Category Archives: 2019 Trip to Southwest United States

Musings on my trip to the Southwestern United States that occurred mainly in 2019 (though it started 2018)

Gray Mountain

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Books, Law

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Gray Mountain, by John Grisham, is in some ways a traditional Grisham novel. He often has great ideas that get you interested right off the bat. This was no exception. A Young Wall Street Lawyer gets laid off after the Financial Crisis of 2008. As a severance perk the firm pays for her health insurance if she agrees to work pro bono for a charity. As a result she finds a job with a Legal Aid firm deep in Virginia. There she discovers Appalachia and all that comes with it, including coal. The coal industry is up to its  old tricks and some employees need legal help in dealing with Big Coal.

Sadly, like most Grisham novels in my opinion, he starts off with a great idea that fizzles because he does not know how to finish it. Grisham is like a good starting pitcher who needs a closer. This book is in that strong tradition. It fizzles  at the end. In the meantime it did provide an entertaining read.

Before it ends, the heroine, Samantha helps a number of indigent people who were getting screwed. The saddest of her cases involves a coal miner who contracts Black Lung disease for which he is entitled to be compensated, but the system, and all embroiled in it, use that system to deny benefits. Samantha in the best tradition of the law tries to get redress. Big Coal resists. As Grisham writes, “coal companies are brilliant when it comes to finding new ways to screw people.”

As Grisham writes:

Chester said, “it’s a favorite trick in the coalfields. A company mines the coal, then goes bankrupt to avoid payments and the reclamation requirements. Sooner or later they usually pop up with another name. Same bad actors, just a new logo.”

“That’s disgusting,” Samantha said.

“No, that’s the law.”

Grisham is nothing if not cynical about lawyers and the law. But in recent years he has also painted the other side of the story, with lawyers like Samantha. There are some good lawyers too. This is what she learns from another lawyer, talking about court rooms, “I love them. It’s the only place where the little guy can go toe-to-toe on a  level field with a big, crooked, corporation. A person with nothing–no money–nothing but a set of facts can file a lawsuit and force a billion dollar company to show up for a fair fight.” That is the majesty of the law.  Even if the fight is not always fair, often it is. Often it brings justice. That is a pretty good thing.

For another client she helps, when no one else will, Samantha realizes this on her way home:

“As she drove away from the Starlight Motel, Samantha realized she had spent the better part of 12 hours aggressively representing Pamela Booker and her children. Had she not stumbled into the clinic that morning, they would be hiding somewhere in the backseat of their car, hungry, cold, hopeless, frightened, and vulnerable.” Again, a pretty good thing.

Sometimes– maybe not often enough, but sometimes–lawyers can be proud of what they do. Damn proud.

The Interesting World of Len Deighton

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Books, CBC radio, World of ideas

 

 

Though the wonders of the CBC Radio App, I listened to a fascinating interview on CBC with an old friend whom I have never met–Len Deighton. I never met him but I grew up with him. Deighton was the writer of spy novels from the 1960s to 1980s. He was in my opinion a great writer. He was right up their with another favortie John LeCarre.  Both of those writers broke the protocol of spy novels in suggesting that the good guys–the British and America spies–were just as morally corrupt as the bad guys–the Communists. Who would ever have thought that?

Listen to this  conversation between Bernard Samson and his boss Dickie Cruyer in British intelligence, who Phillip Coulter described as having “a PHD in office politics,”

 

Bernard: Who pays him?

Dickie:        He’s not for sale Bernard.

Bernard:      Then he’s no one I know.

His first novel, which he actually wrote for himself because he did not intend to publish it, did catch the public attention after he did publish it. He described blink and dingy streets of Berlin soaked with betrayal and paranoia. As Philip Coulter said, his books described “a broken down society at war with itself in which the greatest dangers were from within.”

Deighton realized that one of  the most most common fears of our policial leaders was a fear of a lack of information. He likened this to a fear of the dark or a lack of confidence that our future unknowns will be benign.      That opened up a lot of room for intelligence services (at least until the arrival of Donald Trump who relies instead on his own personal ‘intelligence.’)

