This Land: Massachusetts

It was 2:00 P.M., give or take a minute, on an ordinary Tuesday, though in the suffocating maw of Northern New England’s July “Heat Dome,” nothing felt particularly ordinary. The very air hung thick and greasy, a humid shroud draped over the land, making even the squirrels pant like Alaskan Malamutes at Disney World. Inside the tin-can confines of Ronnie’s trusty, but un-air conditioned mount, Rocinante, a veritable bake oven on wheels, Ronnie noticed the cabin batteries sputtering, their digital readout fading like a bad dream. Keeping the provisions from turning into a science experiment in this hundred-degree crucible was draining the lifeblood right out of them. And when that happens, a drive, an hour or so, a nice little constitutional for the battery, that’s the ticket.

So, off they went, Ronnie at the helm, the digital siren song of Siri’s perpetually inebriated sister (known in these parts as Google Maps) croaking directions. The mission was to find the nearest watering hole for their dwindling provisions… a grocery emporium with a filtered-water refill station, a veritable oasis in this overheated landscape. Mission accomplished. The electronic drunkard was commanded to lead them back to their pre-designated encampment. But alas, Siri’s drunk sister, in a fit of digital delirium, delivered them not to the sylvan serenity of their New Hampshire hideaway, but to Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

Tewksbury, MA? Ronnie’s eyebrows shot up like a rocket. What the Sam Hell!? they weren’t done with New Hampshire yet! The verdant hills of Derry, still echoing with the ghost of a post unfinished. But by then, the sun, a malevolent orange eye in the hazy sky, was already dipping low, casting long, bruised shadows. Backtracking? Forget about it. The die was cast. And besides, they had everything they needed to finish the New Hampshire dispatch right here, right now, in this unexpected patch of overheated forest. Serendipity, it seems, often arrived in the guise of a geographical screw-up. For lo and behold, a stone’s throw from their new, accidental roost, stood the Tewksbury Public Library, and just beyond its brick façade, a short, almost ominous stroll away, loomed the Tewksbury State Hospital, its Gothic spires reaching for the heavens like skeletal fingers, steeped in a history as thick and dark as molasses. SERENDIPITY NOW! A drumroll, please, for the universe’s peculiar sense of humor.

Now, pull up a folding chair, pop a squat, and lend an ear, because we’re about to embark on a journey, a rollicking, rambunctious ride through the peculiar, the profound, and sometimes downright preposterous tapestry of this place called Massachusetts. It’s a land of “firsts” and “extremes,” as some folks are fond of saying, and if you ain’t careful, it’s liable to give you a case of psychic whiplash just trying to keep up.

Way back, long before your great-grandpappy’s great-grandpappy even thought about being born, this neck of the woods hummed with the quiet rhythm of life, home to a diverse tapestry of Indigenous peoples… the Wampanoag, the Narragansett, the Nipmuc, and a slew of others, their names whispered on the wind. They dwelled in ingenious lodges called wigwams, conical cocoons of bark and hide, or sometimes in grander longhouses, sprawling communal abodes, all under the watchful eye of their sachems, leaders who could be as easily a woman as a man, which just goes to show you some things ain’t so new under the sun. Why, the very name “Massachusetts” itself is a linguistic echo, plucked from the Massachusett people, a tribute to their enduring presence.

Then, in 1620, like a scene out of a stained-glass window, along came the Pilgrims, their faces grim with conviction, seeking a place to worship God without all the fuss and bother of the Old World. They clambered off their creaking wooden ark, the Mayflower, and promptly set up shop in Plymouth, a desolate spit of land that would forever be etched in the annals of American myth. A mere decade later, in 1630, another wave, an even more earnest phalanx of Puritans, arrived, their heads buzzing with the grand, almost hubristic idea of building an “ideal” religious society, a shining city upon a hill. They called their settlement the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a name that would eventually be swallowed by the booming metropolis we now call Boston. They even had what some historians, with a twinkle in their eye, refer to as the “First Thanksgiving,” a three-day bacchanal of feasting and goodwill after their initial, hard-won harvest. Now, whether that was a true act of profound gratitude or merely a darn good excuse to eat till their britches burst, we can’t rightly say, but it’s a yarn woven tightly into the fabric of American lore.

These Puritans, bless their earnest, God-fearing hearts, were mighty serious about their faith. So serious, in fact, that if you didn’t quite see eye-to-eye with their rigid interpretations… folks like the fiery Anne Hutchinson and the stubbornly independent Roger Williams… they’d politely (or perhaps not-so-politely, depending on the day and the prevailing winds of theological disagreement) suggest you try your luck elsewhere. And that, loopers, is how the feisty little state of Rhode Island got itself started, by gawd. It seems religious dissent, coupled with a hankering for a bit more elbow room, were quite the potent forces for colonial expansion back then.

And let’s not overlook a grim chapter that unfolded in Salem, a town that earned itself a dark and indelible reputation for a spell of mass hysteria that involved accusations of witchcraft swirling through the air like a noxious fog. It just goes to show you what happens when folks get themselves all riled up, gripped by fear, and start pointing accusatory fingers. A truly grim chapter, that one, leaving a stain on the Puritanical ledger.

Now, fast forward a bit, through the sleepy colonial years, to the late 18th century, and Boston, like a coiled spring, begins to flex its muscles, asserting its destiny as the “Cradle of Liberty.” See, after the French and Indian War, a bloody, protracted affair that emptied the British coffers, the Crown decided it was high time the colonies, those spoiled colonial brats, paid their fair share. Massachusetts, being a feisty, independent-minded sort, didn’t much cotton to that idea. There were protests, simmering resentments, a bit of a ruckus in 1770 that went down in history as the Boston Massacre, where redcoats, those lobster-backed soldiers, fired into an angry crowd. And then, in ’73, those rascals, dressed like painted Indians, tossed a whole heap of tea… crates of it, a veritable harbor-full… into the frigid waters of Boston Harbor. The British, naturally, got their knickers in a twist, their royal temper flaring like a bonfire, and slapped Massachusetts with a series of punitive measures known as the Intolerable Acts. Well, that just poured gasoline on an already raging fire, and pretty soon, firebrands like Samuel Adams and John Hancock were stirring up so much trouble, so much revolutionary fervor, that it lit the fuse for the American Revolution in 1775. Massachusetts, it seems, was always good at getting things started, a perpetual instigator of change.

And speaking of rebellions, after the hard-won victory of the Revolution, a fellow named Daniel Shays, a weathered veteran of that very war, led a populist revolt from 1786 to 1787. They were disaffected, as the fancy folks in powdered wigs would say, burdened by debt and taxes, and they even tried to seize a federal armory in Springfield, a dramatic, ill-fated gambit. Now, this Shays’ Rebellion, as it’s known, didn’t exactly succeed in its immediate aims, but it certainly put the fear of God, or at least the fear of anarchy, into the fledgling nation, convincing everyone that the Articles of Confederation were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. So, with a sense of urgency, they decided to draft a brand-spanking-new Constitution, a gleaming blueprint for a more perfect union, and Massachusetts, being quick on the draw, ever eager to be a pioneer, was the sixth state to ratify it in 1788, cementing its place in the grand experiment.

Now, this Massachusetts, it’s always been a veritable hothouse for big thinkers, for minds that dared to gaze beyond the mundane. It was a hotbed for the Transcendentalist movement, a philosophical ferment that preached the gospel of intuition, individual experience, and a deeper, almost mystical connection with nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Boston boy who preferred the quietude of Concord’s leafy lanes, pretty much cooked up this whole philosophy, like a gourmet chef perfecting a new recipe. And his pal, Henry David Thoreau, that rugged individualist, spent a year roughing it in a little cabin at Walden Pond, living simply, observing the world, and writing about it all in prose as clear as spring water. Seems they liked to contemplate the universe, those two, and then tell everybody about it.

