family – Page 12 – World-Wide Matel

August 3, 2003July 23, 2020

Fredericksburg, VA

We visited Mariza’s future school – Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. It is a cute place (pictures below). Everything is neat, clean and well maintained. It looks exactly as you would expect a college in the middle Atlantic south to look. There are only about 5000 students at the school and all the courses are taught by professors, not teaching assistants as we used to get at the big Midwestern universities I attended. (I lost a lot of respect for teaching assistants when they gave me that job at U of M. I knew less than some of the students I evaluated.)

The city of Fredericksburg is also cute and historic. It reminds me of Alexandria. It is about as old as Alexandria, (founded in 1728), although not as aristocratic looking. It was more a working or commercial town. The city originally handled sea commerce that sailed up the Rappahannock River, until seagoing boats got too big for the shallow river harbor to accommodate. Fredericksburg is best known for the battle that took place there in December 1862. Wave after wave of Union troops attacked Confederates well entrenched behind a stone wall. Many of the deadliest battles of the Civil War took place within a short distance of the city, which made the mistake of being about equal distance between Richmond and Washington. According to what I read, about 100,000 men fell in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania and the Wilderness, all within a long hike from each other. The armies passed this way many times and battles were fought over the same ground. Soldiers in 1864 had the unpleasant experience of coming across the remains of comrades from the last conflicts. It is hard to envision the carnage now on the peaceful and pretty forests and fields.

Chrissy and Mariza try to decide who is taller. I think the contest was long ago decided. This is one of the buildings on campus. Most of the others look similar – red brick and white pillars. They could use some ivy on the walls. Everything is “Gone with the Wind” style. This is a pleasant campus. I think you can walk from one end to the other in about ten minutes, so it should not be too hard for her to get to classes.

These are dorms. They are much nicer than the dumps I had to live in when I was in college. There was also a lot of snow in those days and it was colder. I had to walk many miles to class – up hill both ways. Kids today have it too easy.

A street scene in Fredericksburg. This city has more antique shops per foot than any other place I have ever seen. Parking is a problem. Fortunately, Mary Washington does not allow freshmen to have cars. The town center is about a ten-minute walk from the campus.

The stone wall. It was not so peaceful in 1862. I would not want to run up that hill while people were shooting at me. The battle took place in December. Virginia is not a particularly cold place, but it is frozen in December. Some of the injured men froze to death on the field in front of the stone wall.

July 26, 2003July 23, 2020

Nashville, TN

It is a pleasant place. Nashville looks more Midwestern than southern, although there are the magnolias. We went to see the Parthenon. Nashville has the only full sized replica of that building. It is nicer than the original, which was famously destroyed by the Venetians during a skirmish with the Turks, who used the building as a power storage facility. Although this one is more complete, it is made of concrete instead of marble. It was built in 1892 for the Centennial of city of Nashville. Surrounding the Parthenon is Centennial Park. Across the street is Vanderbilt University, the “Harvard of the South”.

We are staying at Marriott Courtyard. It is a suite hotel, but with smaller facilities than Residence Inn. We had planned to stay at KOA, but the hot weather in Arizona convinced us that we did not want to spend another night in a hot cabin. Ironically, it is cool today. I was a little chilly sitting out near the pool supervising the boys. The boys played football with some other guests. It was not a fair game. Alex was much stronger than anyone else in the pool. He could just muscle through the lines.

July 21, 2003July 23, 2020

Amarillo, TX

The most interesting thing in town is the Big Texan, where I had the best steak I ever tasted. It is a kitschy place, but nice. You can get a 72 oz steak. If you eat the whole thing within an hour, it is free. The waitress says that about ten people a day try to eat the big steak and about three actually finish. They got a big table in front where the big eaters do their thing. Nobody was trying when we were there. It seems to me that it is embarrassing to lose and maybe even more embarrassing to win.

The town itself is mostly strip malls and hotels. It is not that bad a place, but not that good either. The thing I noticed in the paper is how cheap houses are. You can get what looks like a decent house for less than $100,000.

We visited the Plains Museum in Canyon, Texas nearby. The museum was nice and inexpensive. It is housed at West Texas A&M. Texas Universities are good and in state tuition is cheap. This school seems particularly good for geology, paleontology and agriculture. The most interesting part was the history of oil exploration. Texans worked hard to develop technologies to find, get oil and to get it to market. It is a ground up history, where many entrepreneurs innovated their way to success – very heroic. Oil is an interesting topic. Compare how the people of Texas created a resource to how the princes, potentates and nabobs of Arabia had an unearned resource handed to them by foreign companies. Oil corrupts third world counties because they don’t do anything to develop the resource. It comes free along with resentment of the firms that gave them this undeserved bounty.

