Social Darwinism

I just heard this phrase for the first time, listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with Chael Sonnen (who I thought I didn't like, but I think I've changed my mind some). I looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently there are a lot of negative connotations that come with it these days, as it's been used as justification for racism, Nazism and eugenics (which, basically, is the process of sterilizing people who have traits that you don't want in your population, or don't have the traits you DO want. Freaky).

Obviously (or at least I hope it's obvious), that's not what I'm about. But I had a bit of a revelation in recent history, and my mind has been dancing around this idea ever since, that I hadn't been able to come up with an explanation for, until I heard that term. Does that ever happen to you? Do you know what I mean? You grow up, you see and hear things, and your mind starts leaning in a vague direction that you don't understand, because you've never been given the frame of reference from which to grasp it, until someone says something that makes it click, and you realize... "THAT is what I believe. It has been for a while, but I couldn't name it until now."

It's kind of a great feeling actually. For two reasons. One, because it's awesome to know that you're still learning and changing. To know that you aren't such an arrogant mule that your mind can't be changed, because you aren't open to it. I like that. And two, because, for me, it creates this very satisfying sensation to feel the light switch go on in your head. To suddenly know yourself even better than you did before. And to be humbled by the fact that you may yet someday know yourself even better than you do right now.

I mentioned this once in a facebook post, right after it happened. I had just gotten to Kentucky to see Josh, gotten dolled up in rare fashion so to best remind my dear exactly what he'd been missing, and we were in a taxi on our way to some fancy restaurant in Louisville, at the top of a tower that rotated slowly in circles to afford you the full view of the city, but which only served to make me too nauseous to eat my 40 steak.

We had driven through 8 or 10 intersections when it hit me. "Wow.... I am not a Democrat anymore."

I actually said that out loud, and startled the shit out of myself and Josh both. But it was true. Street after street, we passed people in those electric wheelchairs, cruising along side by side with the people that were actually walking in the crosswalks. People that were so grossly overweight that the very act of turning the wheels on their own wheelchairs manually had become impossible. I looked at one of them, perhaps the fattest of the bunch, and thought, "You have, for certain, not been able to wash your own balls for years. Why are you still alive? How have you survived this long?"

I don't want to pay for that guy to carry on whatever lifestyle has gotten him to this point. I know, because it was something I was exposed to in my last job, that Medicaid will help pay for all manner of medical equipment and treatments, regardless of how you ended up in the spot you're in. Chain smoked 2 packs a day for 40 years, and now you have emphysema and lung/throat cancer? Drank entire bottles of whiskey every night, and now your liver is swollen into something the size of a football and your skin is turning green?Eaten super-sized portions of fast food since you were young and now can't reach your ass crack to wipe it? Managed to go most of your life without ever amassing any form of wealth with which to take care of yourself so that other people don't have to? Had 5 kids that you've been feeding that same garbage all their lives who are now pregnant and can't help you?

Why on earth would you be afforded the same care and concern as someone who wasn't a complete idiot? Why do you get my government assistance? Why are you not allowed to just perish naturally, as evolution obviously did not endow you with the skills to survive? (Not that it's necessarily your fault, as I'm sure most of those people came from a similar background. But once you're an adult, it's your own fucking responsibility to make your life better, not mine.)

I understand how harsh that sounds. Believe me, before I started dancing around the idea of Social Darwinism, to shorten it down, I would have been appalled by what I just said. But frankly, it's stupid, and I was only seeing one half of the story. I'm pulling for the human race to make it for several thousand more years at least. I don't want us to die out of nasty self-created illnesses, because we spend all of our resources trying to take care of people who won't take care of themselves. If you aren't supposed to make it... then you just aren't.

I have started to think about it in these terms. When I walk around cities like Louisville, Kentucky. If the power went off for good tomorrow, the mass production of food stopped dead in it's tracks, and animals started moving into the cities to pick off the easy targets... that fat, barely sentient, blob of human who can only move over flat surfaces and only then as fast as his overworked, little electric motor can carry him... that guy is definitely going out before me.

And who else is?

