The hardest thing about writing a book isn’t coming up with the story, or inventing the complicated relationships that help define the characters, or making sure the story flows the way it’s supposed to. It isn’t the painstaking process of finding all the typos and misspellings and missing quotes, or fact-checking every tiny detail so that a reader who has it in for you discovers with chagrin that there’s little to criticize. Nope—it’s none of those, although those do require work.
The hardest thing about writing a novel is creating the one-paragraph synopsis that goes on the back cover. Think about it. The publisher says to the author, “Please take your 140,000-word, 468-page novel and describe it in 125 words or less, in a way that will cause a prospective reader to drool uncontrollably all the way to the checkout counter at the bookstore.”
Good luck with that. Like I said: Hard.
I’m about to publish a new novel, my fifth, called “The Sound of Life.” My editors have gone through it with their editorial microscopes, identifying mistakes, errors and omissions. My cadre of readers have gone through it, uncovering awkward dialogue, technical errors, and flow problems that I inevitably missed. The final manuscript is called ‘The Sound of Life v48F,’ which means that the book went through 48 complete rewrites before I deemed it ready for publication—although there will be at least two more read-throughs before I give it the final go-ahead.
I’m proud of this book. It’s my 106th title (bad habit), and I felt a sense of letdown when I typed the last sentence and knew it was done. That’s never happened to me before. Because of the story that magically emerged from the creative mists before me, the wonderful characters I met along the way, and the journey they allowed me to join them on, when I typed the last word of the final sentence, I felt like I was pulling into the driveway after a long, memorable road trip. I needed a medicine for melancholy, because it was over.
Author Alice Munro wrote, “A good book makes you want to live in the story. A great book gives you no choice.” That’s how I felt with this one. And please understand, this isn’t my ego talking. I experienced something as I wrote this book that rarely happens, like seeing the mysterious and elusive “green flash” over the ocean at sunset. At some point along the creative journey, I realized that I was no longer writing the book: it was writing itself. My job changed from creative director to scribe. It was like it was saying to me, ‘Here’s the keyboard. Try to keep up.’
Author M.L. Farrell said this about books:
A book is not mere paper and words.
It is a door and a key.
It is a road and a journey.
It is a thousand new sights, sensations and sounds.
It holds friendships, experiences, and life lessons.
A book is an entire world.”
There’s so much truth in that. I’m at the point with this one where people are asking me what “The Sound of Life” is about, and now that I know, I’m excited to tell them. But as I describe the 56-foot boat that’s central to the story, the journey from the eastern Caribbean through the Panama Canal then up the coast to Northern California, the rich interactions among the characters, and the happenings in Peru that tie much of the narrative together, I realize somewhat sheepishly that every time I tell someone what the book’s about, I speak in the first person. Not ‘they,’ but ‘we.’ Well, sure—I was there. I was along for the ride. Why wouldn’t I speak in the first person?
Stephen King is a writer whom I admire greatly, for many reasons. “Books are a uniquely portable magic,“ he once said. A uniquely portable magic. I think about the complexity, richness, excitement, laughter, and delicious food that’s captured between the covers of this book. I think about the immensely likable people and their relationships, around whom the story revolves. I think about the sights and sounds and smells and tastes they experience along the way. And I think about what it felt like when my characters, my good friends, got back on the boat and motored away, waving as they left me behind on the dock, en route to their next adventure.
A uniquely portable magic.
“The Sound of Life” will be released in December 2025.
This essay contains an important story for the ages. Given current events, and the absolute truth that history does repeat, the lesson is plain, and chilling.
One of my treasured possessions from the years I lived in Spain is a 16th-century manuscript. It’s a big book, about fifteen by twenty inches, and it contains around 40 hand-written and hand-illuminated parchment pages. According to a faded and somewhat mysterious note inserted between two of the pages, itself very old and its ink faded, “This book contains the responsive readings and Benedictions for all the Masses of all the Saturdays.”
My parents bought the book at a junk shop one Sunday morning in Madrid’s famous flea market, El Rastro. When asked how much the book cost, the shop owner picked it up, hefted it to assess its weight, shrugged his shoulders, and declared, “140 Pesetas.” About two dollars. Years later, They passed it on to me.
