Category Archives: Night Writer

Left. Right. Left, Right, Left. Marching toward what?

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by the Night Writer

Rich Karlgaard is among those pondering a return of the religious left:

Yet while secular politics are unwelcome in our church, I have noticed subtle shifts of late. The mood of the ministry and congregation is moving left. The music is moving toward a folk-rock sound of the 1960s and 1970s. Youth ministers wear berets and soul patches. The younger ministers don’t identify themselves as “Christians” but as “Jesus followers.” I would guess that most of them are Obama supporters, but I don’t ask.

To my thinking, “Christian” is ideally something that other people should call you because of what they see in you, rather than something you’d necessarily call yourself. “Follower of Christ” doesn’t do much for me, since Jesus had a lot of people following him around during his ministry, perhaps just for the food. Personally, I like “Imitator of Christ” myself (more on that later).

America’s religious left seems to be mounting a comeback. I’m happy for this development, even though my own tilt is to the right.

The religious left has a distinguished past in American history. It led the abolition fight in the 19th century. It led the civil rights movement in the 20th century. Organizations like the Red Cross grew out of progressive Christianity.

Yes, and I think the basis of America’s welfare program appealed to our country’s Christian heritage and the well-meaning desire to do good and to help the poor. That welfare has had the un-Christian effect of destroying families and perpetuating multi-generational poverty also has to be acknowledged — something the religious left is loathe to do. It has also been, at best, ambivalent about abortion, and its infatuation and even outright embrace of communist and socialist totalitarianism from the Soviets to Castro, Ortega on through Chavez, and it’s apparent commitment to replacing God with Government throughout U.S. policy is also disturbing. (That’s not to say the Religious Right hasn’t supported it’s share of dictators and made its own alliances of convenience).

The strange disappearance of America’s religious left during the 1970s has been noted but not examined much. My own guess is that drugs, music, sex, New Age religions, body worship, tree worship, earth worship and so forth, siphoned off an entire generation of seekers who had previously found their mystic/activist fulfillment in the left hemisphere of Christianity.

Now one detects that many old hippies, and sons and daughters of hippies, are returning to progressive Christianity.

We’ll see how this plays out politically. If there must be a left, then let’s cheer for a religious and not an atheistic left. However, I do think the trend benefits Democrats and is one reason why Democratic primary voter turnout has far excelled Republican voter turnout this year. The mainstream secular media, as usual, has utterly missed this story.

I think I agree with Karlgaard that if there’s going to be a left let it be a religious left rather than an atheistic one. My caveat, and especially my prayer (for both the left and the right) is that the focus is on seeking and doing God’s will, ideally by trying to be like Christ.

Earlier I mentioned being an “imitator” of Christ. Because we’re all human (left and right), it is an easy step to try and move from “imitator” to “impersonator”, wherein we try to rule by proclamation as if we, ourselves, were God. That’s certainly long been a fear and a warning from the left side of the church aisle regarding the motivations of the right, while the left’s own similar tendencies are ignored or attributed to “doing good” or “meaning well.”

My belief is that any “theocracy”, whether left or right, is fatally flawed by our own human imperfections and tendency to turn moves into movements; movements into monuments; and, ultimately, monuments into mausoleums. By all means, we should pursue faith in our lives and we should hope that our personal beliefs will be reflected in our public behavior individually and through policy. Our responsibilities to the poor (and the poor’s responsibilities to God and others); to be stewards of the earth; to deal ethically and compassionately with others are all things that must be done and honored by individuals, not discharged to a collective or government to be taken care of while we blithely go our own selfish way. As I’ve written here before, if God asks me if I helped the poor (as if He doesn’t already know) I don’t think He’s going to be impressed if I say, “Well, I paid my taxes.” Being religiously left or right, highly taxed or not, doesn’t lessen our responsibilities to do something on an individual basis, no matter how many marches, protests or church services we go to.

We often hear the phrase, “What would Jesus do?” as a guide to behavior. I suppose that’s all right as far as it goes. A better statement might be, “What is Jesus doing?” and then trying to line up with that. If we believe Jesus is still at work around us, and not that He’s gone off and left us to our own freedom-eroding devices, we can purpose to look for those things and and align ourselves accordingly. I urge those of the religious left, and my friends on the religious right, to put our focus on glorifying God, not our own group or idealogy. If we can do that — though we may disagree from time to time — I think we’ll be all right.

