Occupation of Independence

  For a so-called cattle dog Coffee Girl has quite a hankering for flying birds. It's a bit like watching a roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote episode. She "tree-ed" a red-tailed hawk on one of the power poles. The hawk stared down at her, with a look of bemused astonishment, while Coffee Girl had her forepaws on the pole, and howled back, as if she was a hound who had just tree-ed a raccoon. The hawk flew off and then took a dive at the dog; not enough to be scary, just enough to piss her off. At the next pole, the hawk's mate was waiting. The harried hawk would be over there in three seconds or so, so I had to move fast. Bingo!

One of my favorite things about downtown in the Little Pueblo is the funky, hand-crafted motor vehicles. In order for something like this to be practical you need to live in the hippie district downtown. In the 'burbs they drive the usual monster-trucks to the grocery store to pick up one small bag of groceries.

With elections coming up, it is fun to step back from the hackneyed slogans of day-to-day vote-buying and think about the big picture. Ancient Greece was supposed to be a laboratory of political science, with democracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies just a few miles away from each other. Like a modern Aristotle cataloging the various constitutions, we can observe and compare many little societies, such as churches, lodges, civic organizations, etc. In my case it was bicycle clubs. Bicycle clubs do indeed span the political spectrum. One such club was helpful and considerate almost to a fault: they would always wait at the top of a hill for the slowpokes to catch up. If anybody had a flat tire, the whole group would stop and assist. They shared meals together. Great folks, it seemed. But over a summer the starting time would slip because they simply lacked the guts to leave anyone. Many of the flat tires were caused by people running on old rubber. Their obsession with safety became

Do you think I'm just looking at this sexy little beast through a romantic haze? At long last, a cargo van built on a car platform, rather than a heavy truck platform, so that it gets good mileage. Perhaps a version of the Ford TransitConnect is available without those useless windows. A cargo van should possess a rugged and manly minimalism. There are sliding doors on both sides. A six-footer can walk through, if he bends over a little. If only the tires or wheel wells were bigger, for higher clearance! These vans have only been available in the US for a year or two, so it'll be awhile before many exist on the used marketplace. (Ford makes them in Turkey, primarily for non-US customers.) Neglecting the wimpy ground clearance, these guys have a lot of potential as the ultimate camping machines for the short term boondocker.

...you're turned on by old junk like this. I added a spur to one of my coffee shop-anchored bicycle routes in order to visit an old mining area. There is nothing spectacular, but there are twenty old wrecks that make me feel satisfied. Satisfaction: it doesn't sound very exciting, does it? When I converted from a full time, traveling RVer to a townie I had to relearn certain habits of adulthood: satisfaction is more reliable and sustainable than the titillation of novelty. (Channel surfing with gasoline.)

A newbie in town and I had lunch together the other day. Perhaps it could be called a "date," but I'm so far out of it that I don't even know the technical, legal definition of a date anymore. She was from a college town in Oregon, so I was suspicious, but tried to keep an open mind. Several times she introduced key buzzwords into the conversation: organic, Asia, yoga class, and whether there might be trace amounts of meat in the chili; then she appeared to wait for me to take the topic up. With each succeeding blow, my shoulders slumped a little further. Finally she mentioned "vibrations." I'm happy to report that I did not audibly groan, nor did my face fall into the plate as a sign of final surrender. Maybe I sighed a little. Well who ya gonna blame? I moved to a town full of aged hippie-dippies and New Agers, and then complain when they act like it. Actually they are only 10% of the town, and are concentrated in the hippie district. Oddly enough,

The bird was caught alighting from the dead cholla stalk. Its head is to the right, I think. The angle of the wing is more downward than I would have expected.

The Arkansas River Valley, Colorado, a couple years ago. Most people yearn for a long, lingering autumn, full of crisp mornings and warm afternoons, of apple festivals and glorious colors. A season without snow, rain, humidity or bugs. Many autumns don't quite live up to this dream, because it gets rainy and blowy just when the colors get going. Down go those beautiful leaves, down into the first of the winter mud. Living on wheels would seem to be the perfect solution. Just imagine a gradual migration, surfing the wave-crest of colors southward! That is what I expected out of my first fall migration, many equinoxes ago. Much to my surprise, when the October weather collapse happened up north, it quickly went south. There was no six-week-long autumn like I had fantasized, even when migrating from northern Michigan to the Texas Hill Country. The moral of the story is that latitude is over-rated. Moving to the western states, latitude proved to be even more over-rate