When the storm clouds of the Civil War gathered, Massachusetts, ever on the vanguard, was front and center, a tireless drum major in the parade for the abolition of slavery. It was the first state to muster itself a Black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts, a bunch of brave souls, sons of freedom, who went on to earn themselves some serious glory. And not content with just freeing folks from the shackles of bondage, in 1852, Massachusetts became the first state to make sure every child, rich or poor, got a bit of schooling. Compulsory education, they called it, and it just shows you they were always ahead of the curve when it came to smarts, ever eager to enlighten the populace.

And speaking of smarts, after the two big global conflagrations, when the smoke cleared and the cannons fell silent, eastern Massachusetts, which used to be all about the greasy gears of heavy industry, decided to give itself a radical makeover. It transformed itself, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, into a service-based economy, with all sorts of government contracts, private investments, and gleaming research facilities popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain. And the Route 128 corridor, that ribbon of asphalt winding through the suburbs, well, that became a regular parade of high-tech companies, a silicon valley of the East, all snatching up the bright young graduates from the area’s many fancy universities… places like MIT, where they’re so smart, they taught the world to ditch clunky analog media for the sleek, ethereal wonder of the “digital.”

Another feather in its progressive three-cornered hat, Massachusetts, ever the trailblazer, was the first state in the whole U.S. of A. to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. They decided, plain and simple, after much deliberation and legal wrangling, that excluding loopers from civil marriage simply wasn’t constitutional, a blow for equality that reverberated across the nation. See? Extremes and firsts, a constant dance.

And they’ve got more famous literary figures than you can shake a stick at… from the colonial verses of Anne Bradstreet to the whimsical rhymes of Dr. Seuss, with the brooding prose of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the exquisite introspection of Emily Dickinson, and the epic seafaring tales of Herman Melville thrown in for good measure. It’s a regular literary jamboree, this place, a veritable feast for the word-hungry soul.

But let’s not get too puffed up, too self-satisfied, because even a place of such soaring highs has its crushing lows. And we’re not just talking about the low-down, gut-punching feeling you get when you see your quarterly property tax bill. The very place where this post is composed, this serendipitous stopping point called Tewksbury, whose State Hospital looms a short, somber walk away, started out as an almshouse back in 1854. It was a place for the poor, the sick, and later, the pauper insane, their minds adrift on stormy seas. A good many of its early residents were immigrants, especially the weary, hopeful souls from Ireland, fleeing famine and despair, and a full third of ’em, heartbreakingly, were children, their young lives touched by hardship. Why, Anne Sullivan, the remarkable woman who later taught Helen Keller to see the world with her mind’s eye, spent some of her own formative, often brutal years there. Discussing her time in the Tewksbury Hospital, she said, with an almost chilling detachment,

“Very much of what I remember about Tewksbury is indecent, cruel, melancholy, gruesome in the light of grown-up experience; but nothing corresponding with my present understanding of these ideas entered my child mind. Everything interested me. I was not shocked, pained, grieved or troubled by what happened. Such things happened. People behaved like that—that was all that there was to it.”

A chillingly matter-of-fact observation, a child’s stark assessment of a stark reality.

And if that ain’t enough to give you the shivers, to send a cold whisper down your spine, up to 10,000 souls are buried in the woods nearby, their final resting places marked only by tiny, anonymous numbered metal laurels, like miniature tombstone epitaphs. Most of their stories are lost to the mists of time, devoured by fires that consumed the early records, leaving only a spectral void. Some folks even whisper that the place is haunted by ghosts… friendly specters, they say, ghosts that have even infiltrated the hallowed halls of the library, no less. Benign ghosts, they say, and that’s a comfort given all the suffering that surely took place there.

So there you have it… a tiny taste, a mere morsel, of the peculiar grandeur that is Massachusetts. Ronnie, ever the wanderer, says he’d love to hang out a while longer, to savor the coastal sights, to stroll the hallowed grounds of the MIT campus, perhaps even touch the very bricks where a nation was born. But alas, the open road calls, that siren song of adventure echoing in his ears. Two more states to go (Maine and Rhode Island), and then, like a homing pigeon, it’s back to Kanorado to take care of some of Ronnie’s personal business. After that, it’s the final leg, the grand pilgrimage back to Florida City, where the salt air and the gentle lapping of the waves will serve as the backdrop for the main event, the book, the very reason for this grand odyssey. Working title, you ask? One Year on the Road: Searching for the Fibrillating Heart of our Divided Nation. A grand ambition, indeed.

We’ll see you in Rhode Island.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

You can’t just breeze by…
Massachusetts…
The highs are too high…
The lows are cavernous…
The nation’s birth pangs…
The death of innocence…
Behold… the city on the hill.

This Land: New Hampshire

On a July Monday in the year of our lord, 2025, Ronnie and Rocinante woke up to a new day, in a strange land. And with all apologies to the natives, it appears they brought the Kanorado weather with them. Average July temps in Derry New Hampshire (no, not that Derry) is between the upper 70s and mid 80s. Today, it’s 92 with tomorrow’s forecast predicting temps up to 96! Fortunately, no one in the Derry Public Library knows it’s Ronnie’s fault… woo hoo!

Anyway, New Hampshire, the Granite State. The first to weigh in on the various candidates making bids to run the most powerful nation on the planet (till it’s not). These loopers are fiercely independent, proving themselves resilient and worthy from the jump.

On January 5, 1776… long, long ago, the cantankerous loopers of New Hampshire decided they’d had enough of old King George. Wham… first colony to declare independence! Nearly half a year before those other guys got around to signing the Declaration. Brave souls, or maybe just impatient.

“Live Free or Die!” It’s what they say.

Established in 1629, named after some place in England… typical. Then came the British troubles. In 1774, before most folks even knew what was what, New Hampshire jumped the gun seizing Fort William & Mary, just like that. Two years later, they had their own government and constitution. First again. No dilly-dallying for these loopers.

“Live Free or Die!” Sounds about right.

Later on, when the big American family squabble happened, the one they called the Civil War, New Hampshire was all in for abolition. Thirty-two thousand soldiers, give or take a few, marched off to fight for the Union. After that unpleasantness, boom… factories everywhere! Textiles, shoes, paper. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester was the biggest cotton mill on the planet. Can you imagine? Then came the French Canadians, by the droves. Now, a quarter of the population has French-American blood. And these days, New Hampshire is rich and smart. Go figure.

“Live Free or Die!” A mantra, if you will.

They’re not big on religion here. Least religious U.S. state, they say. Staunchly libertarian, they won’t be taking orders from priests… they really like their freedom. A Pew survey in 2014 showed that thirty-six percent here were part of the fast growing demographic known as the “nones“. Thirty percent Protestant, twenty-six percent Catholic. Not many Mormons or Jews. They don’t go to church much, these New Hampshirites. Only fifty-four percent are “absolutely certain there is a God,” compared to seventy-one percent elsewhere. Curious, isn’t it? Oh, and here’s a kicker: New Hampshire is the only state to have a woman governor and two women as U.S. senators. There’s another kick in the agates for the patriarchy.

“Live Free or Die!” And make room for the ladies in your ol’ boy network.