The girls in high heels who know how to properly accessorize a fashionable outfit, but who don't have the foggiest idea how to build a fire.

The... I don't even know what to call them, because they aren't 'men', and half of them are becoming barely distinguishable as boys or even males, who take longer to get ready to leave the house than I do, that can operate the fuck out of a video game, but couldn't figure out how to work a fishing pole to save their lives.

I know some people who would do better than alright if shit hit the fan tomorrow. Better than me, and better than my mountain man boyfriend. But... the percentages are on my side when it comes down to it. And that's just fine with me.

When we look back at the evolution of our time period, who are the people that you want to make it? Is it the damn-near-animal, zombies of humans that you see blankly wandering the aisles of Walmart, leaning on their carts full of sweatpants and microwave dinners? They exist! That isn't an exaggeration or a stereotype! It's almost a full third of the country!

That might seem obvious, but it was a shock to me. It's one thing to hear about them, and another thing to see them and interact with them. To have to slow down your speech and dumb down your vocabulary to get them to stop eyeing you suspiciously. To try not to look brokenhearted or annoyed when you get engulfed in a cloud of their cigarette smoke as they waddle their pregnant bodies, cross-eyed children in tow, into the gas station ahead of you. To be slowed down walking behind those FUCKING electric wheelchairs when you're trying to make it across the street before the little red hand starts flashing. Good lord but I did not know those were the people I was arguing on behalf of when I wholeheartedly supported Medicaid-type programs for anyone who needed them.

That particular group of people isn't garnering my vote and if they would all just... eat and smoke and drink themselves to death and stop having those poor babies that they have no intention of raising right, caring for, loving or protecting, we would all be better off.

THAT is the last distinction I want to make. I am not taking it lightly that I just said that about a third of the country should just go ahead and keel over so that the rest of us don't have to pay to have their asses wiped for them any longer. If you're kind, if you're making the world better by existing, if you're a great thinker or teacher or mother or father or contributor of any kind, you aren't really who I'm talking about. But, I hate to say it, the word 'contributor' doesn't cover a lot of people. And what breaks your heart more? When that fat, old, smoked out, booze-saturated, bitter, shitty excuse for a human being keels over and is no longer a burden or an embarrassment to his town? Or when he has three or four kids that he will never care about, never appreciate, and never provide any example to, of what a real man is?

Frankly, I'd rather evolution just hurry on up and take care of the riff raff so that our species can make it to the year 3,000. Social Darwinism... if it were up to me, I'd stand back and let it take on over, even if I was one of the ones to go out on the way.

A little note from our cottage in the Pennsylvania country

I'm in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Or it might be Fort Indiantown Gap. Or Jonestown. I'm honestly not sure which is actually the name of this place. It's outside of Harrisburg so, Southeastern Pennsylvania. Not too many hours from the east coast.

There are no mountains, of course... which probably doesn't need to be said but it's still the first thing I look for when arriving in a new place, and I mark their absence when I don't see them. What there is instead, are miles and miles of tall, thick forests, interspersed with little farms, over what I assume are what people mean when they say 'rolling hills'. It's beautiful. And it's not like anything I've ever been around before. It's also HOT. Like 80 degrees, at the least. And humid. It makes the blood in my legs feel as if it's trying to solidify into molasses, and it makes it damn hard to walk as fast as I am used to in AK, where you mostly just want to reach the warm indoors. It's fine for me, I don't love it or hate it, but I also don't have to be outside in it if I don't want to... and Josh does. Poor baby. Digging for old bombs under a steamy hot washcloth of a day sounds pretty awful.

Today is Josh's first day back to work. Which means that it's my first day as a housewife. I had to pack up our hotel room this morning, and have moved the truck and all our stuff into the cottage that we'll be staying in the rest of the time we're in Pennsylvania. It's part of the Berry Patch B&B, which sits on 20 acres of farm and forest. When we pulled up in the driveway yesterday, and I got a good look around at the place I'd be spending the next month or so, my very first thought was, "My life is so good."

