SUPER 8 MOTEL, BEMIDJI, MINNESOTA

You are reading this correctly. I'm staying at the Super 8 here in Bemidji, and they have a computer up on a little balcony in the lobby where I'm blogging in. They've only had it for awhile. I got the last room here as a Convention of Western Dancers is flooding the town. It's a beautiful resort town and I paid premium price for it.

Today drove through the threat of severe weather, maybe tornados, and got a nasty surprise on Route 2. I thought Route 2 would drive like secondary roads in Montana-lots of open road and little traffic. Well it was a day of curse and pass and pass and curse and fuss and dash. But I'm seeing some different country than I've seen before. Water, of course, everywhere, here, in the land of a thousand lakes, as they call it. I lived in both St. Paul and Minneapolis as a junior high kid, but I'm north of those two cities now, though I came through the edges of St. Paul to get on I-35 North.

Talking to the two young ladies at the desk, and it turns out that one of them has a Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing from Bemidji State College. She wants to visit Maine and travel too.

Got to touch Lake Superior in Duluth before I took Route 2 to get out of there. I'd never seen Lake Superior or Duluth.


MADISON, WISCONSIN AND UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Passed through Madison on my way north. They'll never live it down. I wanted to stop there and make a blog entry at the university where some real campus revolt went down all those many years ago. Have you ever seen "Days of Rage" which is a documentary of that action when the student body nearly took over the campus? The last time I saw it, I cried. It was during a time when I was beginning to get over all the trauma of those days, and I recall thinking, "I'm so glad it's over and the violence leaving the country."


FOREST PARK IN ST. LOUIS

Stopped in St. Louis on my way out of Carbondale to try and find and photograph the apartment we lived in when I was 3 and 4 and where my folks decided to divorce. 0F course, the row of apartment buildings were gone, torn down to make way for a bank. So I photographed the bank and ate a taco at a little place across the street and told the manager all my story. Well... not all of it. I'd still be there. Forest Park is one of the most impressive inner city places I've ever seen. And as one of the guys at the visitor's center told me, "The St Louis Zoo (which is located in it) is the largest free zoo in the whole world!" Or did he say, "in the United States"?


AGAIN... IN THE NAME OF TRUTH

How often have I heard the saying, "America... the only place in the world where anybody can grow up to be president. The land of opportunity." How true is that? Not very.

The same could be said for a lot of countries. Even about Russia, under the commissars. You see... people of force and will with a little luck always manage to rise up in whatever circumstances they find themselves in. It's in their genes to rise up or at least to make the attempt. Those who succeed can't help themselves any more than some people can't help being on the bottom. It's the reason we need welfare. Some people just always find themselves screwed. Some will be born more docile than his or her neighbors. Some will just be born dumb too. The only way you get a fair and just society is to make sure that there is some leveling mechanism in the economy. That is why we have a graduated income tax and inheritance taxes, to keep leveling the field. It's that or revolution.

The one difference between rising up in a socialist dictatorship and a democracy are the rules of the game one must follow to get ahead. Even in the ghetto, the rules of the game remain. I can't see much difference between a gang banger who succeeds in filling the drug needs of his customers and the activities of cigarette makers and sellers. Some always succeed better than others.

Of course in the good old days when you had to be born into royalty to become king not everyone could be king, but that's the only case.


ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE LIBERAL MEDIA

In the first place, on the average, the more intelligent and educated you are, the more likely you are to be liberal. That's statistics. So you're likely to have a discontinuity between opinions held by the mass of men and the opinions of those who are better educated. The wealthy, often conservative, are often not the best educated. They get the "Cs" in school. Men of "action" are not men of intellect on the whole.

One thing that concerns me is those people who think that the news is being liberal just because the facts presented in news' articles present information which make the conservative uncomfortable. He would rather have the news distorted like a Limbaugh does. If the facts support the liberal view that's no reason to call the media liberal. For one example, evolution is no longer a theory. It's all but proven as the most reasonable explanation of what makes the world, the universe and the species tick. Yet a conservative Christian wants to hear news which is untrue when it comes to that subject. He calls the media liberal for presenting the facts when it comes to Evolution.


DOPPINESS ON THE TRAIL

I get so dizzy and spaced out driving that when I write these blog entries, I know sometimes I'm not expressing myself as well as I'm able to. I'm just gunslinging the words onto the blog space and am not able to formulate my thoughts as well as I can when I'm in my normal leisurely life at home. Gonna quit now. I'm really tired after fighting two lane traffic all afternoon.