What’s in a game? Don’t ask the 8th Circuit Court

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Back in the day, and I mean really back in the day when I had an Apple IIe computer and a computer game called Castle Wolfenstein. The game was on a 5″ floppy disk and was essentially a puzzle maze where you were a WWII Allied prisoner trying to escape from the lowest dungeons of an old castle turned Nazi fortress. Graphically it was about as crude as it could be, and by crude I mean laughably simplistic by today’s standards. It was a one-color, two-dimensional, third-person shooter where the game characters were essentially stick figures whose arms would only extend at 45 and 90 degree angles to shoot at other characters. To “kill” a Nazi guard you had to maneuver around the screen and try to plink him before he got you. If you succeeded, your victim fell over like a tree in the forest. Nevertheless it was hours of fun as you worked your way through various rooms, traps and puzzles while searching crates for keys, ammo, grenades and bullet proof vests.

A few years later I was using a company laptop and one day in a clearance bin I saw an updated version of “Wolfenstein” on a diskette advertising new, 3-D graphics. “Cool,” I thought, and plunked down the $5, took the game home and loaded it up, finding myself in a full-color dungeon, armed with a Luger. I worked my way around a corner and a uniformed guard came rushing at me. I raised my gun and fired and — HIS HEAD EXPLODED! Blood, meat and brains went flying and I actually felt a little ill. In this case the graphics were, well, graphic and unbelievably “crude” but not in the same way as the first game. I later learned that the updated game was based on the “Doom” game engine — quite a leap forward from the tin-man stick figures of my old game. I decided it was too intense for me and turned it off, never to go back to it.

Even then, of course, the “new” graphics were still not as realistic as they are now; the game, after all, was on a little 3″ diskette, running on a computer with a processor that would embarrass a calculator today. Today’s games and game engines are highly advanced, technically, but some are still as base as they can be in their renderings of violence. I’ve changed, too, of course and I don’t mind a little of the ultra-violence in a game as long as it’s not too real. I’ve hacked and slashed my way through orcs, trolls, bug-bears, goblins and fire-breathing demon dogs without flinching (Baldur’s Gate II) or sniped German storm-troopers (Brothers In Arms) while still looking forward to lunch, but while these games are well-rendered the “dead” aren’t excessively gory and they thoughtfully disappear soon after falling. I’ve even played these with my youngest daughter, a sweet-natured girl who used to cry if someone fell off a horse in a TV show, but who now snickers if she gets the drop on a mummy and dispatches it with a spinning kick.

Perhaps this isn’t the nicest daddy-daughter activity we can engage in, but I know that there are games out there that are much worse and that strive to outdo each other in replicating the most realistic dismemberments. These games typically have “M” for “Mature” ratings. These games do not come into my house. I was thinking of this today when I read the news story that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals had struck down (how violent!) a law banning selling “mature” or “adults only” video games.

Minnesota may not enforce a law restricting the sale or rental of “adults only” or “mature” video games to minors, according to an opinion issued Monday by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel said the court previously has held that violent video games are protected free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. For that reason, the law can only be upheld if it is proven “necessary to serve a compelling state interest and … is narrowly tailored to achieve that end,” the panel ruled.

As I read it I was also thinking about the day a few years ago when I went into the video arcade at Valley Fair and watched an expert player using both pistols on the big-screen “House of the Dead” game to mow down realistic, nearly life-sized zombies and monsters. He was fast and unhesitant. He was accurate and stylish, often using the turn-the-gun-sideways grip so popular in today’s action movies. He was about eight years old. I wondered then if maybe something inside a young person doesn’t get seared a bit from playing a game as graphic as that (or even an older person for that matter). Could you “play” enough so that the real thing wouldn’t seem like that big of a deal?

About 15 years ago I was at a conference where we were all taken out to a dude ranch for the evening’s entertainment. One of the things you could do was engage in a quick-draw contest with a friend. In this you each had an authentic style and weight single-action revolver in a leather holster. You actually faced each other from about six feet away and when the cowpoke “referee” gave the signal you’d draw, work the single-action, aim at your opponent and pull the trigger. Sensors determined who fired first, while the referee determined if your gun was pointed in an “effective” manner. My friend Nick and I faced off three times; each time he won. The ref looked at me and shook his head. “Dude,” he said (it was a dude ranch, after all), “you’re clearing leather and cocking the gun ahead of him every time, but you don’t pull the trigger fast enough.

“Really?” I said. “I don’t feel like I’m hesitating.” We tried three more times, each time I focused on pulling the trigger with grim resolution. Three more times I died. I just couldn’t overcome the split-second hesitation, even though I knew the gun was fake and the action wasn’t for real. The ref just shook his head. “You’re a cold-hearted bastard, Nick,” I told my partner. He rather enjoyed that.