The owner's name is Bunny. She has a horse, a goat, a pony, and a donkey that her granddaughter named Fiona. Plus lots of rescue dogs and cats running around. At first, on the phone, I thought she was a bit crabby, but then I realized she's just country. No nonsense, no time for frivolity, just a done-everything kind of tough old broad (and I mean that with real respect).

I can't explain how happy I am that, for less money, we get to stay in a place where this is in my front yard, and where I have a kitchen again, so that we don't have to eat out all the time, and where it's quiet and inspiring enough that I can start trying to figure out this writing business, so as not to be just a housewife for too much longer. Well... I guess I'm not a wife, and this isn't a house. But wife is a shorter word than girlfriend, and girlfriend doesn't really cover what I am in this relationship so... soon enough I'll be a trailer wife, and until then, I guess I'm a hotel wife.

As soon as I finish here, I'm taking the truck to a farmer's market that's about 30 miles from here, to pick us up some yummy fresh veggies. We're having salad for dinner, Pygmy Style (for those of you that don't know, you will not leave hungry from a salad that I make). I've been dying for a chance to make my own damn food. We're both sick of restaurants. 

After that, I'll finish making my little google map cheat sheet for this town. I've already pinned a few places on it; a laundromat, a movie theater, a grocery store, and a diesel mechanic for the Dodge (the clutch is acting weird). Then I'll go pick Josh up from work, and probably have to douse him in ice water to cool him off. It was 85 degrees when I left the hotel this morning at 9:45am, to drive over here. And then... I think we'll take a walk over to visit with Fiona, the donkey. 

To fill in a few other little details;

Josh's sisters are awesome. I am really grateful that they're all going to be easy to be friends with. I loved his whole family. And I actually met a ton of them at once, because his Canadian relatives came down for a few days to hang out also.

There are a ton of bikers in Pennsylvania. And every time we pass a big pack of them, a few of them see the Alaska license plate on the truck, and smile at us, or wave. It makes me happy.

I'm changing my phone number. It was gifts and letters from Anthony I was talking about having to sort through before I left. If your name isn't Anthony, I wasn't talking about you. Get therapy.

We went to a restaurant the night we got here, after the 9 hour drive from Detroit, that had a section labeled 'Appalachian Fayre'. It contained lots of venison, some elk (though I don't think there are elk around here), and my favorite part - rattlesnake and alligator. I can't wait to go back and try those. I didn't, when we were there last, because I was tired and wanted comfort food (buffalo burger and fried pickles). It was Sunday night, and we happened to walk right into a little outdoor concert going on in the back of this place. I don't know how many people live in this town, but it's SMALL. The everyone-knows-each-other kind of place. Kids and parents were dancing on the lawn, a thunderstorm was rolling in from the east, and Josh and I toasted to where life has brought us.

And lastly, I found a note under the windshield wiper of the truck this morning that absolutely made my day -  

If any of you know an Ed Lindquist from Soldotna, tell him that finding this on our truck just tickled me pink, and I would love to see how he's doing on his trek down that infamous trail. What a wonderfully small world we live in. 

My love from the Appalachian country,

Pygmy

First stop off in St. Clair Shores, MI

Flying gets to be more and more of a chore. I suppose then, that it's good I'll be driving around in a giant pickup instead, for the foreseeable future. The cheapest flight out of AK was on Sunday, and by cheapest I mean 460 bucks for a one way ticket to Detroit. Everything else was 200 dollars more. 460 each got us a 5 hour layover in Denver, which had the weirdest and most abundant massive welded art I've ever seen in an airport, AND they had those damned metal armrests between each seat, which means you can't stretch out on them to sleep when you've just gotten off of a 5 hour flight from Anchorage. Damn it Denver. And what was with the blackberries in the first bathroom sink? It might have been the oddest thing I've ever seen in a bathroom sink.

Anyway, I'm here. In Josh's hometown. In a lovely king sized bed at a hotel that is more expensive than necessary for our tastes, but was absolutely needed after the all-nighter we essentially pulled flying down here. It's so green, and so warm... for the moment the absence of mountains isn't even registering with me. Just the stark difference between here and home.

