The fence is gone 
They say it was barbed wire
 
They barracks are gone 
They called them chicken coops 

The towers are gone 
They say they were wood 

The guards are gone 
They say they carried carbines 

The prisoners are gone 
But the ghosts remain

If you stand at the edge of the compound 
You can almost see the them lining up at the mess hall 

If you listen closely 
You can hear the voices 

English over here 
Japanese over there 

The wind whispers of times forgotten
Forgotten to hide the shame 

Now in 2017 I am standing at the edge of a cotton field where row on row of barracks once marched across the muddy land, home to 8400 Japanese Americans. The ghosts still linger. Each family known by a number that replaced their name. Another step to invisibility. This camp is in Rohwer, Arkansas far from much of anything but importantly on a rail line to facilitate the transport of prisoners.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal and incarceration of 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent (about 70% native born Americans) to camps in California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.

The Supreme Court upheld the action in Korematsu v. United States.  In a 6–3 decision, the Court sided with the government, ruling that the exclusion order was constitutional. Six of eight Roosevelt appointees sided with Roosevelt. The lone Republican appointee, Owen Roberts, dissented. The opinion, written by Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, held that the need to protect against espionage outweighed the rights of Americans of Japanese descent. During the case, Solicitor General Charles Fahy is alleged to have suppressed evidence that questioned the need for removal. To this day, the Supreme Court has not overruled its decision.  Since this stands as the law of the land it could offer precedence to the incarceration of Hispanics, Muslims, or other targeted groups.

From the vantage point of 75 years later it is easy to vilify those who advocated and implemented the internment program. It is difficult to put ourselves in that time and place. Perhaps the closest we can get is to recall the aftermath of 9/11, the fear, the anger and even the desire for revenge. The attack on Pearl Harbor understandablely brought those emotions and more. In the book In Defense of Internment, Michelle Malkin argues that the internment was appropriate and just. Unfortunately rather than present an historical analysis based on verified evidence the book is mostly a polemic focused on discrediting opponents.

The book does reproduce important original documents including Japanese diplomatic communications and US intelligence reports. Perusing these documents reveals a couple of key patterns. First, while the Japanese government did try to establish a spy network in the US they had little success. Support among people of Japanese heritage was virtually nonexistent. Second, the US intelligence assessments show little evidence of support and indicated that internment was probably not needed. In fact a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence stated that there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies or sending signals to enemy submarines.  Its is worth noting that not a single instance of espionage or sabotage was ever prosecuted or proved among the 120,000 internees.

The real driver for internment was the long standing racism against people of Japanese background. Historian Nikki Nojima Louis paints a picture of the racial environment on the West coast through newspaper headlines and stories, oral histories and other documentation. Political leaders and leading newspapers in the West had been calling for the expulsion of Japanese at least since the beginning of the 1900's. In1923 the state of Washington passed a law that effectively prohibited native born Japanese Americans from owning property. Japanese immigrants had already been prohibited from owning property and were also prohibited from becoming citizens.  This law was modeled on the slightly less restrictive California Alien Land Law of 1920 targeting Japanese farmers who owned or leased land.

When the Rohwer camp was closed after the war, everything was torn down - the barracks, the mess hall, the guard towers even the barbed wire fence. It was as if the shame was already so clear that the stain needed to be eradicated. Only the land remained. Land that the prisoners had transformed from worthless waste to valued crop land.  Today that land grows cotton and rice and corn.
​
In 1945 the residents erected two large concrete monuments in the Rohwer Memorial Cemetery. The first was decorated with floral patterns and artwork symbolic to both Japanese and American cultures.  This monument was dedicated to all those who died while interned at the relocation center.  The second monument commemorates the young men from the Rohwer Relocation Center who fought and lost their lives while serving in the U.S. Army’s 100th Battalion and 442nd Combat Team.  The juxtaposition of these two monuments speaks louder than words.
 
To this day the 442nd Regiment of Japanese American soldiers is the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in American military history. The 4,000 men who initially made up the unit in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 2.5 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, earning 9,486 Purple Hearts.
 
Just as black soldiers fought for their country only to return and be denied basic civil and political rights, returning Japanese were targets of racial slurs, discrimination and vigilante violence. 
 
