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From Juan Cole’s Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade; Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs :

The new lords and ladies are the Dick and Liz Cheneys and the people for whom they shill. They are the Rupert Murdochs and the Richard Mellon Scaifes, and they are guaranteed to own more and more of the country as long as more progressive taxation (i.e. pre-Reagan, not pre-Bush) is not restored. They are the ones who didn’t want a public universal health option, did not want the wars abroad to end abruptly, did not want the Copenhagen Climate convention to succeed. They are driven by pure greed and narrow profit-seeking for themselves. They always get their way, and they always will as long as you poor stupid bastards buy the line that when the government raises their taxes, it is taking something away from you. It is the alliance of the Neoliberal super-rich with the new lower middle class populists led by W. and now by Sarah Palin that produces clown politics in the US unmatched in most advanced industrial countries with the possible exception of Italy.

I have always been envious of writers who are able to effectively render the natural world.  I grew up in the city so in some sense, nature is a foreign land to me.  It is, however, a foreign land in which I have traveled.  As a boy, I was a member of Boy Scout Troop 17 in Elmhurst, Queens.  There were camping trips every month throughout the year, two weeks of summer camp in July, and a special “long trip” in August where each year we went on an extended cross-country road trip.  In August of 1972, I hiked Mount Washington in New Hampshire, navigated the rapids of the Penobscot River in Maine, hiked along the rocky shores in Acadia National Park, and did traditional New England style Cod fishing in Nova Scotia (making Captains Courageous, a very enjoyable read in school the following fall). 1973 was a grand tour of the west including a backpacking trip through the Grand Canyon, mountain climbing in The Grand Tetons, and canoeing in Missouri.  1974 was a trip to Arkansas for a multi-day canoeing the beautiful Buffalo River.  Years later when the Clinton Whitewater scandal erupted, I actually knew where the place was.

These experiences stimulated all my city-boy senses senses and whenever I read a piece of writing that effectively captures them, I am transported back to those places in my memory.  Some of these places have shown up in my writing.  My young couple in “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” spend a night camping in Acadia National Park. Another couple hike up to Indian Cliffs in Ten Mile River Boy Scout Camp, near Narrowsburg, New York in my story “Indian Summer.”  How I end up mixing fictional couples with boy scout memories in stories with romantic themes is perhaps a topic for psycho-analysis.  As my late father might have said, “Boy Scout camp was never like this!”

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