There are a million different kinds of trees, when I'm only used to seeing spruce, birch and... whatever that other one is that pops up here and there. It's humid and my skin, hair and lungs are ecstatic about it. Exercise-induced asthma is pretty non-existent in such warm, rich air. There's good Greek food all over the place, because I guess they have a lot of Greek settlers in these parts. I about killed myself with sweet bread and hummus last night. I think I will wear shorts today. I'm pretty sure I went all last summer without putting any on. Except when I was in Costa Rica.

Josh had traded his little pickup for a BIG one before he ever came home to help me pack up the apartment. It's a gigantic, silver, diesel, dually, crew cab. And it's a stick shift. Yesterday was the first time I'd gotten to see it or drive it and, regardless of the fact that I look like mouse driving a cement mixer... I get a kick out of it. It's like a giant go-kart. I thought the clutch would be heavier than I could comfortably handle, but it's almost as easy as my CRV.

Well... what once was my CRV, but is now Jen's CRV. I'm happy that someone in my little family has it... I loved that car. That car has afforded me some really wonderful memories. On road or off road, winter or summer, it's taken my abuse and never complained. The last few times I stopped over at Jen's house, seeing it sitting there in her driveway and no longer having the keys on my carabiner was sad. So was looking around my beautiful apartment for the last time. And a multitude of other 'last time' kind of things. None of which compared to saying goodbye to my mom. I did my best to keep it together, but that only lasted til we got to the entryway of my parents' house, and then we both teared up at once. Josh said it was like watching a unicorn dying or something. I am more or less a replica of my mother, minus 30 years, and he said that seeing us both cry at the same time was slightly terrifying. Silly boy. Anyone who knows me would have known the waterworks were coming for that specific parting... ugh.

Anyway, I'm off to get in the pool (I can't even remember when the last time was that I got to get in a pool...) and then go for a walk in the cemetery that just happens to be outside my hotel room window. Weird.

I'll miss you all soon. As of yet it hasn't been long enough. My guess is the two week mark will do it to me. Two week mark seems to be the standard homesickness kick-in landmark. Except for my momma. I miss her already.

An update, of sorts, to make up for my long absence

The apartment is finally packed up. Everything that we still own is in a few boxes, our backpacks, and one giant duffel bag. It was, of course, not as easy as it seemed like it should have been before we got started. I don't own that much stuff. I am a minimalist by nature. I don't get attached to objects, or attach sentimental value to things that aren't practical or useful. Not many anyway. There are a few. The small colored glass medicine bottles from the 1800's that I used to play with as a child, at my grandparents house. The wooden elephants that I bought in Thailand. My grandfather's compass from World War II. Those things all fit into a relatively small box, which is the only thing I'm leaving for my parents to take care of for me.

There were other things that were hard to deal with. Things that I'd stuffed away in a box in the guest room because at the time they were too painful to look at, too steeped in memories that I didn't want to dwell on to keep, and too unbearable to yet think of throwing away. I had forgotten it was all in there (which was kind of a relief when I realized it). Had I just been moving to another house I might have thrown them in with the stuff to move, and dealt with it later. But... given that I'm moving into a fifth wheel with Josh, carting a box of old love letters and photos from my ex around was completely out of the question. The result of that being, that I had to sit down then and there and decide what to do with all of it. I pulled out each letter, photo, little gift, etc., looked at it, waited to see if I was going to feel sad, or cry, or be angry... and didn't. A few things will stay as bookmarks in whichever of my old journals coincides with them, because they are part of my life and my experience, but most of it went, without too much trouble, into the pile of stuff to get thrown away. It's been long enough, and the truth is clear at this point... Josh and I are pretty dang awesome together. I would not have had things unfold in any other fashion than they did.

It's a weird feeling, to realize that you're over someone that you, at one time, thought was going to haunt you forever. A friend of mine is in the stage of that cycle when you first pack that stuff away in a box because you can't handle it, and cover it up with shit because even seeing the box, and knowing what's in it is enough to trigger a minor meltdown. I thought of him a lot when I was throwing stuff away. I have been meaning to write him and tell him that I now have proof positive that eventually, pain turns into wisdom. I hope he'll see this.