Deighton described this in the first of the fabulous trilogy  Game, Set & Match where the spy Bernard Samson had sent a young and inexperienced spy, McKenzie, to a situation in which he was murdered. After that Bernard had terrible visions of McKenzie’s brains spattered on the wall behind his corpse. The visions came back to him at night and he shuddered. “I felt guilty and as I prepared for bed I suffered the delayed reaction that my body had deferred and deferred. I shook uncontrollably. I did not want to admit even to myself that I was frightened but that image of McKenzie kept blurring into an image of myself. And my guilt was turning into fear for fear is so unwelcome that it comes only in disguise and guilt is its favourite one.”

Coulter interviewed Deighton in the London Travellers Club dining room where well educated and well to do Englishmen who had travelled abroad met to discuss their travels. The club was a vital a cog in the British class system. It had a huge library with books that went right up to the ceiling. However, like the books in British aristocratic manors, many of them were seldom read. They were not really there to educate their owners; they were there for decoration. As Coulter said, “Fake books.  A Library not used for the purpose of imparting knowledge are in some ways metaphors for the themes in Len Deighton’s novels. Worlds where things are seldom what they seem where those with the trappings of power and competence actually rarely have those skills. The room too is emblematic of the class tensions that run through Deighton’s books. The tension between a natural aristocracy with wealth and power and the classes below them with little or none.”

Yet Deighton was actually ambivalent about that class system. He saw the good and the bad of that system and saw himself as a referee between the classes. He is a spectator.  As Deighton said in the interview, “If we look at history we see that the upper classes provided people with a sort of dignity, knowledge, self-respect and honour that is completely absent from the political world today and the world has grown much poorer in practicalities.”

Deighton’s complex view of classes is a familiar theme right through his books, filling them with humour, delight, and wonder. As Coulter said, “Yes he believes that there should be a leadership cadre, but no it shouldn’t be closed. Those who lead bear responsibilities not legislated but moral.”

This ambivalence in his novels is exemplified best by his main protaganist Bernie Samson. Sampson is constantly  wracked by that cruel division. After all he is the one who failed to go to one of the better British schools and had this constantly held over his head and his career by his superiors in the office and inferiors in life. “His office wars revolved around the occasionally inept but well educated bureaucrats who are his bosses.” Here is a delightful example, in a description by Bernie Samson:

“On Wednesday afternoon I was in Brett Renssalaer’s office. It was on the top floor not far from the suite the DG occupied. All the top floor offices were decorated to the personal taste of the occupant. It was one of the perks of seniority. Brett’s room was modern with glass and chrome and gray carpet. It was hard, austere, and colourless, a habitat just right for Brett with his dark worsted Saville Row suit, and the crisp white suit and club tie and his fair hair that was going white and the smile that seemed shy and fleeting, but was really the reflex action that marked his indifference.”

Deighton knew this world of spies from London was interesting, sly, and vicious, but above all complex. It is a world well worth inhabiting with a master guide like Len Deighton. He is well worth reading.

Sky Islands

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Arizona, Arizona Photos, Bio-Diversity, Birds, desert, Natural History

There are many sky islands in Arizona.  Madera Canyon was one of them. Madera Canyon is located on a sky island. We went there after the debacle of Tucson’s Festival of Books. Sky islands are  incredible mountain ranges that rose up abruptly out of the desert lowlands without  foothills.  The mountains seemed to be  emerging out of the earth as if by magic.

Later I learned more about this phenomenon.  I learned that such mountains usually had an elevation of between 6,000 and 8,000 feet. I also learned that these mountains which looked like islands in a sea of grass or sea of desert scrub actually had an abundance of wild life.  These islands include most of Arizona’s biotic communities. They are among the most bio-diverse ecosystems on the planet. They are often the meeting place between desert and forest and everything in between. It is precisely that diversity that attracts wild life, especially birds. That is why these sky islands contain well over half the bird species in all of North America.  Not just Arizona. They also contain 29 bat species, more than 3,000 species of plants, and 104 species of mammals.

