centered in the first row past the orchestra, just behind the effects booth. I had a great view of the stage, and enjoyed listening to Penn on bass and Mike Jones on piano for the opening jazz intro. The seats were only reserved for the first half hour, so it was important to claim them, even though the show didn’t begin until 9:00. And now, spoilers re: Penn & Teller (Skip to the red text below to avoid):

Background: I know Penn and Teller fairly well. Meaning: I’ve seen a lot of their work on YouTube. The first trick was one of their best – theoretically I sort of half know how they did it, but damn. But it set the tone for the evening’s show in two ways. But before that, let me say why I like Penn and Teller – they let you know it is a trick. They introduce you, had you not known already, to magician’s vocabulary such as ‘palm’, ‘vanish’ and sleight of hand basics. So the cool thing about their show is that even if you know the basic concepts, they do tricks where darned if you can’t figure them out anyway. That’s their supreme talent – telling you how they’re going to do something, doing it, and doing it so well you don’t see the moves. Back to the two ways the first trick set the tone for the evening. First: Teller couldn’t find someone who had the right sort of phone. Penn actually ran out of patter, and the timing was all off. This became theme number one. Second: Penn made a quip “you may have even seen us perform this trick on YouTube”. Yes. I had. I figured it would be the opener, but this became a problem as the show progressed.

After the phone trick, which despite the aforementioned was still good, there was the rabbit trick. Again – I’d already seen it, and I felt, upon seeing it the first time, that it wasn’t great. Seeing it live didn’t help, as Teller nearly flubbed a critical part. The show next did a lengthy segment on the TSA and libertarian rights. Preachy, and a wee bit long, but the ending was very, very good. Along with the phone trick, Teller’s reveal was a highlight. This was a good example of what I mentioned earlier – I theoretically know how he must’ve done it, and still couldn’t figure it out. It was followed by a really lousy “trick” – routine is the better word – of Penn eating fire. This is street magic stuff. Then Teller did the old card classic with a corner ripped off, and said two words at the end – but the timing was off, and no one could understand what the words were. I should note that at this point I was becoming disillusioned. It got worse with the next bit, a very odd segment with balloon animals – if there was any trick, I missed it. It was more of a performance? Thing? There was a hoop trick, which had one really nice move. And a barrel trick, which, frankly, was pretty lame because I know something about contortionist barrels. Most astoundingly – and not in a good way – they actually did the ripped newspaper trick. I couldn’t believe, at this point, people had paid what they had for this. Earlier they had done a similar stunt with the cut rope – this is basic, high school magic stuff. The timing was truly atrocious for a video camera act, so much so that it was embarrassingly off. People around me were impressed, which is great, I guess, I suppose they got their money’s worth – but I was so underwhelmed. A group audience trick went well, rather advanced card counting required, and then we got Teller’s famous goldfish act, which had two really nice moves, but, like the rabbit, hoop, and phone, I’d already seen. Unfortunately, seeing it live, I have a better understanding of how it was done.  The trick’s ending is somewhat lazy, but that wasn’t new.

All in all, up to this point, we’d been very light on Vegas-style showmanship. I was hoping for a grand finale – the bullet-catching trick, for example, which, even having seen it before, would be impressive to view live. Or the inflation trick. Or the water tank – I wanted a classic piece of showmanship. Teller, dangling upside-down above a vat of acid or something.

Instead I got a special vanish. A very decent vanish, but still. It was designed to be cheesy, and indeed it was. So much so as to be a bit off-putting. I should mention this was the second act, the TSA being the first, where they egregiously hawked wares for sale in the lobby after the show. The accompanying video was so dated, this clearly had been a trick they’d performed for many years.

I left having enjoyed two tricks and appreciating another three or four individual moves. It was something of a let-down. After working together for forty years, perhaps it is time they hung up the act – or maybe I just saw an off night. Either way, a disappointment. I took the shuttle back to Harrah’s, the monorail back to my hotel, and called it an evening. To add insult to injury, housekeeping had replaced my towels and linens, which now weren’t clean but sort of gross.

