It's raining, and that's good by me

It’s raining. In California! And it’s so ineffably lovely that for the moment it’s washed away the sulfur stink of this presidential election. It’s even soothing the bleeding core of me where my foundation of love feels torn. My apartment today isn’t cold, it’s just primed for a blanket.

I’m about to go have lunch with my brother. A beer tonight with my fantastic neighbors. A housewarming tomorrow for good friends, and an array of good books ready at hand for Sunday. And in the moments between, when it’s pain and worry? Well, those drops can fall from me too. I’m not running from them.

So instead of posting the well-meant words of inquiry into how our country got so confused and divided, I’m just going to listen to the rain. Look at the sensation of green on every leaf in sight. Make another cup of tea.

I’m going to soak in gratitude. For the safety I feel, despite all the threats of violence this year from outside our borders and from inside a candidate. I’m going to leave my door unlocked today, because I can. (And even if someone steals all my stuff? They’re in a bad time, the world is a good place, and stuff is just stuff.)

I’m feeling gratitude for the love I’ve found in this life. From family, friends, and a couple special women who walked with me awhile. Love doesn’t die out in me, ever, and optimism puts up a hell of a fight, so I’m going to let that feeling of bleeding inside feel like renewal, a cleansing, and trust that the future will bring me what I need.

I’m just going to enjoy where I am. This part of the world, this planet I adore so much, this town I call home. I’m going to let this rain feel like nourishment, for the soil and the soul. And I hope whether you’re under beautiful rain clouds or clear sunny skies, you’re feeling good today.

Happy International Day of the Girl, Trump notwithstanding

Daesh (ISIS), Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, the Taliban, all these despicable groups afflicting our species are obsessed with suppressing and oppressing women and women’s rights. They’re disturbing to learn about, but remind me of my pride and gratitude that I don’t live in a society so morally reprehensible and downright inhumane. (Because last I checked, women are humans.)

But then I come back to the US, where a racist, morally malformed demagogue routinely uses words like “bimbo, dog, fat pig” and the ever-reliable C-word to describe women, and yet, confoundingly, is still treated as a valid human being to exist on our national stage. I’m baffled by that. And I’m baffled as to why this latest tape is such a big deal. Was anyone surprised to hear him talk like that? He’s been talking like that for decades.

So are we no better than those desert addictions to misogyny? Of course we are. We’re a desert society too (are we not a Judeo-Christian, People of Abraham, monotheistic culture of relative intolerance with an emphasis on war and conflict? You betcha we are. Read more here) but we’ve made some exceedingly slow and agonizingly painful progress from our more barbaric cousins.

I doubt she said this, but I agree wholeheartedly anyway

The most obvious example right now is the remarkably qualified (and preposterously vilified) alternative to Trump’s hideous immorality. She has a long career of public service, bipartisan productivity, and actually listens to other people. All three of which are profound contrasts to, and advantages over Candidate Blumpy.

And in the darkness of his remarks, I'm reminded of my fantasy of all the women in America refusing to vote for Trump, and we watch the whole country unite in rejecting misogyny, racism, ignorance, and immaturity. Now there's an image of hope. Of making America greater than it has been so far.

So there is much work to be done, but much incredible progress being made, so today, International Day of the Girl, I’m going to go ahead and feel optimism for the West, for America, and for our species, that we’re going to move away from the sort of self-destructive ideology that puts half of ourselves lower than the other half. Because that? That’s just barbaric.

So many good choices for charities. I chose Plan International this year.

Who cares about cows?

Yeah, that looks like a homeland to protect and remember

Farm bills and agricultural subsidies are always a big deal, from the US to the EU, and definitely in Switzerland. This baffled me a bit. Swiss agriculture? In a country that wealthy and stable (take my word for it, or come on tour with me and I’ll explain) why are a few cows such a big deal?

The answer I always gave was national identity. The people of Country X want to see themselves as coming from pastoral roots. This didn’t make a ton of sense to me, since if you didn’t grow up on a farm why do you need to feel like your nation did? But I’m used to not quite understanding identity politics since I come from the rampantly, disastrously, shamefully dominant demographic set. Straight, white, middle-class, American male with full health, mobility, education etc? Having every advantage in life reduced the need for an identity to process it.