Now, before all the European colonizer hullabaloo, the Abenaki tribes were here, minding their own business. Different cultures, different gods, but same language, mostly. People were living near Keene up to twelve thousand years ago! Imagine that. You can commune with the sacred spirits in the White Mountain National Forest, winding through the Appalachian Trail.

“Live Free or Die!” A long, beautiful nature hike.

On Mount Washington, they call it… the “World’s Worst Weather.” Hurricane-force winds every third day. Through the years, more than a hundred visitors underestimated that fury, and now they cant. Little dwarf trees, all matted and gnarled, like angry bonsai. So it goes. And the Old Man of the Mountain, a face carved by nature itself, watched over Franconia Notch for ages. Then, one day in May 2003, poof! Gone. Just like that. And Ronnie thought Kanorado had windy days.

“Live Free or Die!” Until you can’t.

Lakes, ponds, rivers, streams. Eight hundred of the first, nineteen thousand miles of the second. Hard to keep track of all this windy river vertigo. Sometimes state boundaries get bungled. New Hampshire and Maine had a little squabble over the Piscataqua River boundary, specifically some islands. The Supreme Court said Maine owned them. But New Hampshire still says the naval shipyard on Seavey’s Island is theirs. Stubborn, these Granite Staters.

“Live Free or Die!” And don’t tread on me.

New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline in the whole darn country, eighteen miles. Blink and you miss it. Hampton Beach, where folks go to get sunburned. And the Isles of Shoals, nine tiny islands offshore. Four of them are New Hampshire’s. Poet Celia Thaxter had an art colony there. And Blackbeard, the pirate, supposedly buried treasure there. Treasure and art. A strange combination.

“Live Free or Die!” For rum, booty, and framing services perhaps?

And New Hampshire has produced an impressive list of notable people: Mary Baker Eddy, who started Christian Science. Robert Frost, a poet who knew a thing or two about lonely roads. Alan Shepard, who went to space. Ronnie James Dio, the flaming heavy metal icon. Dan Brown, who writes those mystery novels. Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers… funny people. So it goes.

“Live Free or Die!” Or at least, take it with a generous sense of humor.

And with that, again we point out the fact that New Hampshire’s average July temperature ranges from the mid-70s to mid-80s. As this entry gets logged the thermometer is in the mid-80s, on the way to a high of 96! Now without sounding like a total narcissist, Ronnie is rehearsing excuses in case anyone were to irrationally put the blame on him and Rocinante for bringing the Kanorado “Dawg Days” all this way north. You gotta admit, it is an astonishing coincidence. On the drive from Burlington VT to Derry, NH, the conditions were gorgeous. Light rain and upper 60s to mid 70s. Ronnie was breathing a sigh of relief for getting away from the punishing Kanorado summer heat, only to find he had apparently brought his customary suffering with him, to the astonishment of the Yankee natives.

PS: There is a silver lining… Ronnie always manages to find one. That being, evening temps cool down significantly so that Ronnie’s able to switch the ceiling fans off around 10 or 11 P.M. as they aren’t needed for the rest of the night. So… there’s that.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

You won’t get far…
In the Granite State…
With Shuck and Jive…
They can’t relate…
First to weigh in…
On the Presidential Race…
Live free and chalk it up to fate.

This Land: Vermont

So… after a brief hiatus from the HSoB tour (Dry Tortugas, baybay), Ronnie and Rocinante pointed the grill due North landing them in historic and spooky (see below) Burlington, Vermont. Now, because Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor, the first night in this northeastern woodland was accompanied by the infamous “heat dome“. That’s right, temps in the 90s, not cooling down till the wee hours. Of course, Ronnie remains humble, and Rocinante snickers beneath her breath as she’s not bothered by the varieties of biological temperature sensitivities. Ronnie expects the dome to move on soon, and he’s finding the Burlington library facilities among the best yet encountered. In fact, there is only one library in which he has experience that compares with Burlington, in Topeka, KS.

Now when Ronnie thinks of Vermont, his brain immediately goes to Senator Bernie Sanders. And why not? The man, with his rumpled suits and his waving arms, and the voice of gravel mixed with moral indignation, is practically a walking, talking, quintessentially American ideal. He’s the guy who reminds you of what Grandma told you about doing the right thing, even if nobody else is. He’s a fearless avatar, this Sanders, straight outta Vermont. And Vermont, well, it’s got this weird, similar history: secular, sure, but with a moral compass that points due north; revolutionary, absolutely, but grounded in a kind of unvarnished pragmatism that’d make a brick wall seem flighty.

But hold your horses, loopers, because even the best of us, even Vermont, has got some unsightly warts. And these aren’t just little pimples, these are the kind of warts that make you wince.

First off, let’s talk about the Native Americans. The Algonquian-speaking Abenaki and the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawks. They were here, for ten thousand years or more, minding their own business, probably inventing things we still don’t understand. Then the Europeans showed up. And now? Poof. All but extinct within the territory. This, my friends, is not a testament to good neighborly relations. This smells of something far nastier, a militant exercise of racist policies, right down to the bone marrow. And get this: Vermont, with a population that barely scrapes a million souls, is one of the least diverse places you’ll ever lay eyes on. But, and here’s where the whiplash comes in, Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery. The first! They even had safe houses along the Underground Railroad, helping people escape the horrors of coerced servitude. Now, put that next to zero federally recognized tribal associations or reservations. It’s enough to make a progressive-minded person feel like they’ve just been spun around in a washing machine. Vertigo, indeed.

And then there’s the whole women’s suffrage thing. Vermont was ahead of the curve, letting women vote in town elections back in 1880, decades before it was a national thing. Good for them, right? Pat on the back, Vermont! But wait, there’s more. In 1931, this enlightened state became the 29th to pass a eugenics law. Eugenics! Sounds like something out of a bad science fiction novel, doesn’t it? They sterilized people in institutions, people they’d decided were “degenerate” or “unfit.” They said they had permission, but documented abuses, folks, documented abuses. Two-thirds of these procedures were on women, and wouldn’t you know it, poor, unwed mothers were prime targets. There’s a debate about the exact numbers, but most happened between ’31 and ’41, though some went on as late as 1970. So, yeah, light and darkness, yin and yang, the whole cosmic shebang. Vermont embodies it all.

This, loopers, is why Ronnie, with his pragmatic Kanorado heart, loves the place. It’s got guts. It’s got flaws. It’s got character. To understand it better, we gotta dig into the dirt a little.

Let’s talk about Ethan Allen. A farmer with dirt under his fingernails, a writer with some philosophical thoughts rattling around in his head, a military man, and a politician. He’s the guy who practically invented Vermont, and he’s famous for snatching Fort Ticonderoga during the Revolutionary War. He was a land speculator, got into some scrapes with the law, and next thing you know, he’s leading the Green Mountain Boys, who basically ran New York settlers out of town with a campaign of intimidation. Then he gets himself captured by the British, tossed on some Royal Navy ships, and eventually swapped in a prisoner exchange… what a life.

And this Allen fellow, he wrote a book, a controversial little number called “Reason.” He was no Christian, he said, but wasn’t sure he was a Deist either. He just wanted good sense and truth to flourish. He believed that if folks just used their brains, they’d get rid of superstition and have a better understanding of God and their obligations to each other. Sound familiar? It should.

Because from the very beginning, a beacon for human dignity, you’ve got Bernie Sanders, a modern analog to Allen. He stands for something. Yet, Vermont itself remains this sparsely populated, homogenous woodland, a place that could confound even the wisest of philosophical thinkers.