The Penn & Teller Theater

Sunday: Woke up early based on the long day ahead of me, and got on the road at 7:45, arriving at Manzanar National Historic Site at 12:30.  I’d long wanted to see this site, and pay tribute. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but not at all in a bad way. Austere, lonely, and vacant, there was lots of good information, moving tributes, and a pervading sense of woundedness. I stayed until 2:00, having explored the place thoroughly. I wrote the following reflection on Facebook:

“Since I learned of the existence of Manzanar I've been fascinated by it. It would be glib to compare the internment of Americans to slavery, or to the holocaust of native peoples. It is not a tragedy on that scale. Nothing is. Yet it is one of our defining moments as a country, for it is one of the most important griefs in our country's history. A great wrong, perpetrated by us against our own people, enacted through government policy and with police oversight. It ranks with suppression of unions at the turn of the century; the denial at the ballot box if you are poor or black - to this day; it even stands with the United States Government opening fire upon our own veterans, the 'Bonus Army', during the Great Depression. For Manzanar did take lives, as is true of any "concentration camp" to use President Roosevelt's own terminology for that site. I know it took lives, for I went today and stood at their graves, in a little patch of desert; a patch nearly forgotten for decades, having quickly torn down the buildings where this crime had been committed.

At the end of the exhibit the book asked visitors to record their thoughts on visiting this place. Some were just names and dates, others told personal stories, many were written in Japanese. I wrote the following:

"I find it - 'disturbing' is not the right word, nor 'troubling' - *horrifying* that the sentiments which created this place are again a part of America's public discourse in 2016. I will fight to ensure such a tragedy never takes place again. 3/27/2016"

Manzanar left me stunned, and very appreciative for having taking the time to go – before I left I got two postcards of paintings drawn by victims. I then needed to drive another four hours or so to Ventura. To put this in perspective, Las Vegas is at latitude 36 degrees north, 115 degrees longitude west. Manzanar is around 37 degrees north,  and roughly 119 degrees west. Ventura – 34 degrees north, 119 degrees west. I drove 244 miles north-ish to Manzanar, and  then almost the same amount, 247 miles south-ish. But it felt worth it. The drive to Manzanar I’d partially done last year, from Vegas to Death Valley, and it was stunningly beautiful. Likewise, the drive down to Ventura in the evening light was also gorgeous. It’s funny – excepting Wednesday’s long haul, the drives were some of the nicest parts of the trip, and they were what I had dreaded the most.  By comparison the National Park and Penn and Teller, what I was excited for, had both been busts. I arrived in Ventura at 6:00, and checked into my cute hotel, The Clocktower Inn. I was quite hungry and wandered to the main downtown, to a restaurant called Lure Fish House. The meal was very good, even though I was a bit under-dressed for Easter Sunday dinner. At this point I had no shame sitting alone in a nice restaurant where everyone else is fancy. I was hungry and the waiter was kind of a douche bro. After a quick stroll through a closed downtown I went back to the hotel.

Manzanar

Monday: My body woke me up too early, and then I received a phone call around 8:00 (thank goodness I’d not decided to try sleeping in). Apparently all trips to the Islands were cancelled due to winds. I’d come to Ventura to see the Channel Islands National Park. Would there be availability tomorrow? No. Friday at the earliest. Well, I couldn’t sit around a wait, so they refunded my ticket.

This meant spending the day, rather unexpectedly, in Ventura - since I was meeting a friend for dinner that evening and my hotel was already booked for two nights. Ventura is somewhat quaint in the downtown, and remarkably full of small antiques stores and thrift shops and the like. After a leisurely morning (finishing Naipaul) I went ahead and explored them, and, as it happens, finally got that haircut. As the afternoon progressed I finished up the last roll of film I'd brought (intended for the Channel Islands) while wandering around the town and chatting with locals. I spent so much time in a local used bookshop I was compelled to by a novel by Miguel Asturias. As the afternoon progressed the wind picked up quite violently, and I could see why they had cancelled the trips. Palm fronds were falling off trees, people were struggling to walk down the street, cars got in accidents - quite a mess. Pleasantly, it was more or less done by the time my friend arrived for a nice dinner.

The next day I drove six hours back up 101 to Berkeley and home. 4,000 miles in total.

Ventura!