Comments, observations and thoughts about whatever seems relevant at the time. There is no particular topic, these are intended to be general observations about things that come up during my life.
I am attracted to the name “Arkadelphia,” it makes me chuckle because it seems to be a take off on Philadelphia, which means brotherly love. Delphia means brother, I wonder what Arkadelphia is supposed to mean? Perhaps it was just a playful name.
I found the location of the hotel in Arkadelphia to be yet another boring cluster of hotels, fast food joints and service stations near a freeway off-ramp. However, a quick trip around the vicinity revealed a much different picture. I took a short loop into the country and found the area had many upper-middle class homes nestled in the woods. It is within a few miles of a nice lake with a State Park offering camping and fishing experiences. Arkadelphia is the home of a state university. In this case, while the traveler encounters more of the same “industrial” conditions of crowded cookie-cutter services, the residents likely experience beautiful and enriching environment not far from the big city of Little Rock.
The trip east across Arkansas surprised me because of how open and unpopulated the country side is. The first 120 miles were through vast conifer plantations, interspersed with what appeared to be woodlands of hardware trees. Logging trucks were common on the highway, carrying loads of logs all about twelve inches in diameter. Apparently they harvest the plantations when the trees reach a foot or so in diameter. I also encountered truckloads of 2×4 lumber. I suppose there must be stud mills (lumber mills turning logs into 2×4 studs for housing) in the area, but I didn’t encounter any. I also expect to have found pulp mills, or possibly electrical plants using the wood from the plantations for fuel. However, I didn’t see any signs of any of these types of processing plants on the road that I took.
The road across Arkansas traveled over a series of “hills,” that seemed more like undulations that hills. It was basically flat county with a bit of ripple to the surface. I encountered very few towns, it was mostly unpopulated country with small clearings in the forest for a few homes along the way. If the route I took was at all representative of the rest of the state, it looks to me like it is almost all forest land with a few small towns and a couple of large cities. I hadn’t envisioned Arkansas as a massive forest, but that is what I encountered.
The eastern sixty miles or so of my trip across Arkansas was through very large farms growing some hay, a lot of corn, and crops that were unfamiliar to me. It reminded me a lot of the farmland in the Sacramento Valley north of Sacramento because of the size of the fields, I guess that they are about a section (square mile) each.
The drive across Arkansas was singularly monotonous with very little of interest. It was all trees, farm land, house every few miles, interspersed with a tiny town every twenty or thirty miles. I settled down an drove just to get to something, anything, more interesting.
My intent was to stay in Magill Oklahoma for two days in order to get a little rest from driving, give myself a little time to just relax and think, and perhaps practice some art in the form of pencil sketches of things of interest. However, by the time morning rolled around I found I once again had itchy feet and that the hotel was just too depressing for me. I ended up pushing off earlier than usual, heading a bit north-east to Poteau Oklahoma.
It was clear that I had at last left the wide open spaces of the deserts and plains, I was now traveling in wooded areas containing muddy rivers and streams. Many of these included the word “mud” in their names. Apparently being muddy isn’t a modern phenomena – these streams have been removing large loads of dirt from the area for hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of years. It is a wonder that there are still hills and mountains in the area.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the trip was that it was almost all through various “Indian” nations. Poteau is either in, or next to, the Choctaw Nation. There was a Choctaw casino down the street a half mile or so. For some reason it felt very comforting to me to know that I was in Chickasaw or Choctaw territory – I felt safe there. I am happy that they have such large tracts of land, but sad that these aren’t their original lands, they had been displaced from their homelands and forced to settle in new ones – sometimes displacing those who were in their traditional homes in Oklahoma. It is all very confusing, frustrating and sorrowful. I only hope that they have created good new homes in their new territories.
Having driven another five hours, I arrived to Poteau in the early afternoon, having time to look around the area to see what I could see. My first goal was to find the town of Poteau. The original old towns are sometimes hard to find now that the freeways have bypassed them, draining much of the economic vigor from the town centers, leaving behind economic “ghost towns.” This appears to have happened in Poteau by forcing the businesses to relocate along the path and intersections of the new roads. I found the old town of Poteau off on a side street a few miles from my motel. I expected to find an active town since it was Saturday afternoon when people should be out and about. However, the streets were empty and the stores were all closed. I found another imminent ghost town. There was an interesting restaurant that billed itself as the eatin’ and drinkin’ place – Warehouse Willey’s. It was only open in the evening, which was disappointing because I was hoping for lunch.
I checked into my hotel and found a sheet of paper with “things of interest” listed. One of these was Spiro Mounds Archeological Center located about fifteen miles away on the banks of the Arkansas River. The archeological center had been neglected for a few years because of Covid, and was in the process of being renovated. A nice lady was watching over the interesting displays of the reconstructions of the life and culture of the early peoples who had made the mounds from around 900 AD to 1300 AD. A walking trail took me to the mounds themselves, one of which was reported to be about 300 feet long, 120 feet wide and 34 feet high. There were several large mounds and a number of ancient house sites, all overgrown with brush and trees. I thought about taking a photograph for this posting, but all it would have been was another forest – there was nothing very photogenic to make an interesting photograph.
Apparently the mounds are a bit of an enigma in part because in the 1930s treasure hunters dug up much of the site, taking many artifacts that were then sold to collectors around the world. The disruption caused by their mining operations resulted in making future archeological investigations very difficult. What is known is that the site was very important to the local culture when it was active, but it is difficult to know exactly who these people were or what the purpose of the mounds might have been. Some of the mounds incorporated graves but it is unclear whether the main purpose was as graves or perhaps something else.
It continues to amaze me that activities such as the mining for archeological treasures in ancient sacred sites is somehow considered acceptable. I am continually struck by the belief that anything that can be taken is fair game. Those who can get things do so, with little or not consideration of the consequences. We play a big game of “finders keepers” without regard to the idea that just finding it might not be equivalent to owning it taking it. While the archeologists feel that they are free to dig up old sites because it is in the name of “science” – in reality they are doing the same thing. A few hundred years from now the “new” archeologists will undoubtedly complain that the sites had been destroyed by the “old” archeologists – those that are currently doing the digging.
