Elaine

  She was an insider, I am an outsider. She was a liberal who identified herself as a socialist. I read National Review and think Ronald Reagan was the best president of my lifetime. She was a San Miguel county commissioner and a former Telluride mayor, I am a woodsy. Obviously, Elaine Fischer and I were not two peas in a pod. Despite our many differences we were friends. When she passed away on Memorial day I felt the loss. Judging from the turnout and emotions a saw and experienced at her memorial a few days ago, so did many of you.
  We were brought togeather nine years ago when I first rented studio space for painting at the Stronghouse on South Fir . She had a studio there for almost as long as Stronghouse had been rented by Telluride Arts to give artists a place to create. I well remember my first show there. The opening night art walk was well attended but sales were slow in coming.  Elaine had noticed a couple from Arizona who were attracted to a particular painting of mine. As I recall it was a twilight scene of a moon rise over Ajax with Telluride tucked in its valley beginning to show it's lights. More memorable than that painting was the sight of Elaine with her arm around the woman, literally dragging the couple back into the gallery after they'd left, convincing them they they needed to buy this painting, as they of course did. Salesmanship and artistic talent are not always present in the same person. Many an artist can be glad that both traits existed in her especially when that moxie was channeled in your behalf.
     Her approach to painting was a lot like her overall approach to life. In the words of Marissa Mattys at that recent memorial, she had " tenacity and focus" to an unusual degree. I often watched her paint . Her commitment was total. Her concentration was unflinching.
       A show she hung one year was made up entirely of self portraits. These were not flattering self portraits. She was exploring her subject, revealing it untainted with sentimentality or romanticism. She called the show "Vanity". The title was not fitting in my estimation. I suppose she meant it to be ironic.
      Last year's show reflected her struggle with cancer. From the cannon of great western art she chose the paintings of several woman and skilfully reproduced them then introduced an unsettling intrusion in the form of the crude ugly charactertures of the modernist painter Guston. The female figures of Delacroix, Franz Hals, Manet, and Sergeant represented life as we'd choose it. The Guston element said that nature perhaps has something else in mind.
    She didn't drive. That's different, even around here. Maybe that's a reason she stayed in Telluride after Marks ( her husband) death. This is one of the few places where cars are largely unnecessary. Maybe she stayed because this is a place where an individual can make a big difference if only they have the will. It's not surprising then that she was drawn to politics. 
   Politics is not the easiest profession. You have to have the ability to sell your ideas. You also have to be able to sell yourself. That's never easy, especially if you have the slightest ego or self-regard, something  I'm told politicians have in good supply. As far as I know she never lost an election. I do remember her worrying about losing an election even when it seemed to me that she had it in the bag. She did win pretty overwhelmingly. I don't think Elaine's strengths as a commissioner, or a mayor, or a councilmen were lost on her constituents, even to those of us of another party. She was relentless in the best sense of the term.
    When it came to her health that tenacity and focus again came into play. After her diagnosis of cancer she decided that she would do whatever it took to fight it. She would not leave it to the Doctors alone to decide what was best for her and carry it out. She informed herself on the best course of action and made damn sure they carried it out. She stopped eating and drinking most of the foods that brought her the greatest pleasure to concentrate on the foods that would help her body overcame the cancer that sought to destroy her. She wasn't about to take cancer lying down. She wouldn't go down without a fight. That was Elaine from the day I met her, and from what I hear, right up to the end. That was the Elaine we knew. That was the Elaine who touched so many of our lives  while she lived among us, some of us ,without our even knowing it. That was the Elaine who left a great big hole in our lives on Memorial day. There is no one quite like her to fill it up again.