And what about Vermont’s cultural output? Well, you got Phish. A jam band. From Burlington. Known for their musical improvisation and their fan base. The East Coast’s Grateful Dead, essentially. Make of that what you will.

Feeling dizzy yet? Hold on to your hats. In the 21st century, Vermont decided to double down on its progressivism. In 2000, it was the first state to introduce civil unions. Then, in 2009, it was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, and get this, they did it without being forced by a court. They just did it because they thought it was the right thing to do. And on January 22, 2018, Vermont became the first state to legalize recreational cannabis through legislative action. The ninth state for medical marijuana. And who signed these laws? A Republican Governor!

So, there you have it. Vermont. A place of contradictions, a place of pioneers, a place that sometimes gets it spectacularly right and sometimes gets it spectacularly wrong… c’est la!

And now, Ronnie, not ready to leave this place, is planning to attend some of the local “ghost tours,” cos you know, that’s one of the driving motivations of the HSoB tour. For example: Lake Champlain, bordering Burlington, Vermont, is steeped in maritime history, shrouded in tales of shipwrecks and ghosts including, but not limited to the schooner Sarah Ellen, lost in 1860, has been linked to a legend known as the Champlain Witch. The steamboat Water Witch sank in 1866 during a gale after being converted to a schooner, is another ghostly story of tragedy on the lake. This one has the captain’s youngest child lost to the depths.

Lake Champlain has claimed over 300 shipwrecks, many of these sacred zones are considered inhabited by spirits of those sleeping there. Some of these are included in Vermont’s Underwater Historic Preserve System made accessible to certified summer divers. And some of these divers have reported spooky experiences, including cold waves and strange noises near the wrecks.

Don’t worry, Ronnie won’t dive… hell, he didn’t even go snorkeling at Dry Tortugas. Something about taking off the glasses stops all thoughts of exploring the murky depths. Without the glasses, he feels like a slightly less animated Mr. Magoo.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

It may be micro…
More trees than Glasgow…
Green Mountain country…
It’s where the syrup grows…
It’s Lake Champlain…
And its ship wreck ghosts…
All part of American Ideal!

This Land: New Jersey

Alright, here we are… back in Horseheads, NY. Now, Ronnie and Rocinante were supposed to be in New Jersey. Writing about New Jersey from the Jersey Shore, no less… from the Boardwalk… gnoshing on saltwater taffy.

But plans, you know. They’re like little paper boats you set sailing in a bathtub, and then the dog jumps in… C’est la.

We aimed for the Atlantic, for the roar of the ocean and the smell of fries, and we landed in Clinton. Clinton, New Jersey. Which, naturally, kicked off a little ditty in Ronnie’s head, a bastardization of something that was definitely better in its original form:

Well I’ve never been to Jersey…
It’s charms are kinda hidden…
Well we headed for the boardwalk…
Only made it out to Clinton…
Can ya dig it…?
Ya just can’t rig it…
Go on and swig it.

And I’ve never been to Heaven…
But I’ve been to Kanorado…
Well they tell me i was born there…
But i really don’t remember…
In Kanorado… not Eldorado…
What does it matter…?

What does it matter indeed? You try to make sense of things, write a nice little blog dispatch, and your brain starts howling like three lonely dogs.

Now, New Jersey. It gets a bad rap. A real thumping from the wits over in New York, the titans of 30 Rock, who probably only ever see the bits that look like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag – all that industry flanking the Jersey Turnpike. “Garden State,” they call it. And you drive past refineries that look like metallic dinosaurs coughing up their last, and you wonder about the gardener.

But listen: Jersey. It’s small. Fifth smallest, a little postage stamp of a place. But it’s packed. Like a can of articulate sardines. Most densely populated state in the whole damn Union. And these aren’t just any sardines, mind you. They’re educated. They’re rolling in it – ten percent are millionaires. Millionaires! Probably from inventing some new kind of concrete or a better way to subdivide themselves. They’re healthy, too, second healthiest. And diverse? You betcha. Religion, ethnicity, the whole shebang. They’re practically a miniature, well-funded, surprisingly fit United Nations. Human Development Index, both the American kind and the regular kind? Near the top. So there.

And the noise they make, these New Jerseyites. You’ve got Frank Sinatra, Ol’ Blue Eyes, serenading the Meadowlands. Then there’s Springsteen, The Boss, sounding like he swallowed a gravel road and a book of working-class poetry. Whitney Houston, voice like a goddamn angel, soaring over Newark. Queen Latifah, hip hop royalty. And Tony Soprano, figuring out life’s little and bada-bing tragedies, usually involving gabagool. Even Snooki, bless her heart, contributing to the general, unscripted, leopard-print chaos. Moxie, Jersey’s got it.

So, Ronnie and Rocinante, they’re trundling along, aiming for the shore, and they hit Clinton. No beach, no boardwalk. But Clinton, it turns out, has ghosts (a prominent HSoB Tour objective). Every October, the Red Mill there gets dressed up as a Haunted Village. They even had Ghost Hunters poke around in 2008. Ghosts, by gawd. We were supposed to be looking for the soul of the Jersey Shore, and we found a place that specializes in things that ain’t there anymore. Or maybe never were.

Excuses, excuses. They’re like armpits, Ronnie always said; most people have two and they usually stink. One excuse for falling short of the salty air was a detour. A holy pilgrimage, almost. Rocinante, with a mind of her own, or maybe just following the subtle magnetic pull of craftsmanship, wandered off to Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Nazareth, PA. Where they made Ronnie’s guitar. Martin, the kind of guitar that made Robbie Robertson want to sing about feeling about half-past dead. Which, of course, set off another little ear-worm:

Pulled into Nazareth, feelin’ ’bout half-past dead…
Don’t need to find a place where i can lay my head…
Cos’ Rocinante was smart ’bout thinkin’ ahead…
Allowing Ronnie to skip the part ’bout askin’ for a bed.

It’s a funny old world. You aim for the ocean, you find a guitar factory and Jersey Mike’s for lunch. You expect one thing, you get something else.

And speaking of something else, New Jersey. Blue state. Thoroughly blue. But even in the bluest of states, you’ll find some folks trying to repaint the town red. Some genius, some absolute card-carrying comedian without an audience, tried to change the name of little Clinton to “Reagan.” Reagan, New Jersey. You can’t make this stuff up. The universe just hands it to you on a slightly greasy, very confusing platter. Who needs The Onion when you’ve got municipal politics?

So, the report on the day trip to New Jersey got written, not from the boardwalk, but from the quiet, and ever-friendly Horseheads Free Library. About a trip that missed its target but hit a few other things along the way. Ghosts, guitars, sandwiches, and the perplexing, often hilarious, business of being human. Turn, turn, turn.

Onward through the fog… RH

You don’t need beach towels…
On a Clinton hike…
But if you’re hungry…
There’s Jersey Mikes…
And if you’re lucky…
You’ll stop in Nazareth…
And pick out a brand new Martin ax.

This Land: Connecticut

LISTEN: If you want to understand the United States of America, and you’re in a hurry, you could do worse than look at Connecticut. It’s a real grab bag of a place. It’s got all the shiny things and all the sharp, rusty things America keeps in its pockets. It’s a place of beautiful, brilliant minds, some of which are put to work making new and interesting ways to blow people to pieces.

C’EST LA: They had a war there, once. The Pequot War. This was long before the powdered wigs and the Declaration of Independence. It was just plain, old-fashioned barn-burner. And then, not so long ago, a young man walked into a school called Sandy Hook and did something so awful it’s hard to write words about it. Between those two points, you will find a long and profitable history of making tools for the unfortunate vocation of killing people and breaking things.