I returned for dinner and found Warehouse Willy’s packed! The restaurant seats perhaps 100 people and had a line out the door onto the street waiting for a table. I waited in the little bar that could about 20 people. A customer came up to me and asked if I had been there before, and then said “The food is worth the wait, you won’t be disappointed.” I was seated after about a half-hour later by a very nice, friendly, waitress. I ordered a chicken dinner with the fixin’s. It turned out to be very much less than I had hoped for – I was disappointed. Dinner consisted of a small piece of dry tasteless chicken with a bowl of mashed potatoes – served with a piece of toasted white bread. I don’t know what the gentleman had been referring to, perhaps it is just better than the other options of fast food joints.
I was finished with dinner at around 7:00pm. Not feeling like crawling back into my cell at the hotel, I opted to stop in at a place I had noticed called “The Watering Hole” located in an almost empty strip mall near my motel. There was plenty of available parking. The only reason that I could tell that The Watering Hole was an active business was the cluster of cars near the front door. Otherwise It looked like just another one of the shuttered businesses in the mall.
The Watering Hole was a bare-bones bar with a few tables and perhaps 15 stools lined up at the bar. Six or seven young guys were sitting at the bar, flanking on both sides the one female customer. I took a seat at the far end of the bar, next to a very large thirty something black man. I was immediately informed by the “bouncer” that I needed to pay a $5 cover charge for the band. When I pointed out that there was no band, they agreed to drop the charge as long as I didn’t stay past 9:00 when the band was scheduled to start playing. The shaven head middle-aged bartender made the obvious point that he intended to ignore both of us. He continued talking to the young guys, and the girl, without so much as a glance in our direction. I wondered if I would even get a chance to order a beer. Eventually a nice female bartender came from the back room and took our orders.
The two of us eventually started up a bit of a conversation. He told me that he had originally come to Poteau to attend college, saying “My Momma told me I had to get some education, but it didn’t work for me, I dropped out once I got an AA degree.” He got a job driving truck in the region. He was happy that he gets paid by the hour rather than the mile, but wishes he could find a job where he could be home more than one night out of three. He misses being with his wife and family, cruising the interstates has gotten old for he.
He asked why I was in the area. When I told him I was just drifting along seeing what I could see, he offered me a piece of advice. He told me that he has learned to be very careful when going to strange bars. He said he walks in, judges the “feel” of the place, and if it isn’t welcoming he just walks right on out. He suggested that I check out the vibes quickly and act accordingly. My guess is that he knows what he is talking about in this neck of the woods. Obviously I have been a little lax with following his recommendation given that I stayed in the bar even after being “threatened” with a 38. Actually, I wasn’t being threatened, I was being tested, but it could have gone either way I suppose. I bought him another beer, and headed back to my dismal hotel room.
I seem to have stalled out in Magill, spending two nights here and considering a third. It is not that there is anything special about this town, it is just that I need a break from driving. It is time to do my laundry, catch up on some email traffic, attend a System Safety Meeting, practice drawing and just plain kicking back for a bit.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the trip for the past couple of days has been the changes to the environment. Shortly after leaving Hereford a couple of days ago I noticed that the colors had changed, grass became green instead of brown, and the ground was no longer visible through the foliage. It quickly changed from slightly greener grass to large green lawns being mowed by big riding lawnmowers and forests with trees that formed a wall next to the road with their leaves reaching to the ground, preventing a view into the forest. I was suddenly past the desert and the plains, I was now in a land of summer rain and high humidity.
I now see squashed armadillos on the road and turtles making their way across the highways – apparently drivers avoid turtles but not armadillos. The double yellow “no passing” markings are no longer taken as the law, or even sound advice> Cars pass me regardless of the road markings, or the obvious blind corners – I guess there usually aren’t head-on crashes so it is safe to do so. The radio stations have also changed with the airwaves being dominated by extremely conservative political commentary or fundamentalist religious instructions. There are no longer any sources of moderate opinion – it seems to be all about the government being corrupted by the liberals and the impending end-time as described in Revelations. I set my radio on “scan” in the hopes of finding some relief, but without much success – it is all extremely conservative talk shows except for an occasional music station that either plays western music or light rock.
My first night in Magill was at an upscale Best Western where I got one of the last rooms, a big suite. It was quite nice, cheery and relaxing. That was not available for my second night due to a wedding and graduation. I moved down the street to an American Inn that was slightly less expensive, but much less attractive. I find this hotel to be quite drab and depressing but am not sure why. Perhaps it is partly to do with being an “enclosed” hotel with doors that open to long dark hallways instead of motels that open to the parking lot. Perhaps it is the lack of an elevator, forcing me to lug my bags up the stairs. The rooms are alright – kind of small but not unusually so. I think it has to do with the color scheme of green walls, dark carpets and bare walls. It feels like every step possible to reduce cost while meeting some minimum acceptable standard has been taken. No artwork, no open spaces, no bright colors, chipped furniture and stained carpets set the tone. Not really bad, but not very good either. The $20 a night saving is not worth the feeling of depression that comes with it. My variations in hotel accommodations reminds me of the tour that Mary Jo and I took in China in 2006. Our tour included a range of accommodations that might be described as varying from 1 star or less up to an occasional 5 star. I think they added in the 5 star ones to give a little relief. That is a bit like what I am doing. I can tolerate some pretty basic situations as long as I once in awhile get something a little better.
There are few dining opportunities in Magill. There are a couple of fast food places along the main highway, a home town cafe on 1st street and a pizza place. The home town cafe has low ceilings, dull lighting, large black and white photographs of people taken a hundred years ago, and a couple of huge stuffed bass fish. The menu tends toward catfish, grits, and other things that are not in my normal diet – obviously the local food is changing character as I travel into the south. The pizza parlor has more “normal” food. I ordered an 8″ pizza and a beer but got a 14 inch pizza at the same price, complements of the waitress I think. I could see that the six waitresses were noticing me as an outsider, they sort of huddled and glanced my way as they rather obviously talked about me. Every one of them found a reason to help me at my table, offering a little flirt as they departed. I asked one of them where I might find a bar. She responded with “Darlin’, you are now in the Bible Belt and bars don’t exist here due to local ordinances. They are an important part of a town.” I guess restaurants can serve alcohol, but there are no bars or saloons in this part of the world.
I am torn between staying here another day, perhaps going to see where those giant fish came from, or getting back on the road to see what adventures might come my way. I don’t expect many adventures in Magill but it seems that adventures come when least expected.
