I tried to post an entry from Beaver Island, but that was thwarted. Now I'm too exhuasted to recount my vacation
to the Island in the detail that I would like, but I will say that it was blissful. The Island is a model for the economy
of a post-imperial America: localized economy, interdependent services, community dependency, and growth control.
Beaver Island is what towns across the country should resemble. No wastelands of sprawl with the charm of a Nazi
death camp, no warehouses of surplus crap manufactured by toiling laborers in countries most Americans are too
dumb to know of, no grease sponge strip restaurants, no chain lube-n-go auto clinics, no desolate pods of vinyl and
wallboard McHouses in the scorching sun and clay front yards incomprehensively twisting their way through former
farms and productive rural land, and finally--ulitmately, miraculously--no carcinogenic floodwater of automobiles
overwhelming infrastructure. People there don't use their cars to joyride between big box merchandise emporiums
and their estate community.
I saw the aurora borealis three times, the Milky Way every night, gazed at the moon through a 4mm lens on a 144mm
telescope--close enough to watch it move out of view in just a few seconds, I went horseback riding, ate smelt and
whitefish almost every day caught from the Lake that morning, I hiked through environments unique in the world,
and best of all, I was secluded--utterly secluded--from the frivolity of this doped up modern world of ours.
To illustrate this frivolity, read this article in the Detroit Free Press from Tuesday, September 9, 2003:
Population swings from Oakland to Macomb
Neighboring county attracting residents with more home for the money, down-to-earth feel http://www.freep.com/news/locmac/move9_20030909.htm
The article is about the trend of people moving from the wasteland of sprawl outside of Detroit called Oakland
County to another, newer, blossoming wasteland of sprawl to the north called Macomb County. Here are some
quotations from the article so that you can get an idea of how fuckin' stupid these people are:
The Magers not only found an upscale home for less money [in Macomb County], they also got more time to enjoy
it. Tom Mager said a comparable house in Oakland would have meant a much longer commute.
"Traffic was just getting worse every year," he said.
The family has also discovered Lake St. Clair.
"There's something about the lake," Mager said. "I don't know what it does to people, but they seem to be friendlier
than anyplace else I've gone."
a.) there's that overused kitschified and worshiped word 'upscale' again. What the hell does that mean? Essentially,
it is the word politicos, developers, journalists, and comatose suburbanites like to use to describe their sordid cess pool
of an environment--the wasteland that they've been duped into believing is luxurious and entitled.
b.) no shit traffic was just getting worse every year. That's what happens when assholes like you move to the middle of cornfields and have to drive every-fuckin'-where. It's what happens in a car-dependent society that values
the freedom to drive absolutely positively everywhere--anywhere--anybody feels they have the God-given
right to drive. People that make traffic overload to an absurd degree possible are called property rights advocates (maniacs).
c.) the thing about the Lake that's so charming is that people who live on it realize that they have something in their
lives that nobody else in the suburban junkscape has--something worth preserving and caring for; something that makes
their experience fulfilling and unique--not totally mundane, anonymous, trite, insignificant, inconsequential, comatose,
sordid, vacuous, and lame like the four million people populating the I-74/I-96/I-94 corridors outside of one of America's
formerly most productive and successful cities.
Well, more rant later--I never got to what I did with a month of no internet access.
Chanson du jour: Lauryn Hill, Adam Lives in Theory