Aside from that stuff, the hardest thing to let go of was, strangely enough, my old canvas and flannel sleeping bag. It's way too heavy and bulky to hike with, but it's kept me warm on some long and lonely trips, and in some scary cold temperatures. It's in rough shape. It's not practical. I don't need it anymore. But I'll be damned if I could put it in the Salvation Army pile without serious pangs of sadness. Weird.

I haven't written anything since Josh got home. For good reason obviously... I fucking missed him and I suddenly have him to myself all the time. That and we've been so incredibly busy, I haven't had any time. I had a birthday, Jen threw us a barbecue, we got to stay with friends in a cabin in Moose Pass, and then the next weekend in Cooper Landing, we went to Seward to clean out the boat, we packed up the whole apartment, cleaned and sold my car, got rid of the furniture, scrubbed everything, made endless trips to the post office, the bank, Salvation Army, the dump, and on and on, and I still have shit to do. Currently, we're in Seward again to put the sails back on the boat, and if the weather is nice, to go take a farewell voyage out of Resurrection Bay, into the actual Pacific Ocean, before it goes up for sale.

After that, we'll either go, or we won't. His particular career field is very much one that makes plans difficult to impossible to formulate.

Tuesday morning, I thought we were going to Jersey for the summer. I was looking around at everything cool you can get to from there. Washington D.C., the Smithsonian, the Air and Space Museum, New York City, The Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Baltimore, Boston, etc. I was planning to sell my ticket to Sasquatch, since I'd be on the opposite coast.

Then, he got a call about a job in Alabama that all the rest of the last crew he really liked will be on. So... I was bumming about being too far away to go see all the previously mentioned stuff, and trying to wrap my head around a summer in the deep south. It has it's romantic aspects. New Orleans would be less than 6 hours away, and the town that I presume Lauren is going to be in later this summer would be more like 3 or 4. The Gulf of Mexico is pretty awesome (some of it), and anything within driving distance of a beach can't be so bad. I was glad I'd not gotten rid of all my shorts.

Then, Wednesday morning, he got a call about a short job starting almost immediately, that will be somewhere in the Bay Area in California. And HOORAY!!! I can drive to the Gorge from there, if I want, or I can hop a cheap flight and use my ticket to Sasquatch after all! I will be directly south of Oregon, which is where Wren is moving next week! I love Northern California. I've always wanted to go back and see the Redwoods again. And we could check out Tahoe, go to Yosemite, or over to Vegas to go to a UFC! I got really excited about that prospect.

Until this morning, when he got a call about a job in Pennsylvania that would be with a company he really likes, and that he could have for sure, right now, if he wanted it. So I was back to planning for the Northeast again, and bummed that Bay Area was looking less likely.

And then... he got a call from the same guy, saying that the Project Manager didn't want to pay for a plane ticket to bring Josh all the way from Alaska. Which is ridiculous, because an extra two or three hundred dollars on a multi-million dollar project is obviously a drop in the bucket, but whatever. The guy apparently wants bodies, and not brains.

This is how it's been going. Josh is friendly, he's sharp, he's an incredibly hard worker, is always in good spirits, and everyone wants to hire him at once. What this means for me is... that I have no fucking idea where I'm going, or when, and everytime I think I know, something else comes up. Right now, we could go to Bama in mid-June, Bay Area on Monday, or Jersey June 1st, or somewhere else we haven't heard about yet, which seems equally likely. I have decided to give up on planning until we're on a plane.

Now that we're done moving, I hope to be back on the internet more often. We spent the drive down here, taking photos of Alaska turning green, and the shiny white ice still left atop the mountains in Turnagain Pass, and coming up with photo captions for each so that I can paste them here, and turn this blog from one about nothing, anything, and everything, into a blog that is... sometimes about our travels. Cheers, my loves and friends.

Knowing how much greener than this it's going to get here very soon, is sure going to make it hard to leave my home.

Glossy ice on top of Turnagain Pass

My favorite little harbor :)