Somehow I don’t think the little kid I saw playing the game at Valley Fair would hesitate. This is a good thing, perhaps, if you’re under zombie attack for real but since that doesn’t happen much when the legislature isn’t in session I wonder if, all in all, it’s not such a good thing. I also wonder at the bizarre reasoning of the 8th Circuit Court which based it’s ruling in large part that graphic violence is protected as free speech and therefore can’t be restricted, even by age. Which, in turn, makes me wonder if the Court will now repeal motion picture ratings and allow over-the-counter sales of pr0n magazines to 10-year-olds under the same logic.

I’d like to be just as sophisticated and blasé about the potential impact of the CG-enhanced violence in games available to kids and the TV shows and movies that are so accessible. The scientists, after all, assure us that there’s a negligible effect. “Tosh,” I’ll think to myself, “the schools and parents are doing an excellent job of teaching manners, respect and impulse-control to today’s young men. What’s the worst that can happen?” And then I’ll turn from the comics page to the local news section.

A young man upset about a girlfriend issue takes a rock in a sock to a knife fight and is killed by two other young men. Another man beats his friend to death with a baseball bat. A five-year-old boy takes a knife to school in order to threaten his gym teacher. A 15-year-old boy points a replica gun at police officers, who respond with real bullets. The last article appeared in the paper two days ago, the first three articles, along with the story about the court ruling, were all in today’s paper. I’m sure it’s all just coincidence.

Let’s play two.

Update:

Then there’s this: Five arrested with weapons outside St. Paul school. Three of the five are minors.

More fuelishness

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Some are concerned that buying military air refueling tankers from a foreign power will have a harmful effect on our national defense and security. It certainly raises some interesting issues for consideration, so let me see if I’ve got this straight:

We import the oil from foreign powers so we can make the jet fuel our planes will use.

We borrow money from foreign powers so we can buy the oil from other foreign powers so we can make the jet fuel our planes will use.

And now you’re concerned about our national security?

The sporting chance

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This weekend was the first one since the Super Bowl where I had the opportunity or inclination to park my butt in front of the TV to watch some sports. My butt didn’t necessarily stay there, though.

Friday night, for example, I didn’t turn the set on until pretty late in the evening. I did some quick channel-surfing and came across the Big Ten channel with six minutes left in the Gophers-Indiana game in the Big Ten Men’s Tournament. I hadn’t watched much of the Gophs this season, but I knew the names of the players and that senior center Spencer Tollackson was out of the game with a sprained ankle. Given the team’s history in recent years and the fact they were missing their big man, I was surprised to see that the Gophers were leading. Not-so-surprisingly, they went into epileptic chicken mode, letting the Hoosiers hang around and eventually take the lead with 1.5 seconds left. The way they put Indiana at the foul-line twice with less than five seconds left was shocking only if you hadn’t once watched the football team mishandle a punt snap a couple of years ago to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the closing seconds of a conference game.

Friday night, anyway, I had noticed that freshman shooting specialist and ESPY-winner (for famously hitting a last-second, game-winning shot from the seat of his pants in high school) Blake Hoffarber wasn’t in the game. Not having followed the team closely I didn’t know if it was because of other deficiencies in his game, but when Tubby Smith called timeout and sent Hoffarber in with less than two seconds left I figured there was no way you could ask the kid to come off the bench cold and take a shot to win the game. Absurd. So there I was, sprawled on the couch as the long throw-in crossed mid-court and went into a tangle of arms and bodies, only to deflect into Hoffarber’s hands with just enough time for him to turn and shot-put a left-handed shot at the rim — where it disappeared along with the breath of every Hoosier fan in the Fieldhouse. As for myself, I found myself totally and automatically levitated from the couch while a loud “D’oh!” was yanked uncontrollably from my lips. It was a magical and exciting moment and I had witnessed it with my own eyes!

Then this afternoon I turned on Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Invitational shortly after Tiger Woods had separated himself from the other leaders on the front nine. I stuck with the event through the afternoon as Tiger looked as if he was going to run away with it until he inexplicably took a page from my game and three-putted from six feet on number 10. The rest of the tournament was tense as several people stayed in contention until finally a relatively unknown pro forged a tie with the Great One and headed for the scorer’s tent as Tiger prepared to assault Bay Hill’s challenging finishing hole, ultimately leaving himself with a 25-foot downhill slider of a putt to win the tournament. This time I was on the edge of the couch, both feet on the floor, elbows on knees, leaning forward toward the set as the putt started on its long, slow, curving patch before dropping into the cup in much the same way my briefcase hits the floor when I come home from a long day’s work.

