On The Road Again

On the road again?  Well yeah?  Right now we are in Spokane I suspect that this is because Spokane is Kristi’s hometown. It has been a very exhausting 24 hours.  Actually it’s been more than that.  I have found that I did forget to bring a few things.  I hope I remembered the most important things.  We are at an Air BnB.  It is a small upstairs apartment.  I suppose that it will serve our purposes.  Their wifi is good, and they have cable TV which might prove interesting as we never watch cable as we don’t have it at home.  Thank you Burk Ketcham.

We are, however immersed in our individual digital devices.  Kristi is playing with her android tablet, and I’m typing away on this budget laptop.  There are some things that I guess I just haven’t felt that we needed.  Cable television is one of them.  Back in the early 21^st century we were doing vigils against the Iraq War three times a week with Burk Ketcham.  Many of you will know who I am writing about.  I don’t remember what brought it up.  I may  have been complaining about the reporting of the war to Burk but he told me he never watches television.  Shortly after that I was watching network news as in those days I was in a habit of doing.  We, like a lot of people, had a small tv above our meal tab le.  We were immersed in news of the war and had a good idea of what was going on.  I heard the news anchor lying through his teeth about the war and as I scrolled through channel after channel they were all lying.  That was when I stopped watching the network news.  After all this explanation it turns out that the bnb only has the tv that comes through the air.  Nevermind.

I’m guessing that in the next couple of days, in spite of having dragged an impressive amount of stuff with us, we will find out things that we at least thought we needed that we neglected to bring, and at the same time find that a lot of what we have with us is relatively useless.  In the meantime we will be keeping busy.  We’ll be playing 7 times in the next 5 days.  Oh yaah . . . next stop is Cascade, Idaho.  We’ll see you there.

We have had some time this morning so I broke down and watched tv for about 5 minutes.  It was all I could take.  After that I dialed in Democracy Now on this computer and watched the headlines there.  I've just got to say . . . that did not cheer me up.  "Double speak" is the order of the day and those who do not agree get fired (for now), and those who protest could end up in the big house for up to ten years.  I don't know how many of you are like me but it looks like this is all going to go down for the worst we have imagined.  What I have imagined was pretty bad.  I still have the feeling that I'm watching a train wreck in slow motion and I have the same kind of fascination waiting for the cars to turn hearing the screeching of the steel wheels on the steel tracks, watching the cars turn, then watching them roll over, scrambling out of the way, running to a higher vantage point where I can see the faces in the cars and hear the screams.  Now it is moving faster and I am horrified but still fascinated as I see the bodies thrown from the cars and the tracks buckling under the weight of the cars fall on them.  At some point it may be our turn to either go underground, or go to jail and fill up the little rooms until . . . and I do not know what ends this administration would go to to stay in power but I think we're going to find out sooner than later.

In the meantime we are in the snow over here.  It is like going to another world and I know that with the travel on our agenda there will be many, many more changes in environment for us.  In some regards it seems like we are leaving a ship heading into a storm.  On the other hand we are leaving it in a lifeboat, vulnerable to the elements but powerless to try to deal with our mother ship in the storm.  I wish we were going for help, but we are simply embarked on another adventure.  Keep the home fires burning.  We will return.  Steve Nebel 1/31/017