My daily activities have settled into a bit of a delayed writing schedule. For example, I arrived in Hereford on the afternoon of May 16, got signed in to a motel, took a little nap to rest after several hours of driving, went out to explore the town and have dinner, then read a bit about aliens (the book I purchased at the UFO store in Roswell), and sleep. There was no time to write. In the morning I got up, meditated, worked on my email traffic, wrote about what happened two days before at Boswell. This all took took so long that I missed the complementary breakfast, and I was back on the road arriving at Altus Oklahoma on the afternoon of the 17th. It is now the morning of the 18th and I am writing about Hereford on the 16th.
I suppose this is more information than you want, but I have gotten some comments questioning the difference between the dates in the title versus the posted dates. The reason is that I want to be out of a location before I write about my experiences there to make sure that nothing noteworthy is missed. My next opportunity to write about a location is two days after my arrival. And then of course there are those days that I just don’t get around to writing at all. By the way, it has been pointed out to me that there is no way to write to me, or make comments on the postings. Apparently that is correct, those options used to be available but I see that they disappeared – I have no idea when or how. I also don’t know how to fix the web site to allow for that, I created the site but have long ago forgotten how to fix it. You can always drop me a line at my email address of charles_hoes@hoes-eng.com if you have something to say or a question.
Today, May 18, is my birthday. I think I have now officially tipped into “old” at 76. I have close friends that are many years older than me that don’t act “old” – so I realize that for some lucky souls being “old” is a matter of opinion, I seem to be one of those lucky ones and don’t believe it. I do recognize however that for another groups of people their bodies might be starting to force a different opinion upon them, and they have to act old- or perhaps they actually die like my wife did so unexpectedly. Life’s a bitch as they say. In any case, at 76 I don’t think I can continue the fantasy that I have unlimited time to do things, and put off important tasks until later. Later just might not ever come. Of course that was always the case, and I knew it, but acted in many ways as if I am immortal. I find I am now spending some time trying to to figure out those things that seem most important to accomplish so I can put my time and attention there, rather than just twiddle away the days thinking that there will be plenty of time in the future. Of course, that doesn’t imply that there is anything wrong with twiddling away the days as long as that is an intentional activity – inaction, leisure, having fun and just doing nothing are all fine options. I just don’t want to accidentally use up my allotted time because of not paying attention.
The drive from Boswell to Hereford was an uneventful, 75 miles and hour trip across the high plains of northern Texas. Hour after hour of more of the same, until it changed. As I neared Hereford I began to notice large black blotches on the otherwise uniform light brown of the grasses and low bushes. The blotches were big BIG, apparently miles across. As I approached they stated to gain some definition and I could tell that they were cattle, my guess is that they were black angus – packed into the giant pens of several big feed lots. As I was driving next to the feed lots I could see some extra details. The cattle appeared to be able to have five or six feet of space between each other, standing on dark (almost black) ground covered in manure – not a green thing in sight. The large feed lot enclosures were crossed fenced, forming many smaller pens holding perhaps 500 animals each (I didn’t count, so that is just a wild guess). I couldn’t help but think about the plight of these animals confined for their entire life. Here and there were piles of manure with one or two steers standing on top getting a better view of their world. The smell was surprisingly mild, even when I finally got down wind of the enclosures. Not pleasant, but certainly tolerable.
Coming into Hereford I was presented with an industrial scene of silos, train yards, equipment yards and such. The photo is taken from the parking lot of my motel for the evening – not my idea of a beautiful scene, but it is typical of the business district.
Hereford, Texas
I took a little time to drive around town (Hereford has a population of approximately 30,000 people) to see if I could find “the town.” I found that the two intersecting freeways turned into four lane, 30 mph roads with a scattering of businesses on each side. There was an old, dilapidated mall on one of the roads, and businesses similar to that found at my motel on the other. Most of the businesses were open and still doing business, it was clearly not a ghost town in the making. My impression was that it is a busy place that is treated more like a factory than a home. I had the uncomfortable feeling of being inside of some sort of giant, inhuman machine rather than being in a community. The spaces outside of the “business” areas were largely filled with nice, neat homes, schools and churches.
After getting settled into my small, but functional, motel room I went searching for a place to have a drink with locals, and a place for dinner. The big sign in the parking lot for the “Great Wall Buffet” gave a pretty good clue about that option – it was closed, boarded up, and falling apart. Just down the street I noticed a sign for a BBQ place. Being in Texas I thought I should at least try BBQ once on my trip. The door was open, but once inside it was clearly not operating. However, there was a lady sitting in a glassed in booth in the middle of the entrance to the restaurant – she was running a small business of cashing payroll checks inside of the larger business of the restaurant. Weird! She said that the restaurant was closed for a few days, but was still in business. When I asked her for a place with local food she suggested two steak houses, one that served alcohol and one that didn’t. I picked the one that did.
I found a nice steakhouse about a 1/2 mile down the main drag from my motel. It was pretty much like steak houses anywhere, a large room full of tables and a separate lounge area with a bar, some tables and a couple of booths. The bar had three people sitting at it and a couple of tables were filled with men talking and obviously enjoying some time at the end of their working day. I sat at the bar, between a young (20’s something) girl and a middle aged man (named “Frank” for the purposes of this story). One of the men at a nearby table caught my attention because he was wearing sparkling clean, ironed, worn, western wear. A crisply pressed shirt, ironed Levi’s, a clean (expensive) cowboy hat – and big spurs. The clean, pressed clothes and big hat marked him as “management” to me, but the spurs confused me. “Management” usually works in offices and rides around in pickups, and walks around – neither of which demand spurs.
Losing all control of my mind, I leaned over to the young lady and asked her what the deal with the spurs was (I should have known better)- I was curious about what sort of job the guy does that requires spurs, why does he wear them in the restaurant or are they just for show? Her response was to loudly holler to the guy with the spurs, saying something along the lines of, “Hey Jim, this fella wants to know why you are wearing spurs.” Holy cow, that was subtle! So now I was thrown into another really uncomfortable situation. Jim just looked at me quizzically, but didn’t say a word. Everyone in the bar heard that question and it became silent for a bit until Frank, sitting a couple of stools down from me said, “He is a cowboy.” That took the heat out of the moment and everyone went back to whatever they were doing.
I then said that I knew he was a cowboy, I could tell by his clothes, his hat, and his spurs – but my question was “why do they need cowboys here?”. I told him I saw the stock yards, but it didn’t look like they would need horses for that sort of operation. Frank then told me that it is still necessary to use horses to move the cattle around in the yard, it is still a very important job. That got us onto a very interesting conversation.