 

Sky Islands are havens of biodiversity. That is really their most important feature.  When you move into these “islands” in the desert there is an astounding range of biodiversity.  As Gary Paul Nabhan said, “In fact the “sky islands” of southeastern Arizona and adjacent Sonora are now recognized by the national Union for the Conservation of Nature as one of the great centers of plant diversity north of the tropics.”

The reason for that diversity is of course the great variety of topography in the state. That produces a wonderful variety of life, both flora and fauna. As Nabhan said, “When we compare our desert with others, the contrast is striking. Overall, the Sonoran Desert has the greatest diversity of plant growth forms–architectural strategies for dealing with heat and drought–of any desert in the world.”

The Sonoran Desert is certainly not the bleak and barren place that many expect–and sky islands are the apexes of diversity.

What makes Madera Canyon so special is the creek at the bottom. It traverses  4 life zones and many habitats between the desert floor and the mountain tops.  It has become world famous for its diverse flora and fauna. According to the Friends of Madera Canyon, “the variety of climates within 10 miles is similar to that found in driving from Arizona to Canada!”

Southwestern Arizona and this canyon are spectacular places for people who love wildlife and wild plants. This area is ranked the third best birding area in the US!  It contains some 400 birds species and especially 14 of Arizona’s 15 hummingbird species. That is more hummingbirds than any where else in the United States. But today we saw none at all.

It was interesting that the more we gained in altitude the more deciduous trees appeared and the less cactuses.   I have learned that usually in Arizona the higher the altitude the higher the precipitation so the more diverse the vegetation. Trees need the added the moisture on the higher elevations. Of course, if the mountain is too high, as in the San Francisco Peaks then there are no trees at all. Just snow. Trees, like all life is finicky.  Like Goldilocks, things have to be just right.

The landscape of southern Arizona seems dry—it is dry.  But it does get rain. In fact this region gets about 11 inches (280 mm) of rain per years. This is enough rain to allow a surprising amount of vegetation to flourish. Even wild flowers abound.  That seems impossible. It looks so dry and nearly barren. But the land is not barren—far from it.

On the day we were there an enthusiastic birder showed me a photograph of an Elegant Trogon (Trogon elegans) one of the rarest birds in the United States. A couple of years ago my brother-in-law Harv and I went in search of it but did not find. He has seen it a few times. Me never. Darn! The birder showed me a photograph he had taken of it. I was really jealous.  Later I went in search of it. I found another birder who had found it and he told me exactly where to go, but I missed it. I am an incompetent fledgling birder.    We spent some time sitting on a bench with camera and binoculars in hand. We saw a lot of birds of different species, but surprisingly no hummingbirds. Usually in the past we saw a large variety of hummingbirds here. I was puzzled by their absence.

House Finches are interesting birds because they were released in the eastern part of North America by people who brought them from Europe in the 1940s and now they have spread over most of North America including Arizona and Manitoba.

 

Acorn Woodpeckers often drill small holes in trees in the autumn to insert their acorns. Often their “granary trees” are used over and over again and contain thousands of acorns. Aren’t birds weird?

Mexican jays have co-operative breeding where the young from previous years help the parents to raise the new young.  Nature is not just competition, sometimes it involves cooperation.

 

Reading is Sexy: The Tucson Festival of Books

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Arizona, Books, civilization

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I have wanted to go to the Tucson Festival of Books for many years.  Every year they have some very interesting authors. So this was the year we decided to go.  I was unable to secure tickets in advance. This was  a mistake.  But, I figured, that should not be a problem; after all for each venue they reserved 25% of the tickets for walk in traffic. We would just walk up right? Wrong!