There’s nothing in the book that identifies its origins, other than its Catholic purpose. I’ve studied and researched it extensively, and spent countless hours with scholars of ancient manuscripts. Here’s what I know. The cover is most likely Spanish, as evidenced by the intricately tooled designs in the leather. The pattern is made up of rows of tiny rosettes, similar to covers from the same period which were often inlaid with ivory and precious stones. The binding mimics the German style of binding of the same period.
The contents are mid-16th-century. There is handwriting toward the end of the book appears to be in the style of the early 18th-century, which implies that the book must have been in use until at least the 1700s.
The book is divided into sections by crude index tabs, hand-labeled and made of vellum, a stronger paper than the high-quality rag of the manuscript itself. A careful examination of one of the pages under a special microscope designed for the purpose reveals a pattern of lines pressed into the surface, a consistent fraction of a millimeter apart, a result of the mold and deckle used in the paper manufacturing process. This line pattern confirms the date of the book.
The pages are hand-written in Latin, and the lines of text alternate with musical staff for the choir that chanted them.
A year or so ago, I decided that I wanted to know more about this strange and ancient book that fell into my hands. I wanted to know where it came from; who wrote it; what the ink was made from; where the paper was sourced; what church or cathedral it was used in; and what was going on in the world at the time. I wanted to know about socioeconomics, geopolitical happenings, and cultural mores. Was it used in a church that was abandoned due to declining attendance, its assets scattered? Was the book looted during the Spanish Civil War? I didn’t know, but I wanted to.
I started by looking into the time period just before the book was first created and used. I don’t know for sure and probably never will, but based on my own research and the insights of academics and scholars far more informed than I, the middle of the 15th-century seemed like a good place to start.
During the mid-1400s, the late Middle Ages were coming to a close, and the Renaissance, with its focus on the arts, music, and the humanities, was beginning. The Hundred Years’ War between England and France was finally drawing to a close, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, and Spain and Portugal were demonstrating their sea powers, on the hunt for new trade routes with the rest of the world.
Equally important was the invention of the printing press in Europe, which arrived too late for my book, but had a profound impact, nonetheless, on the spread of global knowledge, insight, awareness, and ideas.
In essence, the mid-15th century was a period of transformation, of turnover from one set of guiding principles to another. It was here, shortly after this moment of transition, that my manuscript book came into existence.
The Iberian Peninsula, which comprises Spain and Portugal, has been a multicultural melting pot for its entire existence. For centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians coexisted, each playing a role in the rich cultural development of what ultimately became modern Spain. Ten centuries ago, Muslims brought science, architecture, medicine, and extraordinary art, while the Jewish community developed the country’s economy and served as its powerful merchant class. The Christians provided administrative governance. In fact, when Alfonso X, also known as Alfonso the Wise, died in the latter half of the 13th century, he ordered that it be inscribed on his tomb that he was ‘King of the Three Religions.’ Even today it’s impossible NOT to see the influence of the three belief structures that characterized ancient Spain. Look at the Mezquita Cathedral in Córdoba, where a Catholic church has been built to surround a mosque. The country was a palimpsest of contradictions, but it worked.
In the mid-1400s, things changed in a way that is eerily reminiscent of current events. Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville who had the attention of the Catholic Kings, Fernando and Isabela, told Queen Isabela during an official visit to Seville that large numbers of Jews who had converted to Christianity were actually Christians in name only—that they in fact continued to practice what came to be known as crypto-Judaism. A study, written by the Archbishop of Seville and Tomás de Torquemada (a Jewish convert himself and soon-to-be administrator of the Spanish Inquisition), offered the same conclusion. I don’t know if this was the first example of a conspiracy theory, but it certainly qualifies as one.
In response to these baseless claims, Fernando and Isabela requested a mandate from the Pope to establish an inquisition in Spain. The Pope agreed, and granted them permission to select a panel of priests to serve as Inquisitors.
In 1482 Fernando sought to take over the existing Papal Inquisition in the province of Aragon, which resulted in major resistance because it infringed on local rights. Relatives and friends of those accused complained of the brutality to the Pope, who wanted to maintain control of the Inquisition. The Pope wrote that “… in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia, the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and that many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies … have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.”
