Driving to LA

margaret & jane

Our first night south of Portland was with a Bridge City Meeting family. Our dinner conversation involved comparing genealogies. Margaret, Jane and I all have family ties to Switzerland going back one or more generations. Jane also has ties to the Ojibwa in Canada (a Hudson Bay Company story).

The next morning, I updated Joe on some recent AFSC business, plus studied that NYT business story on the kitchen counter about how Russian ex-spies are leveraging their experience to play world game, by investing in Exxon Mobil, Renault... Silicon Valley.

Joe filled me in on some local politics involving the railroads, which abruptly terminated freight service to his area recently ("an act of war" I fulminated). Oregonians tend to be quite passive in the face of ongoing infrastructure deterioration.

Anyway we learned long ago from A Nation at Risk that average USAers don't take threats to their sovereignty very seriously, which explains why they're being railroaded in so many dimensions.

Our drive to Arcata via the Oregon and California coastal highway was very beautiful (lots of redwoods -- very few other cars on the Avenue of the Giants today).

Yesterday, in Arcata, I posted some inspired Python Nation lore. Our solstice celebration was everything I'd hoped, with friends I hadn't seen in many years.

Right now, I'm in Ukiah ("haiku" spelled backwards said the graffiti in the mens room), posting from Coffee Critic. However, it's time to leave.

downtown arcata