Rather than levitating, however, I flopped backwards, hands on my forehead at what I’d just seen, nearly unnerved by the fact that someone like Tiger Woods now strides the earth.

For all the excesses and scandals in pro and “amateur” sports these days that can leave you jaded, it’s great to not only remember but experience the sheer drama and unscripted displays of skill and will that ultimately make our games so compelling.

Just saying…

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Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor, has had several interesting sermon excerpts broadcast recently, including this snippet on Hugh Hewitt’s show yesterday:

I’m still in Bible country. I’m still in the text. Jesus was a poor, black man who lived in a country, and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich, white people. The Romans were rich, the Romans were Italians, which means they were European, which means they were white, and the Romans ran everything in Jesus’ country.

I suppose that’s why Jesus could never catch a break, and why the scriptures describe him always going around being obsessed with being a victim. Rev. Wright said he was working from the Bible text, but when I read the Bible it strikes me that Jesus didn’t focus on Affirmative Action, he was Affirmative Action. I also recall that he didn’t seem to agree very much with the actions and interpretations of Pharisees and Sadducees or, as Rev. Wright’s interpretation would presumably have it, the leadership of his “black” people.

Working on those Night Memes…

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After three years of doing this blog thing I don’t know that there are six little known facts about me left undisclosed, but I’ll see what I can do with the meme that Jroosh tagged me with.

Six Little Known Facts About Me:
1. I hate most vegetables, especially green beans, beets and brussel sprouts. One time I was grievously deceived when I what I thought was a bowl of fried, diced potatoes was actually parsnips. I still shudder at the recollection.

2. I couldn’t wait to sign up for band in 6th grade because I really wanted to play the trumpet. Somehow or another I let the band instructor talk me into playing the tenor saxophone. Five years later I finally quit (probably about the time my parents finished paying the damn thing off).

3. As an adult I also took banjo lessons for awhile. I concluded that banjo players aren’t really as happy as they look.

4. The greatest days of my life were October 10, 1987; August 18, 1988 and February 10, 1994.

5. So far I have only discovered three games in which I have a natural aptitude: football, bumper pool and Trivial Pursuit. Now I’m too old to play football, I haven’t seen a bumper pool table in 35 years, and no one who knows me will play Trivial Pursuit with me anymore.

6. I will turn 50 on Thursday, April 3. Coincidentally, this “little known fact” also lines up with Trivia Night at Keegan’s, which I will be attending. Show up and see if an old dog has learned any new tricks.

Mary Ann caught with Mary Jane?

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A politician caught cheating on his wife with a prostitute?
Ho-hum.

China abusing human rights only months before the Olympics?
Shocked, I’m shocked, I tell you (not).

Someone with the Hillary campaign caught saying something negative about Obama?
Yeah, never saw that coming.

An Obama staffer calls Hillary a “monster”?
Paging Captain Obvious.

A Minnesota DFL legislator’s knee jerk reaction to a problem is to ban something?
Is the Pope Catholic?

But Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island gets caught with dope?
Ok, let me off here, this world is getting way too weird.

Let us now praise the Government

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Well, I put it off as long as I could, but finally I had to go to the DMV today to renew both my license tabs and my driver’s license. That’s kind of like waiting to go to the dentist until you need a root canal and bridgework. Anyway, I hoofed it over to the Hennepin County Government Center at lunchtime today, anticipating a gulag-like shuffle as if in leg-irons from one counter to another while hoping the re-education wouldn’t be too painful.

The first thing I noticed when I got there was that the HCGC has changed quite a bit in the four years since it last darkened my soul. The main reception area has been re-designed, and is airier, even bright. Rather than a bunker, the lady in the information booth was in a half-moon shaped desk that looked almost conceirge-like. When I asked where I needed to go she gave me directions with what almost appeared to be a smile.

I got to the motor vehicle area a little later than I had hoped to, and was thus expecting a long line. Instead, this reception area was also well-lit and pleasantly decorated and there was only one person ahead of me and he was quickly dispatched. I stepped up to where the state employee was conducting bureaucratic triage and distributing waiting numbers. This fellow as even jovial as he confirmed that I could get both of my missions accomplished by the same person at the same time, then he gave me my number and the form I needed to fill out and pointed me to a comfortable waiting area, around which were 19 service windows arranged in a semi-circle. Regularly a pleasant voice on the intercom would say “Number such-and-such, now being served at window 18” or similar. Did she say served?

