Home and Staying Here!

What a great feeling to drive down US 95 from Coeur d’Alene this week and seeing the rolling hills of the Palouse stretching out before me. There is no ‘welcome home’ sight as wonderful. I had to pull over and take pictures. It’s beautiful and green right now with a bit of snow still high on the mountains to the west.

My last night on the road, I stayed at a little campground in St. Regis, Montana called Nugget RV Resort. What a beautiful little campground. I had what was probably the most beautiful campsite I’ve had anywhere but at Sun Meadow. Nice shade, well-kept grounds, friendly but respectfully distant people. Unfortunately, that comes at a price. At nearly $50 a night (after my Good Sam discount) it was the most expensive park I stayed at during my eleven-day trip from South Texas.

There is a bit of humor in being here at Sun Meadow where everyone is naked except for their face mask!

The nights are great, with temps in the fifties which is terrific sleeping weather with the windows open. A couple of sunny hot days over the weekend, but high sixties for the next week. Huge break from the 106 I was in last week!

Writing has been progressing well while I was traveling with work on all three of my stories in progress. This isn’t the frantic-paced writing of 5-10,000 words a day I was writing at this time last year but it’s just fine as far as I’m concerned. I feel like they are good words just now.

I’m feeling very mellow as I look out my window at the scene above. With the chaos in the world outside our enclave, it is comforting to be surrounded by such peace and quiet. But in my head, I see the same turmoil, riots, police brutality, and racial tension I lived through in the sixties. In sixty years, it seems we have truly learned nothing and I despair that we ever will.

Memorial Day was Monday and I took time to remember the fallen soldiers of our many wars. I was reminded, however, that “The Greatest Generation” were teenagers and young twenties during World War II. It’s easy to think of them now as grandparents and great grandparents. But when they made their stand against Nazism, Imperial Japan, concentration death camps, and tyranny of all forms, they were young. It remains to be seen if today’s teens and young twenties will step up and make a difference--to become an even greater generation.

It’s time.

Why I’m wearing a mask

I have stayed pretty isolated for the past two months, having human contact a total of four times. So, Tuesday, I set out to move from Pharr, Texas to Sun Meadow in Idaho for the summer. I’m anxious to get “home.”

I got as far as Del Rio, TX on Tuesday night, nearly 350 miles. I put on my mask and went in to register at the Hidden Valley RV Park. Nice place. When I walked in, the park host said, “Oh, you don’t need to wear that here. We don’t wear them.” I declined the offer. During my tour and assignment of a lovely parking spot, surrounded by privacy fence so that if I’d chosen, I could have gone naked—which is about the only way I’d be comfortable in the 106 degree heat—she went on to say they had no active cases in the area and were open for business.

The next day, after a 450-mile drive, I arrived at the Western Sky’s RV Park in Vado, New Mexico (just outside Las Cruces). Large illuminated signs at the border announced that masks are required in New Mexico. I put mine on to go register and neither the host nor the previous guest were wearing a mask. I kept mine on and was pleased that even though the park is not as fancy as the night before, the temperature was 20 degrees cooler.

In Santa Fe, the Los Pinos RV Park didn’t have an office open at all. A guy came around to the site to collect the money and give me a receipt. No mask. I did.

By contrast, the KOA Kampground in Colorado City/Pueblo South to care of the entire transaction over the phone. When I pulled into the campground, I went to a walk-up window where a masked attendant had me sign the receipt for the credit card transaction and pointed in the direction of my site. Guy on a four-wheeler led me there, held up his hands when I was in the right position, and left.

Now, I’m in Wheatland, WY at the Mountain View RV Park. Yes, there is a mountain view, if you put yourself in the right place. The unmasked host stepped out of her trailer to greet me from several feet away. Pointed to the slot I was assigned and told me to fill in a registration card in the laundry room. The registration was quick and easy and I shoved the money in an envelope to put in the slot. Wrote my own receipt.

So, hey! Even when there’s a rule about wearing a mask, it’s ‘open to interpretation’; why am I bothering?

Last fall, I nearly suffered from heart failure. It almost prevented me from seeing my 70^th birthday. Four days after my birthday, I was in the emergency room and slated for cardioversion and then ablation. I survived. I took off for warmer weather on November 15, not anticipating I’d be stuck in Texas for four months! But reading the available data, I’m in an at-risk group. (That’s the group that various people have referred to as “Some of them are going to have to die to save the economy.”) Having had one brush with death, I’m not looking forward to another.

