It’s time for a fall trip. Let’s go…

“I needed something to pare the fat off my soul, to scare the shit out of me, to make me grateful, again, for being alive.”
- Colin Fletcher, River, R.I.P.

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Major trip preparations can take your mind off other things. Like the news that it’s been six years since 9/11.

Catching up on cable on my last night in Alabamaland for awhile, I did take a moment to remember.

I looked up the column I wrote that week as a faculty member for The Moroon college newspaper at Loyola University New Orleans. I don’t think I’ve read it since it appeared on Friday, Sept. 14, 2001.

The column documented some indelible images from that day and assessed the media coverage - history on the run.

“How will the media handle this day? How will we handle this horrific tragedy?,” I wrote. “Remember. The answers will define us for the rest of our lives.”

Media Coverage Brings Stories, Images to Country

Then I think about what’s happened since. How President Bush and co. blew away the good will of not only the American people, but people around the world with the ill-conceived and disastrous invasion of Iraq.

And now if Bush and Cheney and Gen. David H. Petraeus have their way, tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be in Iraq for years to come. In case you haven’t caught on to this yet, we’ve been saying for two and a half years there was never any plan to get out. This was to be a long-range staging area for world and oil domination - and the political card to turn the U.S. over to the GOP for a generation.

Well, it didn’t work out with roses, so Bush and co. have to continue to pretend that the surge is working to try and withdraw, somehow, “with honor.” It’s hard to see anything honorable coming out of this, except perhaps for a Texas jail cell for someone higher up in the political food chain than former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

I guess if you are the most clueless leader of the free world in history, however, there’s no choice but to pretend everything’s OK and just go on playing Howdy Doody on TV. Continue the ratings failed puppet show until the contract runs out - or until someone fires you, which would mean impeachment. And for some reason, we can’t even consider that, according to the pundits and the Democrats in Congress.

Can America stand another 16 months of this? How many scandals does it take?

Oh well, back to the trip. I’ll be looking in the front windows of the White House in a couple of days from Lafayette Park at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It won’t be the first time.

In 2004 and 2005 I used to ride my Cannondale mountain bike from Alexandria, Virginia, through the Carlisle Group compound, down the Potomac River and by National Airport (I never liked it when they renamed it for Reagan). It’s a 14 mile ride that eventually takes you across the river at the Jefferson Memorial, and onto to the National Mall - framed by the monuments of Lincoln and Washington and the Capitol itself. The White House is just off The Mall by a park known for its protests dating back to the Vietnam War. Ride around the White House and there’s that statue of Andrew Jackson on his goddamned horse. There are many benches there where you should be able to sit and think, although the cell phones and the omnipresent Secret Service agents and park police make real contemplation difficult.

It is one of the busiest and most intense places in the world not only because of the number of people who cram into the area around Washington, D.C. It is the sheer power and security of the place that keeps your attention focused in a level of awareness that is impossible to escape.

Even back across the river in Virginia in a park, reading a good Civil War book, you can never really escape the intense feeling of where you are and what you are close to.

Every time the presidential helicopter flies overhead, or its decoy, you are constantly aware that for the slightest of reasons, some cop there could think you are a criminal or a terrorist - and whisk you away to Guantanamo (or simply the D.C. jail).

But if you have a van with a canoe on top, a digital recorder and camera, and a Capitol press credential, you might have a chance - if you don’t put a PRESS sign on the outside of your vehicle.

Woops! Someone warned me I should get that LocustFork.Net sign off my back window. After the Jill Simpson story broke with the stuff about the fire and her car being run off the road, one friend even said, the one who loaned me the River book, “Knock out that damn back window and get rid of it.”

But no, I like promoting my domain name on the back window of the Chevy van. I often get waves and honks from others on the road with blue dot bumper stickers on their cars. In Alabama, women drive up beside me and hold up their blue dots to show me through the window. They are too afraid to stick them on their cars in the land of Karl Rove’s Supreme Court and Bob Riley’s cowboy boots.

So once again I will be cowboying in the van across the American South to D.C. and beyond. This time the plan involves van camping in three state parks in three states, Virginia, Maryland - and Pennsylvania, on the way back from New York.

There will be a little old hearing at the Rayburn House Office building on Friday, and Saturday, a bit of war protesting on The Mall - great photo and blog material, if we don’t get arrested.

Cross your fingers, say your prayers or whatever, then check us out again in a day or two. We should have some fun to report.

Last fall I spent 12 days van camping and chasing bird pictures and free high speed wireless Internet connections all down the Gulf Coast, and four days in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

Friends in high places tell me this is the best time of year for a trip up the East Coast. It’s a fall trip. Let’s go…

Postscript: Just as we finished editing this column, the editor of The Progressive Populist newspaper near Austin, Texas, notified me the Justice Off the Tracks in Alabama story has been published online. It will appear in the newspaper out Sept. 12, two days before Ms. Simpson’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 6:13 am and is filed under Under the Microscope II. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.