To begin with we were late getting off by about 30 minutes and we missed the first event called “Sizzling Suspense” and featured 3 authors. We only knew one of them. That was J.A Jance as one of the authors. Chris and I had both read at least one of her books and liked them. However when we arrived we had a very difficult time finding parking. We had been told it was Spring break so parking would be easier. Wrong! Maybe it was easier than it was regularly, but it was definitely not easy.

As we were walking in we noticed there were a lot of people here. As we walked beside some enthusiastic attendees we were assured we would have a great time. One said she came very year and loved it. We were getting exciting despite the late start.

First, we were amazed at how many outdoor booths there were. Most were related to books or reading. All kinds for all kinds of readers. Childrens’ books, University of Arizona books, nature books, mystery books, religious books,  non-fiction, etc. There were Mormons trying to give away information about tracing our ancestral roots. Maybe they wanted to convert our dead relatives. That’s what people back home say they like to do. How do you convert dead people? There were more traditional religious nuts warning us to repent. You name it there was something there for your taste. The crowds were large. There was a busker in a pedestrian underpass under  a street who played wonderful music.  The acoustics were astounding where he stood. Even cheap Mennonites tipped! This actually was the highlight of the festival for me. Now you know it did not end well. I also loved some bumper stickers: “He’s not My President.” “Reading is sexy.” ”Keep the Immigrants. Deport the Racists.”

Eventually we found parking, not that far away from the site but we missed the first event. Still no problem as we took time to review the brochure.  We took so much time that we got to it “only” about 15 minutes before it was scheduled to start, but that should be enough time. Right? Wrong! The subject was “Is Democracy in Danger?” I thought that could not be very popular. Wrong once more! I went to the end of the line while Chris sat down near the entrance to the Hall. It was a very long line. I was getting doubtful about this process. About 25 feet from the entrance, after about 20 minutes of standing in line, it was announced that we would not get in. The line had been too long. It sucks to be us.

This was frustrating but we decided to get in line for the 3rd event even earlier so we could get in. This event  was called “Lets Get Real” and featured writers from the southern border. Although this was currently a very popular subject of debate, given Trump’s declaration of an emergency on the southern border, I thought there would not be big crowd for this talk. Wrong again! I was not there early enough. Many people support the wall; many do not. Same story. Just before getting to the entrance it was announced we would not get in, even though I had been in line for nearly half an hour. So the day was half over and we had got into zero events.  Needless to say I was frustrated with how this worked. I confess I even said a few bad words. I am not a very good Mennonite.  Me bad. No. Tucson Festival of Books bad.

I wanted to hear Noam Chomsky, one of my favourite political writers, and the featured speaker, who would be talking in the evening but I feared the same problem. I had been enough line-ups. I told Chris, “We are going home!” Wisely, she said, “no.”  Lets go to Madera Canyon so we get something out of our 90-minute drive to Tucson. Good thinking Chris. So we left without seeing 1 single event. We walked around, ate some food, looked at some weirdos and left.

It was not a total waste however. I figured out that there was no purpose in going to this Festival without tickets.  Had I bought them I realized I would still have to stand in a lineups, but only for a few minutes. There was a special line-up for ticket holders and provided people were not late they would get in.

The Festival  often have some very interesting authors. Here is a very partial list from years past:

2011 – Elmore Leonard

2012 – Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana

2013 – R.L. Stine

2014 – Richard Russo

2015 – Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Sam Barry, Greg Isles, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan & Scott Turow -The Rock Bottom Remainders

2016 – J.A. Jance

2017 – T.C. Boyle

2018 – Billy Collins (America’s Poet laureate)

2019–Noam Chomsky

That is a pretty impressive list.

I also realized this was an immensely popular festival. The 2010 United States Census put the population of Tucson at 520,116, while the 2015 estimated population of the entire Tucson metropolitan statistical area was 980,263. That is similar to Winnipeg in other words. Yet this festival was huge. Many writers. Thousands of attendees. Everything free! Even parking (after we found it) was free.