The Pope, whose position on the “new Christians” was far more tolerant than those of the Spanish Catholic Kings, tried to maintain control over the Inquisition to ensure that the punishments being meted out were appropriate and justly assigned. He issued a new order that stipulated a more tolerant approach to the practices of the Inquisition.
Fernando was outraged, arguing that no sensible pope would have published such a document. In May of 1482, he wrote a threatening letter to Rome, saying: “Take care therefore not to let the matter go further, and to revoke any concessions and entrust us with the care of this question.” In response, cowed by the power of the Spanish monarchy, the Pope changed his stance to full cooperation, and issued a new order in 1483 that appointed Torquemada as Inquisitor General of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, in the process creating a single entity to administer nationwide punishment without oversight.
The first victims were burned at the stake in Aragon in 1484. Fierce opposition continued, protesting the loss of local autonomy. Meanwhile, the Pope withdrew all papal inquisitors from the region, handing total control to the Inquisitor General Torquemada, including the handling of all appeals. The Catholic Church abdicated its oversight, effectively washing its hands of the whole affair.
Keep in mind that the Jews represented the country’s merchant class—the artisans, shopkeepers, laborers, and craftspeople. In 1483, all Jews living in the province of Andalusia were expelled from the country. The Pope was troubled by this aggressive stance, but his protest fell on deaf ears because of political pressure from King Fernando, who threatened the Pope if he continued to question the actions of the Catholic Kings. The Pope backed down, and in short order Torquemada established additional arbitrary rules for persecution. One of them was that new courts could be established on an ad hoc basis as needed, with a thirty-day grace period for the accused to confess. And as for the accused, they were guilty until proven innocent based on such ludicrous things as the lack of chimney smoke coming from their homes, clear evidence that they were observing the Sabbath. The accused were allowed to confess and do penance, but if they relapsed—and all it took was the whispered word of an angry neighbor—they were executed. Those who had nothing to confess were tortured until they came up with something, anything, to make the pain stop. Then they were executed.
1492 is widely recognized as the year that Christopher Columbus received permission from the Catholic Kings to sail off to the New World in pursuit of untold riches that would add wealth to the Crown’s coffers. His voyages, often taught as brave forays into the unknown, were in fact expeditions of hegemonic terror.
The Catholic Kings gave Columbus, whose actual name was Cristobal Colón, the title of admiral, viceroy, and governor of any land he discovered. And, he was allowed to keep ten percent of any treasure he found, which motivated him greatly to do so—and by any horrific means necessary.
But 1492 is also studied by Spanish historians because of a less well-known but far more profound event: by royal decree, all of Spain’s remaining Jews were expelled that year. They left the country by the tens of thousands, taking with them what amounted to the entire merchant class of the country—and the economy that they made possible. As a result, Spain slid into a slow but inevitable economic collapse. The country found itself morally and economically bankrupt, its trade routes disrupted, its trading partners non-existent. Spain entered its own Dark Age, hopelessly crippled.
It doesn’t take a degree in Medieval Spanish History to do a little plug-and-play exercise here, replacing 15th-century names with names from the 21st, substituting one ethnic group for another, inserting a 15th-century excuse for an unspeakable action for one that is similarly vile from the 21st-century.
I’ve quoted George Santayana a lot lately about the state of things, so I think I’ll end with a quote this time from Polish poet Stanislaw Lec: “When smashing monuments, save the pedestals—they always come in handy.”
A few weeks ago, I gave my final career keynote in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Sabine and I decided to do it as a road trip, so we made a big, looping three-week journey that took us as far west as the sand hills of Nebraska, where I wanted to record the sounds of the prairie in the early fall. On the way out, we passed through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, northern Illinois, and Iowa, before reaching Nebraska; on the way back we drove through Missouri, southern Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, then Pennsylvania and New York again, before crossing back into Vermont via the Crown Point Bridge. 19 travel days, 4,400 miles, 13 states. Not bad.