No matter how thick a book is or how well you might like it, isn't it true that you only remember a few scenes? Why that scene and not some other? Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry brushed off the village atheist one day. That book was written in 1927. I wondered if people even use that term any more. Village atheist, town drunk, slut, gossip, or do-gooder -- how do they matter to an America that doesn't live in villages anymore? America is a hollowed-out country, a coast-to-coast archipelago of monstrous conurbations. People sat out on porches and kept an eye on each other on Lewis's Main Street. Today we experience our neighbor in the 'burbs only in seeing his garage door open up, a car with tinted windows emerges, it heads off to work or to a fast food drive-through, and then the garage door closes. The Village Atheist used to be portrayed unsympathetically. If he was jolly enough, he might have been tolerated as the licensed lunatic, but usually he was seen as sou

In the field you do have to struggle to see the yellow breast of some birds, which Bobbie and Dixxe helped me identify as a western kingbird. Soon the migrating birds, of both wing and wheel, will start coming through. I hope the performance is as much fun as last year. Northern flickers were the first invaders.

In the Southwest a few years ago. 'Love at first sight' is a principle that doesn't seem to apply to geologic layers, at least for me. It fails in both directions. When I saw red-rock Utah for the first time I drooled over it like anyone would. But once the brain has seen red rock and admitted it as a possibility, it ceases to be interesting. And yet I know RVers who make a big deal of it, long term. Red sandstone cliffs decompose into loose red sand which is impassable to a mountain bike. Conversely I was none too crazy about granite at first. It was crumbly and ignoble. Eventually though, the eroded hoodoos and gargoyles win you over. Soon you appreciate the sure-footedness that you have while scrambling over granite rocks, but it's the dry washes that are the most fun. They are filled with granite decomposed into coarse sand. Granite sand can be sharp-edged; under the shearing pressure of your shoe it locks up and makes for easy walking. My little poodl

The movies of the Coen Brothers, such as Fargo, Barton Fink, Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Intolerable Cruelty, have given me a lot of kicks over the years. No doubt they will have other successes in the future. There is something they could do to ensure that, and it ties in with writing in general, not just movies. Critics praise the scripts of Coen Brothers movies for being quirky, offbeat, or for breaking Hollywood formulas with surprises. But these things are both good and bad. A movie is interesting because the viewer is caught up in the dilemmas and conflicts of characters that the viewer cares about. If a speech or a plot twist becomes too offbeat, the viewer can no longer believe it. "Witty" dialogue can be so overdone that it seems contrived. Surprises become ends in themselves. The writing ceases to be about a character and becomes a character itself.  In other words their scripts are examples of what Strunk and White, in the "Elements of St

Every now and then I listen to some Jimmy Buffett songs while taking a snooze. The song with the refrain about "pacin' the cage" made quite an impact. RVs started pulling out of this park early on Labor Day, headed back to the torrid, ghastly conurbation of lower Arizona. They did no harm and I really feel kind of bad about being so glad to see them go. Maybe they are just reminding me of missing the autumn migration, which usually started in September. The autumn migration always seemed twice as dramatic as the spring. Maybe that's an ancestral grudge against winter. I used to study DeLorme and Benchmark atlases for weeks while anticipating it and feeling nervous about it. I did my share of constant travel in an RV, but it never really seemed necessary or even desirable. It's probably lazy to fall back on the old buzzword, natural, but it does seem like snowbirding -- seasonal migration -- is more natural than the endless running around that some RVers do. Anim

Just imagine a guy like me running an art gallery of the photographic kind, especially in a high rent district like Sedona or Bisbee. I'd put a photograph like this on the wall and some well-heeled dowager or matron would look at it and say, "Huh? How does this make the wall in our new retirement McMansion look more upscale?" My art gallery would go broke in three months. This is my favorite season, when monsoonal humidity meets cooler night air, and the result is torrential dew that decorates and honors the finely-textured grasses that I love. My eyes hunt for these dew-clusters, while my dog runs between them or sometimes through them, as she chases her varmints. She comes out of the field soaked and happy.