What I’ve discovered is that I cannot depend on other people to protect me. I expect that includes not just those in the places I visit, but also people who vouch their friendship. Of 1,675,000 confirmed cases in the US, 98,000 have died. Over 10,000 new cases are reported each day in the US, and no state has shown a sustained drop in the number of new cases per day reported over the past three weeks. It is up to me to protect myself.

But there is another reason, as well.

A good friend of mine, retired from the US Army, was called back to active duty to work for the CoVid response team, as Battle Captain in the Emergency Resource Center for the Army. Another friend is consulting with the DoD on CoVid modeling. Neither of them have to be doing what they are doing. Both were retired and beyond an age where they had to respond to the crisis. But they are.

I have friends in the medical field, doctors, nurses, technicians, who have all held the line in the fight against CoVid-19. They are constantly at risk, overworked, and exhausted.

And I will damn well not do anything that might make their job more difficult.

That is why I wear a mask.

Hear me out on this...

I’ve been thinking about this for the sadder part of the past four years. It’s a time in which I’ve seen the dehumanizing of many of our people. A time when corporate profits took the top priority over everything else. A time when our national debt has soared rather than the promised decline. A time when minimum wage jobs have been created that no one could live on, even though they were snapped up in the name of reducing unemployment. A time when disease has crippled the economy, created the highest unemployment in ages, and saw the sharpest decline in the stock market since the great depression.

But none of that is what I’ve been thinking about as I swelter in place in Texas. I’ve been thinking about the campaign to put a non-politician—a businessman—in the top leadership spot in the country. And that is the flaw that has been eating at me ever since.

I understand debt seemed to be out of control. It still is. I understand how scary the word ‘socialism’ is to capitalists who drive on paved highways created through socialism; depend on police and fire first responders paid through socialism; depend on businesses being propped up by socialist government funding; and collect socialist security checks each month.

But fundamentally, the United States of America is not a business. The government was not created to make a profit for the largest shareholders.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

No. There is nothing in there that says ‘make a profit.’ In fact, quite the opposite. Justice, Tranquility, Defense, Welfare, Liberty. A very specific charter for our government, and one that has been eroded steadily for over two hundred years. Justice has gone to the highest bidder, tainted by racism, sexism, and wealthism. Never has there been a time when the people were less at peace in their lives, jobs, entertainment, and education. Our defense forces are routinely sent out to defend fiscal investments, not the people or their freedom; and after serving faithfully are cut loose without fundamental services and even deported. The general welfare of the populace stands a distant last place in the eyes of law and commerce. And our liberty has been supplanted by irresponsibility.

If we were to use the metaphor of the government as a business, we would have to say there has been a hostile takeover. It is being stripped to the bone and the dismantled parts sold to the highest bidder. The government has turned from its charter to see to the general welfare by tossing the name ‘socialism’ at it. Instead, it operates on the basis of getting the best return for its largest investors. This has artificially inflated market prices to the point where only the richest investors can afford the common necessities of food, shelter, and clothing.

The mean (average) household income in the United States has moved steadily upward with the GNP. However, the median household income (half of households below and half above) has fallen further and further behind the mean. This is the result of favorable treatment of the wealthy with lower tax rates, government subsidies, and deregulation. At the same time, households at or near the median are typically dual income households who still can’t earn an ‘average’ wage.

It has taken us 232 years to get to this point; we won’t reverse it all at once. If we have been taught anything by the Covid-19 experience, it is that the essential workers in this country do not sit behind large oak desks investing in stocks. Corporate executives do not earn their income; the lowest level worker in the company earns the executive’s income. The executive just collects it.

The Supreme Court ruled that corporations were protected under the First Amendment and could participate in (fund) election campaigns. This places corporations ahead of humans in the final degree. It has established the corporation as the principal stockholder in our government.

There are three things concerning our government that I have come firmly to believe in my 70 years. 1. The United States is not a business. 2. Corporations are not people/citizens. 3. Land doesn’t vote. People do.

These three items should be at the seat of reform in the next year or we will continue to flounder and oppression will become even more rampant.

The preceding was an unpaid rant by a citizen whose income falls well below the median but above poverty. I am not a corporation.

Mothers’ Day and My Travels

First of all, happy Mothers’ Day. A mere twenty-seven years and change ago, a tiny baby entered the world and changed our lives forever. And I am so proud of the young woman she has become. So here is to Quinne and her mother, Michele—both of whom made me a father.

Who travels?

