Thank you for this terrific column! I really appreciate it and I'm so glad you got so much out of my work. I don't know if you read HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, but I discuss working, at age 22, at a newspaper (The NY Daily News) during the 9/11 attacks -- so your story rang painfully true for me as well. Anyway, thank you, fellow Oregon Trail wagon mate!
Thank you for your response! I just started "Hiding in Plain Sight." It's the last of your books I haven't read. It must have been quite the experience to work at a New York newspaper during that era. I can't wait to read more. And as always, I look forward to your essays. Thanks so much for what you do.
Thank you! The epilogue for HIDING inspired LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP. I'll say no more to avoid spoilers -- oh wait, our current reality is the spoiler! ;) But seriously thank you for writing such a thoughtful article.
"Route 66 is America, and America is falling apart.” Route 66 was a road where the restaurants and hotels would not serve people of color. In essence, yes that is a reflection of America.
Wow. Thank you for putting into words a feeling I’ve been unable to describe for my entire adulthood, maybe even much of my teenage life.
“But also, on some level, it seems like we’ve always known that we’d never know the future. And weirdly, it feels like we’re ready … come what may.”
I’ll be sitting with this for awhile. There’s an odd sense of comfort in seeing it written by someone else, knowing it isn’t just me who has never been able to feel like I could envision a future in any tangible way. It’s a nice reminder, I suppose, that in many ways it makes this moment no more or less terrifying than it’s ever been.
Greetings from a new subscriber, alas unpaid for now. You can thank (or curse)Sarah K for bringing me here. Your description of 9/11 brought back some memories as I was also at a military base (Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake) when shit hit the proverbial fan. In our case, they just kicked us out as nonessential personnel. I worked for a company that did federal government contracts for environmental projects so I worked a couple of projects at the Tooele Chemical Weapons Incinerator observing emissions testing. You know it’s serious when 1) they issue you antidote cartridges (like an epi-pen for nerve gas) and 2) site security has automatic weapons.
I'm not American but I just watched the Netflix doco on the Oklahoma City bombing - it was 30 years ago. I was running this country's largest television news network when it happened, and it dominated screens here for ages.
What I didn't know till I saw this doco was that the far RW gun nuts and anti-govt weirdos were very much in evidence then as they are now. I had always thought they were a post-Obama thing. Which makes me wonder if the States will ever be stable and safe.
Excellent review. I’ve been thinking about the bit in Matrix where the narrator points to 1999 as the peak of human civilization. At the time I first watched the movie I thought “this is going to age poorly, like how 80s sci fi thought there would be flying cars in 2001” but it has turned out it’s probably right. Obviously not in regards to technology, but in regards to culture and society. Everything was innocent. I was starting my third year at West Point and while I had experienced some hardships growing up, I couldn’t fathom how fundamentally the events 2 years later would change the trajectory of my life, from one of a tutor and administrator to one of taking people through war, including sending some of them to their deaths.
I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but to me, having seen war up close and having seen people trying to cling on to some sort of life and context when everything is falling apart and where everything, literally everything may change from one day to the next, this makes me recoil in terror at the thought of our own civilization deteriorating to where my family and the people I love have to experience that sort of desperation and hopelessness, regardless if its due to climate disaster, internal unrest or outright wae.
Thank you for your insights. Your firsthand experience in war certainly provides a vivid and unsettling perspective. I think about this often — how the violence, destruction, and instability I've only ever known to be something that happens in distant places could suddenly arrive at my doorstep. It's one thing to imagine this and another thing to understand it.
When I talk to my (30 year old) nephews about the protest crowds I see, and how many of us old people there are- and not so many young- he shrugs- "we always figured we'd die in the climate apocalypse" ...no castles in the sand
I've met a few 20-somethings with this fatalistic perspective. I certainly can't blame them. When I decided at age 30 to never have children, it was in large part because I feared the climate crisis would bring the kind of future I couldn't imagine subjecting another human to. Yet I've loved my experience on this Earth thus far and still yearn for a similarly joyful life for my nieces, nephews, and everyone else. It's not outside the realm of possibility for the younger generations to push through all of this wealth inequality and pointless culture-war strife to form an equitable society, and work together to meet the vast challenges of the climate catastrophe. My faith in humanity has taken some hits, though, as I watch so many young people succumb to the same misconceptions and mistakes we humans have always made.
well, that's still a refreshingly positive view of the world humanity has carved out of paradise.
I'm very much a Mark Twainer- our country still feels like Huckleberry Finn enacted as ongoing theatre- right now Trump is "the King" that Huck and Tom meet up with in small town on the Mississippi.
Thank you for this terrific column! I really appreciate it and I'm so glad you got so much out of my work. I don't know if you read HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, but I discuss working, at age 22, at a newspaper (The NY Daily News) during the 9/11 attacks -- so your story rang painfully true for me as well. Anyway, thank you, fellow Oregon Trail wagon mate!