When I'm out walking the dogs near sunset I walk by a patch of tall heliotropic sunflowers. Maybe butterflies hang out there at that time of the day, or maybe the low sun presents their wings to advantage. I must have looked silly chasing camera-shy butterflies around the patch, with a rather confused dog attached to me. They certainly are good at escaping just a second before you get a good photograph. The eye and brain flutter over the sunflowers as well as the butterflies, and at some point in the confusion, they all seem like the same species. This is great fun, and I was lucky to get such a close-up. And yet it looks like a standard postcard or Olan Mills studio portrait of a butterfly. How dreadful it must be to be a professional photographer! The customer looks at his end result; the subjective experience of taking the photograph means nothing. How unfair: the experience was living. The end result of work is dead; it's what gets pinned to the page. But I guess any ki

Arkansas River Valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago. Believe it or not, I will say something nice about motor-crazed yahoos today. First off, should I use a new name, such as "motorsports enthusiasts?" Actually ATVs aren't that noisy and tend to be operated by responsible adults, which the dogs and I are friendly to, on the trail. But those young guys on their dirt bikes! Growl. On Friday night they arrived in force, with all the usual commotion and anticipation. They have finished their drive from a population center and to celebrate the occasion they serenade the nearest square mile with ugly, raucous music. One of the cretins camped fifty yards away from me. The next day they buzzed around like insect pests. I kept to short hikes in the dry washes of decomposed granite so I wouldn't have to overlap with them.  On Sunday morning I played a game with myself, guessing which group of louts would leave first. What a joy it is to see the ramps get put in

The friendly fingers of cholla at sunrise.

This is my favorite time of year. The grasslands are turgid, full of seeds, and besotted with dew. I never really appreciated texture until the last couple years, and have no idea why it started.

Sometimes it's hard to believe how much time an investor can spend reading business reports and opinions without finding anything of quality. Most of it is just news media fluff and cheerleading, performed by sex kittens; or Debt, Doom, and Gloom sermons performed by old bald white guys in bow ties. And yet, we are so much luckier than just a few years ago, thanks to the internet. The Mainstream never considers anything fundamental: it only cares about how quickly the country can get back on the wrong track, that is, Business as Usual. Outside the mainstream, fundamental issues do get questioned, but at the expense of a kooky element. By that I mean an outlook that is emotional, moralistic and scolding, and fixated. For instance, I sympathize philosophically with gold-bugs and the Debt & Doom types, but I seldom follow their financial advice. Still, I'm glad they're around to counter the conventional drivel and group-think of the narco-Keynesian mainstream. An indivi

When I settled into the Little Pueblo in southern New Mexico, a reader wanted to know how I selected it as my "retirement town." The short answer is outdoor lifestyle, climate, and altitude. But I like polemics like this, so let's look at the longer answer. Perhaps my opinions on this topic are of limited use to couples who care about how much house they can afford in any given area. I'm done with the house thing.  The basic decision is whether you want to look at a city as a grown-up or as an eyelash-fluttering Romanticist. The Romanticist is turned on by extremes: for instance they might choose a "vibrant" city that gets a lot of positive publicity, such as Portland OR. It's not exciting and romantic to consider the traffic, the anthill busyness, and the high cost of living in a big city. The Romanticist could just as easily flip to the other extreme by pining for a "quaint and charming" hamlet, while yawning about its lack of a doctor, g

For a second or two it felt like a real punch to my stomach when the waiter told me that the little cafe would be closing soon. I cherished stopping in on the way back from a standard summer bicycle ride. The food was surprisingly good here, just a few pedal kicks from the continental divide, on the edge of an old mining town.  To actually get pleasure from a restaurant is so rare for me that it is worth dwelling on this wonderful little cafe. Normally I consider food at restaurants to be mediocre, tasteless, and obscenely over-priced. Oh, and the background din. This year they had added a overhead shelter made of galvanized, corrugated steel, one of the building materials used in decaying New Mexican dumps, a great favorite of mine.  Red chiles hung dried in bunches next to my table. The rafters of the structure looked like de-barked pine logs, and made me think of the ponderosa forest I had just bicycled through. Off in the distance was a pair of mountain peaks which some frie

Arkansas River Valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago. Over the years I have learned how to turn some of my dislikes into advantages. Much to my surprise the result has been melodrama, performed on an outdoor stage. A melodrama needs a villain of course. The consummate outdoor-villains are forests, especially if they are dark, thick, and buggy. Going into a forest on foot or wheel takes some real effort; you have to imagine that the suffering will eventually turn productive. Just when I start to give up hope I see some brightness, some gap in the forest canopy opens up. The sun breaks into that gap and becomes the stage-lighting for a small performance stage on the forest floor where flowers and bugs run riot. The star of the show is that wing-artist, the butterfly. Sometimes a flutter in La Mariposa's dance coincides with a flutter of aspen leaves, as if they are applauding her performance.   One day there were at least eight different types of butterflies within a few ste