More wealth, less satisfaction

    
     I once belonged to a millenialist religion. The second coming ,we believed ,was just around the corner and soon Christ Himself would rule on Earth. This wasn't some whacky fringe group either. We weren't looking for spaceships or comets to carry us to the promised land ,or living in an isolated desert compound purifying ourselves in preparation for the coming rapture. There was a widespread belief that the world was rotten and getting rottener. That idea is a common thread in all millennialist cults , religious and secular.  If life wasn't getting worse, if the world wasn't descending into ever greater depravity  and suffering, then why pin your hopes on its sudden culmination and speedy redemption? I had a few problems with the doctrines of that church , this was one of them. For whatever reason, I tended to think of the world as a pretty wonderful place and improving all the time. It turns out that my uninformed ,overly positive impression was right all along. I may have been naive but I wasn't deceived. 
    The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook adds further confirmation to my sunny outlook. It's his contention that life in the United States has improved tremendously over the last sixty years. It's been on the same trajectory since colonial times, with occasional hiccups here and there, but always trending upwards. The air is cleaner, rivers and streams are less polluted. The rich have become richer, but then so have every other class. Those in the middle, for instance, have experienced a doubling in income over the last sixty years in inflation adjusted dollars. Not only that but the goods and services available to them far surpass what the nineteen sixties had to offer in quality, convenience, and life enhancement. The author is amazed that the good news isn't getting out there, and so am I. It's not in the interest of politicians or the news media to broadcast it. Power for the political class depends on our believing otherwise, and that's the message the mainstream media is pleased to pass on and amplify. False narratives about the decline of the middle class are inescapable. It's not surprising that many of us believe it.
       What about income inequality? Haven't the rich seen their incomes and buying power increase far faster than the middle class? Easterbrook points out that there are two significant factors at play skewing median household income statistics that need to be taken into account. Immigration accounts for most of the income growth disparity. The United States, from around 1980 until today, has taken in over a million immigrants annually. For most of those years that's been about equal to the rest of the world's nations combined. Most of those immigrants are poor. For many of them the climb out of poverty is a slow process while coping with a strange culture and a difficult language to master. Add in the millions of immigrants who have crossed the border illegally , many of whome are largely uneducated, and you begin to see the situation more clearly.                                                     While immigration is a positive phenomenon, and one of America's greatest sources of strength, in the short term it detracts from the median wealth statistical profile. According to Easterbrook and the studies he sites ,the gap between haves and have-nots is actually shrinking, not growing, once you factor out the non-native born. Another factor is the shrinking size of the American family. While the typical household today contains about 2.6 people, twenty-five years ago the average was 4. Household income may have grown only slightly over that period ( factoring in the drag on that statistic due to high numbers of new immigrants), but remember that wealth is spread out over far fewer people per household today. Taking smaller households into account the rise in wealth per person since 1990 on average is fifty percent. 
       My former religion didn't actually teach that shrinking paychecks were a sign of the coming apocalypse. They looked for societal collapse in other forms. There was even some finger pointing at increasing prosperity as a cause of increasing sin. Here they were on to something. Prosperity is at least a mixed blessing. Even as we have gained in wealth and in other measures of a satisfying and comfortable life we've been losing ground on the happiness index. Suicides are up, drug use and alcohol addiction are rampant, more and more of us suffer bouts of depression. That is the "paradox" that appears in the title of Easterbrook's book. It explores the subject and offers solutions. 
        The question comes up, would you rather be rich or do you prefer to be happy? My answer is always, yes.
        
        