A man named David Bushnell built a submarine there called the Turtle. This was way back. It was supposed to sneak up on British ships and make them go away forever. It didn’t work so well, but we’ve been perfecting the idea ever since. Now Connecticut is home to companies with names that sound like comic book villains. Raytheon. Pratt & Whitney. Lockheed Martin. They make clever things that fly very fast and then explode. Busy, busy, busy. And the money rolls in.

But here’s the thing about people: they are messy, unpredictable creatures. For every looper building a bomb, there’s another sitting in a quiet room, trying to write a letter that might save the world.

Connecticut had one of the best letter-writers of all time. His name was Sam Clemens, but he called himself Mark Twain. He lived in a big, beautiful, goofy house in Hartford. He had a mustache. He saw all the greed and the violence and the hucksterism, and he thought it was the saddest and funniest thing in the world. He used free speech like a fire hose. He pointed it at hypocrisy and cruelty and tried to wash some of the filth away.

And not far from him lived a woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe. She wrote a letter about owning other human beings. It made a lot of powerful people very, very angry. That’s how you know a letter is doing its job. She was using her brain and a bottle of ink to fight against loopers using whips and chains.

It’s enough to give you an existential whiplash…?

And get this: back in the day, the political party of Democrats in Connecticut thought the Civil War was a bad idea. They weren’t too bothered about the whole slavery business. Now, of course, that same party in that same state plants signs in every lawn about diversity and inclusion. The names on the jerseys have stayed the same, but the players, and the rules of the game, have gone topsy-turvy. It’s all very confusing. It’s a good reason to spark up some of Snoop Dogg’s doobois.

So what’s next for the little state with the big contradictions? Now we’ve taught the machines to think, or at least to write book reports and make up pictures. We’re feeding all of our nonsense into these things, all of our history, and our hatreds, and our love poems. What will the thinking machines make of Connecticut? Maybe they’ll tell us to keep building the bombs, only to do it more efficiently. Or maybe they’ll read Mark Twain and decide the whole human experiment is a joke. A bad one.

I imagine old Sam Clemens would have a thing or two to say about it. He’d look at the internet, where everyone has a megaphone and no one has an editor, and he’d probably light a cigar, pour himself a whiskey, and rack the billiards. He might have watched that movie, Idiocracy, and said, “They got it mostly right, but it should have been sadder.” He knew the score. He knew that human genius was a beautiful and dangerous thing, like a bottle of nitroglycerin. You could use it to help prevent a heart attack, or you could use it to blow up the world.

C’EST LA: We have the angels of our better nature, and we have the howling monkeys who want to burn it all down. They both live in Connecticut. They both live in us. Words are nice. Books are nice. But they might not be enough to keep the monkeys from the matches.

We’ll have to do better. We’ll just have to be kinder. And that’s all we have to say about that.

Next Stop: Jersey, Baybay!

Onward through the fog… RH

You got your swords…
You got your ploughshares…
Visit Hartford…
They’ve got it all there…
Commune with ghosts…
Converse with brilliant minds…
All await you in Connecticut!

HSoB: Dawg Dayz

Ronnie Hays, a man whose summer spirit animal was likely a slightly singed tumbleweed, had come to the nation’s capital with the best of intentions. The Hot Springs or Busk tour, a grand delusion hatched during a particularly brutal February, was predicated on the simple, Nietzschean idea that purposeful suffering builds character. Having already suffered enough, Ronnie decided to route his nation-wide tour to stay in climate zones ranging from fifty-five to eighty-five degrees, the sweet spot of human endurance, the crucible of the soul! He’d envisioned himself a Thoreauvian guitar hero, strumming universal chords amidst humanity’s waxing and waning.

Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated, desert-baked bullshit.

The “Heat Dome,” as the local news charmingly called it, wasn’t a dome at all. It was more like being trapped inside a giant, sweaty armpit, the kind belonging to a long-haul trucker who’d mainlined lukewarm coffee for three days straight. The air in Ronnie’s trusty Sprinter van, Rocinante, felt thick enough to chew. He’d envisioned festive busking celebrations, though getting him no closer to Saturday Night Live, would render enough spare coin to grab a meal at the local sandwich shop. Instead, he found himself sweating under a near ineffectual ceiling fan, each morning waking up feeling like a poorly wrung dishcloth.

So, the busking gear gathered dust. The call of the troubadour was drowned out by the siren song of the mall food court’s air conditioning. After a productive shift dodging rogue toddlers and the whispered anxieties of the internet-addicted masses at the public library, Ronnie would retreat to this muzak-infused oasis. There, amidst the clatter of plastic cutlery and the pervasive aroma of lukewarm orange chicken, he’d tap tap tap away on his tablet, crafting ironic insights (or at least, moderately coherent sentences). Roughing it, his ass. This was more like politely surrendering to the crushing reality of climate change and a distinct lack of masochistic tendencies.

He pictured himself now, a bumbling, modern-day Don Quixote, sweat beading on his five-o-clock shadow. His armor traded in for a Hawaiian shirt that clung to him like a damp second skin. On his head, not a gleaming helmet, but a decidedly un-gleaming bucket hat, perpetually askew. His trusty spear replaced by a backpack, its hydration bladder more vital than any lance against the oppressive thermal foe. Rocinante, the wheezing van, stood sentinel in the D.C. Metro Branch Avenue parking lot… a tin can beast of burden in this concrete desert. In the hazy distance, a monstrous broadcast tower pulsed with invisible signals, a modern-day malevolent windmill against a humidity-choked sky, a reminder of the information war that had lured him to the proud highway in the first place.

He’d braved the sweltering streets of D.C., a city buzzing with a nervous energy thicker than the humidity. The political air crackled with a pre-apocalyptic fervor, the news a constant barrage of impending crisis. A grumpy waiter here, a train car full of faces etched with worry there. And then, the memes. Oh, the memes. Those digital harbingers of discontent, the unfunny, menacing pronouncements hinting at a redux of some long-ago, blood-soaked uncivil conflict. Ronnie, with his comfortable former life in the ivory towers of academia, knew he was on the wrong side of that particular partisan divide, labeled with that delightfully reductive term: “woke.”

He’d spent hours wandering around the fenced-off National Mall, the intended epicenter of his social exploration just out of reach. Denied entry to the Pride Fest because of his backpack – a water bottle deemed a potential weapon, for Christ’s sake – he felt like a character in some absurdist Kafka adaptation. The irony wasn’t lost on him: all this purposeful social exploring he’d signed up for, only to be thwarted by something as mundane as a plastic water bottle and transparent back-pack.

He thought of Churchill, of course. That eternal optimist (or perhaps just a bloke with a stiff upper lip and a fondness for the drink). “Americans can be counted on to do the right thing once they’ve tried everything else.” Ronnie clung to that like a life raft in a sea of digital vitriol and oppressive heat. This flirtation with the dark side, this collective descent into the fever swamp of ethnonationalism – it was just a phase, right? A particularly sweaty, anxiety-inducing phase. Eventually, the fever would break, and they’d stumble back towards something resembling pluralistic sanity.

He hoped.

The Metro ride back to Rocinante was a sweaty, sullen affair. The promise of the night in a tin can under a sky slow to cool was less than appealing. Just weeks ago, he’d been shivering in that damned mummy bag, wishing for a single degree of warmth. Now, the thought of trying to sleep in a pervasive coating of sweat felt like a prelude to spontaneous combustion.