Thank you for your response! I just started "Hiding in Plain Sight." It's the last of your books I haven't read. It must have been quite the experience to work at a New York newspaper during that era. I can't wait to read more. And as always, I look forward to your essays. Thanks so much for what you do.
Thank you! The epilogue for HIDING inspired LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP. I'll say no more to avoid spoilers -- oh wait, our current reality is the spoiler! ;) But seriously thank you for writing such a thoughtful article.
Admit it. You all thought you'd be dead from dysentery by now.
"Route 66 is America, and America is falling apart.” Route 66 was a road where the restaurants and hotels would not serve people of color. In essence, yes that is a reflection of America.
Agree and that's all discussed explicitly in the book
A pixelated America died of dysentery somewhere along the trail a couple decades ago.
Its a grim game we’re playing through here, but the heartfelt writing makes it a bit more bearable. Thank you
Wow. Thank you for putting into words a feeling I’ve been unable to describe for my entire adulthood, maybe even much of my teenage life.
“But also, on some level, it seems like we’ve always known that we’d never know the future. And weirdly, it feels like we’re ready … come what may.”
I’ll be sitting with this for awhile. There’s an odd sense of comfort in seeing it written by someone else, knowing it isn’t just me who has never been able to feel like I could envision a future in any tangible way. It’s a nice reminder, I suppose, that in many ways it makes this moment no more or less terrifying than it’s ever been.
I made the mistake of looking at the first photo before I'd read all the accompanying text and was puzzled as to why you'd posted a zombie 😭
Greetings from a new subscriber, alas unpaid for now. You can thank (or curse)Sarah K for bringing me here. Your description of 9/11 brought back some memories as I was also at a military base (Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake) when shit hit the proverbial fan. In our case, they just kicked us out as nonessential personnel. I worked for a company that did federal government contracts for environmental projects so I worked a couple of projects at the Tooele Chemical Weapons Incinerator observing emissions testing. You know it’s serious when 1) they issue you antidote cartridges (like an epi-pen for nerve gas) and 2) site security has automatic weapons.
Nice to find your site. Good article.
I'm not American but I just watched the Netflix doco on the Oklahoma City bombing - it was 30 years ago. I was running this country's largest television news network when it happened, and it dominated screens here for ages.
What I didn't know till I saw this doco was that the far RW gun nuts and anti-govt weirdos were very much in evidence then as they are now. I had always thought they were a post-Obama thing. Which makes me wonder if the States will ever be stable and safe.
Excellent review. I’ve been thinking about the bit in Matrix where the narrator points to 1999 as the peak of human civilization. At the time I first watched the movie I thought “this is going to age poorly, like how 80s sci fi thought there would be flying cars in 2001” but it has turned out it’s probably right. Obviously not in regards to technology, but in regards to culture and society. Everything was innocent. I was starting my third year at West Point and while I had experienced some hardships growing up, I couldn’t fathom how fundamentally the events 2 years later would change the trajectory of my life, from one of a tutor and administrator to one of taking people through war, including sending some of them to their deaths.
I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but to me, having seen war up close and having seen people trying to cling on to some sort of life and context when everything is falling apart and where everything, literally everything may change from one day to the next, this makes me recoil in terror at the thought of our own civilization deteriorating to where my family and the people I love have to experience that sort of desperation and hopelessness, regardless if its due to climate disaster, internal unrest or outright wae.
Thank you for your insights. Your firsthand experience in war certainly provides a vivid and unsettling perspective. I think about this often — how the violence, destruction, and instability I've only ever known to be something that happens in distant places could suddenly arrive at my doorstep. It's one thing to imagine this and another thing to understand it.
Great title...
When I talk to my (30 year old) nephews about the protest crowds I see, and how many of us old people there are- and not so many young- he shrugs- "we always figured we'd die in the climate apocalypse" ...no castles in the sand
I've met a few 20-somethings with this fatalistic perspective. I certainly can't blame them. When I decided at age 30 to never have children, it was in large part because I feared the climate crisis would bring the kind of future I couldn't imagine subjecting another human to. Yet I've loved my experience on this Earth thus far and still yearn for a similarly joyful life for my nieces, nephews, and everyone else. It's not outside the realm of possibility for the younger generations to push through all of this wealth inequality and pointless culture-war strife to form an equitable society, and work together to meet the vast challenges of the climate catastrophe. My faith in humanity has taken some hits, though, as I watch so many young people succumb to the same misconceptions and mistakes we humans have always made.
well, that's still a refreshingly positive view of the world humanity has carved out of paradise.
I'm very much a Mark Twainer- our country still feels like Huckleberry Finn enacted as ongoing theatre- right now Trump is "the King" that Huck and Tom meet up with in small town on the Mississippi.
I did a hard scroll back to that photo of you with the Twin Towers in the background…. Photos that show them, always stop me in my tracks….
Agreed!