I quizzed Frank about whether or not he grew up there, which he didn’t. He grew up in California, went to school there and decided to move to Texas, landing in Hereford a few years ago. He said it was the best move of his life – Hereford is a very good place for business. It turned out that Frank is the owner of the restaurant, and of a very large, expensive hotel just behind the restaurant. The restaurant had been built by a well-to-do cattleman as a gift to his wife who just wanted to own such a place. She didn’t have a clue about how to manage it, so it quickly went broke and they had a bit of a “fire sale” to get out of it – which is where Frank came into the picture. He found it was an amazing deal, bought it and turned it into a success, soon taking over the hotel in similar fashion.
Frank explained that the county is very rich, with amazingly profitable businesses everywhere. He said there are something like 40,000 people in the county (30,000 in town and the rest scattered around),but did an annual business of 14 billion dollars! That is about $300,000 for each man, woman and child in the county. He said that almost everyone that was doing anything were multimillionaires, and some billionaires.
On hearing that I scrunched up my face, saying it sure didn’t look like that. He laughed and told me it is their little secret. They purposefully keep it like that. Their houses are nice, but not pretentious (which I had already observed) and all of wealth of the area in terms of agricultural production (with the exception of the feed lots) was far from the roads where it is not visible to the casual observer, such as myself. I asked about the crops, suggesting that perhaps it was for growing feed for the lots. He laughed and agreed, but then said they grow just about everything. He listed off a long list of crops (which I promptly forgot), and said that a big part of their business is growing seeds because they are so isolated that there are no other varieties to cross breed with the ones they are growing. The market for the seeds is global, my guess is that many of the seed companies near Davis California use this area to produce the seeds that they develop in the many greenhouses located near the University of California, Davis which is known worldwide for its expertise in crop development.
It turned out that my initial impression of it being a dull, dirty, kind of nasty place to live was totally wrong – in fact, perhaps that was a ruse to ensure that they are left alone, left to making their fortunes in their own way without much intervention. Franks said that as long as they have water and ground it is a gold mine. It reminded me a little bit of Coober Pedy in Australia. The main source of income in Coober Pedy is opal mining, highly prized valuable opals. All of the opal business is transacted with cash, with suitcases full of cash from Asian customers. Because of the high risk of getting robbed when carrying millions of dollars around in a suitcase, they hide in plain sight. They purchase expensive, fancy cars and strip the bodies off, replacing the bodies with beat up old ones – so they look just like “desert rat” vehicles, but run like new. All of the housing, their clothes, the way of life centers around being rich but looking poor. All except for their underground houses (literally underground) that few outsiders get to see. Hereford seems to be taking a similar approach.
This discussion really made me start to wonder just how much of what I having been seeing is real, and how much is a cover – a ruse to be allowed to do what they want because nobody really knows what that is. I wonder how deeply this ruse goes, if it exists at all.
I hadn’t planned on visiting Roswell, it seemed too much “on the beaten path,” and I thought I had already been there. I ended up there because any other direction was going to require a much longer drive than my “target” of a maximum of 180 miles a day or they were too close, and it looked like my choices would all end up in yet another soon-to-be ghost town. I was getting a bit tired of dusty, depressing towns without places to eat. It turned out that I hadn’t been there, instead I had visited a tiny town near the gate to Area 51 – I had mistaken it for being Roswell, which is actually about 30 miles from that fat spot on the road. The place I had visited consisted of a bar/restaurant where pilots and scientists working at Area 51 relax at the end of the day.
Roswell is a large, vibrant (in comparison to my previous few day’s experiences) community of perhaps 60,000 folks. On the morning of this leg of my trip I made reservations in yet another Best Western on Main Street in Roswell. I have been finding that Best Westerns are often my choice because they are toward the lower priced places that I can depend upon being at least “ok.” They usually (perhaps always) offer a complementary breakfast of yucky scrambled eggs, greasy bacon and/or sausage, bland fried potatoes, coffee, cheap rolls, juice and a couple of type of fruit. Not very good, but plentiful and free. Breakfast is to be found in a sterile little room with a few other silent travelers. I find the whole breakfast event to be rather depressing – but often it is the only choice in town, and it saves me $20 or so for the breakfast that I would really like. It is much better than my breakfast at home where I usually have a bowl of granola and a cup of instant coffee – so I am not complaining. It turns out that I often don’t get around to eating the BW breakfast until late in the morning, meaning I can skip lunch and have an early dinner – another $20 saved. This results in the room only costing something like $50 when savings on meals are factored in.
I have acquired a “normal” pattern when I roll into a new town. My first task is to find my motel. (I am now finding it best to make reservations in the morning before I set out on my adventure. This gives me a chance to search the options on Expedia or similar web site, and then call the property directly to make sure of availability of a room and quiz them about the availability of restaurants.) After locating my lodging for the night, I take a driving tour around town in an attempt to find the “town” (if there is any), locate places to eat and/or drink, and just get the lay of the land. I did that in Roswell and found that while it is a large town, there really isn’t much of a “town” there. It is mostly residential areas and a cluster of mall type businesses and hotels on Main Street shared by the main highway.
There is a small “historical district” that clearly used to be the “town.” It has old, now converted, movie theaters, restaurants, banks and other businesses. Now they are almost all stores catering to the “alien tourist” trade. The historical district consists mostly of stores selling alien trinkets, the international alien museum, rock shops, sellers of incense and “hippy” clothes, art consignment stores, and an eclectic store full of “antiques” (old junk) – odd places that might lure in those that like to fantasize about aliens and such. I read that the alien tourist trade brings in about $16 million a year to the town, so all of these weird little businesses are tolerated by the city. Statues, images and illusions to aliens are everywhere in town.
I ended up leaving a bit of money in that district as there were a few things that just couldn’t be passed up.
I went into a UFO store and found a large selection of books on the topic, one of which I already owned and found pretty thought provoking. I asked the sales clerk which one he thought had the most “truthful” story. He handed me the The Ultimate Guide to the Roswell UFO Crash. After asking for his assistance I felt sort of obligated to purchase it for $22.44. Is there a hidden meaning in such an odd price? It consists of brief discussions of things that transpired during the weeks of June 1947, along with GPS coordinates and QR codes for the locations where these events took place. They are interesting little stories.
I stepped into an art consignment store were a dozen or so local artists display their wares. I was very impressed with many of the paintings. They seemed quite good to me – but out of my price range and besides I don’t want to start cluttering my already filled car with more stuff. However, I did get to talking with one of the artists who managed to get me to admit that I am wandering the country and hopefully trying my hand at drawing simple illustrations as a total amateur. She showed me a kids book that she had illustrated, suggesting that her very simple sketches (as if done by an 11 year old boy) might give me some inspiration. I purchased the book.