And so the ghosts remain
 
The ghosts of our past
 
Too easily forgotten or ignored
 
But if we fail to heed them
 
They may be the ghosts of our future
 
 
​

 
Sometimes you are just having a bad day; things are not going your way, people are unkind.  You are feeling like a Gloomy Gus and you just want to go eat worms.  It can be hard to shake these moods to return to that happy upbeat person trapped inside.  I've been there and am ready to share a couple of techniques that I find helpful and you may as well.
 
Ice Cream.  Yes, ice cream can give you at least temporary respite from the troubles of the world.  To get maximum benefit you need to hold the ice cream in your mouth and let that creamy sweetness slowly melt on your tongue.  This allows the healing vapors to directly ascend to your brain, bringing immediate relief.  Ice cream also releases seretonin, the pleasure chemical, giving you a sense of well being and happiness.  But there is more.  Ice cream has been scientifically shown to make you smarter.  Of course the very fact you are eating ice cream proves you are smart, but a Japanese scientist demonstrated that people who ate ice cream for breakfast did significantly better on intelligence tests.  Ice cream for breakfast! Did you get that?  It doesn't get much better than that.
 
Now, as effective as ice cream can be sometimes it is not enough.  Sometimes you need something more, the touch of human kindness.  Where can you find that any day of the week?  A car dealer.  I know what you are thinking - a car dealer?  That is where all those nasty, pushy salespeople who haggle price endlessly and yell or cry if you won't buy their car can be found.  That was then; this is now.  Somewhere along the way car dealers had an epiphany.  They all (well, most) found religion or ate too much ice cream and now they are warm and welcoming and wonderful.
 
I was recently been in a bad moody (sorry if it was obvious) and even ice cream didn't snap me out of it so I stopped in at my local new car dealership.  A young woman greeted me with a broad smile and a warm handshake.  She offered me coffee and a comfortable chair. She inquired how my day was going, how I was doing.  I confessed that things were not good; it had been a day.  She was most solicitous and asked how she might help.  A convertible, I replied, I might need a convertible. 
 
People who drive convertibles with the tops down always look like they are having fun, They are carefree, laughing and happy.  Oh, and the sun is always shinning. A note of caution, people in convertibles with the top up are trapped and miserable, hunched over the wheel wanting to burst out through the canvas covering.  Nothing says happy like a top down drive with car songs blasting from the radio.
 
 At the risk of sounding like the old curmudgeon that I am, I must say that young people today don't know diddly about car songs and probably don't even know what diddly means.  If I may elucidate, car songs are songs about cars.  Often they include girls, which is OK, and occasionally surfing.  Surfing songs are only legally permissible outside of California on perfect sunny days in a convertible with the top down.  Even then don't over do it.  When you hear the music coming from young peoples' cars it is often rap or hip hop or worse, pabulum pop or what masquerades as country these days.  Most of today's country music would have Willie turning over in his grave if he was dead,  which he is not thanks to all the pot he smoked.  He may not know where he is or who he is but he's still on the road. 
 
Car songs mean the Beach Boys "Little Deuce Coupe" or "409" (She's real fine my 409, She's real fine my 409, Giddy up giddy up giddy up 409).  Wow, they just don't write lyrics like that anymore!  And lets not forget the quintessential car song "Hot Rod Lincoln" "Son, you're gonna' drive me to drinkin' / If you don't stop drivin' that Hot Rod Lincoln." That's a car song.
 
But I digress.  The sales rep and I walked out to the lot.  Over in the far corner was a 2017 124 Spider convertible; a red convertible.  As we put the top down the sun came out right on cue.  She handed me the keys; my mood brightened.  We hit the street driving north to the entrance to the interstate.  The ramp is a nice tight right hand sweeper.  I settled into a line, punched it, hit the apex and as we approached the driving lane I had to slow down to merge with traffic.  A smile crossed my face.
 