What a sound it is. It doesn't really belong in New Mexico. Sometimes it happens when I ride my bicycle between a pinch of large trees. The din is so loud that it startles me and I stop pedaling. It's like the whole world has developed tinnitus. But then I realize it's just those crazy (male) cicadas. I look for them in trees when I hear their racket, but never see them. This sound is worth dwelling on. (Wikipedia has an interesting article on the cidada.) You enjoy things more when you are surprised, and it's very difficult to be surprised visually since entire industries are aimed at visual images. That's why sounds, smells, are feelies are so important.

I resist showing cloud photos because I fear never stopping. But these clouds were so crisp at sunset tonight that I can't resist. With a closeup you can see the weird shadow on the top cloud:

After admiring the old hotel in town for the last two years, I finally got a chance to see the rooms, thanks to some visitors from out of town who stayed there. It was pleasing: old embossed metal tiles on the high ceilings; lots of wood and old photographs on the walls. But my heart skipped a beat when my friends pointed out the transoms above the doors. Without the transom you'd get no ventilation in an old hotel, but didn't they also ensure that the guests heard each step in the creepy interior hallway? They probably heard the goings-on in neighboring rooms, as well. The guests would have had to open the window to get a little air; just think of all the street noise. It was so stuffy in those old rooms that I would never pay to stay there. It reminds one of the hot stuffy hotel rooms in the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink." I didn't bring a camera, but perhaps it's just as well. Our fine old hotel wouldn't offer the camera-candy provided by more fam

While I was harrying a bird this morning my young kelpie, Coffee Girl, charged off toward the arroyo in one of her 'I saw it first' feints. Good work, Girl.

For the first time in years I've finished a novel: "Elmer Gantry" by Sinclair Lewis. I was inspired to read it by Burt Lancaster's performance in the movie as well as the supporting actor, Arthur Kennedy, who played the cynical and world-wise newspaper reporter, as he did a couple years later in "Lawrence of Arabia." I was surprised to enjoy the novel as much as I did, since I'm weary of secular intellectuals trying to out-voltaire Voltaire a century or two too late. Poor old Christianity has been beaten up so much since the 1700's, why do "bold" free- thinkers think they are so heroic in attacking it? It's a case of arrested development; they are perpetual adolescents who are rebelling against the religion of their parents' generation. What about people born in the 1960's? By the time they were adolescents, pseudo-Hindu-Buddhist fads were becoming pretty dated. Why didn't they rebel against them? They should be in their p

Upper Rio Grande valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago. Last episode we left our heroes staring right into a dense, miserable forest. There was no way to finish the hike to the mountain top with that hideous forest in the way, so I was resigned to retreat. But what was that barely noticeable lightness hiding behind the forest's black curtain? I must have been intrigued--what else would make me wade in through that junk? It was a small meadow, an island of light and air, surrounded by dreary, dark forest. I really didn't know that such islands existed. Sailors must feel like this when they discover a small, secret cove that isn't on the charts; it instantly becomes their own little paradise; the rest of the world becomes uninteresting to them. Rather than break out onto the grassy slope on the way home, I decided to walk along this shoreline of forest and grass, and plunge into the arboreal netherworld whenever there might be another of these little garden-mea

Can you imagine anything more boring to a young person than going to a so-called farmers' market on Saturday morning? It was even boring to me a couple years ago. But lately I have come away from them in a mood of satisfaction and appreciation. How strange.  In the past I might have been turned off by the high prices and the hippie-dippieness of small organic "farmers." (Gardeners, actually.) I expect to pay grocery-like prices for groceries, not boutique prices or art-gallery prices. But when you live in a state that is an agricultural nobody, you do start to appreciate the growing of food. This isn't the only example of how our tastes change as we get older. Maybe we come to the conclusion that the world, for the most part, is a lot of crap -- noise, useless busyness, and bother; and since we as individuals can't do much about it, we withdraw into a cocoon to enjoy a few quiet, honest pleasures that are available. Perhaps 'cocoon' isn't the r