None but the most honest and wise

      No candidate for President has ever been as thoroughly vetted  as Hillary Clinton. Although her enemies have made many false claims against her and she has been the target of numerous investigations from her earliest days in the Whitehouse (as first lady) till now ,she has never been convicted or indicted for anything illegal. This is what you hear from the Clinton campaign when the question of Hillary's numerous scandals comes up. It's mostly true too, well ,apart from that false claims business. Not all the claims against her have proven false. Many have been proven true, some in the strictest " legal" sense of the term, some only true as far as one can reasonably interpret events given the facts at hand. It reminds me of a great line from one of the Adam's Family movies. Gomez  greets his brother ," Fester, you old lady killer". "Yes" a beaming Fester replies ," but never convicted".
     After so many investigations , if the best you can come up with is" but never convicted" you're not making a particularly strong endorsement. That's especially true when these probes and investigations give us a picture of someone who will stop at nothing to get her way. I admire people who are relentless, but relentnessness has a flip side too. There's relentnessness on the wrong path, and there's relentnessness driving you to the wrong means. You can have all the right goals and relentlessly still destroy everything in your path. Having a sense of right and wrong,  a moral sense, makes all the difference. Without scruples you're a danger to everyone around you, especially anyone that gets in the way. Determination alone is neither a virtue nor a vice. There's many a future suicide bomber out there who is wonderfully determined. Determination becomes a virtue only when it's tied to virtuous acts.                                                                                                                                               I refer you to Hillary's first Washington scandal, travelgate. Take a look at what she put Billy Dale through. He was fired from his job and given just minutes to clear his desk and leave the Whitehouse. He was repeatedly and exhaustively investigated by the IRS and FBI. He was brought to court on trumped up charges, defending his innocence at great expense.  His only offensive was to hold a position that Hillary wished to reward to a friend. The charges that came against him were a smokescreen to justify his firing. The first lady instigated the initial firing of Dale and his staff and the cover-up, then lied to a special prosecutor about her role. But she was never convicted. She does have the Clinton knack for getting away with anything, everything, outside the unlikely event of someone having preserved the semen stained blue dress.
        I swear I didn't start today's column with intentions of writing about Hillary Clinton. I thought I'd take a few more whacks at the Donald, maybe make the case for why we can't elect this world class buffoon. Why bother? Everyone should be able to make that case on their own by now, unless they're supporters. That bunch are unreachable. Their minds are made up. As Trump himself has said, he can shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue, and they'd still vote for him. I have no reason to doubt that.
      In 1801, second president, John Adams moved into the Whitehouse. He was the first president to live there. On his first night in that large, lonely,and as yet unfinished presidential palace, he wrote to his wife, Abigail, who was caring after their children in Quincy Massachusetts. At the close of his letter he made a now famous prayer ,or blessing on the new digs. " Before I end my letter I pray that heaven bestow the best of blessings upon this house, and all that hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men rule under this roof." he wrote. It's a wonderful sentiment. My only quibble is with the "rule" part. Presidents don't rule, they don't reign, they preside. It's hard to disagree with the rest. Those we elect to the highest office ought to be honorable, just, fair-minded, not exclusively self serving, honest, and reasonable. They ought to reflect the best our society has to offer. 
      Voting for someone just because we like their style, or what they say, or because of their party affiliation, isn't enough. We have a duty to look beyond their positions and question the carefully cultivated image they try to project. We have a duty to judge their character. 
      In the upcoming presidential election that leaves us with exactly two choices. There's none of the above, and anyone else please.

The worst form of government

Near bottom of paragraph 3 I misspelled specter. Did you get new head shot?
   DB

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: The worst form of government
From: David Brankley <kleybran@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2016, 6:12 PM
To: editor <editor@telluridedailyplanet.com>
CC:


      Everything about Donald Trump's candidacy has been surprising. Maybe it's just me. I am shocked that so many in my party ,or drawn to my party at least temporarily by this singular candidate from who knows what political netherworld, would find Trump an acceptable choice for president. Why aren't they seeing what I see? It's a good question. I find myself asking it at least once a day, but then I do think about politics way too much. I have this funny idea that understanding politics, especially the how and why of people coming to their political views tells us something significant about humanity, maybe even more than what shows we watch. Some say the two are related.
      If you're not a Republican you're probably thinking, "Of course he's popular. He speaks to people's fears and appeals to all their bassist instincts. That's exactly what your party has been about since Goldwater and Nixon." I don't think that's a fair assessment, but given Trumps success among a large portion of traditional GOP supporters there's undoubtedly some truth in it.
       In this election cycle you are either very cynical or you're not paying attention. My cynicism has been fed recently by coming across the very scholarly " Democracy for Realists" a book by social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels. They show that study after study highlights the conclusion that very little of our political thinking results from actual thought. Our opinions grow out of our affiliations rather than lead us to them. Our political opinions are largely an accident of circumstance. We use our rational minds mostly to justify these views, not so much for rearranging them, less still for originating them or changing our minds. Even worse than this finding is that the votes that really count in most national elections come from those who haven't even thought things through enough to have a cogent political opinion one way or the other. This group is unburdened by ideological considerations but surprisingly open to considerations as arbitrary and beside the point as ,for instance, the weather, or the color tie last seen on the candidate under consideration. God help us! These are the people who's spector keeps me up at night. Not only do they vote, often elections turn on their irrational impulses and proclivities .
        When it comes right down to it the state of the weather is just as good a reason for voting for or against a candidate or party as the state of the economy. Consider that there are a multitude of factors to hamper,crash, or promote an economy. There are so many, and the process is so complex ,that otherwise reasonable economists can't come to any sort of consensus. Not even Nobel prize winning economists. Like most of the rest of us they come down on ideological lines on economic questions. Little wonder that the rest of us, who haven't devoted a lifetime to studying economics, reach for any trope that's comes handy to base or justify an opinion. Nothing beats a simplistic answer, especially when it reinforces what we already believe and is accepted by those around us. Unfortunately, simplistic answers never work in economics. Maybe that's why it's called the dismal science.
         Did the Clinton tax hike of 1993 stimulate the economic growth that followed, and help lower the deficit? Well actually the economic boom of that period was largely due to the digital revolution that was making economies all around the world more productive and efficient. The reduction in the deficit ( but not the debt) was due to the stimulation of that tech boom combined with budget slashing measures taken by a largely Republican reformist minded Congress. Of course, that tax hike didn't hurt the economy as many of us feared, and it did help considerably to lower the deficit. How you view those events depends almost entirely on what side of the political fence you sit on.
       We like giving credit to our side whenever we can, and accuse the other side of only hurting the causes we care most about. Both sides, right and left, take this to extremes. So you have two opposing sides, alike in blind loyalty to the faith, determined to not give an inch. In the middle you have those who have somehow arrived at their views without the encumbrance of thought. From such strange preferences and enmitys you get modern politics, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz. As Churchill said " Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time."

Rounding for home

   There comes a time in every journey when you realize it's nearly over. Despite all appearances this isn't it. Today on the rolling steppe of the Eastern Navajo reservation in New Mexico I came over a rise and was surprised by the sudden aberration of the San Juans hovering over the Northern horizon like a brilliant cloud. Because of the lack of landmarks out here either foreground or middle- ground ,snow covered peaks ,even while still one hundred miles away or more, make a distinct impression. The impression is underlined by the realization that my home is up there. Up there is the end of this winter's cycling tour of the Western States.
     If you were to trace this ride on a map it could be confusing. Rather than straight lines and definite objectives there would be curves, loops, ellipticals and diversions. The only discernable theme would be a route that ties together most of the best desert riding the American west has to offer joined to much of the best coastal riding along the Pacific.
     Tomorrow morning I'll be in be in Farmington, noon at the latest. Once there a several day famine from WiFi will be over. I will pour over Facebook and maybe post some photos, check my email, and post this column. The desert doesn't offer a lot in the way of WiFi coverage , or even cell phone coverage. What it offers is a whole lot worth posting about. There are spectacular sunsets, and starry nights, coyote choruses, firey meteors, and overwhelming silence, nature's extravagance amid severe austerity. There are pronghorns, and javalina, ravens, and horned larks , lizards, tortoise, and roadrunners. Roadrunners are throwbacks to the age of dinosaurs. They rarely fly. They use their long legs for chasing lizards across the sand. Their motions are dinosaur-like and so is their general appearance. Unless you're a lizard that appearance is not really intimidating so most people don't make a big deal out of watching roadrunners . Replace those feathers with scales or flesh and the sight of them transports you back a hundred million years in time, an era so fitting to this scenery. Desert travel is time travel. This planet spent a tremendous amount of time doing nicely without us. It's revelatory to keep in touch with that reality. We're not that big a deal and we only just arrived. Here is where we do that.
     I've managed to gain a few extra pounds lately, not in fat or muscle, in dust. The winds have been raging in Northern New Mexico this spring, as they do every spring. What's to stop them? That's how so much New Mexico soil, and Northern Arizona dust end up on our snow most springs. Maybe their loss is our gain but I'm not so sure. I like my snow white. I like me white too, or at least tanned. Instead I've become the color of the desert that surrounds me. So are my clothes. So is my gear. We are all color coordinated at last. All the bottle showers in the world won't remove it. I can feel fresh for an hour maybe, but the dust returns. I'm sort of a magnet for dust I suppose. A real bath would be nice, or a long hot shower. Some of the state parks in Utah have showers. That's all the more reason for heading back to Utah.
   In all these years on a bike saddle I've never been blown over by wind. This spring, about three days ago, in Northern New Mexico I was able to cross that one off my list. I was on Old 66 closing in on Grants. Most of the day I'd enjoyed soul satisfying tailwind but I was making one of those curves I was talking about and now I had it against me. Against me is exactly the way to say it. This wind had it in for me. Suddenly a whirlwind grew around me. I took a glancing left then a powerful right hook that layed me out on the road before I knew what was happening. That may have been a blessing. If I tried to prevent injury I would probably caused it instead.  I was alright, just shaken and sore for a few days.
   I'm only rounding for home at this point. I'm not really headed there. It's too early in the season still. Spring arrives at different times in different places. At 9000 feet it can't be expected to arrive until some time in early May. That's when you can expect me to make the climb up the San Juans and intoTelluride. In the meantime there's more riding ahead, more curvy confusing paths to follow, ellipticals, loop-t-loops, and parabolas. More wind, more dust are in store, maybe another delightful fall, but so are moments of unusual beauty and transcendent peace. It all comes in one package.