Other than the keynote in Iowa and the recording stops we made, which included a few sandhill cranes, a great interview with Bethany Ostrom, a field biologist at the Crane Trust in Nebraska—you’ll hear from Bethany in an upcoming episode—meadowlarks, freight trains, wind rattling the endless cornfields of Iowa, a couple of dawn choruses, bison grunting, cattle lowing, the sound of huge barges moving up and down the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau, the booming of gigantic wind turbines—more on that later—and the fife and drum marching band at Colonial Williamsburg, which, together with the bellows in their blacksmith shop and the clopping of horses pulling carriages brought the place to life, Sabine and I spent a lot of our time trying to see the country differently than we ever have. We try to live by Mark Twain’s quote, that “travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrowmindedness.” We wanted to get a better understanding of just what this country, this place, is, especially as we face a very weird political period. I’m not sure if we actually managed to scratch that particular itch, but we definitely came home more enlightened than we were when we left.
So, in this post, I thought I might share some of our observations, because I think they might help to dispel some of the venomous myths and legends that try so hard to define the bright line between ‘them’ and ‘us’—whatever ‘them’ and ‘us’ actually means. Spoiler alert? We concluded that ‘them’ and ‘us’ is a myth where it matters: the country is still mostly about ‘we.’
So, observations.
The midwestern states are sometimes called the I-states (for Iowa, Illinois, Indiana), or the flyover states, because of the misconception among many that you have to fly OVER them to get anywhere that matters. Sorry, but if you believe that, you’ve clearly never been to the Midwest. This has always been an unimaginably big and abundant agricultural region, with fields rolling to the horizon in every direction. A harvester the size of a triceratops looks like a Matchbox Car in these fields, they’re so big. A little research told me that the Midwest comprises 127 million acres of farmland, which have historically produced a cornucopia of bounty that includes alfalfa, apples, asparagus, green beans, blueberries, cabbage, carrots, sweet and tart cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, grapes, oats, onions, peaches, plums, peas, bell peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, raspberries, strawberries, sweet corn, tobacco, tomatoes, watermelon, and wheat. By the way, California sprawls across 100 million acres, just for comparison.
Railroads and corn in Iowa.
But here’s the dirty little secret that my research turned up. Those food crops are only produced on 25 percent of those 127 million acres. The other 75 percent—some 95 million of those 127 million acres—produce corn and soybeans, which, I’m chagrined to say, are the only agricultural crops we saw during our entire journey, other than a few hundred acres of cotton planted in extremely rural southern Illinois. Believe me, we were looking, but we saw nothing other than those two crops in gigantic fields that stretched into the distance.
But, we did see evidence of a third crop: electrons.
Turbines–as far as the eye can see.
Everywhere I listened I heard the wind blowing through dry cornstalks. But I also heard the rhythmic whoosh of gigantic wind turbines, which, along with enormous fields of solar panels, cover huge swaths of the prairie. These turbines are massive: tip to tip, their blades span 110 yards—longer than a football field. So, the Midwest produces three meaningfully large crops: soybeans, corn, and electrons. The corn is used to produce ethanol; Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, and South Dakota collectively produced 265 million barrels of ethanol in 2016 (the most recent numbers I could find that I trusted), which accounts for 72 percent of the nation’s total production. Most of it gets mixed with gasoline to create E85 sustainable fuel, and it’s big business out here. According to the statistics I found, Iowa has 41 ethanol plants, Nebraska, 326, Illinois, 13, Minnesota, 19, Indiana 14, and South Dakota, 15. It’s important. But you can’t eat it.
Meanwhile, soy goes into everything because it’s cheap and easy to grow. 80 percent of the soybean crop is fed to livestock for beef, chicken, egg and dairy production. Soy oil is used for cooking and is also used to produce margarine, chocolate, ice cream, baked goods, cosmetics, and soap. It’s widely useful, but there are some concerns about its long-term effect on human and animal hormone production. That’s not proven, there’s no clear science behind it, but there are concerns.
Meanwhile, the electrons go to power—what? Data centers, I suppose, needed for AI and Bitcoin mining.
I found it interesting that as we drove through the heartland, the only crops we saw were those three—corn, soybeans, and electrons. Not much actual food. Anybody else find that weird, that the largest farming region in the country, 20 percent larger than the entire state of California, mostly grows inedible crops? I’m not being critical of midwestern farmers—please believe me when I say that. Farmers, like everyone, have to follow the money to make a living in an industry where margins can be razor-thin and the vagaries of the weather and the water table can mean the difference between a fair profit and a devastating loss. Corn and soy are two of the most heavily government-subsidized crops in the United States. But as I dug into this, I learned a few things.