Soon after buying that book I wandered into a store selling rocks, crystals and things like that. I noticed a large pile of geodes selling for between $10 to $35 each, depending upon weight. That got me into telling the clerk about my experience in the southeast corner of the Mojave Desert where I came upon a large area filled with geodes that one of the members of our group of friends returned to after the trip and took all of geodes for himself. He didn’t leave any behind for anyone else to appreciate, and didn’t offer any of them to those on the trip that showed him where they were located. Just goes to show, if something is important to you be very careful about letting others have access to it – they just might end up taking it for themselves. That story led me to continuing on and telling him the story of my father and my encounter of the third kind with aliens in that part of the desert. The clerk seemed pleased with the story and said that something must be happening with the alignment of the moon because I wasn’t the first person to wander in with personal stories of encounters with aliens.
While wandering down the street looking into store windows I was stopped by guy about my age. He wanted to talk about his trip driving around the USA taking his time and just looking at things. We shared stories of our experiences for a few minutes while standing on the sidewalk. This was perhaps the fourth or fifth time in the last two weeks that someone wanted to tell me that they are doing the exact same thing as I am. The country must be swarming with old hippies (or those who wanted to be hippies) drifting around taking it all in, trying to learn to stop and smell the roses. They are dropping dollops of money in lots of little back country, out of the way, places. It seems like a good thing, one that many people are compelled to do when their life changes by things like retirement or the loss of a partner.
I didn’t want to eat lunch at any of the fast food places on main street, and was unable to find anything in the historical district, so I headed out to where the old silos and abandoned wool mills were located on the “other” side of the tracks. I found a cafe directly across the street from the farm supply store called Cowboy Cafewith giant pickups in the parking lot. That seemed right up my alley as a likely place for encountering the local folks. As usual, all heads turned toward me when I walked in, but once they decided I was harmless they went back to the discussions and meals. It was a nice hometown cafe, full of people that obviously work with their hands in the outdoors. I ordered a pork chop and fixin’s. The windows had amazing temporary art painted on the glass. I think it is temporary because the paintings were actually on the outside of the windows, exposed to the weather – but the view was from the inside. They all showed scenes of the surrounding desert during dusk, with dark storm clouds in the background and cowboys doing various things, one was squatting by a fire cooking his dinner, another was sitting on a horse, things like that. The amazing part was how the light from outside lit up the scenes to create just the right mood. They were crudely done, perhaps with a sponge – ragged and unfinished around the edges, but I found them to capture the solitude and beauty of the desert.
About the time that I was finishing up my meal a tall, “macho” cowboy came in. He was wearing his big cowboy hat, giant belt buckle on his levi’s, and had a bit of a swagger. He sat down in a booth where he could see me and expressed deep, visceral hate. If looks could kill, that was what he would have done. The feeling of anger and hate just wrapped him in a cloud of nasty. It was a brief glance, and he quickly looked back to the others at the table, but it is very clear and obvious. Instead of being frightened, my reaction surprised me to be more along the lines of compassion – how very sad to spend your life living full of hate and anger. That must feel terrible. I soon got up and left without incident, but my sorrow for folks that live in such pain stayed for the rest of the day. I think there is a lot of that out here in the land of the deeply religious, deeply conservative countryside.
I realize that I need to put dates on these posts because I don’t always get to them in a timely manner, but also because I am starting to lose track of the calendar as the days move along. They are all starting to turn into a bit of a blur. If I don’t date them I will get my posts even more mixed up than they are now. It seems like I should have all of the time in the world to write these little notes, but amazingly that doesn’t seem to be the case. For example, it is now the morning of the 15th and it is the first opportunity I have had to post something about the 13th, I was “busy” all day yesterday.
Saturday the 13th found me heading almost due east toward Carrizozo. Having left Quemado rather late in the morning, I was hoping for a late breakfast/early lunch somewhere along the way. The next town on the route sounded promising for it was called Pie Town. Luckily, Pie Town lives up to its name – it has two restaurants (and nothing much else) that both claim to make the best pies in Pie Town. I chose the one that seemed to be more confident about their claim.
Unfortunately I didn’t write the name of the restaurant down and I forgot it. However, it is an Indian term meaning “The Family.” That sounded good to me. It was a nice, homey little place with four or five tables and a little outdoors seating if desired. Local art and trinkets displayed on the walls and a case were for sale. Funny signs on the walls gave a little humorous advice and it felt good. It was packed (meaning there were eight customers) and only one open table. A nice waitress immediately approached me. I asked for a cup of coffee and a menu – which she promptly delivered. I noticed that she had a large leather belt with a big sheathed knife on her side. Nice knife, pretty pearl handle. And then I waited, and waited … and waited. Eventually the real waiter (the first lady was apparently a customer who helped me out as she was leaving) came by and was surprised that I hadn’t ordered yet. (He also had a big sheathed Buck knife on his side – as did all of the others that seemed to be associated with the business). He took my order with the comment, “Wouldn’t have mattered, your order wouldn’t have come up on the list by now in any case.”
Having plenty of time to observe, it became clear that the cook did one order at a time. One table had six people at it. They all ordered at the same time, but the first to order got his food before the meal for the second was started, and so on. The result was that about half way through the table had one person finished eating, two working on their meal, and three still waiting to be served. It was quite awhile before the last had been served, and the cook could go on to the next table with two gentlemen waiting for theirs – and mine later in line. The waiter was pointing out that there was still a table ahead of me so my ordering late had no impact upon when my food might be delivered.
While I was waiting another couple came in and asked if they could share my table, which was of course fine with me. I got to talking to the gentleman with the normal lead-in of, “Are you from around here?” Turns out that they moved to Pie Town three years ago. They lived in North Carolina. Wanting to get away from it all for a trip the purchased a large travel vehicle (I am not sure if it was a motor-home or a trailer), and headed out just as Covid locked down the nation.
Rather than go back to their home, they found a piece of property in Pie Town that had a working well, a septic system, electricity and several acres of land. For $60,000 they had a place to park their rig and wait out the pandemic. While waiting they converted a little shed that was on the property to a Tiny House, sold their travel rig, and set up home. They are now planning on buying a used shipping container to turn into a guest house. They seem to be having a ball, enjoying the isolation (they can just see the neighbors house on the horizon), and new way of life. He said that the biggest down side is that it is 100 miles to the grocery store – I guess they are careful to buy what they need when there. I eventually got my breakfast, and it was “fair.” I didn’t get any pie because they only sold full, large sized, pies – and I had no way to deal with that.