He’d had enough. This noble experiment in “Hot Springs or Busk” had devolved into a sweaty, keyboard-tapping surrender in a mall food court. Protest season in D.C.? They could have it. The call of the open road, the beckoning of cooler climes further north… that was the only pursuit that held any appeal now. Time to point Rocinante toward the hazy promise of something less… apocalyptic. All that said, and with all the hassle of dodging heat stroke, he’d still take these dog dayz over winter frostbite and existential dread any damn day of the week. Over and out, he muttered to himself, the glow of the tablet screen reflecting in his weary eyes. Over and out. Time to get back to the original plan. Time to head NORTH. And for the love of all that is holy, someone please convince the powers that be we REALLY don’t want to turn Earth into another Venus. Can we please get back to that Post WWII spirit of sacrifice in the face of collective crisis? Can we, PLEASE, start prioritizing a life-friendly climate over billionaires’ bank accounts?

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

This Land: New York

Of course, like California, Texas, and Florida, New York is too big for just one post. However, we’ll have to settle on this phase of the tour as Ronnie & Rocinante are on an ever tightening time schedule. They may return to NY in late July or August, Texas in September or October.

Anyway… New York! The Big Apple! Everybody’s got a New York story, right? Like it’s a damn pilgrimage you gotta make to prove you’re a fully functioning ‘murican. So, Ronnie has his personal connections to New York, that slab of concrete crammed with eight million other schmucks all trying to get somewhere slightly faster than the next guy.

First up, Bob Dylan! Yeah, Bobby Z. The voice of a generation, a moniker he wisely refused to hold. Voice like a rusty wheel on an outlaw biker’s ride, but hey, you know what they say about the squeaky one! And Ronnie has a deep reverence for Dylan’s impact on the music biz. Over the years Ronnie has cultivated a small garden of his own. Well… not so much in the “business”. Even though he was active as a player in the 1980/90s, he retreated from that merry-go-round in time to ring in the new millennium. No longer playing for money, but not willing to abandon his garden. He’s out there with a tiny little rake and a watering can, growing organic, timeless songs while the bulldozers of pop-country are paving a formulaic paradise next door… in “the biz”.

Anyway, Ronnie retreated from the biz. Got out before some cheap hustler grafted a spiked dog collar on his neck and made him rock out about peach cobbler, or cherry pie, or something equally inane. Meanwhile, in contrast, Dylan, like Ronnie, came from “nowheresville“. But, unlike Ronnie, Bobby Z. made good. You could say he cashed in. Or you could say he wisely avoided J. Edgar Hoover’s death ray at a time of serious danger for influential folks taking contrary views on the war in Vietnam. And Ronnie? Well, he “jumped off the bandwagon in time to raise a couple kids and try to pursue some resemblance of adult career-like activities.” Translation: he chickened out and got a job! A job, folks! That thing you do so you can afford the therapist you need because of your job! But hey, at least he’s got his self-produced records, no autotune, all-natural. Not perfect, in fact, fairly crude. But hey, imperfect authenticity beats sanitized, pitch-corrected pablum any day!

Next up for Ronnie’s New York story! Those goddamn 1970s and 80s TV programs. Oh, the cultural landmarks! “All in the Family” apparently had a big impact. Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it? His maternal grandad and eldest uncle were “Archie Bunker clones.” Clones! Like they were churned out in some bigot factory in Queens! Provincial, nativist, racist, misogynist… the wholeunenlightened enchilada! The things Ronnie’s Grandpa would say watching ball games on TV would make a PC maven cringe all the way to their socks. We kid you not! Probably stuff that would make Archie Bunker hisowndamnself say, “Whoa, take it easy there, Meathead’s dad!” There’s that. Yeah, but for Ronnie, Saturday Night Live came as a refreshing cool breeze… a tonic for the raging rebel soul!

Then, there’s the mid-2000s. Ronnie and his girlfriend hit the big city! A “whirlwind junket around Gotham.” Five days in Manhattan! Almost enough time to get used to the subway system. Almost! That’s like saying five minutes in a high-school boys’ locker room is almost enough time to get used to the smell! I’ve heard folks say you never get used to the New York subway. Like a mobile petri dish filled to the rim with way too much humanity and the distinct aroma of “what the hell is that?”

They “visited MoMa.” Modern art! Where jaded connoisseurs stare at a red square on a white canvas and go, “Profound!” Yeah, easy money, right? After a good stroll through MoMa, Ronnie and his companion “Sought out culinary treasures.” For some, that would be like paying $30 for a hot dog and calling it “artisanal.” But no, there’s super interesting ethnic fare to discover if you know where to look. Our heroes had an “exotic food on a budget” guide, and it delivered, in spades. They also hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge, a little slice of history. Hey! You can take the boy out of the High Plains, but… Anyway the pair also rode the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building! The observation deck! “Look, sweetie! Tiny little yellow cars full of tiny little schmucks just like us!”

And the highlight: a nighttime 5K around Central Park! Because running in circles in the dark in a city famous for its muggers is just good, clean fun! Nothing like a good dose of adrenaline to pump up your 5K time. And then, the pièce de résistance: Ronnie got yelled at by a Ralph Kramden clone driving a shuttle bus! A shuttle bus! They didn’t have a pass! A pass! For a bus! What is this, Gaza? “Where you from?” the bus driver bellows. Ronnie, thinking he’s clever, says, “Queens?” And the driver, a true scholar of human nature and New York geography, wasn’t buying it! So they had to walk back to the hotel! Oh, the humanity! Trudging through the concrete jungle, probably past a dozen guys selling “I Heart NY” shirts made by children in a sweatshop in a country they can’t pronounce. That’s your New York experience right there!

Finally, Ronnie and Rocinante are hunkered down in Horseheads New York for the writing of this post. Horseheads… central southern New York. Now there’s a name that just rolls off the tongue and lands in a pile of what-the-hell. The story behind it is “somewhat Stephen King-esque.” You might imagine it involving a disgruntled farmer, a cursed field, and a pile of, well, you know. Horseheads! We wouldn’t be surprised if the local football team was called “The Impalers.” Truth isn’t far from all that, by the way. You gotta love a town that just puts the weird right out there on the welcome sign. No pretense, just “Yup, Horseheads. Deal with it.” At least it’s honest, unlike the rest of the current era in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Ok…

Onward through the fog… RH

In New York City…
You’ll find no pity…
To make it there…
Takes lots of gritty…
But like ol’ Blue Eyes…
In soothing crooner tones…
Make it there…
You’ll make it anywhere.

This Land: Maryland

We have the “West”.
We have the “Midwest”.
We have the “Southwest”.
We have the “Post-Jim-Crow South”.
We have the “New England” colonies.

All of these regions have their unique character. However, there is a place where this variety gets brewed into a delicious stew. That place is called Maryland. Sorta like “spiral motion physics,” where the motion around a source of attraction forms spiraling patterns toward the source like a whirlpool. That point is DC, and the American stew is at its diversity-best in the surrounding area, Maryland. And it’s not just the people as the geography is also representative of this diversity. Maryland may not be one of the largest states in the US, but with its variety of culture, climate, topographical features, and temperament, some would say…

Maryland is America in Miniature

Now… it’s impossible to speak of Maryland in the year of our lord 2025 without mentioning the apparent shifting in nature of that cultural/political source of gravity in DC. It is a brazen spectacle to behold, our present-day republic teetering on the precipice of a descent into a veritable kakistocracy. A governance of the witless and the fearful as outlined in the so-called “Project 2025.” This ponderous tome, a testament to the enduring American appetite for sanctimonious nonsense, imagines a future so bleakly uniform, so relentlessly scrubbed of the invigorating cacophony of realpolitik, that one is almost moved to pity the authors for their impoverished imaginations. They pine for a nation remade in the image of a white-washed sepulcher, a monotonous ethno-state lorded over by a monarch of their own anointing.