Back at the dealer I thanked the saleswoman for the drive but confessed I didn't intend to buy the car.  "I know," she said.  We both smiled.  It was going to be a good day.
​

​The cold gray concrete column rises from the promontory, standing like a sentinel, a reminder of our past, a warning about the future. It is a testament to truth, in a place that bares your soul; where you can not lie to yourself.
It commemorates the Great War. It has been a hundred years since the war to end all wars and in that time not a single day has passed when war has not raged on. Perhaps that is why this memorial is not festooned in red, white and blue - just a gray obelisk such that we might consider our actions in the cold, clear morning light rather in the intemperate world of shadows.  It reminds us that words are all too easy and mask the reality of the fear, the hate, the dying.  The black and white that once seemed clear bleeds away into the unending gray.
If we allow it to give us pause, to ignore the bravado, it might serve as a guide helping us consider the true costs of war: the maimed, the displaced, the orphaned, the grieving survivors; those endless fields of graves growing only headstones and hatred. That tower of concrete might bring us to consider another way, a way not predicated on the power of guns and bombs, not dependent on destroying those who are different, those we don't understand.
The wind blows cold across the dead winter grass. The concrete glowers even in the February sun. The wind may blow good or ill;  we may continue down the same old road or we can carve a new path. Look up, consider the lessons this place has for us before you decide.

Part III - Determining a Winner
 
The founders aversion to democratic elections resulted in some interesting electoral structures.  For example the Constitution specified that Senators would be elected by state legislatures rather than direct election.  This proved convenient in many ways.  For example when New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912 Albert Fall famously walked around the New Mexico legislature handing out packets of money just before the vote which made him one the first two New Mexico US Senators.  This practice was common in many states where candidates found it so much simpler than campaigning. It took 125 years before this process was changed via the 17th amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1913.
 
One of the most idiosyncratic institutions devised by the framers of the constitution was the Electoral College formulated at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 by the Committee on Postponed Parts (now there is a committee that would fit right in today).
 
What the founders really wanted was for the "people" or at least those they saw fit to enfranchise, to elect individuals such as themselves who would in turn select a president.  They meant Electors who were educated, rich property owners, not subject to the emotions or hysteria of the mob, , what today we would call the elite and were then often referred to as the ruling class. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, thought that “the people could not be trusted to intelligently rule themselves” so it should come as no surprise the founders thought that a ruling class should be in control. The Electoral College was the mechanism by which they sought to accomplish that.
 
The other critical issue that made the direct election of the president anathema was one seldom discussed or even noted - slavery.  When Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president, the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.”  What he meant was that since slaves could not vote the South would have a much smaller voting population if direct election was in effect.  Therefore the South would likely be out voted by the North.  The Electoral College would level the playing field since the number of electors a state had was based on the state's total white population plus three fifths of the number of slaves.  This was no small matter as 40% of the population of Virginia were slaves; in South Carolina it was 54% in 1780 rising to over 60% later.  The electoral college system proved very effective, with southerners Washington, Jefferson and Monroe all elected president.
 
The "people", being the ungrateful wretches that we are, never followed the founders script very well and the Electoral College now votes based on the rules in place for each state.  Because most state have winner-take-all rules, presidential candidates have no reason to pay much attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion. In 2012 two-thirds of general-election campaign events (176 of 253) were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa). Thirty-eight states were ignored.
 
So the lasting remnant of this odd system is that often states with small populations have a disproportional  influence and a few swing states have an outsized influence on the election and so get the lions share of the campaign focus and money. The most obvious effect is that it is possible for a president to be elected via the Electoral College while not receiving a majority of the popular vote.  While we used to think such an occurrence was a remnant of the past we have now had this happen twice in the current century - not a recipe for legitimacy or for unifying the country.
 
So should the Electoral College be eliminated?  Well if you are in a swing state why would you want to give up the power that comes with the status quo? These "battleground” states receive 7% more federal grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.
 
Since the Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution it would take a constitutional amendment to change it, meaning that members of Congress from at least some of the states that might be disadvantaged by direct election by popular vote would need to support it and two thirds of the states would need to ratify it.  Not easily done.
 
There is a creative alternative that does not require a constitutional amendment to achieve the same effect.  The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president, and it will come into effect only when it will guarantee that outcome. For that to occur the legislation must be passed by states which together have a total electoral vote of at least 270, enough to elect a president.   As of 2016, it has been adopted by ten states and the District of Columbia. Together, they have 165 electoral votes, which is 30.7% of the total Electoral College and 61.1% of the votes needed to give the compact legal force.
 
Conclusion
 
Thomas Jefferson, paraphrasing Joseph de Maistre, said that  "The government you elect is the government you deserve".  That seems too simplistic.  The jury is still out on whether a large group of people can govern themselves effectively and fairly over a long period of time.  The Founders were clearly skeptical of the American people's ability to do just that.
 