A few minutes later my number was up and I went to my assigned window where the woman there was bright-eyed and smiling. In less than a minute she had done what she needed to with my forms and had me standing on the little blue line, looking into the camera. The bright flash left a dinner-plate sized spot in front of my eyes, but I was still able to examine my new photo. Something was wrong, however. “I don’t know who that old guy is on the screen,” I told the woman. “But I’ve never seen him before.” She actually giggled.

After blinking several times I was able to autograph the last document and then she handed me my brand new license tabs. Just like that I was on my way, my head swimming at the ease of the experience (and a little from the after-effects of the flash). I wasn’t so discombobulated, however, that I didn’t see the table of cookies and juice that had materialized in the waiting room. Blinking a few more times, I confirmed that, yes, there was a table full of cookies there – chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and sugar – and a juice dispenser. No camera crews were in sight, either, as I surveyed the room. I considered the tray of cookies the way a cautious bear might sniff at an unexpected honeypot in a clearing. “What the heck,” I thought as I grabbed a chocolate chip cookie. It was soft and delicious.

Now that’s what I call my tax dollars at work!

Unto the next generation

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by the Night Writer

“We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth… This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.”

— Thomas Jefferson

I just spent a week away from my children. Curiously enough, I spent a surprising amount of this time thinking and talking about home education.

One afternoon I played golf with a fun couple who have two boys, aged 4 and 2, who are nicknamed “Search” and “Destroy.” The mom had learned from my wife the evening before that we home educate and was interested in what was involved. I heard the usual questions from her about college admissions (colleges are now, in fact, actively recruiting home-schooled teens) and socialization (personally, I’m more concerned about socialism).

I told her that my children had always had a wide circle of friends their age, either cousins or kids from church or even the neighborhood, but also had had the experience of talking to and working closely with adults on a one-on-one basis. One of the results of this, in my opinion, is that my daughters have always been poised and comfortable whenever they speak with non-parental adults. They are respectful, but not awed or overcome with shyness or cupidity. In short, they act as if talking to other, older people is completely natural (imagine that!). Interestingly enough, the woman I was talking to and her husband spend a great deal of time (and earn a fair amount of money) trying to teach adults to regain or re-engage the child-like creativity and imagination they had had before years of education and “socialization” had beaten it out of them.

Two days later I was in the home of my wife’s cousin Kay and her husband, Adrian. With us were, I think, 9 of their 11 kids, plus a few sons- and daughters-in-law (and a prospective daughter-in-law) and their own children. We were enthusiastically and effortlessly added to the dinner table where our presence scarcely created a ripple. I think that with this many kids and grandkids around on a regular basis, most of Kay’s recipes start with “Take one whole cow…” One of the things you can’t help but notice, besides the number, is how fresh-faced and attentive all the young folks are, even the ones that have married in. Kay home-educated all of her children, some of whom are currently pursuing college degrees.

Normally when I’m around a family gathering of this size the rising clamor will eventually start to get to me, raising my blood-pressure and level of discomfort. This night, however, though there was a steady hub-bub, I had nothing but a feeling of peace, though I’d scarcely met any of these people before that night. Several of the children cycled through our table talk as the evening rolled on, with every age having something to contribute to the conversation.

The next morning we met Adrian, Kay and their oldest son, David, at their favorite local restaurant for breakfast. One of the topics that came up was the recent California appellate court ruling requiring home-schooling parents to have a teaching certificate. More compelling was one judge’s written opinion:

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.”

Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

The ruling sent shock waves throughout the estimated 166,000 home-educators in California as well as through the California legislature and even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said, “Every California child deserves a quality education, and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts, and, if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights, then, as elected officials, we will.” Interestingly enough, Schwarzenegger’s signing of SB777 last year may be one of the things that have led many parents to abandon the public schools. Give the Governator credit though; he may not be great at logic but he definitely knows how to count votes and probably realizes that whatever other political beliefs a homeschooling family may have, telling them that they have no right to educate their own children trumps them all.

Personally, I’m not shocked. California has long been the most overtly hostile state toward home-educators (ironically it’s own school system struggles to place a certified teacher in every classroom, yet would seek to mandate it in every home-school). Similarly, Education Minnesota has no love lost for home-educators and my hunch is that they wouldn’t mind if their pet DFL pupils in the Minnesota legislature were to bring them a similar bill as if it were a bright, shiny apple.