But other people will talk about such things until….(wait for it)...the cows come home.

Ain't she so pretty!

That expression was always a mystery to me. I’d picture farmers chatting on the porch until the cows meandered home in the evening light. Or was it that the cows would never come home on their own, so you’d talk forever? That could be, too, but let’s go with something else.

Because it’s wearing a floral headdress.

Every spring, the farmers throughout the Alps drive their cows up to higher pasture for the summer. They stay up there eating rich green grass and justifying Alphorns for the warm sunny months, giving some folks time off to talk endlessly (hence the phrase, I’m thinking) while a few heroes of national identity up in the mountain meadows churn butter and coagulate protein. (Ain’t that just the sexiest phrasing I could have chosen for cheese-making?)

Get on with your cow self!

Leave it to this last tour group I had, with their preternatural luck and timing, to arrive just in time for the almabtrieb, or viehscheid, the annual parade of cows returning from summer pasture. It was stupendous. The cows, dressed in their finest and caring not one udder about it, paraded through town in a ceremonious way that was most a-moo-sing. (You’re welcome.)

So what? So some cows walked through town, why should I blog about it, and why should legislatures spend so much time on ag issues?

In this year of an insane US presidential candidate, United Kingdomers choosing to leave the most successful diplomatic structure in European history, and Colombians voting to reject peace in favor of punitive measures and further bloodshed, well, it’s damn fine to sit back in the sun and watch something so hearty, so earnest, so down-home rustically peaceful and reassuring as a parade of decorated cows coming home.

Not a shabby looking place, that Switzerland

Is it worth it? All the tax revenue spent to prolong a procession of bovine ladies and tractors of cheese? Well, it did me good, and the whole town with me, so I guess the fiscal considerations are a moooo-t point.

A Parisian response to fear

I was focused on the situation so don't have
good photos, but man it was fun and loud

What do you do when terrorists want you to be afraid? To be closed off, fearful of strangers, and angry? To stay locked in your house, suspicious of others, scared of crowds and skittish of loud noises? Well, if you’re Paris, you throwing a mutha-phunking techno parade to draw in the crowds and blast out the windows, that’s what you do.

Because screw fear! Sucks to your divisiveness! And extremists can kiss my unafraid not-shut-in tolerant liberal western ass! It’s time for a party so loud everyone’s invited whether they like it or not. Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, and Animist, I don’t care, if you have eardrums, you’re at the party.

And who cares if modern music seems to have forgotten musical instruments, because for the moment all we need is the sort of gut-thumping noise that makes everyone feel the rhythm in their ribs and the beat in the bloodstream as our hearts accelerate to match.

And if it’s my tour group, midway through my Paris walk, caught and beached somewhere between the converted church and the place where the boy king’s life changed forever? Oh well! Change of plans! We’re travelers: we adapt. And so we hold off on the French Revolution for a moment and instead lift cell phone cameras to the beautiful and blissfully idiotic thudding of a techno resistance movement. And if that swarm is hefting bottles of booze to the sky? Good for them. Ain’t nobody driving, ain’t nobody fighting, but all of everybody is moving and defiantly alive. Tolerating each other, who cares how you dress, if you can sing, or whether you pray and to whom.

Paris is unafraid, and these thousands of hoarse shouting, public drinking, sexual tension exploding, uncovered, unashamed, and celebrating youngsters are going to make sure you know it.

Because Paris is a city attacked. Once by terrorists, and repeatedly by fear. A city maligned by well-meaning purveyors of information, and by loving and thoughtful individuals who are right to feel fear, but wrong to act on it.

How did my group act on it? Did they stay home and huddle in front of the panic-inducing television? Nope, they came and saw for themselves. And when I asked them in the Champs de Mars if any of them felt afraid of Paris, they laughed. The correct response. They’d seen for themselves that fear on this global scale is a packaged commodity you don’t have to wear. And shouldn’t. Because locked inside, it’s quiet and safe and dead and complicit. But outside? In the traveler’s world, the citizen’s reality, the truth of the shared experience? It’s doing just fine.