I made a bit of a joke a while back that my truck was currently getting six weeks per gallon of gas. That’s now up to almost two months per gallon. I did have to chuckle a little, though, when I received my travel report from Google Maps yesterday. Here’s what the message said:

Nathan, here's your new Timeline update

You're receiving this monthly email because you turned on Location History, a Google Account–level setting that saves where you go in your private Timeline.

Location History data also helps give you personalized information on Google, including better restaurant recommendations, and suggestions for a faster commute. You can view, edit, and delete this data anytime in Timeline.

I know that having elected this setting, I am being tracked and plotted every time I turn on Google Maps. However, don’t assume that if you turn this setting off, Google will stop tracking and plotting your journeys. The setting merely allows you to save and see that information.

I enjoy seeing this stuff and since Google is tracking it anyway, I might as well make use of it. Here’s what my travel map looked like at the end of 2019.

Pretty impressive, huh? This told me that I had traveled 11,244 miles in 2019 and that was equivalent to 50% around the world. I started the year in the lower left corner of the map, went north to the scrum in Washington and Idaho, went south through California, and then east. The last pin on the right is where I spent the holidays with Amy near Claremore, OK. All told, a very satisfying journey.

Here’s the map they sent me for April:

 

Yes, I traveled a whopping total of 4 miles and visited Costco and H-E-B plus! (grocery store).

Now the Plan

I hope to leave Pharr TX in just over a week. I’ll leave here on Tuesday the 19^th and take a more direct, Interstate-guided route north to Sun Meadow in Idaho. I’ve plotted the trip on a map.

It’s supposedly 2,547 miles. I’m not estimating anything better than being at Sun Meadow before the end of May, around the 28^th or so. I will be happy to get there and reluctant to leave again in the fall.

Well, that’s the plan, anyway. And as we know, no plan survives contact with the enemy. My daughter sent me a couple of new masks and I will wear them like a desperado! Along with the new Stetson she sent me.

I only wish I had a 45 so I could shoot me some of them virus things. We’ll teach ’em!

Stay safe. Stay isolated. Stay sane.

Zombie Flies

We all thought it would be a zombie apocalypse and there’s been some disappointment that the apocalypse we got is short on imagination. Well, I’m telling you that the zombie apocalypse has also begun.

Let me first tell you I’ve been invaded. The creatures we all blame for spreading filth and disease has found a way into my trailer, even with all the doors and windows sealed shut and the air conditioner running. The flies are thick as presidential tweets.

My flyswatter is in sad condition.

It is battle-worn and weary. It has nearly a thousand confirmed kills. The bodies are thick on the floor of my trailer.

But still they keep coming. I suspect the dead ones are coming back as zombies!

For evidence, I hit a fly squarely and watched it drop to join its brethren on the floor. Then, an hour later, a fly crawled onto my desk. I don’t know how it got there, but it didn’t fly. And in the distracted, stiff, lurching manner of a zombie, it approached me. I screamed, “I killed you once! Why don’t you just die?” And then I smashed its head with the flyswatter again because we all know you have to smash their heads in order to kill the zombies.

No. I don’t miss people contact at all! Quarantine is fine! No change for me, really.

I started putting away my latest shipment of cigars and needed to use a couple of cylindrical humidors I hadn’t touched since last summer. Imagine my surprise to find they all had cigars in them. Not full, mind you, but there were three humidors with cigars in them that I’d completely forgotten. Probably enough cigars now to last until fall since I don’t feel like sitting outside to smoke in this weather.

The weather in Idaho is looking better to me every day and I’m hoping to be there by Memorial Day.

I’ve paid for a place here in Pharr TX until May 23, but if it looks clear for travel, I’ll be heading north by the 16^th. I plan to cover the distance with minimal stops and use of the dreaded Interstate. I’ll shoot up 25 all the way to 90 and then down to Sun Meadow from Coeur d’Alene. I can’t wait to get home! But I will continue to self-isolate.

My books will soon be available on Bookapy.com. Both mainstream and erotica. The publishing site I use to release free books insists that if I promote there, I have to only promote their purchase site. With well over 30 books in the market now, it will take me a while to get the books released. That doesn’t mean I’ll be dropping Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but I’ll have yet another site to manage releases on.

The quickest way to avoid the confusion is to join me on Patreon at www.patreon.com/nathaneverett. My patrons of $5/month or more receive advance release copies of all my new books from either Devon Layne or Nathan Everett and have access to even more for free online reading.

I hope you’ll join me there!