I found out that the real claim to fame of Pie Town is that it is on the Mexico to Canada hiking trail that follows the ridge of Continental Divide – located about a half mile east of Pie Town. This is a place to get something to eat, it has a little hostel outside of town with beds and showers, and perhaps there are a few provisions to be had, and a point of contact with “the outside.” It is a place not to be missed and enjoyed by those on the trail – apparently a nice pie just about hits the spot after enough time on the trail. The six folks eating at the table when I came in were hikers.
A few miles down the road I came up over a ridge and noticed a line of tiny white things. As I got closer I could see that it was actually two lines, crossing at right angles to each other. I was pretty puzzled until eventually I could see that they were large dish antennas and I knew that I had stumbled into the middle of the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope.
The road went right through the middle of the array, giving me a good view of them. Of course I had to take the side trip to the visitor center located a few miles off of the highway. The visitor center had a nice display in the building and a walking path around the administration buildings. I found nothing that I didn’t already know, and looking at the outside of two story brick buildings wasn’t all that exciting. However, there was a walking path that got very close to one of the dishes, so I did that and got a nice photo (shown above).
Continuing along I came upon a sign pointing out that I was very close to the site of the Trinity experiment. Trinity was code for the first detonation of “The Gadget.” a nuclear device conceptually similar to its devastating cousin, “Fat Man.” This was the first full sized demonstration that the idea of a nuclear bomb would work. I kind of wanted to turn and visit the site, but put it off. Later on I found that tours are infrequent, and that even when they are it requires driving about 20 miles through the desert and a lot of time. Besides, what do you find when you get there? Nothing but more desert and a small stone obelisk. As much of a nerd as I am, I elected to skip that tour.
I soon saw an odd river off in the distance. I wondered what it might be because I hadn’t noticed any rivers in this part of the world, and it seemed oddly dark. It turned out to be a huge lava flow that the highway crossed in getting to my destination for the night of Carrizozo, located immediately east of the White Sands Missile Range. I had been driving along the northern edge of the missile range since a little after Pie Town. All of the accessible parts of the missile range were located many miles to the south so I elected to skip whatever that might offer.
Carrizozo is yet another city on the verge of turning into a ghost town. Not so long ago it was obviously a large, bustling metropolis with a wide variety of businesses, many nice homes, and all that could be wanted in a pretty city in the desert. Now almost all of the businesses are shuttered, with broken windows, collapsed roofs and broken walls. Dust and debris inhabit the town these days. About the only businesses that appeared to be open were art galleries scattered around among the shuttered buildings. Unfortunately, my timing was very poor and all of the galleries were closed. Just about the only businesses still operating besides the art galleries were two motels, two gas stations and a run-down restaurant at the intersection of major highways running north-south and east-west near the edge of town. I was told that the two restaurant choices were the one at the intersection and a pizza place not far away. I first went to the restaurant, but it was so dismal that I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down – better to snack out of my “emergency” supplies for dinner than eat there. I then went to the pizza place located in what had once been a nice big home. Much to my surprise the pizza was excellent, perhaps the best I have ever had. What a treat. The place was sparse, rather uncomfortable, and not what you might call “homey” – but clean and ok, with great pizza!
The proprietors in my Duncan hotel suggested that a nice drive might be north to the town of Quemado, New Mexico. They suggested a little hotel/motel that had an attached restaurant, making it an easy and comfortable stop. It was a lot trip getting there, up into the high desert regions of open juniper trees and short greyish grass. It was pretty, but very isolated. It turned out that the restaurant was closed due to a graduation, and there were no more in the town – and no saloons. Dinner ended up being a handful of trail mix and a few pieces of jerky. Luckily I had some food along. The gas station sold beer, so I was set for the night. The room was very nice – large, clean, and comfortable. However, when I ran water in the bathroom sink it came out dark, blood red! I flushed the toilet to see if perhaps it was just the sink – the toilet bowl filled with the same horrible looking water. I wondered out my morning shower was going to work out. Somehow, it was miraculously clean in the morning – weird and gross.
About the only thing of interest that I could find it town was this larger than lifesize bull in all of its glory. Other than that, I was in yet another ghost town in the making. But this time I was unable to find anyone to talk to. That gave me a little time to find, and make, visual content.
Yesterday was an interesting trip from Tucson to Duncan, Arizona. I was unable to find my normal “back roads” for the first hundred miles or so, traveling on Interstate 10 instead. This part of the trip was singularly boring – the background hills passing by while almost all of my attention was on integrating safely with the many trucks weaving back and forth between lanes. I find these times on the freeways to be boring, uncomfortable, and just work instead of play.
However, I finally got off the freeway and onto a smaller major highway headed north to Safford where I hoped to get lunch, an air filter for my car, and perhaps some CD music for those long stretches without radio reception. I found a music store in town, but upon entering discovered that it is a musical instrument stored, but the fellow at the counter was very helpful in pointing out that there was no place in town selling CD’s except perhaps the Goodwill store down the block. I went there are found a few baskets of very old, very worn CDs that might be useful or interesting. Nothing that I recognized, but maybe worth a try at $0.50 each. I’ll give them a try next time I am traveling though nowhere on the backroads.
Across the street from the Goodwill store is a small diner, so that seemed like as good a choice as any. Looking through the window I could see two small tables and a couple of staff. It turned out to be a meeting of perhaps 6 or 8 staff members for the tiny restaurant. It became immediately obvious that most of the staff were quite disabled, a couple of Down syndrome folks and others with speech and other problems. They were all quite eager to assist me, but were limited to bringing water and silverware. The “boss” came for my order and directed activities. I ordered 1/2 a roast beef sandwich, chips and a drink – it was fine, nothing special but met my needs. I found the experience to be a mix of sad that these folks have such difficulties, and thrilled that someone was being so kind and generous to give them a hand. I was the only customer at what should have been the “rush hour.”
Safford is situated near the center of a large, wide valley. I could see little reason for a large town in that spot, I didn’t see much agriculture and it wasn’t clear that there was a source of income, but I guessed that mining must be close by. My guess was correct, there are large copper mines in the vicinity and apparently that fuels most of the economy. I noticed quiet a few unusual things during my brief stay. I saw several people missing arms, hands and legs. Perhaps from mining accidents?? I also noticed quite a few folks in exaggerated cowboy hats, bib overalls, and a rather “down home” way of walking and talking. Not like those that I saw in Tucson. Clearly I am heading in much more rural territory. This all made me happy – finally people just being people, not putting on a show for others.