Paris is alive and well. It is not unsafe, and it is not dangerous. Nor is it afraid and lashing out. It’s alive. It’s joie de vivre. It’s all those hearts beating defiantly together, celebrating and loud.  Can you hear it from there?

I guess I'm just ambitious

I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I appreciate it. Every time. I really do. But I guess I’m just… I’m more ambitious than that.

It's not just us. The French
sure know how to make a
sheep pen look dangerous.

I’m not sure when we changed over. Was it September 11th? Was that when we stopped saying “happy travels” and retreated into the more fearful “travel safe”? Is that the day we let a finite event darken our ongoing reality?

Because I feel safer abroad than I do at home. Danger is in the mundane, the autopilot trip to the store among people with a thousand things on their minds (and a steering wheel in their hands). Wish me safe grocery shopping if you like, but in the streets of Paris? Safely safe me in safety. Alert to the details of the place I’m enjoying.

I am not scared of your televised danger,

This sign in the Vatican warns us
there are two kinds of walking.
I know which one looks more fun to me.

I am not scared of every stranger.

I am not scared, Sam I am...not.

Whereas in the US post office this morning a guy was ranting about “This is bullshit!” and “It’s like the fuckin’ DMV in here!” Granted my local post office is the slowest specimen this side of the Euphrates, but still, this was more hostility than I’d experienced in any of the supposedly dangerous lanes of international travel. And the guy was pushing a baby stroller. Good luck, kiddo. Because the danger is in quotidian malcontentment. Daesh ain’t got nearly that reach.

Border outpost on the German border.
Oh yes, we live in a terrifying age.

The worst danger I encountered was the septic stink of a fellow passenger. Which was potent. Whew. Somebody’s belly didn’t start off happy, and airline food didn’t help at all. That’s the danger I faced. No need to call the army. (Well, perhaps they could send a gas mask?)

I am grateful to every one of you who wished me safe travels. I am. Thank you. And I’m grateful that we live in the most peaceful time in human history. (Don’t believe me? Come on my tour and we’ll talk about the Counter-reformation.) A time so peaceful, so prosperous and fundamentally secure that property values around the world have gone through the roof, and hordes of people are crowding into the places that used to be reserved for the privileged few.

Kinda annoying, but better than the alternative.

So thank you, friend, family, acquaintance who wished me “safe travels” yesterday. I wish the same for you. And more. Much more. I guess I’m just ambitious like that.

Travel! It's terrifying!

The Secret to Europe

No photo of the boulangerie, but this was just down the street

The smell of fresh baked bread. Is there anything on earth so glorious as that smell on a Paris morning? It was Friday and the perfectly round fruit-topped tarts were glistening with sugar and the muffins with their floured plumpness were the first part of an equation whose answer was a comfortable chair, cup of tea, and a good book. But it was the freshly baked baguettes that drew me in.

The mademoiselle behind the counter was chatting with the dignified madame l’customer ahead of me, their words lilting about in that frolicsome French that seems always on the verge of a loving tut-tut.

When it was my turn I stepped forward, gave a friendly smile and nod, and said in my very best French “Un baguette si vous plait.” I was killing it. An integrated part of this morning in the boulangerie.

Except maybe not. The mademoiselle seemed annoyed by my presence. She wasn’t rude, but nor was she nice. She was curt and briskly businesslike with my bread, so different from the affectionate glow of moments before, and barely looked at me as she handed over the bag and greeted the next person in line with a friendly hello.

Maybe the old stereotypes were right. Maybe the French (or Parisians at least) really were still rude to foreigners. Maybe my inevitable accent was just not good enough for their demanding sensibilities. How terribly disappointing!

Good thing it wasn’t true. It took me some time to figure out. Countless more small interactions across the continent, but eventually I noticed the missing piece. And what a difference it made.

So when I watched three young Americans make the same mistake I had, ordering their sandwiches on the Rue Cler last time I was in Paris, and receiving the same terse Parisian response, I was ready to share what I’d learned.