There were also exhibits on Texas in the past, starting with the Pre-Cambrian. My personal favorite is the Pleistocene, but there is not that much you can say about a couple of bison skulls so let me skip to the last couple hundred years ago. Life was a challenge for people in the Texas panhandle. The land is semi desert. Adapting crops to the environment only goes do far. Farmers water their land with water drawn from the Ogallala aquifer, a giant underground lake. The aquifer was created 100,000 years ago by water runoff from the far away Rockies. It is no longer being recharged because the Pecos River now cuts through and drains off the water into the Gulf of Mexico. The water will last awhile longer, but needs to be conserved. Maybe we could plug up the Pecos in set the whole recharging thing in motion again.

I listened to AM radio on the way into town. Most people around here are conservative, if you survey what they listen to. But contrary to what we might think of people so far inland in the U.S., they are interested in foreign affairs. They have to be, since their agricultural commodities are sold on world markets. The local radio included interviews about markets overseas and a report of a trade delegation from Russia visiting the panhandle. They also had a call in program about how biotechnology is being received in Europe.

July 17, 2003July 23, 2020

Monument Valley

The pictures speak for themselves. You can understand why this place is such a popular setting for westerns. It is part of the Navajo reservation and we had to pay $25 to get in. We drove a 17-mile course, stopping at various places to look at the scenery or take pictures. The flat, big rock formations are mesas, after the Spanish word for table. When they get thinner and broader at the bottom, they are called buttes. When the butte gets very thin it is called a spire. Which are which is open to some interpretation.

After that we went on to Durango, Colorado, stopping at the four corners monument. The four corners is where the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet. It is also part of the Navajo nation, and it cost us $15 to get in there. I guess they have to make money in this dry, inhospitable place. It is the only place in the U.S. where you can set your foot in four states at once. The Navajo arrived in the area only about 800 years ago. Before that Anastazi people occupied the place. The Anastazi lived in Pueblo villages that you still see around here, but they died out for reasons anthropologists still speculate about. A big reason was the harsh climate. Despite the grandeur, this place is obviously a wasteland. We drove for hours at 60 mph through almost nothing but rock, sand and dirt. Occasionally you see a house. I don’t know how the inhabitants make a living. This is even bleaker than the desert near Phoenix. The only redeeming characteristic is that it is much cooler than the lower desert. Daytime temperatures are only about 100, which seems cool at least in the dry air, and it gets into the 50s at night.

As we crossed into Colorado and gained altitudes, things became a lot greener. We are staying at KOA in Durango, Colorado. It is a nicer cabin than we had before. Durango has all the conveniences, including a Wall Mart, where we bought a window fan for $10. It is bringing in the cooler air very nicely. I am writing at about 11 pm and it is comfortably cool outside. Tomorrow we plan to go rafting and I hope to have pictures.

July 2, 2003July 23, 2020

Phoenix Day 2

Pictures of the early morning roads.

This is the road to nowhere in particular. It ends about 100 meters out of this picture.

If you want to do anything outside, you have to do it early in the morning. One of the advantages of jet lag is that you can’t sleep very late. I went running today at 5:30. It was hot, but not too bad, like a warm afternoon most other places I have lived. A lot of people were out running, walking and biking. In fact, I have never seen so many people exercising outside a park or health club designed for joggers or bikers. I suppose they are all concentrated at this time. They know that they have only a short window of opportunity. You can count on a sunny, rain free day every day during this time of the year, but by about 7:00 it gets too hot to do anything strenuous. You just have to adjust. In northern climates, you can’t do much in the winter because it is too cold. You just assume that you will stay in the house a lot from December through March because the weather is cold and miserable. The same is true in the desert; only it applies to summer heat. Nobody goes out during the middle of the day unless they have to. In that respect it has an advantage over the cold places. During January in Wisconsin or Poland there is no time of the day when it is warm enough to go out comfortably.

The area outside the cultivation has a harsh beauty.

It is also true that the dry heat of the desert is easier to live with than the humid heat we often get in Virginia. I am not saying its not hot – 105 degrees in the shade is hot no matter what the humidity – but if you don’t move around it is not too uncomfortable and if you swim it is actually very cool as the evaporation is rapid. Below are some pictures of the early morning Phoenix streets. They are very wide and ready for a lot more cars than use them most of the time, although there are traffic jams in the downtown during rush hour. People drive a lot farther here. The city is spread out and most people will happily drive for 45 minutes or an hour to get to a restaurant of movie theater.

Alex contemplating the landscape. He is less than enthusiastic about waking up for the morning run.

I like this house. It takes a lot of work to have such nice plants here.

Kids playing in the pool at Dianne & Ray’s house. If you have a pool, the heat is not so bad. Even 105 degree weather feels cool when you get a little wet. The very low humidity means the water evaporates quickly cooling the skin. You can shiver and feel cold. The water in the pool is always warm and tastes a little salty.

July 1, 2003July 23, 2020

Phoenix Day 1

Arrived in Phoenix yesterday. It is hot here even at night. When we arrived it was 105 degrees. Today it got to 110 degrees. The sky is perfectly clear and everything is dry. Arizona, at least the Valley of the Sun, where Phoenix sits, is a different world. We will be in Phoenix for the next couple of days. Then we are going down to Tucson and Tombstone.