Government is people acting through a set of institutions and processes that they devise and continue to change, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Ben Franklin said that the government crafted at the constitutional convention was a republic "if you can keep it."  Franklin may have been a bit self serving in that remark because our ability to keep the republic is directly related to the mechanisms that he and his fellow framers built into the constitution. If the republic is going to continue we need to be willing and able to consider those processes and improve them where necessary and possible.  That can only happen, be accepted, and be seen as legitimate if the broadest spectrum of the citizenry are engaged and participate.  And that struggle continues.
 
What changes to the electoral process would you support or advocate?  Consider some options:
Candidate Selection:

• Hold a national primary to select the presidential candidates
• Provide free time to candidates on the public broadcast licensed spectrum to reduce the advantage of large contributions (primary and general election)
• Allow all eligible voters to vote in all primaries
• Determined the date that states hold primaries by lottery to eliminate the undue influence of states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.

 
Voting:

• Have "designated" voters determined by a lottery that selects a representative sample of people from each state who will be required to vote - in effect a representative voting system analogous to our representative government - eliminating the need for most people to vote.
• Provide a financial incentive to vote
• Restrict voting to people who pay income taxes of at least $10,000 per year
• Allow corporations to vote since they are legally people

 
Determining a Winner:

• Pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact 
• Award electoral college delegates in each state proportionately based on the proportion of popular votes received.

 
I look forward to your suggestions and comments.
​

Part II -Voting
 
One fact about voting that we hear about is that only about 50% of eligible voters actually vote.  That number is actually worse if you consider that for non-presidential elections and local elections the turnout is usually much lower.  In addition, many people are not eligible to vote.  Many states disenfranchise people who have been convicted of certain classes of crimes and voter suppression efforts have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of people.
 
But even among people who can vote the majority often fail to do so.  There are many explanations for this, from people being too busy or not being interested in politics, to the inconvenience of the process (election day is a work day, many states do not allow early voting etc).  This year in particular gave credence to the old adage that if god had wanted us to vote she would have given us candidates.
 
What is hard to fathom is that so many people fought and in some cases died to gain the right to vote - women, Blacks, people who did not own property, Irish, Italians, and Jews among others.  This began at the very start of the Republic, well, really before the Republic started.  Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband who was attending the constitutional convention and admonished him to  “remember the ladies.”  Apparently he forgot because women would fight for over 100 years to gain suffrage.
 
There are those who advocate for interpreting the Constitution based on the original intent of the founders.  Perhaps they do not realize that in the first presidential elections only about 6% of the population was eligible to vote - or perhaps they understand that perfectly and would like to return to the days when voting was limited to white males of property and means.  After all, the founders were no fans of democracy.  James Madison expressed a widely held belief among the founders when he said "democracy was too precious to waste on the common man."
 
Most were petrified of "democracy" where the "great unwashed" i.e. people without education, wealth or proper dispositions (e.g. women) would select office holders.  Perhaps that is why the rate of desertion among soldiers in the American Revolution (those sunshine patriots) was so high.  Those doing the fighting were not expected to have a say in the governance of the new Republic.  Interestingly, after fighting the War of Independence the commitment to voting was almost non-existent.  Although just 6% of the population were eligible to vote in the first presidential election only 38,818 people out of a population of about 3 million (2.4 million free) actually voted  for a voting percentage of about 21%. So George Washington was elected with only 1.3% of the population voting - quite the mandate!.  But it got worse.  Two years later only 13,332 people voted out of population then estimated at 3.9 million or less than 0.5%.  Democracy got off to a slow start.
 
So who should be allowed to vote and what is the best process to select a president? It is tempting to say that everyone should be allowed, perhaps required, to vote but this not only goes against our entire history as a nation but there does not seem to be a practical way to make it happen especially when it is in so many groups’ vested interest to reduce the voters in opposing groups.  Universal suffrage may be an American ideal that people across a broad spectrum of the political landscape espouse but it has never been achieved and seems unlikely to be in the future.
 
Many techniques have been tried or suggested - "motor-voter" (including voter registration with motor vehicle registration), automatic registration, same day registration and innumerable get out the vote campaigns.  So far none seem to have had a substantial or lasting effect on voting participation.
 
