Thelma and Louise Redux

My old friend Jean, a widow, from my bridge group and I have birthdays the same week in June. We also have limited opportunities to travel. So, when our bridge group met in May and everyone else was talking travel plans, we decided we needed to make some plans of our own.
She had never been to the mountains and I've always wanted to go to Yellowstone, so we decided that we would devise a route that would take us to Colorado Springs, Jackson Hole and on to Mount Rushmore and back to Texas by way of the middle of the nation.
We left on June 14 and didn't get back until the 26th. It was an arduous journey of close to 4,000 miles. That's a lot of gasoline, cheap hotel rooms, and switching butt cheeks.
I'm amazed by how much I feel that I learned on this trip, beginning with simple geography. I have trouble remembering which square state is which. It was pretty impressive to see how much agriculture and commerce appear to be going on. I know that the economy is not great, but the hotels were full, the fields were green, the train cars were loaded. It made me feel encouraged.
Did I mention the scenery? Wowee, wow, wow as the Grand would say. The Tetons were magnificent. The aftermath of forest fires in Yellowstone really made an impression. Seeing snow on the ground a couple of feet deep in late June...unimaginable to a girl used to summers in the hubs of hell. No one ever told me about the Badlands of South Dakota. I've never seen anything so awe inspiring. To think that it was once the bottom of an ancient sea.
Jean and I made acceptable travel companions. We agreed on when and what to eat. We were pretty considerate of each other. We're enough alike that we didn't have one saying bungee jump and the other wanting to tour a museum.
We did have our tense moments, someone is always bound to do something insulting, but we resolved the issues and made it home friendship in tact.
Last stop on the trip was in Dallas to see my kids for a few minutes. I bought Sloan a pair of red cowgirl boots which she promptly put on although she was wearing her favorite "princess" skirt and some bracelets. She then added the park ranger hat from the gift shop and Mt. Rushmore, and the ensemble was complete.
There is truly no place like home. No matter how wonderful travelling may be, and no matter how hot and humid the weather here, it is good to sleep in your own bed and especially to make your own coffee.

Meanwhile Back in the Gulf...

There is a picture of a sign on Facebook this morning that someone took at a Big Polluter station. It ironically says that customers are responsible for their own spills. I noticed that one of the commentors was hot that Obama hasn't gotten this leak stopped and the spill cleaned up. I promise you on most days this individual is ranting that government is too big and Obama, the socialist tyrant, is trying to take over the world, and thinks he is the Second Coming.
That group seems to be completely unaware that the deregulation of the oil industry and the cozy relationships between big oil and the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy developed BEFORE Barack Obama was the President.
No matter what the hell happened here or how long it's going to take to solve the problem, Barack Obama didn't bring this about, and I'm pretty sure that his Harvard law degree doesn't equip him to figure out what a whole hell of a lot of petroleum engineers don't seem to be able to design.
Wake up America! This is another prime example of what happens when we forfeit government by the people, for the people for corporatism. We've been so busy social networking and waiting for the newest Iphone to come out that we haven't noticed that our lawmakers are a wholly owned subsidiary of the largest corporations in the world.
BP like all the other corporate giants has used part of its record profits to make sure that the Congress and the bureaucracy make the rules in their favor. Then they dribble out some dividends to make the part of the population that can afford to invest happy. The rest of us are just along for the ride, and we're only now beginning to notice that their scheme doesn't really call for a middle class. They don't need skilled workers, those jobs can more cheaply be done overseas. They don't need public schools, you can't do things their way if the people are informed and educated. They've encouraged the belief that Americans are too good to pick their own fruit, mow their own lawns and build their own houses. Besides undocumented labor is better for the bottom line; well corporate bottom lines. It turns out that illegal workers are bankrupting state budgets with educating their children and providing for their healthcare.
Meanwhile back in the Gulf, millions of barrels of oil are spewing into the ocean's currents , eventually poisoning the food chain, suffocating the environment, and killing more of the economy by eliminating jobs for fishermen and those who depend on tourism.
Yes, it's imperative that someone stop this leaking. Someone has to pay. Someone has to figure it all out and make it better. But America we have to wake up and stop making government our enemy. We have to stop listening to the voices that tell us we can have something for nothing and that government is too big. We have to have government to provide order and security. We have to pay for what we receive from government.
If our republic is going to survive, we have to respect the notion that there is a common good, and that corporate greed and corrupt lawmakers operating in their own interests and not for the good of their customers and contituents, has to stop.
This oil spill should be a lesson for all of us. People died and the environment is threatened because we aren't willing to alter our energy position, because corporations cannot stop piling up profits, because our public policy makers are putting their own interests first.
It doesn't have to be this way, but ordinary Americans are going to have to pay attention.