According to author David Simon, who wrote “Meatonomics,” about two-thirds of government subsidies support meat production, which as a nation we eat way too much of, while about two percent goes to the production of fruits and vegetables, which we don’t eat enough of.
But the most heavily subsidized crop? The number one most government-underwritten crop in the country? Electric vehicles and batteries. And what’s the third big cash crop in the Midwest? Electrons. Hmmm.
I have no judgment to make here, just an observation. This country is ginormous. We drove from Vermont to Nebraska, 2,200 miles, not quite to the vertical midline of the country, one-way. As a country, we’ve got a world-class transportation system that serves somewhere north of 330 million people. It reaches from Key West or Brownsville or San Diego all the way to Utqiagvik, the northernmost point in Alaska. But as good as the transportation system may be, we also have a vulnerable supply chain.
The Platte River at dawn.
I don’t worry about most things related to infrastructure in the United States, but I do worry about the food supply, because much of its production is concentrated in vulnerable regions. California is subject to drought and wildfire and earthquakes; other regions worry about flooding, freezing, and unanticipated and increasingly violent weather events brought on by climate change. I also worry about the power grid, because it is data network-dependent for telemetry and load-sharing and is not hardened to the degree it should be against cyberattack. During our trip, we could always tell when some kind of power generation facility was nearby, because we saw great rows of power line pylons marching off into the distance. If we lose the power grid, it’s not a laugh-it-off moment with a ‘we’ll just camp in the back yard and eat smores until it comes back on—it’ll be fun!’ response. Without power, heaters and air conditioners don’t work, gas pumps at gas stations can’t pump fuel, trucks can’t deliver food to grocery stores, traffic lights don’t work, refrigeration systems can’t prevent food from spoiling, stoves and ovens and refrigerators don’t do what they’re supposed to do, and critical infrastructure—police, government, healthcare, industrial production—can’t do what they’re supposed to do. It ain’t Armageddon, but it ain’t pretty. And home generators? Great—until you run out of fuel, which you can’t resupply because the pumps at the station don’t work. And that also means that telecom networks eventually start to go down for lack of fuel for the backup generators that keep the towers working. So, good that the Midwest is doing its part to help generate energy. But it’s not the production I worry about—it’s the distribution.
Concentration of resource production, regardless of what that resource is, never ends well. Yes, it can be a cost-effective way to do things, but there’s a reason we no longer rely on mainframe computers to do our work for us. Instead, we use personal computers connected via local area networks with backup protocols in place, because they eliminate the single point of failure problem. Even data centers are made up of endless racks of blade servers, each one of them a small computer that slides into a bay and collectively becomes a virtual supercomputer resource that can be sliced and diced as needed to satisfy the needs of its users and to ensure redundancy. This is why I have long advocated for more local production of food. No single point of failure. It’s fresher and healthier because it’s locally produced. More expensive than mass-produced crops? Sure, somewhat. But I don’t have to worry anywhere near as much about salmonella, listeria, and other nasty things that keep happening at the national level, because they’re often transported from a single vulnerable source. Just a thought that kept recurring in my tiny little brain as we drove through the endless fields of the heartland, few of which were producing food.
Okay: change of topic. We found ourselves morbidly watching the evolution in roadkill as we drove west. In Vermont, it was raccoons and skunks smeared across the highways. That continued into New York, but as we approached Pennsylvania, the victims became suicidal deer. So many deer. Then, somewhere in Iowa, we started to see armadillos—opossum on the half-shell—and then on the way back through Kentucky they turned into real opossums, before returning to deer and skunk and trash pandas—what my grandson calls raccoons—as we headed back into the northeast.
Apparently, it’s easier to just PAINT the roadkill than it is to move it.
At the same time, we watched the political shift happen as we migrated from east to Midwest and then back again. No big surprise: we expected that. After all, we live in Vermont, the home of Bernie Sanders and Ben and Jerry’s and other left-leaning establishments. But please take note that Vermont has a Republican governor who is very good at his job—he takes it seriously and does great things for Vermont. Just saying—it works. Anyway, as we drove west, we entered Trump country, with lots of MAGA signs and billboards with religious themes, but surprisingly, quite a few signs for Harris, as well. And then there’s this: Everybody everywhere, regardless of their political persuasion, was kind. I spoke with all kinds of people, some of them ardent Trump supporters, and they were all thoughtful and respectful. I didn’t try to argue the merits of one candidate over the other, but as I have found so many other times, everybody—okay, ALMOST everybody—wants the same things from life, regardless of party affiliation: meaningful work, decent income, the ability to take care of family, balance in their lives (meaning not having to work two full-time jobs just to stay ahead of the bills), an occasional vacation, a sense of pride and purpose, and a sense of meaning and personal accomplishment. Those things transcend politics, and are, in fact, far more important. Party matters far less than people.