In moments of such profound national heartburn, it is instructive, and indeed, affirming, to cast a backward glance at the decision to remove the federal government’s seat from the feverish grasp of Philadelphia to the relatively blank slate of Maryland and what is now known as the District of Columbia. This was not merely a geographical relocation, but a providential compromise of competing interests escaping the miasma of a political homogeneity that then, as now, threatened to asphyxiate the nascent republic in its sleep.

One need only consider the character of Maryland, that delightful America in Miniature, to appreciate the wisdom of our founders. Here is a state forged in the crucible of religious tolerance, a haven for England’s persecuted Catholics, who, though a minority, were granted the revolutionary courtesy of coexisting with their Puritan tormentors. This early experiment in pluralism, though not without its lamentable “plundering times” at the hands of Cromwellian zealots, set a precedent for the rich and varied tapestry that is modern Maryland. It is a state where, to this day, the descendants of indentured servants and the progeny of freed slaves live and work alongside a vibrant influx of souls from every corner of the globe – Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean. Indeed, it stands as one of a handful of states where the so-called “minorities” now constitute the majority, a demographic destiny that sends shivers down the spines of the Project 2025 Christian Nationalist hierarchs.

The very soil of Maryland seems to reject the notion of a monolithic culture. From the salt-laced air of the Chesapeake to the rolling hills of the Piedmont, the state’s varied topography mirrors the diversity of its people. It is a place where the first American-born saint rests, a testament to its Catholic roots, yet where Protestants and the happily godless now outnumber the papists. It is a “Free State” not merely in its defiance of Prohibition’s follies, but in its very essence – a haven for the unconventional, boasting one of the highest concentrations of those who defy the rigid taxonomies of gender and sexuality. Let us not forget that the first American to proudly proclaim himself a “drag queen,” the courageous William Dorsey Swann, hailed from these parts, a pioneer in the eternal struggle for the right to be oneself, however flamboyant.

Contrast this vibrant, chaotic, and ultimately more interesting reality with the sterile vision of the Project 2025 evangelists. They yearn for a nation of one political philosophy, one creed, one stultifying set of beliefs, a landscape as flat and featureless as their own intellectual horizons. Theirs is a philosophy born of fear – fear of the other, fear of the new, fear of the messy and unpredictable nature of a truly free society. They would dismantle the very administrative state that, for all its bureaucratic bungling, provides a framework for our collective endeavor, and replace it with a system of pay-to-play patronage and ideological loyalty tests. They would, in essence, turn the clock back to an imagined golden age that never was.

The historical record of Maryland stands as a powerful rebuke to this retrograde fantasy. It was in Maryland that the ideals of the Revolution led to the liberation of thousands of slaves, a moral awakening that, while imperfect and tragically delayed, pointed toward a more just future. It was on Maryland’s soil, at Antietam, that the tide of a bloody Civil War, fought over the very soul of the nation, began to turn. And it was Maryland that, in the ashes of that conflict, abolished slavery and extended the franchise to its non-white citizens. This is not the history of a people wedded to a single, exclusionary identity, but of a people grappling, often violently, with the complexities of building a society out of disparate and often conflicting parts.

The proponents of this newfangled ethno-nationalist monarchy would do well to study this history. They would do well to observe the thriving economy of Maryland, buoyed by its proximity to the very federal government they seek to corrupt. They would do well to visit its public libraries, those bastions of self-directed education that offer knowledge to all, regardless of station or background.

In the final analysis, the decision to plant the nation’s capital in the embrace of Maryland was a stroke of genius. It was an implicit recognition that the strength of this republic lies not in its ability to enforce a bland uniformity, but in its capacity to absorb and celebrate its manifold diversities. The future of this nation, if it is to have a future worth mentioning, will not be found in the sterile pages of Project 2025, but in the noisy, vibrant, and gloriously untidy reality of places like Maryland. Let the hollow sycophants preach their gospel of homogeneity; the rest of us, the free human beings in this republic, will continue to draw our strength from the rich and fertile soil of our diversity.

And that’s all we have to say about that.

Onward through the fog… RH

You can’t just waltz by…
The state of Maryland…
Too much to see…
Too much to do…
Get on the Metro…
To the Fed. Triangle…
And don’t forget…
To hydrate properly.

Wizard Whisperer

By the smoking shrooms of the Riviera City, what fresh hell is this? Stan Diller, they call him. Diller Monkey, the festering boil on the backside of Oz. This ain’t your cuddly winged primate flinging feces for giggles, no sir. This is a creature brewed in the very cauldron of Quadling nationalist bile, a walking, squawking hate-balloon who somehow, by the grace of some seriously twisted karmic joke, has the ear – and apparently the drooling attention span – of the goddamn Wizard.

They gossip, these nervous little Munchkin handlers with their sweaty palms and darting eyes, that Diller is the “Wizard Whisperer!” More like the Wizard’s ventriloquist, shoving his twisted rhetoric up the old man’s puppet-hole while the Wiz just blinks and nods like a wind-up jack-in-the-box. Remember that fiasco at the Castleforce Guild global summit? Poor Wizard, nodding off like a goddamn used car lot inflatable tube-man gone limp, and there’s Diller, his beady little monkey eyes gleaming with some kind of perverse pride, practically dragging the befuddled old coot out by the sleeve. You’d almost feel sorry for the Wizard, if you weren’t so busy choking on the stench of Diller’s racist policies.

Family separation at the border? “Zero tolerance” for anyone who doesn’t sport pristine Quadling papers? Banning Oompa Loompas? This is pure, uncut Diller Monkey madness, a xenophobic freak show orchestrated by a tiny, bitter primate with a heart full of rusty nails and a brain marinated in White Quadling grievance. All the more puzzling is the fact that Diller is a flying monkey. A race of creatures formerly demonized and nearly exterminated by the very Quadlings he currently champions. Irony, apparently died in the realm years ago. And the Wizard, bless his fading faculties, scarfs it up like a Big Mac and large fries.

“A simple, no-brainer,” Diller chirps, regarding the trauma inflicted on families ripped apart at his command. This is the kind of soulless pronouncement that should send a chill down the spine of every sentient creature in this cursed land. “The powers of the wizard… will not be questioned!” he screeches, his voice echoing with the unmistakable timbre of a tinpot dictator in the making. Familiar, you say? You bet your lollypop stick it’s familiar. It’s the sound of freedom getting a fake-news red pill shoved up its bum.

And the literary tastes of this creature? Mourning the loss of some scribbler peddling White Quadling “genocide” fantasies in the pages of “Blackheart,” that festering rag for the Oz alt-right? Of course he did. Because this isn’t about policy for the common good, loopers. This is about the primal, gut-level ugliness of racial animus, plain and simple. Diller Monkey isn’t interested in making Oz great again. He’s interested in making it “white” again. Whatever the hell that means in a land full of tin woodsmen, upright lions, and talking scarecrows.

So here we are… the Wizard, the once-revered reality-TV star, now a doddering puppet dancing to the tune of a racist little monkey. The citizens voted for a Wizard, but what they got was Diller, the “Wizard Whisperer,” the architect of Oz’s slow, agonizing descent into a xenophobic hellhole. And all we can do is show up, amidst the crumbling grandeur of Riviera City, and rage against the machine. Because in the grand, twisted theatre of Oz, that’s the only goddamn sane response left.