I am staying at an old, recently “renovated” (returned to something close to original). It is furnished in a way that feels like you are in the proprietor’s home (which is almost certainly the case), eclectic and charming. LOTS of paintings on the walls, comfortable chairs and couches for lounging, real books on the book shelves – and almost no contact with the owner in an official sort of way. I didn’t check in, just shown to my room. I asked about this arrangement and was told that I could just pay when I leave. So much for formality. Later in the afternoon I ventured into their backyard garden/wild space filled with plants, a running fountain, and more art. Nice. I got into a conversation with Deborah (the female half of the owners) about my background, and a tiny bit about there moving here to get out of the hustle and bustle of big cities – they certainly succeeded in that. The conversation touched on the Challenger accident – when I came in after dinner I found a book titled “Visual Explanations” with my name on it waiting on the dining room table. It was bookmarked to the section discussing how the poor visual representation of the susceptibility of the o-rings to low temperature led to the decision to launch even in the face of warnings that it was unsafe to do so. It is an interesting story to add to my understanding of how things can go wrong.
Soon after arriving in town at around 2:00 I went looking for a bar to get a nice cold beer. Turned out that the Riverfront Lounge is about 100 feet from the hotel, an easy walk. I suppose this bar is better called a saloon given the nature of the town, but “lounge” seems a bit out of place too. When I opened the door, all eyes were upon me. Four guys and a woman seated at the bar, and a lady bartender. I did my best to act nonchalant, settled at the bar and order an 805 beer (after noticing an advertisement for same on the wall). One of the guys piped up and said he had a 38 in his pickup that could sort out any questions. Great – within the first minute they are talk about guns, violence – and me. Then he continued with by saying that his 38 could solve some of the immigration problem at the border, just need to go down there and kill a few of them. Holly cow! What have I walked into.
However, things quickly settled down, we bought each other beers, and the discussion became friendly. He said he didn’t really have a 38 in his car, he keeps it at home. It was a funny sort of situation, one I have experienced on many occasions when walking uninvited into other people’s territory. There is often this kind of challenge, exaggerated threats and masculine banter. It is a kind of test. If I can withstand the test and not lose my nerve it almost always turns into a good time and friendly relationship – but it has to go through the test of fire first.
I had two beers (one of which was bought by the guy with the gun), and went up the street for dinner at the steak house. It was a nice, pleasant, place with lots of local “color” in the other customers. I had to chuckle to myself because the scene could have been taken exactly from some of those “old west” paintings – down to the giant cowboy hats and all that. It was perfect!
I finished dinner just about dusk and was headed on my way home when I heard a big; “Charlie, come on over here!” There were two people sitting at a picnic table outside of two big fifth-wheel mobil homes. One was Earl, the friendly guy sitting next to me at the “lounge,” and the pretty bar tender lady. They were sitting outside enjoying the pretty evening, chatting with their favorite drinks. They asked me to join them, which I did without hesitation. They got me a beer and started to “yarn” a bit.
Once they found out that I am being a bit of a vagabond, Earl started telling us (me, I think she had heard them all many times before) about his life as a drifter. His roots seem to be in Duncan, but they get pretty stretched out sometimes. He started hitch hiking at about the age of 13 – traveling to Florida – and never really stopped. He told about living for more than a month under a tree in the parking lot of a service organization (sorry, I can’t recall which one right now) because he got food and they offered drinks. His stories of his travels around the country hitchhiking, riding the rails and living under trees in parking lots made me think that I had perhaps come upon the real King of the Road. And then he would come back to Duncan for while, until the itchy feet got the better of him and off he would go. The bar tender nodded her head that stories are true, and that he is perhaps one of the happiest guys in the country. Not “down and out” because of necessity, but instead for choice. She was so sweet and caring about him that I wonder if perhaps she is his daughter. She told me that she looks after the group of guys that I met in the lounge earlier. The table and space between the trailers becomes a kind of gathering place for old friends on nights when the weather is good – which is most nights. Others started to drift in just about the time that I felt I had worn out my welcome and headed back to my hotel. It was an altogether heart warming, and loving, evening.
I was having so much fun in Duncan that I tried to extend my stay, but the town was booked up for the weekend – it is a destination for groups of motorcycle tourist and others. It is “on the way” and while close to being a ghost town, still has lots of “juice” provided by my new friends, the proprietors of my hotel, and others. I found it to be a real treat, perhaps it will end up being a high point on my trip. I suppose I should have found a place to park my car and try out my new bed in the Subaru. Oh well, live and learn. Now that I am five hundred miles away I realize that I should have been more determined to stay – afterall that is exactly the reason that I fixed up my car to stay in it if needed. I am positive that someone would have given me a place to park for a night or two.
I was given an amazing tour of the Mirror Laboratory at the University of Arizona today. What a place!!! It totally amazed me, and I don’t amaze all that easy with technology.
It is a bit to get an idea of scale in these photos. You can see the guy working in the photo to the right. The photo on the right shows them preparing the mold getting ready for casting. This step should be done sometime around September. The mirror on the left is a “small” mirror being tested for shape. You can’t quite see them, but there are three more much larger ones in storage in the background. The one on the right is for the Giant Magellan Telescope. That telescope will have 7 of these gigantic mirrors mounted on a single mount, just like a “regular” telescope. The mirror shown is the last of the set. The others have been cast and are in storage. The glass takes five years to get, so you kind of have to plan ahead a bit.
I don’t have the time or space to go into the details here, you can Google it if you are interested in the future telescope, or this mirror lab. This is the one place in the world where this sized mirror can be made. The mirrors are mostly hollow so aren’t nearly as heavy as would be the case without the process used here. It casting process is a bit complex, but basically the white structures being placed in the right hand photo are the places that DON’T get glass, there is a small space between these that get filled with the glass, resulting in a honey comb once they wash the white stuff out. There is also a layer of glass on the bottom and another on the top. The top pieces forms the parabolic shape of the mirror. To cast it, fist sized chunks of glass are arranged on top of the white things, which are different lengths to approximate the final shape of the surface. The glass is melted while the whole thing spins. Some of the glass runs down between the white forms, and some stays on top to create the mirror surface. The spinning makes the glass form the desired bowl shape. Once it has finished melting and filling in the spaces, it is slowly (weeks) cooled. Then it has to be polished and finished.