Free to choose

   In the 18th century when British explorer Capt. James Cook discovered a spectacular chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific and named them after expedition sponsor the Earl of Sandwich, he had every reason to believe that he had just stumbled upon paradise on Earth. Sandwiche's name would live on for his culinary innovation but those islands are now called Hawaii. It was a place utterly unlike the kingdom Cook had sailed from. Although it was then the richest ,most advanced and powerful empire in the world ,it's capitol contained enormous unhealthy slums, it's countryside had numerous poor and landless. In that age of enormous economic upheaval many of its people were worse off than their serf ancestors.
    Hawaiians, on the other hand wanted for nothing. Nature provided a rich diet in fruit and seafood. Where nature left off Hawaiians supplemented its offerings with the tarro and pigs they had brought with them centuries earlier from Polynesia. Their surroundings were beautiful. The climate was ideal. 
    After initial contact Cook and the scientists on board began to reassess their first impressions .All was not well in paradise. Hawaiians were pitted in conflict with each other. The wars between and within royal households were bloody and protracted, almost genocidal. Their rulers were absolute, and rarely benign. The penalty for allowing your shadow to fall on anyone of royal blood was death. The Hawaiian word taboo applied to a vast code of conduct. The penalties for even accidental slips in decorum could entail execution or banishment. Many, even most of the strictures of taboo appear arbitrary and ridiculous to us.. In Hawaii before Cook's  discovery ,the code of taboo meant everything, and no man or woman dared disobey.
   I've often wondered how and why Hawaiians got it so wrong. They had such a good thing going for them. There was passion fruit and mahi mahi, rich volcanic soil, lush vegetation, and beautiful wahinees, hula and pig roasts on the beach. Why not concentrate on just enjoying what life had to offer? Why mess things up with spiteful warfare and so many meaningless ,wasteful, and harmful rules? With all those natural advantages why discard the opportunity to be the happiest ,freest people on Earth?  I'm not sure I want an answer to those questions. I'm afraid it may be that freedom is not entirely compatible with human nature .Freedom is a burden few of us wish to bare. Hawaii is not an outlier or an anomaly, it's just an extreme example of the problem with human nature.
     In a library a few days ago I'd picked up an article to read about a nine year old super athlete.  Milla Bizzotto had taken up exercise to increase strength when bullies at school were making life difficult. She loved working out .Recently she won top place in her age group in a national test of strength in the form of a grueling obstacle course based on Navy Seals training.  She had this to say," I don't want to play video games. I don't want to Hoverboard. I don't want to do things to make life easier. I want to be comfortable being uncomfortable." . She's my hero. At nine she's already wiser than 99 point something of all the adults I've ever met. Putting the article down I almost shouted her words to the boys playing animated games on the library computers nearby. I managed to restrain the impulse. All the boys looked to me to prefer playing computer games to anything requiring actual physical effort. All were overweight. One was obese. 
   Freedom begins with the liberty to act for ourselves, but once that is possible the extent of our actual freedom depends on what we do with that liberty. Mostly it's squandered. Making bad choices and acting on them, or failing to act deepens our loss of a sense of accountability .Choosing not to grow is choosing to loose ground to our own worst instincts .When we face the results of our own poor decisions, human nature has us looking for external causes to our problems rather than facing our own deficiencies head on. There will always be others to channel our  disfatifications to feed their insatiable need for power. Take a look at the candidates in this election season.
     On a positive note I try to remember that the loss of freedom is not inevitable. When all around you are heading down the wrong path you are free to step aside and set your our own agenda. There's nothing stopping you . Choose freedom, accept accountability over comfort even when it runs counter to popular opinion, respectability, or convenience. It matters.

