Month: May 2017

Lake City, FL – I am currently on a driveabout, meaning that I am on the road traveling with no particular destinations in mind. I did start with two ideas, one of which was to get to Key West, FL. I happen to like the beginnings and ends of places, and Key West I believe is the furthest south you can drive on the continental US. This means that I have driven as far north as you can go via 2-wheel vehicle (Inuvik, NWT) and also as far south without crossing an international border with a passport.

My reason for going on this driveabout is simply to try to shake off the last 42 years of working. I just wanted to have a few weeks of driving about with no agenda, nothing to do, no meetings or deadlines to deal with, no one else to take into consideration – nothing. Nothing but wandering from place to place as it strikes me. Having made Key West, my next goal is to get to the Chattahoochie National Forest and to set foot on the beginning of the Appalachain Trail. Right at the moment, however, I am sort of grounded here in Lake City because of weather. There is just too much severe weather up in the northern Georgia/southern Tennessee area to want to go up there and pitch camp. So I am biding my time down here waiting for the weather to clear up some. I hope it does.

I can’t say it has been all that interesting so far. Mostly the weather and the elements have been beating me up. It’s been hot everywhere I have gone in Florida. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t be going to Florida this time of year, but that’s what circumstances presented me. I wanted to go late April or earlier in May, but I did not get a chance to leave until May 17 or so. I’ve been out close to two weeks now, and the hot weather has been definitely the hardest challenge. Right here at this moment it’s 93 degrees outside, and I am holed up in a Starbucks spending the day trying to stay cool. I’ve had a few very hard days in my tent with the combination of heat and humidity. One day reached a heat index of 103 degrees, and man was that miserable. I don’t think I have ever spent time under conditions where simply lying still was cause enough to sweat. Literally.

I am also interested in trying to see how just traveling around would give me some new perceptions. I am looking for what’s next in life, and it seemed to me that, since I did not have any good ideas at home, perhaps driving around and seeing new places would stimulate some ideas. So often over the past few years I have dreamed of a long hike somewhere, but one thing I am learning in short order through this trip is you cannot predict how Mother Nature will behave. It’s not like every day would be 76 degrees and sun, with nice cool temps in the low 60s each night for comfortable sleeping weather. Today I am avoiding the insects and the heat of the day by hopping from one air-conditioned location to another. Can’t do that on the trail.

So I have nothing profound at the moment. I am keeping a handwritten journal rather than a digital one for those times when I don’t have digital access. Right at the moment I am eager to get out of Florida and the south in general. I was thinking about meandering along the Gulf Coast across Alabama and Mississippi, but it’s simply going to be too hot. I will save that trip for another springtime. It seems more practical to try to head north and get into some cooler climes. Not sure I will have more success there, and I have seen far more of the midwest and west than I have the south, but this time of year is not the most ideal time to go. Live and learn.  -twl

Dunkirk NY –

O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

I am so depressed this morning with the passing of the so-called American Health Care Act by the Republican Congress last night, not to mention that the Congress also repealed the “Work and Save” plans last Monday, plans which would have more easily set up retirement savings plans for workers in small businesses. I realized that I have lived through a time where the corporations of America once provided pensions and health care, to a time when corporations now provide neither of those things.

We no longer live in a democracy; we live in an oligarchy as bad as any oligarchy you can name in history. Consider this political cartoon entitled “The Laughter of the Gods” from Puck magazine in 1909:

It’s a bit difficult to read, so here is what it depicts:

• The men on the left and the right are the “Republican Boss” and “Democratic Boss” respectively.
• The man in the top hat is “Privileged Interests.”
• The man second from the left next to Republican Bosses is labeled “Dive Keeper” as far as I can tell. I am not sure of that reference; it could either refer to landlords or to saloon owners.
• The little guys in the ring carry broadsheets labeled “Democratic Principles” (left) and “Republican Principles” (right).
• The Quote from the Big Four says, “Let ’em argue! If they stopped talking they might begin thinking, and then where would we be?”

Things have come full circle. When the robber baron monopolies of the turn of the last century were busted up, the Depression and the post-Depression era became eras for the average person, and oligarchs had a little bit of a vacation. But they have come roaring back in this century with a vengeance. The inequality of wealth distribution in this country is phenomenal, and I fear it will continue for some time. I am also pretty sure that the whole mess has to completely break down before change will be enacted, which will be another painful era in America’s ongoing story. We came damn close in 2007-08, and the next time it happens we may not be able to stop it. The oligarchical corporations have such a fixed and firm hold on everything that it’s difficult to imagine a way out. Like Hamlet, I find life becoming “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.”  -twl