Upper Rio Grande valley of Colorado, a couple summers ago. It was so easy to decide what to do first at this new RV boondocking campsite. A large peak loomed over camp. Though not a "peak bagger" I just had to start towards it, because of the grand and grassy slope in front of the trailer. It wasn't a planar ramp. It was a steep ascension of rumpled folds, like a woman's green dress in a more gracious and elegant age. There are so many places like this in the national forests out West. But you can't see them because they are covered with the Stygian gloom of an overgrown silviculture. Why is this hillside free of the usual clutter -- did it burn some years ago? I had to walk up it, that first morning. While the dogs enjoyed their romp over the grass, I stared in admiration of the landscape: I was looking at the upper end of the Rio Grande, leading into the center of Colorado's San Juan Mountains, near Lake City. The hillside was so steep that,

It can be a surprising amount of fun to sneak around a juniper bush and zero in on unsuspecting birds. This is a pair of curved bill thrashers. Love their eyes.

Bicycling isn't the only sport that needs a certain amount of gathering-up prior to beginning. Nor is old age the only time of life when you forget things. But for some reason none of that helps when I start a bike ride without a water bottle.  My ride begins by climbing over a 1000 feet up to the continental divide. If I notice that I've forgotten water halfway up the hill I become so angry at myself that I can't think about anything else. A desperate thirst overtakes me. This happened again recently. (Why not just store equipment, including the water bottle, on the bike? Then you won't forget anything. I've been telling myself that for 30 years.) To make matters worse there is no place to buy bottled water on my route. What the heck was I supposed to do? Approaching the Divide I suddenly got an idea: there are always plastic bottles littering the roadside. Normally I just avert my eyes. Why not keep an eye out for them, grab one, take it to the cafe or somebod

After five minutes of hoopin' and hollerin' aimed at getting this hawk into a more photogenic pose, he finally got annoyed and ruffled up a bit. Nice talons baby.

Isn't it wonderful to watch a human being -- or any other animal -- do something really, really well? Those of us who are suckers for boy-meets-dog/boy-loses-dog movies might claim that we appreciate good animal actors better than human ones. But it wasn't until recently that I knew enough about animal acting to properly appreciate it. While watching a "Benji" sequel I went to Wikipedia to learn about the dog himself . Did you know that there is such a thing as "trainer eye?" An animal actor who is really good lacks trainer eye; that is, the animal doesn't glance over at the trainer, who is just a couple feet off screen. The classic performance of poor animal acting was done by "Toto" in the Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy was singing about bluebirds and rainbows, Toto was repeatedly -- mind you, repeatedly -- glancing at the trainer off screen. I suppose it didn't matter too much, since the audience was focusing on Dorothy. While watching B

I'll be the first to admit that pretty flowers don't typically drive me into rhapsodies of poetic excitement. But this small flower does. Perhaps it's the blood-red color. I saw it for the first time this year on yesterday's bicycle ride into the forest. As a recovering travelholic (an ex-full-time-traveler) I have to remind myself  that it's OK to have seen something before. After all, it's been a whole year since I've seen this little darlin'.

Just when I was ready to give up on reading history, an interlibrary loan came to my rescue: "Medieval Technology and Social Change," by Lynn Townsend White. It is probably considered by some to be a modern classic. Take a look at the Preface: Voltaire to the contrary, history is a bag of tricks which the dead have played upon historians . The most remarkable of these illusions is the belief that the surviving written records provide us with a reasonably accurate facsimile of past human activity. 'Prehistory' is defined as the period for which such records are not available. But until very recently the vast majority of mankind was living in a subhistory which was a continuation of prehistory. Nor was this condition characteristic simply of the lower strata of society. In medieval Europe until the end of the eleventh century we learn of the feudal aristocracy largely from clerical sources which naturally reflect ecclesiastical attitudes: the knights do not speak for

Summer boondocking in the upper Rio Grande, a couple summers ago. If I had to pick my favorite moment of an outdoor-day, it might well the first one, when "night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops." [*] That's how the day starts for us when I park with the RV's door and bedroom window facing east. Soon the high-country's sun hits the bedroom window with a soft pounce. Coffee Girl starts her day by walking from the foot of the bed to my head. She softly drops her head on my neck and holds it there. My official morning hug, I guess. Both dogs are impatient to get going. They prefer to hit the trail at sunrise. There aren't many wildflowers on today's hike, but they're nice. Hunters are probably the only people who have ever come up the volcanic ridge that we were walking on. Most hikers follow the brown signs and stakes. I loved the contrasts of grass and trees, ridge and cliff. Most of

Strange things are happening around here lately, with the monsoons in full gear.  The male brain being what it is, I suggested to the lady hiking with me that it looked like some kind of orgy. She considered the suggestion indelicate. But after looking at a blowup of one of the photos, perhaps I was right.