Some political scientists have suggested that voting should be restricted to those who have at least a baseline knowledge of government, politics, policy and candidates.  Or if not restricted that those who are more knowledgeable should be given more votes or have their votes count more.  This has been tried with voter literacy tests.  While we usually think of those tests as Jim Crow tools to stop African-Americans from voting they actually began in Connecticut in 1855 to disenfranchise immigrants.  New York City did much the same in the 1920s and similar tests were used by many states in the north and the south.  Literacy tests were not banned by Congress until 1975. 
 
What limits on voting are acceptable?  If not knowledge or literacy as thresholds, what about people with dementia, cognitive impairment or developmental disabilities?  One concern has been that someone is likely to influence or manipulate those with impairments.  But aren’t the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaign advertising and activities meant to influence and manipulate as many of us as possible?  Should such activities be prohibited?
 
While today people are no longer technically prohibited from voting based on race, sex, religion or ethnicity, voter exclusion is more subtle and tactical.  Polling places are moved to inconvenient locations, are reduced in number to create long waits, and names are purged from voter rolls. People who have committed crimes and "paid their debt to society" are excluded from voting in many states.  This seems ironic since one might suggest that former criminals are uniquely qualified to judge many of our politicians. 
 
I'll leave it there until we wrap up next week with Part III- Determining a Winner.
​

​The Electoral Process
 
Perhaps we are far enough removed from the recent election to consider the efficacy of the institutional mechanisms and processes involved in selecting a president. 
 
The 2016 presidential election was a virtual case study in the flaws of the US constitutional democracy.  The process started with the extra-constitutional nominating process of the main political parties.  The Republicans began promisingly with a large field of candidates and an open primary process.  The debates, primaries and campaigns immediately devolved into a spectacle that made pro wrestling look good and seemed to virtually preclude a real discussion of the issues facing the country.  As in an unsupervised school yard, the meanest, most foul mouthed bully emerged triumphant. 
 
The Democrats took the opposite approach blocking potential rivals to anoint the current member of the Clinton "royal family" just as a certain faction of the Republicans had hoped to continue the Bush dynasty with Jeb.  Just as Jeb was derailed, Clinton also was nearly upset by an irascible 75 year old socialist who wasn't even a Democrat.  The process resulted in the two most disliked candidates ever to run for the presidency.  Ultimately the  candidate receiving the most votes lost the election complements of the founders' Electoral College mechanism.
 
Of course as we despair at this spectacle  it is useful to remember Churchill's famous remark about democracy as "the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  While that may be true it still begs the question is this the best we can do?  Does the system need improvement and what would that be? 
 
There are three essential elements of the process that deserve consideration: the selection of candidates; the process of voting ; and process by which a winner is determined.  These elements will be considered in a series of 3 separate blog postings. The first one is presented here. 
 
Part I -Candidate Selection
 
Key institutions in presidential elections are the political parties and their processes for selecting the candidates for the general election.  They are critically important because for all practical purposes they provide the general population with only two viable choices for the presidency.  From over 150 million natural born Americans over age thirty-five who are eligible to run for president voters are given a choice of just two.  Despite this, political parties, primaries, nominating conventions, delegates and super-delegates do not appear in the constitution. 
Not only is the entire process extra-constitutional the very idea was anathema to most of the founding fathers. John Adams put it this way:  "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
Washigton warned repeatedly about the negative impact of political parties and factions including in his Farwell Address: "Let me … warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party."


This was all to no avail because factions and the early incarnations of politcical parties actually started before the Constitution was ratified (the Federalist papers were basically the organ of a particular faction) and after the consensus in the selection of Washington as the first president future contests were racous affairs of competeing factions and parties.
It is easy to think that the way the parties select their candidates today is the way it has always been done but for both parties the current system is relatively recent and subject to change.  While virtually every state held a primary election in 2016 as recently as 1968 Hubert Humphery secured the Democratic nomination without ever competing in a single primary.  This was still the era of authoritarian machine politics as embodied in Chicago's Mayor Daley who controlled the city process and determined the candidates.
Should modifications be considered, such as a national primary, proportional allocation of delagates or rank order voting?  Would any of these approaches significantly improve the selection process?  Why would either of the major parties consider such changes?
Of course the elephant in the room not yet mentioned is money.  Particularly since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision there has been renewed debate about the role of money in elections and campaign finance reform.  But Citizens United and the financing mechanisms are only different from where we began in form, not substance.  We like to think that the USA was created by revolution - that noble hard working Americans rose up to throw off tyranical British rule.  But it wasn't really a revolution, rather it was the displacing of one set of elites with another.  The American "revolutionaries" were wealthy, landed gentry who wanted to run things their way rather than the way the Britsh elites wanted it. The French had a real revoluntion when they beheaded the elites and the rabble were in control.  That was not what the leaders of the American independence movement had in mind.
 