Special Agent
     Laundry day in Hawthorne Nevada. I didn't get much wrong apart from loading my wash plus soap into the dryer instead of the washer before inserting my quarters and turning on the machine, then waiting thirty minutes for it to thoroughly dry my already dry, but still unwashed clothes. I was just pulling them out when another customer walked in to whome I exclaimed, " Wow, this washer actually dries your clothes too." He noticed my mistake about half a moment before it finally dawned on me. He gave me a look that said, how stupid can you get? Before he could press that point home the camp manager ( this was at the Good Sam campground where I'd stopped to buy a shower and inspired by my new found cleanliness was following that up with some laundry) stopped in to say hello to the man who had just arrived. He asked him if he had caucused, they knew each other, and the Nevada caucuses of the 2016 presidential race had just occurred. Yes , he answered, and he'd "voted for the idiot". There was no question who he was referring to. He meant Trump. He also seemed very proud to have promoted the candidate that he considered an idiot. Trump had won the Nevada caucus. He was winning most of them. The other candidates were helpless to stop him, and unable to explain or understand his broad appeal inside, much less outside the Republican party.
    Apart from the strangers odd way of characterizing his choice for president, and a genius for discriminating between washers and dryers far exceedingly my own, there was nothing about him that struck you as impressive. He looked just like any other old coot living out in the desert. Turns out ,as we talked, and he told me about his life he was much more impressive in life story than appearance. But what do we expect of people who have lived life much larger than the rest of us? Should they resemble the people who play them in Hollywood? My experience is, they seldom do. They tend to look like the rest of us schlubs.
      We got as far back as 1958 in his story. He told me that that was when he was in the military, in Indochina, and he was recruited by the CIA, a career that lasted almost twenty years. He'd killed for his country, and been shot at, he said. It would have been a suspicious story coming from anyone else but I was warming up to him, and still find it all believable. Then came marriage to a beautiful casino floor manager in Las Vegas. After her untimely death he took to drinking and misspent the money she had left him. Much of it went to buying brothels in central Nevada. He had owned three, including the famous Bunny Ranch. It was there he'd had the misfortune of having partners who were skimming off the profits for themselves. This lead to a fight. That led to two bullet holes in his belly which he was happy to show me. The other guy didn't walk away. You don't get into a gun battle with ex-CIA may be the moral of that story.
      Was any of this true? Was all of it or none of it? Who knows? Might make a great book really. Someone could buy the movie rights. Someone could play a younger, slightly more chiseled version of our hero. I'm thinking ,Matt Damon.
     I eventually got those confusing machines worked out, which one was dry and which one was wet, and in what order to use them. I rode out of Hawthorne cleaner, happier, and wondering about all the schlubs out there. They've all got some kind of story to tell. An hour alone with them in the laundromat of a one horse town might be enough to throw off all your first impressions, or maybe just confirm your harshest suspicions. Maybe you just need to pick the right laundry, or the wrong machine.