What really amazed me though were the thousands of people who showed up. People of all ages. Not just intellectuals. Kids. Moms. Pops, odds and sod,  Hundreds of friendly volunteers. How could there be so many people to come to hear about books? I was stunned. Yesterday when we told a friend where we were going today he was perplexed. “Why would you do that?’ he asked. Tucson has many intelligent people that was my conclusion.  I hope to try it again when I am wiser.

The Golden Age of Television

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Television Shows

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A few years ago a good friend of mine shocked me.  I asked him what books he had read recently. He said, “none.”  I was astonished.  How could that be? He was about the most well read guy I knew, yet he said he did not read much anymore. Instead he was watching television. I was thunderstruck. What a pitiful waste of time I thought.

He explained that this was the golden age of television and he was spending a lot of time watching television. I thought this was absurd. After all I was brought up on the value of books and the idea that most television was crap–dreck. There was very little good about anything on television, I thought.

At the time, when I did watch TV  I mainly watched the network shows or sports. ‘What shows should I watch,’ asked. He pointed me in the direction of some television shows I had hardly heard of before. Shows like, The Wire, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad. They were on weird channels I rarely watched. I resolved to give them a try.

I started with The Wire. This is a television show about black youth in Baltimore and their foes, the police and district attorneys. The series spanned 5 seasons. I found it very difficult to watch. I had trouble understanding what the youth were saying. Their slang was nearly impenetrable. After less than half a season I gave up on the show. I thought my friend who recommended it was nuts.  Some time later, maybe a year later, I came back to that show and tried harder “to get it.”  What was this show about? At first I could not grasp it.

After  awhile I thought I started getting an understanding of  what was going on. At least I thought I did. Then I realized that this was an extremely interesting series with some amazing writing and gritty acting. This was a police show unlike any other. Ultimately, I concluded this was the best television I had ever seen.

I also liked Mad Men, though not as much. The creators I thought were geniuses. I fell in love with Breaking Bad. The development of characters in the series and quirky stories and unlikely cinematography was outstanding. I was hooked. I started to love television. I found it hard to believe that this had happened.

I did not give up on books. Thank goodness.  I don’t really think my friend had given up either. Yet I realized some of the best writing, and most creative minds were at work in television. Since then I have come to appreciate many other fantastic television shows. Most of these were not shown on the standard networks with their formulaic approaches, but I could find them. I could find them and be amazed. This is the golden age of television.

Phoenix: A University Town

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Arizona, World of ideas

 

Sir Jonathan Bate

         I love to travel. Anywhere anytime is what I usually say. But southern Arizona is special for many reasons. One of the hidden pleasures of Phoenix is that it is a University town. It has a major university–Arizona State University (‘ASU’). It may be the largest public university in the US. It is certainly in the top 5. But it is not just big; it is good. It has been voted “No 1 in innovation” among American Universities.

Much more important to us however, is that they have an astonishing number of events to which the public is invited. Every week it seems we get another  notice of free events with an array of talks, conferences, films, and concerts. Fantastic speakers with diverse viewpoints usually speaking in clear jargon-free language. I know to some this will sound strange, but to me learning is fun. Particularly if there are no exams. I know I would ace them anyway!

This year we attended a wide variety of such events. First was a 3 lecture series by Professor of English literature and ecology, Sir Jonathan Bate from Oxford University. Bate is one of the few Professors of English to be knighted for his work. His book on Shakespeare has been called the best modern book written on him. And there have been thousands. His subject in the lecture series was “How the Humanities can Save the Planet.” It was very interesting and thought provoking. We particularly liked a video of Don Henley singing the Eagles song, “The Last Resort” together with amazing images. This closed the first lecture.

We attended a full day conference on polarization and civil disagreement at ASU. In other words the main topic was extremism in views and increasing partisanship and polarization in public discourse. That may sound boring to some of you. It was far from boring. We spent the day listening to speakers from the top universities around the US, including what one of the speakers referred to as the best collection of political philosophers in one room that he had ever seen.