Alex and Lisa, Chrissy’s sister and brother in law, are putting us up. They have a nice Phoenix style house. The boys are sleeping in the living room. We have an upstairs place.

Nothing much lives in the desert without the help of irrigation and few people lived here before the invention of air conditioning. Phoenix is comfortable only because of 20th Century technologies. The temperatures are a lot like those in Iraq. Alex& Lisa have done a wonderful job of landscaping. Last time we were here the yard was nothing but rocks and dirt. Now there are trees and desert plants. There is a short moss-like grass. It is very green and has to be watered every day or two. Below are some pictures from today.

Above is Alex & Lisa’s back yard. It took a lot of work to make it this nice. The tree is a palo verde. It has very small leaves, but the trunk remains green all year and allows photosynthesis.

Above is the neighbor’s yard. This is what it looks like when you do nothing. Unlike in more humid climates, the grass doesn’t cover the sins of the landscaper. This guy’s idea of landscaping is evidently to leave the dirt and rocks and put on a layer of dog shit. (those are the specks you see in the picture)

Saguaro cactus grow only in the Sonora Desert in Northern Mexico and Arizona. Phoenix is on the northern edge. It takes many years fro the Saguaro to grow “arms”. They are protected species and are registered. This one in Alex’s yard was given to him by a lady he worked for. It would be worth about $2000.00 if he had to buy it.

In the distance is what the landscape looks like without irrigation. The hills are pretty and pretty dry.

No matter where they are, the kids engage in the usual recreation – video games. Note the determined expression on the boys’ faces as they overcome the threat to the universe.

Alex made a nice playground for his two kids, Christiana and Roman.

June 28, 2003July 23, 2020

Lacrosse

Western Wisconsin is nice enough – clean and pleasant. There is almost no crime. People don’t lock their cars. They even leave the keys on the dashboard sometimes, and they leave valuable things such as bikes unlocked in their back yards. Although I bet the local people would tell me their particular harrowing crime stories, you can’t be too afraid to walk around in a town where barking dogs and aggressive littering are reported on the police section of the local newspaper. I ran for about a half hour through north Lacrosse. I have never actually set foot in that particular neighborhood, but I have been there before. This type of human geography extends from New England to the Pacific Ocean. Adjust for regional variations in vegetation and you could easily find this in Buffalo or Boise, Sioux Fall or Spokane. Norman Rockwell could set up shop here. Millions of Americans still live his lifestyle.

So what’s not to like? I don’t like the houses, and the yards, especially the yards. Houses are small and there is almost no landscaping around them. Thanks to fertilizers, weed killing chemicals, and power mowers, the grass is neat, but people don’t seem fond of trees or big bushes, at least not near their houses. There are lots of trees on the streets – maples, ash, hackberry and linden – but not many on property people take care of themselves. That is a contrast with the East where trees sprout from even small spaces. Around here, people would complaint that shade interfere with the grass; roots clog drain and trees drop leaves in the rain gutters. I know this compulsive neatness that loses sight of goals. My father wanted grass ½ inch high and neat, although we rarely achieved it. (He was too lazy and I didn’t care about a neat lawn . . . and I was lazy too.) Strip mall & gas station owners spread little stones over the landscaping. It is neat and requires no care, but it is unattractive and predictable. I would rather have the confusion and profusion of growing plants, even ones that were not well maintained or volunteer to occupy that patch of ground. Most people call the latter variety weeds. They are better than the little rocks or the chemically induced grass.

I would not want to live here, but I understand why so many do. The Lacrosse area is growing rapidly. I might complain about the houses, but it looks like most people can afford to own one, at least in cooperation with their mortgage company. Prices are remarkable low, by Northern Virginia standards. This place has become a paradise for hunters and fishermen. The forests and fields near town teem with wildlife as farm fields revert to nature and create habitat. Fish are jumping in the lakes and the Black River across from my hotel is full of small boats. There have not been so many deer here for more than a century. Wild turkeys, which were rare in this area even 200 years ago, are common. They like the old farm fields. Eagles nest along the Mississippi. God’s Country.

This is Middle America. The citizens of Lacrosse work hard, teach their kids decent values and send them off to the local university, or maybe to the University of Minnesota at Winona not too far up the river. “The Lacrosse Tribune” carries stories of local boys serving in Iraq. Many houses fly the American flag. Most people love the USA. SUVs & pickup trucks fill the wide and well-maintained streets and most people drive near the speed limit, unlike drivers in my Polish experience. Wisconsin is a nice place to visit and a wonderful place for a lot of people to live, just not for me. It is my native state, but I can’t go home again permanently.

The boys and I are staying at the Roadstar Inn, since it would be too hard for Chrissy’s mother if we descended on her small house. It is an inexpensive 1970s type hotel, near fast food places and the Mississippi River. We are about to head out to the free “continental breakfast”. The weather is warm (about 70) and humid. It rained last night. It is 7:15 am on June 28, 2003.