Stay tuned… much more to come.

This Land: Delaware

Ok… Ronnie wants to share another vivid dream. This time accompanied by a lone, mournful saxophone moaning a melody from some vaguely familiar smoky jazz club. The scene is a dusty phantom TV studio at night with the sound of a flickering fluorescent light, buzzing like a trapped fly. The dream conjured forth a vision so preposterous, yet so uniquely American in its blend of earnest naivety and jaded cynicism, that it deserves attention.

To the mournful strains, a debate between two ladies, from drastically different eras, denizens of that diminutive state of Delaware. A place known for its accommodating incorporation laws and its haste in jumping on the Federal bandwagon.

The first, a clever gal called “Lizzie” Magie, the originator of the popular board game, Monopoly, was aflame with the righteous indignation of a perennial reformer. Her prescription for the nation’s 21st Century Defcon-II constitutional emergency? To uproot the entire federal governing apparatus from its swampy roost in DC and transplant it for a time to the hallowed, if somewhat cramped, soil of Delaware. Rehab, a shock to the system for a period of time before moving back into the original storied monumental structures. The symbolism, she declared, of returning to the “first state” would, by some occult magic, restore the pristine virtues of the Founding Fathers… those gentlemen who, if they could witness the current state of their handiwork, would likely prescribe a universal draft of Jonestown Cool-Aid.

This Lizzy Magie creature, with the touching faith of a Nebraska retiree buying into a Mazatlán time-share, lamented over the rapid degradation of the “three co-equal branches,” a charming myth that has as much relation to current reality as Schoolhouse Rock has to the operations of Donald Trump’s meme-coin exchange. The branches, she correctly observed, are no longer co-equal; they are, instead, a grotesque mirage… it’s all about the ONE, she would say. One part AI Pope, one part Verruca Salt, and one part Bonaparte wannabe. Her solution to this, beyond the geographical transplant, was a ballot method currently adopted by a few progressive states and municipalities called “ranked-choice voting.” Anathema to the current crop of minority rule denizens, and so not likely to be adopted as long as they hold the reins. Then again, the notion of an innovative method of tabulating ballots can somehow transmute the base metal of homo imbecillis into political gold is rather quaint! The idea, as she expounded it, was to compel the scoundrels who infest the halls of power to appeal to a wider swath of the electorate, to dilute their venom, to approach a reasonable approximation of “the common interest”. Of course, this will only fly over Christian Nationalism‘s dead body.

Against this geyser of well-intentioned wishful thinking stood the second apparition, a younger, livelier, specimen of Delawarean womanhood named Aubrey Plaza. This curious exhibit, draped in the deadpan weeds of fashionable apathy, met the older madame’s reformist zeal with a blast of arctic cynicism that was, we confess, almost refreshing in its bleak honesty. To the proposal of Delaware as the governmental rehab facility, she responded with a chuckle worthy of a seasoned city editor observing a cub reporter’s first fumbling attempts at the Parks & Rec. desk. The problem, she drawled, with a voice like coffin nails scratching ice, was not the capital’s temporary address, but the fundamental, irredeemable character of the political species and the greed that elevates them.

This Aubrey Plaza-like apparition, to her credit, harbored no illusions about “fairness” or the noble aspirations of the founding slave-owners. Politics, in her view, was a naked grab for power, and the current vogue for “minoritarian rule” was not a bug but a feature, a “boutique monopoly of misery” to be savored by its practitioners. She saw in ranked-choice voting not a path to a more reasoned polity, but a machine for manufacturing “beige” politicians, an army of anodyne chameleons stripped of even the base authenticity of their current awfulness. Her ultimate vision, delivered with the deadpan ennui of a bored Delphic oracle, was of an algorithm anointing rulers, a prospect that, in its sheer mechanistic horror, almost eclipses the current system of selection by dark money, performative martyrdom, and juvenile bullying.

What, then, to make of this nightmare debate between the earnest, if deluded, progressive and the languid, clear-eyed absurdist? Lizzy, with her touching faith in procedural tinkering and the essential goodness of humankind, represents the eternal optimist, the kind who believes a new coat of paint can mitigate dry rot. Her desire for a return to foundational principles is understandable, if naive; her championing of ranked-choice voting, merely the latest iteration of the age-old quest to make silk satchels out of swine ears. It presupposes a citizenry capable of, and interested in, nuanced decision-making, a presupposition so wildly at odds with observed reality as to be laughable. The average voter, faced with ranking their preferences among a slate of multi-creed options, would likely succumb to vertigo or simply vote for the candidate with the most reassuringly vacuous slogan.

As for dear Ms. Plaza, her pronouncements, while reeking of the intellectual sewer, at least possess the virtue of an unvarnished realism of sorts. Her embrace of minoritarian rule as an “elegant slide” is, of course, monstrous, yet it is an accurate enough description of the trajectory of more than one so-called democracy. Her dismissal of compromise as “what people who are losing agree to” is the distilled wisdom of every ward heeler and backroom boss since Odysseus launched his armada. She sees the game for what it is: a contest of audacity, not a symposium of philosophers. Her suggestion that some tribes are simply “better” and that the point might be for the “correct minority to achieve a beautifully efficient, aesthetically perverse monopoly” is the quiet part said loud, the unspoken ambition of every tinpot Messiah and aspiring oligarch.

As rare as it is to glean coherence from these prematurely interrupted sleep cycles, Ronnie was able to dredge some meaning, if fleeting. Namely, the dream offered a grim choice between two equally unappetizing just-desserts. On the one hand, the saccharine, pie in the sky nostrums of the bleeding heart progressive librul, forever convinced that one more committee meeting, one more ballot reform, will usher in a new Shining City on the Hill. On the other, the cold, reptilian embrace of power politics, a frank acknowledgment that the entire enterprise is a swindle, best enjoyed by those with a taste for the perverse.

The notion that advanced information technology, as Lizzy hopefully termed it, could facilitate a more pluralistic utopia via ranked-choice voting is perhaps the most vulnerable element of the entire phantasmagoria. Technology, in the hands of civic charlatans, may end up being a more efficient tool for bamboozling the citizenry, for refining the techniques of mass manipulation, less for elevating civil discourse. To imagine it serving the “interests of all” is probably a hopeless pipe dream.

So, the capital can remain in Washington, or it may, for all we care, be relocated to Mars, with Congress critters required to broadcast their imbecilities in matching blue space suits… it’ll make no damn bit of difference. Ms. Plaza’s final, chilling observation about Delaware’s “low incorporation fees” as a boon for some minoritarian corporate monarchy is perhaps the most salient takeaway. For in this emerging grand, cacophonous, and increasingly deranged Republican Autocracy, the only true constants are the pursuit of plunder and the eternal, unyielding willful compliance of at least a bloated third of the electorate. And it will take more than bizzarro dreams to push back against this unfortunate state of affairs. Now, if you’ll excuse us, it’s time to head out to the van and throw a burrito down a clearly hangry dreamer’s throat.

Onward through the fog… RH

A sure-fire way to…
Spoil Thanksgiving…
Fire up a game of…
Classic Monopoly…
It works the same way…
For national unity…
Go ahead and blame Delaware.

Loopcircus

Loopcircus

This Land: Massachusetts

This Land: New Hampshire

This Land: Vermont

This Land: New Jersey

This Land: Connecticut

HSoB: Dawg Dayz

This Land: New York

This Land: Maryland

Wizard Whisperer

This Land: Delaware