In fact the legal historian Michael Klarman argues that "the Constitution is undemocratic because it was designed to protect wealthy merchants and landowners from the redistributive tendencies of popular government."  The title of Klarman's book says it all: Framers' Coup.
 
Should political parties operate outside the Constitution, often beyond any law or regulation?  Should the parties decide on their own how presidential debates should be structured, who is allowed to participate and even what questions can be asked?  Should political money be unlimited and often anonymous?  If not, who should regulate the process and the parties?  Remember when the League of Women Voters used to organize the debates?  They quit because they thought the process had become too tainted. And while it may be bad now it was probably worse in the past and it is possible to make it worse again.
 
So give that some thought before we discuss the voting process in Part II in about a week.

​The Sad Christmas Tree
It was a sad little tree with a broken little star hanging from the crown.  It was leaning against a garbage can at the curb.  Kirby drove past it, stopped, debated for a minute then backed up and picked the sad little tree up and placed it in the back of his pickup truck.  He nestled it behind the blown tire and the bag of half rotten cabbage that he had picked from the field on his way home.  He drove on.
 
Carlos was a sad little boy.  At six years of age already aware that his family was poor and did not belong with most of the families in the area.  He already knew that he was not one of us.  He was one of them.  He knew that his father worked six sometimes seven days a week in the fields planting crops, weeding and cultivating, running the irrigation system, doing all the things that make food grow and then working to harvest the crops and prepare them for shipment.  With all that work he did not make enough money to buy the food he grew to feed his family.  To buy the food that Kirby grew, Carlos’s mother, Carla, had to sign up for food stamps.  Carla use to clean house for some of the families that owned the fields where Kirby worked.  When one of the families got scared that they might get in trouble for paying Carla without reporting it they stopped having her clean their house and they told all the other families and they all stopped hiring Carla as well.  So Carla spent her days tending a little vegetable garden and looking for work that was close enough to walk to.  Carlos knew all this.  He was wise beyond his years.
 
Carlos did not smile or laugh very often.  There was not much reason for him to be happy.  When Kirby drove up to their little trailer and took the sad little tree out of the truck Carlos just stood and stared.  Then a smile spread across his face as big as the New Mexican sky and as bright as the New Mexican sun.  He never expected they would have a Christmas tree.  He knew they could not afford Christmas presents.  He ran to his father and together they brought the sad little tree into the sad little living room.  Kirby plugged in the lights that were still attached to the tree and every light lite up like daybreak.  Kirby and Carla straightened the plastic branches and fluffed out the drooping needles.  Kirby tied the broken star so that it mostly sat on the crown of the tree.  When they turned all the lights in the house off the tree radiated a magical warmth from the corner of their home.  Carlos sat and starred for hours refusing to come and eat dinner.  His parents let Carlos stay up way past his bedtime and the whole time he just sat and stared at the tree as if in a trance.
 
After a while Carlos did not know if he was really seeing the lights of the little Christmas tree of if he was dreaming.  Gradually he realized that the wind did not blow through the house where the siding was missing and the heat worked all the time and kept the house cozy and warm and the broken window was not patched with duct tape. He knew he was not in the workers rental trailer so he was sure he was dreaming. 
 
In his dream the whole house was decorated with colored lights and ribbons and even flowers. His father did not look tired because he only had to work five days a week and he was paid enough to live on.  On his father’s feet were a good pair of brand new boots.  Then Carlos saw his mother in a new pretty blouse standing in the kitchen cooking dinner.  She looked so happy because she had found a good job and they had plenty of good food for her to cook.
 
The dream faded and Carlos saw the light from the sad little tree still glowing in the corner greeting the Christmas dawn.  Carlos was wrapped in a blanket and had spent the night sleeping in his father’s arms.  Beside his father’s chair Carlos saw his mother asleep on the old worn couch.  But Carlos felt warm in a way that the heater never made him feel.
 
The little tree no longer looked sad.  The little boy no longer looked sad.
 
Tomorrow he thought, tomorrow we will start again.  It can be better; I know that it can be better.