We could have gone to the second half day but decided enough was enough. We figured that if we went for the second day we would have got so smart none of our friends would ever talk to us again. Amazingly the public is invited to attend and are welcomed when there. Many ordinary people like us were mingling with great intellectuals. And you didn’t have to be an intellectual giant to get in. All you needed was curiosity. The conference was entirely free including breakfast, snacks, lunch and dinner together with wine.  I estimated something like this back home would have cost each of us about $2,500 and members of the public would not have been encouraged to attend.

ASU also encourages its professors to get involved in community outreach. As a result we heard a talk by an ASU ecologist at the local Audubon Society meeting talking on the effect of humans on birds. Again there was spirited discussion.

Finally we heard another ASU professor at a local County Park explain the fascinating 2 billion year geological history of Arizona in 60 minutes. The crowd was enthralled. He gives this talk, or a version of it, every year and the place is always packed to hear him speak on a Friday night. Go figure!

We love southern Arizona but thanks to ASU we have enjoyed being immersed in the wonderful word of ideas. This may sound hard to believe, but it was exciting. There is no better place to travel to, than the world of ideas.  I love ASU.

Snow in the Superstition Mountains

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Arizona, Arizona Photos, desert

 

I know people will have hard time believing this but we went looking for snow. I am not sure I ever did that before. Usually I try to avoid all snow. I certainly never go looking for it. That is not quite true. I snow can be beautiful. But snow is  what I was looking for. I was in search of truth and beauty and today this day that  meant snow. And we found it in the Superstition Mountains after the area experienced the worst snowstorm in 122 years.

I wanted to take some pictures of snow in the Superstition Mountains and I was not disappointed. And we were not alone. On the weekend there were people everywhere trying to photograph the snow. Everyone was an artist with their cameras. So we returned on Monday when the unlucky working people went to work.

 

We decided to go a little farther on highway 88. We wanted to go where we could not go a couple of days ago on account of huge crowds. We really wanted to go a couple of miles and head back to San Tan Valley where we wanted to go to the pool. But the beauty seduced us. It was just too beautiful to turn back.

 

We drove all the way to Tortilla Flats and ate again in the outside bar listening to the music of the Tortilla Flat Band. That is always a pleasure. I loved the high water in the stream that was overflowing the road.

Canyon Lake is always beautiful. Like virtually all lakes in Arizona this one is store bought.

On the way back I wanted to photograph a mountain with snow on it. Since there were many utility wires in the way, I had to trek into the Tonto National Forest about a quarter mile dodging jumping cholla and other nasty cactuses. When I made I was so proud, I shouted just like Nolan when he figured out how to play the music on a card we sent him: “I did it; I did it.”

The oldest plant in the Sonoran Desert–maybe the world

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, desert, Natural History, Plants

 

 

Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata.)

 You would have to be a much better photographer than I am, to make this inconspicuous plant look interesting. But it is interesting. Very interesting. It is probably the most interesting plant in the Sonoran Desert. They are very common. Ubiquitous I would say.

It isa shrub or  bush. But, it is a perennial bush that has some amazing properties. It can live for up to 2 years without rain. Today it did not have its tiny yellow flowers. They have already turned into tiny fruit.  These plants are believed to be among the oldest living plants. Some are as old as 11,000 years old! That is older than the Old Testament was written. That is older than the pyramids. Archaeologists believe Egypt’s large pyramids are the work of the Old Kingdom society that rose to prominence in the Nile Valley after 3000 B.C. Historical analysis tells us that the Egyptians built the Giza Pyramids in a span of 85 years between 2589 and 2504 BC. Is it possible that a creosote bush is twice as old as that? At least one such plant was carbon dated to be more than 11,000 years old.

Creosote is the probably the most drought resistant perennial plant in North America. It must be to survive in a desert for that long.  And we humans think we are smart? As humans we naturally value what we do. Does anything we do compare with this? This was an old friend worth cherishing. I tried to show I appreciated it.