The process for making these relatively light weight, huge, mirrors started around 1980 when the inventor took a couple of wife’s pyrex dishes, broke them into pieces, and melted them to see if they would form a single, optically pure piece of glass. It worked, and over the period of more than a decade or so they came up with this process of spin forming hollow mirrors.
Part of my journey includes an extremely generous offer to visit the mirror lab at the University of Arizona. This is the place where many of the largest, and most complex, telescope mirrors are designed and built. For a technology nerd such as myself this is an amazing, not to be missed, offer. However, when planning for my trip it was not certain exactly when this tour could take place, so instead of worrying too much about it I just booked a hotel room for a few days that bracketed the likely available times. I arrived in Tucson last Sunday, the tour is today (Wednesday) and I’ll continue my journey toward the east tomorrow morning. This has opened up a nice time to rest after days of driving, being a pleasant opportunity to relax and take time to “smell the roses.”
My hotel selection is a bit different than I envisioned. Rather than a high rise, environmental enclosed retreat from the “world out there”, this hotel is what I would call a motel – built in 1972 to service the automobile travelers by providing three long lines of side-by-side rooms with parking right in front of your door. When I leave my room it is to the outdoors, not a hall in a big building. Going to get my breakfast (a bowl of mush with options for things like raisins, banana chips, various types of seeds, etc) I walk through the parking lot. While Hotel McCoy has small rooms, funky decor, and limited services it also has the feeling of remaining connected to nature (even though it is located almost under a large network of elevated freeways that disconnected the motel from “normal” traffic flows). Given the choice, I choose staying connected to the environment – and actually use the pool because it is a comfortable and accessible feature open to the sky with interesting guests hanging around and talking. If you have been following along you realize that I was a bit skeptical about this hotel when I arrived, but have grown rather fond of it. I get all that I need without a lot of the “plastic” feeling of a normal hotel. It is comfortable and friendly, hard to ask for much more.
I haven’t felt like doing much in Tucson. I went out to take a tour of the old Titan Missile silo and defunct missile. I have been around these sorts of hardware enough to find it pretty “ho hum” – yep, a big missile in an underground building painted all green inside (to keep the crew calm). Not dissimilar to a ship or submarine. Just a big steel place with the plumbing exposed and low headroom walkways. I see the need for that in submarines but why limit the headroom for a building that extends hundreds of feet into the ground? It was probably designed using the same, or similar, military specs as for a ship and that resulted in cramped, low walkways and rooms. My main takeaway was the normal one of awe that we build things like that, and what sort of global insanity results in their creation? Clearly humanity is tittering on the edge of insanity.
Another trip was a tour to the local desert national park. It was beautiful, but once again I think they (that great unknown version of they) put in too many plants! It is jammed full of plants of various types so you can hardly see the ground in most places. What kind of desert is that?? It certainly isn’t the barren desert that I am used to in the Mojave, or that is depicted in the movies.
I managed to have a couple of interesting discussions with folks while here. One was with a kid (65 years old) that is on a retirement adventure much like me. His mother recently died so he became freed up enough to journey. He was a high-tech salesman, starting out with Wang computers, moving on to AT&T internet and other places. He mentioned the vast amount of money that could be made in the good old days, told me that his friends had made – and spent – fortunes, and that his ex-wife now has his fortune. He told me about the grand canyon, how it was totally impossible for it to take 2-3 million years to cut the canyons because Mt St Helens created a 1,000 foot canyon in just a few days after May 18, 1980. I tried to question him about the existence of such a canyon, and how that could have happened. He insisted that it exists and that it was cut with water coming from above. He is convinced that the grand canyon was cut in a few years not so long ago.
Another discussion I had concerned the future of electric cars. I mentioned that it is my opinion that battery powered cars are a fleeting technology soon to be replaced with hydrogen fuel cells. That got us into a rather confused conversation because I had assumed that because he was a technically trained person, one that is very interested in vehicles of all types, he would understand when I said that I expect future electric cars to be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. I finally figured out that he knew nothing of this, he didn’t know about hydrogen fuel cells, didn’t know that they are mature and ready to be put on the market, and that they offer vast safety and environmental advantages over the current love affair with lithium batteries. I don’t want to go into all of the details about this technology here (perhaps in a separate blog if I get the time and enthusiasm to do so – or if anyone expresses interest in knowing more on the subject). He assumed hydrogen cars would use internal combustion engines, and assumed that hydrogen was far too dangerous to use as evidenced by the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. Even though he is a knowledgeable fellow in engineering related fields he didn’t know that the Hindenburg fire/explosion was NOT primarily a hydrogen event (it was created by the coatings on the gas bags), and that hydrogen is vastly safer than gasoline as a fuel – but he is perfectly happy to drive gasoline powered cars.
The main point that I came away from these discussions is that we are being duped by the news media (for example, telling us that the Hindenburg proved that hydrogen is too dangerous to use and convincing the public that batteries are the way to go when they are a terrible solution promoted by a megalomaniac billionaire). Not only that, but the public is not only almost totally ignorant about anything beyond their immediate sight and touch, but they are either too lazy, or don’t know how, to look things up to sort truth from fiction. They get snippets of information (such as there were great lahars caused by the rapid melting of snow on the mountain that quickly eroded huge amounts of the mountain, and then extrapolate that to other things such as the grand canyon. That satisfies their need for “understanding” and they then settle back and make decisions based upon their totally faulty reasoning.
These inter-connected problems (false information from the media), and an inability to sort fact from fiction are causing much of the discord we are currently experiencing in the USA (and the world). The media problem could be solved by the public demanding truth instead of fiction. We used to get something a bit closer to the truth, but now all controls seem to be been lifted and are free to promote anything they want without ever having to account for their wild flights of fantasy. The second problem, being able to sort truth from fiction, seems to be a massive failure of our education system. My experience in the education of educators when I obtained my teaching credential is that teachers are ill prepared to understand how to do this themselves. There is almost no place in our educational system targeted on the problem of finding valid information among the mountains of lives, falsehoods, wives tales, and religious beliefs. Students are taught that if they read it, or hear it from an “expert” that it is true… no questions asked. And of course we all tend to gravitate toward sources that align with our existing beliefs – therefore keeping us inside of our sphere of knowledge. It takes practice and training to learn to get beyond those limits.