That said, there is a sense of oppression in the center of the country that’s less obvious along the nation’s edges, where wealth is concentrated. Obesity, drug abuse, and poverty are everywhere, and many people are desperate. Jobs have gone away completely due to automation or offshoring, and more often than not they have not been replaced. Many people I spoke with in the Midwest feel abandoned and ignored, and the political posters and yard signs we saw express this. Lots of promises made, lots of promises broken. This is the hollowing out of the middle class that I wrote about in my book, The Nation We Knew. It’s real, and it has done serious damage. And as near as I can tell, precious little is being done in Washington or anywhere else to fix it. Call me naïve, but that’s criminal.
I’ve always been a big fan of globalization, and I still am, but my enthusiasm about its long-term value came away tempered from this trip. Yes, it’s good for companies to keep production costs down, because by keeping costs down, the market wins. And in the spirit of international cooperation and international business, when work is offshored through globalization, jobs are created in other countries, which stimulates those countries’ economies. Those countries get jobs and the opportunity to create a middle class for the first time; we get cheaper imports. But when the money saved is exclusively passed on to shareholders and corporate executives instead of to employees as wages and basic benefits, and when domestic jobs go offshore and are not replaced, that’s a dangerous and damaging double whammy. Some people will say that that’s an oversimplification, but it’s not. Once those other countries have their own middle class with legitimate disposable income, they aren’t willing to work for those markedly lower wages anymore, which means that cheap labor becomes a thing of the past. So, the price of things goes up, including offshore labor, and imports get more expensive. And, just to add one more factor, those countries with new middle classes now create more domestic demand for many of the same products—or for the labor that creates the products they want. Suddenly, that labor arbitrage doesn’t look quite so attractive anymore.
The back side of the seawall (Riverwall?) that faces the Mississippi River.
I’m standing on the bank of the Mississippi River, watching it flow around the bow of a gigantic barge, pushed by a specialized tugboat. These vessels have to be careful: As big as this river is, thanks to drought, it’s only nine feet deep here. That’s unimaginably shallow for a river this big.
We spent the night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in a downtown hotel that’s just up the street from the Mississippi River. The river, of course, is unimaginably immense, and this is a comparatively narrow section of it—at Cape Girardeau’s waterfront, it’s about 900 feet across. The river’s surface is about 30 feet lower than the street, and the street—and therefore, the town—is protected by a 25-foot “seawall”—river-wall? —because several times in the recent past, the river has gone OVER the wall. Think about that: A river as massive as the Mississippi, 11 miles wide at its widest point, has risen more than 50 feet from where we were standing at its shore.
Sabine standing next to the seawall that protects Cape Girardeau. Look closely–you can see the marks showing the high water levels over the years, and the river, far below.
Cape Girardeau is a beautiful little town, but many of the downtown storefronts are boarded up because they were restaurants and retail shops before the pandemic, and they didn’t survive the shutdown. Now developers want to turn them into office space and condos, except that far fewer people work in an office anymore and the condos will be expensive for a town that suffers the same job deficit as every other small town in the region. The downtown felt vaguely unsafe, in spite of its brightly painted river panoramas. We saw the same thing in other towns we visited: Grand Island, Nebraska, where we stayed for a couple of days, was the same. We ate at a small restaurant there that was reported to be the best breakfast place in town. It was barely half-full, about to close for the day at 1 PM, the food was marginal at best, and the people, while friendly and welcoming, just felt resigned. The people that sat at the few tables that were occupied were mostly farmer types, universally complaining about the low price of whatever it was that they grew, the inept government that provided no assistance whatsoever in spite of their promises to do so, and their inability to get the help they needed to run the farm. We heard this a lot throughout the region. There were, interestingly, large numbers of Latin American workers around. In Grand Island we shopped in a small Mexican market on the town’s main street, and it was very busy. And the most common restaurant cuisine we encountered by a long shot throughout the heartland was Mexican. Spanish was spoken everywhere, and Latin American farm labor seemed to be an accepted part of the local economy.