American Mosaic

Driving the heartland, all rust and dust. The cities look worn and tired. Streets broken crumbling under the relentless onslaught of tires. The people are a clichéd rainbow race energized and in a hurry, cars a crush on the highway.  But sitting in the sun on a warm November afternoon at an ice cream shop everyone is relaxed and friendly
.
Off the interstate down two lane country roads the fields stretch flat and fallow, all gray above shades of brown below. The people are mostly white and overweight moving slowly even in the crisp autumn air. This is the domain of the angry white men. Each one I meet is friendly and polite. The land of white bread and pie, pickups with dogs in the back.
Each a snapshot, each a slice of America, a piece of the mosaic, gather enough and step back to see the bigger picture. We do that with our cross country drives. In the last fourteen years we have done some variation of this 27 times. Patterns emerge of both place and time from following all those miles of asphalt and white lines. Most of those miles are on interstates although we try to get off the beaten track in places small and large. Interstates are boring but fast. They are good economic and social indicators. The arteries of the nation carrying goods and people, they ebb and flow, they pulse with cars and trucks pumped from an unseen heart.

The traffic on the interstate Is a good gauge of the economy. In 2003 in that nervous gap between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, traffic was light and as gas prices soared stayed that way. Subsequently traffic increased as the country settled into the new normal. With the financial meltdown in 2008 traffic plummeted, down at least 25% and tractor trailer volume down 40-50%. Fewer trucks and SUV's, more cars that took less gas. Then a steady rebound began, picking up steam each year. Now,  while some people have been left out of the recovery, on the road big rigs are nose to tail and the cars, SUV's and pickups get bigger and bigger. On the road it looks like boom times.

Interstates show you the changing economy in other ways. In West Texas you now see more windmills than oil pumps. The tractor trailers have sprouted aerodynamic appendages. Speed limits have creeped up to 80 in Texas. But most noticed is the homogenization, the corporatization. Pull off any exit and it's like groundhog day. Stamped out with a cookie cutter every stop looks the same; a MacDonald's over there, a row of gas pumps at the travel plaza with the same brands, a Subway in one corner. The restrooms are in the back so you have to walk past all the snacks, beverage coolers line one wall. You could be anywhere from Ohio to Oklahoma, Indiana to Texarkana.

Need to stay overnight? You will find the same motel brands - Holiday inn, Comfort, Red Roof and on and on. Local motels have been reduced to places that look like a drug deal could go down at any time.

Restaurants follow the trend. Fake Italian at Olive Garden, a fantasy neighborhood at Applebee's, Chilli's Mexican masquerade, even the occasional local place now acts like a chain - the scripted greeting from your server, the suggestion of an appetizer while you peruse the menu, the portion control meals, the themed décor. Corporate food from corporate farms.  The lingering flavor of fertilizer and pesticides.

Even regional language and speech are fading. Maybe it's because of TV or the increasing mobility of people. There was a time when you knew as soon as someone spoke that they were from Long Island or the South. Now, no matter where you are, most people sound vaguely Midwestern.  They are not from anywhere.

There are some distractions- local attractions still unique in time and place. We passed up the world's largest golf tee but stopped to see the nation's largest cross. The vertical column Is a gleaming white obelisk 198 feet tall, the arms stretch east and west 113 feet. It is a Christian symbol but devoid of religiosity. Maybe because Jesus is always depicted as human that you can't imagine him on a cross this big. Easier to relate to are a row of Cadillac cars buried nose down in the desert of West Texas tailfins sticking up like giant jackrabbit ears - Cadillac Ranch as it is known. Americana at its best.

For anyone who goes not believe that God is everywhere they have not driven across the country punching the seek button on their radio.  Scanning across the radio dial to nothing but static suddenly a clear masculine (it is always male) voice invites you to accept Jesus as your savior.  That same voice will follow you from Ohio to Oklahoma and beyond. There are helpful road signs on the billboards.  A recent one asked, "where will you spend eternity?"  An interesting question but given where they place these signs the answer that jumps to mind is, well, certainly not here.
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Each excursion paints a bit more of the picture and provides food for thought.  But sometimes the pieces don't quite fit together. It seems ironic that as the country becomes more regimented by corporate institutions and conduct and as so many local customs and businesses appear to be in decline that the nation is so divided politically and culturally.  Perhaps political, social, and religious differences and antagonisms are a way of rebelling against the blandness of a homogenized world.
 
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