That's my big mystical secret

“It helps a lot if you say hello first.” I told them (not bothering to say hello first because we’re Americans). “It took me awhile to notice it, since back home we smile and get straight to the point, but over here they really like it if you greet them before saying what you want.”

Being Americans, they were guarded about this stranger speaking to them, their defensive caution struggling against the desire to learn and enjoy their vacation.

“So if you just start with a quick ‘Bon jour madame’ in France, ‘Buon giorno signore’ in Italy, whatever, you usually get a much better reaction.” They kind of mumbled a response, still wondering when I’d demand their wallets, so I let them be and stepped up to the counter.

“Bon jour madame” I said to the mistress of sandwiches, who chirped back the answering greeting. “Un sandwich au jambon et fromage, si vous plait.” And we were best buddies by the time she passed across my lunch.

The Americanas were immersed in their guide book when I turned around, but perhaps somewhere down the road they’ll speak from experience when they whisper to someone “It helps if you greet them first.”

I'm going to miss the technology I can't wait to get rid of

That scrappy little car was dinged up, scratched, and nonspecifically battered into a character all its own before we ever picked it up at the Athens airport. But once I figured out where reverse was, I gunned that spunky little engine (4, maybe 4.5 horsepower?) and we were off into the tzatziki swirl of Greek traffic.

Mandalay knew the rhythm

Cars coming in from the right, I’m bobbing left to pass then cutting out of the way of the speedracer trying for Dubai by nightfall, and the motorcycles sort of croon among the fray with their gaspy trumpets of unsavory exhaust and swoopy leaning turns. It was a big ballet of steel frames and plastic bumpers, scored by combustion engines and pleasantly restrained bips of horn, costumed by sunlight glints on hoods and side mirrors, and riding on warm Mediterranean wind blowing in the window to dance your hair.

I do my best not to drive in other countries. Shucks, I do my best not to drive at home either. But driving in Greece? That was fun. When I get a good car around me, the pull and shift of wheels and gears, making my strategic way through the breakdown of cohesion you get when we fallible humans are given such power, I admit it, it’s damn fun.

I love driving, but who loves traffic?

I enjoy driving.

And I can’t wait for autonomous, self-driven cars to take it away.

Of course, I personally should get to keep my normal car, but the masses around me ought to sit back and let google get them where they’re going. It will work out better for all of us that way. Because if there’s one thing I know about automobiles, it’s that humans are not yet ready for that kind of responsibility. Give us another millennium of evolution maybe, but for now we just can’t be trusted with such momentum and concussive force.

Sit back and watch, boys. It's safer.

This is especially obvious to we cyclists. Google wouldn’t pull right in front of us, because google has exponentially more eyes to point at the bike lane, as well as in front and behind and around itself. We poor sad humans have a mere two sensors (sorta four if you count the ears, but those are busy listening to Adele). We just can’t handle three dimensional movement. There’s too much going on for our monkey gray matter. I saw we let the machines do it.

Will there be a loss of fun? Absolutely. But a reduction of tedious stress? Definitely. And a massive diminishing of danger? You betcha.

This Malaysian boy knew there's
plenty of fun to be had without car keys

It’s like the end of the Wild West. Sure, after about the turn of the century you couldn’t ride around shooting your gun at whatever you felt like anymore, and I’m sure those days were a whole lot of fun. Target practice in the orchard? Why not! Until suddenly there’s a subdivision built behind it. But I for one am glad we got rid of that. (For the most part. Dangit.)

Taking away our steering wheels will be the same. I’ll miss the days of piloting my machine through the fray, but man I won’t miss the jackwad in the BMW who nearly ran me off the road yesterday, or the scatter-brained parent too busy raising a brood to signal, or the young fella who learned to drive from video games and doesn’t appear to comprehend how unsustainable that is.

So please google, automate our Bay Area traffic. And if we ever feel the need to go roll those automobile dice again? Well, there’s always Greece.

Athens, the Acropolis, and the church
across from our hotel