Of course, it takes a real socialist mentality to proclaim that the State is the rightful owner of your children, as I’ve documented before regarding events in England and Germany. The Germans, in fact, are still embracing the 1937 law instituted by a certain mustachioed megalomaniac that mandates compulsory state school educations. Seventy years later they’re still enforcing it by forceably taking kids from their homes to school in police cars or even removing children from their parents’ homes and hiding them in psychiatric hospitals for evaluation.

Many home-school parents in California are having to consider possibly leaving the state. That’s a drastic measure for sure, but one that has had to be taken by many German parents, as described by Sheila Lange in her blog, Trying to Homeschool in Germany, which details the personal struggles of her own family (now living in South Africa) and other home-school German families.

Of course, that’s all happening very far away, in Germany or even California, right? Closer to home, former Nebraska state senator Peter Hoagland is on record as saying, “Fundamentalist parents have no right to indoctrinate their children in their beliefs. We are preparing their children for the year 2000 and life in a global one-world society and those children will not fit in.”

Especially not if I can help it.

Trip update: just deserts

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No, I don’t mean “just desserts”; I mean we drove from Scottsdale to Las Cruces, New Mexico on Thursday, and it was mostly just deserts, with a lot of rocks.

The landscape is very different here. It reminds me of how weird it all seemed when I moved from Phoenix to Minneapolis nearly 28 years ago. After living in Arizona for a year it was almost overwhelming to see so much green everywhere and all at once. It was probably a good thing that I arrived in Minnesota in June, however; if my first impression was 12 degrees with an icy wind I might have turned down the Minny job and stayed in Phoenix, and who knows what effect that would have had on my life (not to mention the lives of my wife and daughters)?

We drove the scenic route from Scottsdale, which took us through the dramatic, rocky passes around Superior and Globe. The rugged slopes converge at different angles around the highway, almost tilting your perspective and perception, especially when the horizon is blocked and the road is twisting. The Reverend Mother rode through here on Wednesday with the motorcycle gang she joined (I’ll leave it to her to post that story) and said the effect was even greater on a bike than in the car. I wouldn’t say it was beautiful, exactly, but it was very distinctive, unusual and fun.

The purpose of the trip was to visit the Reverend Mom’s cousin and her family, but we were also looking forward to seeing New Mexico, which we’ve heard is beautiful. Actually, I know it’s beautiful, because I’ve driven through the state before. Apparently the stretch we drove through today, however, is not going to make it into the brochures. Right at the state line the pavement changed to a darker, more rumbly surface and the scenery began to take on certain moonscape qualities as we drove along state highway 70 toward Demry.

It looked as if a nuclear bomb had gone off — nothing grew that was more than 3-feet tall and there were no buildings or structures for miles. In fact, if we came across a structure it was most likely dilapidated – windows missing, roof fallen in, or possibly an abandoned, sand-pitted mobile home. All it would take to complete a classic “desolate West” scene would be a bleached long-horn skull or two. Instead we saw the modern equivalent: rusted out frames of an occasional vehicle, including an old 1930s or 40s-era pickup that had been left where it died on the ranch, stripped of tires and interior and left to rust and blow away bit by bit. Given the age of the vehicle, I wondered how long it had been sitting there within sight of the highway.

Amazingly we even saw occasional small herds of cattle, including the dreaded black ninja cows conducting desert manuevers. Most were eating the desert scrub grass and foliage. Somehow, I don’t think these cattle will make it to Kobe-beef status on the Bourbon Steak menu.

Even the first town we came across, Lordsburg, looked dessicated. Good Lord, Lordsburg. Literally half the businesses and buildings along the main drag were boarded up, and the windows to the lobby of the Luxury Hotel revealed metal folding chairs for furniture. One dedicated car-dealer featured about a dozen new cars and trucks aimed at the road, prices marked on the windshields in optimistic neon colors. I think the marketing theme for the dealer should be, “Leaving town? Why not do it in a BRAND NEW CAR!”

Other than that about the only maintained structures we saw until we got to Demry was a series of about two dozen billboards placed close together Burma-Shave style promoting the Continental Divide Trading Post. Each billboard promoted another rare, not-to-be-missed product; everything from snake eggs (not sure if these were pickled or not) to saddles, whips and, probably, mounted jack-a-lopes. They probably had beef jerky, too, and out here I bet it comes directly off the slaughtered local cattle without need for drying or processing.