Occupation of Independence

 Recall that I am a recovering armchair general, attempting to become an armchair media critic.  It has always been surprising how much talking there is on You Tube, and yet there are hardly any maps.  I have seen talking-heads give confusing and lengthy speeches about war-front geography -- please, shut up and show me a meaningful map! The maps that are shown do not even have labels on them.  If graphs are shown, their labels and legends are illegible. Perhaps the medium is the message.  Graphs and maps do not show well on the restricted real estate of a smartphone, but talking does.  Earlier I wrote about how bad many talking-heads are, at talking.  But there are people who are good at talking.  Other people would be wise to imitate them.  So this is a shout-out to one of those good talkers: 'Mr. Global,' on You Tube.  Seriously I love the way that guy talks! 

In preparation for a colonoscopy, they put you on a special diet to empty out your intestines.   It involves a lot of Gatorade, clear broth, and laxatives. I thought I would be hungry without solid food, but the broth was surprisingly satisfying.  I had never bought broth before, at the grocery store.  Why wasn't I buying broth all the time?  On top of everything else, broth doesn't need refrigeration when unopened.  A camper should like that. Putting leftovers into broth for more nutrition and taste is so easy.  That is how our frugal (and less obese) ancestors ate.  They used leftovers from the main meal in mid-day.  Remember that they didn't have good refrigeration in those days.  There is always something that needs to be used up, soon. My new evening meal. Just think: all my life I had been cleaning out skillets and pans during the mid-day meal by washing the residue down the sink, instead of saving it for evening soup.  A...

 Perhaps we got as much as 0.05" of rain the other day.  If that weren't miraculous enough, it stayed cloudy most of the day. The next day there was some dampness to the ground.  This is fantastic for a hiker or mountain biker.  The ground had turned from something uncomfortable and dead into something completely different, something with real hope.  But don't think I am telling tall tales: there weren't any mud puddles to slosh through. If life and hope aren't worth noticing and writing about, what is?  But how would you actually write about it?  Lavishing adjectives on it probably wouldn't work.  The long-suffering reader knows my stump speech by heart, by now.  But each new manifestation of it seems fresh to me because something that was dead and predictable is washed over by the surprising and the alive, like a wave of white sea foam onto a beach.  Before the smartphone, RVers still had daguerreotypes to capture the moment....

It is rare to get a punch in the gut when reading a history book.  But how would you react to this quote about the war between ancient Athens and Sparta, from Lewis Dartnell's "Origins, How the Earth's History Shaped Human History"?  It was written  7 years before Trump-anyahu's War Against Iran : "Ultimately it was Athens' dependence on grain imported along the sea lanes from the Black Sea that proved her fatal weakness. Falling upon the Athenian navy right in the narrow strait of the Hellespont, the Spartans utterly destroyed it.  The Peloponnesian War is a good illustration of the central importance of the geography of the seas and the vulnerability of vital maritime routes at narrow straits. Commanding such naval chokepoints, and thus a rival’s access to overseas resources, is often as important as controlling territory on land, and can determine the outcome of wars and the fate of civilisations." It is rare to see such a tangible and pithy examp...

 It is time to come up for air.  I can only think and write about the problems of the world so much before I need to shift my attention to something more soothing.  Such as the prettiest field I have ever seen.  It was just outside of town (in west central Idaho).  Wouldn't it be nice to drive by agricultural fields and know every time what the crop is?!  Presumably this is barley or wheat:  It seemed like you could drown in there!  Lush fields of grain are sometimes featured in movies: think of the fantasy scene in "Gladiator" or the 'Kiss' scene in "Room With a View".  I wish I knew of more such scenes. The reader might think I am exaggerating the beauty of agricultural fields, and wonder why I don't show more mountains, arches, and cliffs from famous national parks in the western states.  Believe me, a person can get tired of lifeless rocks, trees without leaves, and cholla needles.  A person can get tired of endless drought and ...

 For better or worse I like to write about travel in terms of subjective experiences.  I prefer not to write about breathtakingly beautiful scenery, how many solar panels you need, or whether RV toilet paper should be one ply or two.  When you camp in the backcountry, and then return to civilization, you notice things that you probably wouldn't notice if you lived in town all the time.  In that sense, it is a 'travel experience.' Rolling into a gas station in the "big" city, I noticed a couple obese female customers.  Why oh why didn't they at least wear long pants and shirts?!  It is not exaggerating to say that they 'wounded' me with a special type of sadness. What was causing this reaction?  Was it just a male-sexist-pig being deprived of his fair share of eye candy?  No, I don't think so.  As a man gets older he places less emphasis on his own pleasure or excitement and looks at the Big Picture of the human condition. The punch in the gut...

 The introductory chapters of history books are usually marvelous to read.  But Big Pictures can sometimes become over-generalized, superficial verbiage.  So there is the opposite approach, using a tangible and specific event to serve as a metaphor to illustrate the Big Picture. Perhaps that is the approach future historians will take when discussing the end of the American Empire.  They will introduce their book with a comparison of the funeral in Iran and Trump's Great American State Fair, taking place on the same weekend. Did you have a chance to see videos at the street level of the funeral in Tehran?  I was impressed with how calm and long-suffering people were.  They needed hours just to get to it, after fighting the traffic of a giant city.  Where were the porta-potties and the food trucks?  It didn't seem like Iranians needed hats for that sun.  They stood shoulder to shoulder in triple digit (Fahrenheit) heat. Why!, it's as if t...

 Everybody probably has a list of worst fears.  For my part I have long 'horribilized' crossing Hell's Canyon in July.  Yesterday, the day before the Fourth of July, I did cross it.  It was hard to believe. Getting ready to cross the bottom.     At the bottom I crossed paths with a couple bicycle tourers.  They didn't seem too miserable.  A few more miles in Idaho, we stopped at a nice rest stop and campground.  The leaf-bearing trees were gorgeous.  Walking through the little park I felt warm, but not hot. People and children were jumping in the Snake River to cool off.  Their pleasure was infectious, even to me.  Up on top, the first couple small towns were having a nostalgic Independence Day celebration.  Farmers' Markets, watermelons, sweet corn, parades.  The grocery store was packed. I didn't see one pro-Trump banner or Israeli flag.  Everything seemed so normal and wholesome.  This is not an advertise...