Since WWII has never seemed interesting to me it seemed like a good idea to add "The World at War" documentary to my Netflix queue. Indeed, it did prove to be a well-made documentary. It helped a little that it was made in Britain. Why are Americans so interested in WWII? It's probably just triumphalism. Most Americans -- who see themselves as patriotic -- are probably unconcerned that the end of that war saw the USA morph from a constitutional republic to a militaristic world empire destined for Eternal War. Or maybe they think it's cool. Most people who have lived long enough have actually experienced short term triumphs turn into long term defeats, and vice versa. It usually happens to nations too. The other mighty victor of WWII, the USSR, no longer exists. How much longer will the USA maintain its current importance? I think the USA, despite its high-tech weaponry, has hollowed out in many ways. It is actually a weak country. But the rest of the world hasn'

I've only noticed this in one spot of my dog-walking grassy field: a cluster of hungry squatters, munching away on their campsite.

Northern Arizona, a couple summers ago. What a relief it was to drive away from 7000 feet and snow and head down and north to Snowflake AZ. Certain things gave me a chuckle, like "Alaska Oil" gas stations and "Our Lady of the Snow" Catholic church. After driving only fifteen miles it seemed like a different state. Northeastern Arizona is a strange combination of LDS (Mormon) towns, Indian reservations and fossilized trees. I thought of the joke that ended the movie, "Raising Arizona." It was nice to be back in "greater Utah" in some ways. Nobody could lay out a town like Brigham Young. I chose one of those wide streets and pulled a U-turn, just because I could. Once I asked a couple men of good taste which state had the best looking women. We all agreed: Utah. They exude wholesomeness, an underrated  quality in a society saturated with media smut. There was another wholesomeness that you can appreciate best when you compare it

I compliment Netflix quite a bit on this blog, and have to do it again. A Swedish documentary called "Kestrel's Eye" caught my eye the other day. The opening moments were not confidence-building: how could a nature documentary without narration or a musical background hold my interest for almost an hour and a half? Much to my surprise the lack of narration helped the movie. It made it seem so real. There have been other times when I've watched a movie in which the action was slow and the dialogue was understated, and wondered if this was really a movie. With "Kestrel's Eye" the viewer has to make a persistent effort to be satisfied without the noise and razzle-dazzle that we are accustomed to in entertainment products. And it worked. The other advantage of no narration is that you are spared the predictable sermons and platitudes about 'what man has done to the Earth' or the 'delicate balance of nature.' It's funny how animals are

A curved bill thrasher sings into the microphone.

Back East they complain that 'It's not the heat, it's the humidity.' I'm here to tell you that it's not as simple as that. Easterners suffer from such an excess of moisture over an annual cycle that they never think of the hardship of aridity.  I just finished a bicycle ride in enormous humidity by New Mexican standards: 60% in mid-morning. It only takes 30% to generate an afternoon thunderstorm. The fields have become green with all the rain and humidity lately. The Easterners yawn at this news. But not me. Soon my camera will go to work on fields full of seed heads, texture, and flowers. Bear in mind that in April, after a freakishly wet and snowy winter, everything was still brown. Some people's idea of sensual luxury is to go to a spa and be pampered with hot springs, massages, aromatherapy, etc. I'll settle for an experience like today: I didn't need to smear my skin with that crisco-like sunscreen, since the high humidity partly blocked the s

A couple of immature doves.

I was interested in a recent article in asia times dotcom that speculated on whether China would emphasize aircraft carriers or anti-carrier missiles. With their satellites they know exactly where American aircraft carriers are, and to knock them out it only takes a high-tech missile that costs, what?, 0.3% as much as the aircraft carrier. The missile can be fired from anywhere -- even a fishing trawler. Of course the US Navy believes that nothing projects a country's power like the carrier battle group. One of the most amazing features of modern American life is how much money it spends on its military, and how useless most of it is. Fred Reed is a favorite writer of mine who has a military background that has left him with a respect for military personnel and a savage disrespect for political/military policies. Perhaps the US should recognize that it has a second-rate military at phenomenal cost – an enormous, largely useless national codpiece.