Occupation of Independence

The world seems to have been caught by surprise by the revolution in Tunisia. For Netflix customers it was an excellent time to rewatch the movie, Battle of Algiers , made in the mid-1960s in Italy and Algiers. It is a remarkable movie that seems so timely today. Of course anything is an improvement over the American media's treatment of the "War on Terror." It's been a long time since I gave any thought to North Africa. It hasn't exactly been insignificant throughout history: the Desert Fox in World War II, the Moors invading Spain in the Middle Ages, Carthage destroying Italian small farmers and then finally the Roman Republic in classical times. Now we watch to see how pervasive revolution in Arab countries becomes. Israel must be the most nervous country about all this. It would be prefer to be surrounded by American client states. America likes to pretend it's pushing democracy in the Mideast, but real democracy would produce Islamic governments that we

The vague discomfort that I always felt in Yuma overlapped in some way with how I felt around RVers in general. The whole thing seemed like a big revolving door. Every year there's a new crop of newbies with the standard notions. The romance of pretty scenery and escapism is not long-lasting; that and normal human aging soon put them on a lot in Yuma. Recently Peter Yates died. He directed the movie Breaking Away circa 1980, about growing up in an Indiana college town, with a subplot about bicycle racing. The best speech in the movie comes from Dennis Quaid, who plays the ex-high school quarterback. (All of the boys are 19 year old townies, bored and unemployed, and not college-bound.) With some envious resentment they watch the college football team practice one day, when the ex-high school quarterback soliloquizes: You know what really gets me though? Here I am, I've gotta live in this stinkin' town, and I gotta read in the newspaper about some new hot shot kid, the

Recently I was commenting on someone else's blog when the subject of Yuma AZ came up. It is a snowbird magnet, as are Sun City and Green Valley. I rented a lot there during three winters. It was interesting to me to rethink Yuma because so many issues about retirement and relocation seem to coalesce there.  Yuma is famous with retirees and snowbirds primarily because it is the warmest place in the southwest, although not as warm as south Texas or Florida. And there are practical advantages, such as low cost dentistas and farmacias right across the border in Algodones, one of the few border towns that won't frighten middle class gringos. Years ago Yuma was considered a bargain: you could buy a gravel lot and plunk down an RV for a few months, or you could even build a normal house, although living in Yuma for twelve months per year is a perverse idea. On the negative side, Yuma is desperately congested in the winter. Just going to the grocery store can be a nigh