Okay, on to a different topic. The Homogenization of America is real and kind of heartbreaking. So first, the interstate highway system is completed in 1955 as a massive and highly effective conduit for national commerce following WWII. As a result, it became possible to move product quickly and easily from source to destination, anywhere in the country. But by design, the highway system bypasses small town America, and as a result, those towns slowly and inexorably died out, taking with them the soul of the country, its diversity and quirkiness. This is why William Least Heat-Moon wrote Blue Highways. By avoiding freeways, or highways, or interstates, or whatever you call the roads in your area that are red on maps, he was able to visit those towns that demonstrate just how diverse, and unique, and extraordinary this country is.
But the view from the freeways is pretty bleak. Every town—EVERY town—greets the traveler with exactly the same mask on its face: a collage made up of Wal-Mart; Dick’s Sporting Goods; Marshall’s; McDonald’s and its ilk; Home Goods; Dollar Store; Dollar General; and Target. Small local restaurants or diners are truly scarce, because they’ve been ground out of existence by the big chains that often have a mission to do that very thing. When we did find local businesses, they were usually kind of sad, most of them just barely making it like the breakfast place we visited, where a slowly turning ceiling fan was one of the few signs that a place was even open.
Local products are as scarce as unicorn horns, although some of the places we visited sold unicorn horns. Apparently, unicorns originate in China, because that’s where they all came from. Anyway, before we left, my dad told us to eat at the Amana Colonies north of Cedar Rapids, one of the original German colonies in the country built by people who fled persecution in Germany. He told us that the food was unbelievable, served family style, and the crafts they sell there are all made by local craftspeople. Well, the food is now identical to what we would get at Appleby’s—chicken fingers, fries, cheese sticks—and the crafts are all embarrassingly cheesy, most of them manufactured in Asia.
One of the main streets in Colonial Williamsburg.
We ended our trip at Colonial Williamsburg, a place we have long wanted to visit. Funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Colonial Williamsburg has been restored and preserved in its original state as a colonial village. This is not a theme park; it’s a national treasure, where colonial life cannot just be imagined; it can be seen.
In the visitor center there’s a plaque honoring Rockefeller that says:
The restoration of Williamsburg offered an opportunity to restore a complete area and free it entirely from alien and inharmonious surroundings, as well as to preserve the beauty and charm of the old buildings and gardens of the city and its historical significance. But here’s the important part.
The plaque ends with this:
Perhaps an even greater value is the lesson that it teaches of the patriotism, high purpose, and unselfish devotion of our forefathers to the common good. May this restored city ever stand as a beacon light of freedom to the world.
Politicians, take note.
To enter Colonial Williamsburg, we had to walk across a bridge that connects the visitor center to the town. Embedded in the ground, about every 20 feet or so, are brass plaques that take the visitor back in time as they walk toward the village. We stopped to read every one of them, and they were powerful. I’m not going to read them all to you, but let me offer this.
In December 2021, the editor-in-chief of the Pennsylvania Capital Star wrote an insightful piece about the state of the nation, and he used Colonial Williamsburg as his set piece. Here’s what he said, reading the plaques as he went across the bridge toward the visitors center:
“The return trip across the bridge is a voyage to where we are now: With religion becoming a matter of personal choice, rather than state mandate. The embryonic United States expanded westward, but at a terrible cost to the native peoples who already occupied the land. President Abraham Lincoln lifted the chains of bondage for millions, but so much work still remained. Public education became an option for all. By the 1930s, Social Security and other programs provided a safety net to those who needed it the most. In the 1950s, a woman named Rosa Parks stood up for what was right, by sitting down.
There’s a final plaque set into the concrete on the return leg to the Visitors’ Center. The question it asks is as simple as it is towering in the challenge it poses: “What difference will you make?”
Here’s what I conclude from all this travel. More than anything else—ANYTHING else—education matters. It really, really does. This is one of the biggest realizations that struck me about the emotional and opportunity disparity in this country. First, let’s be clear: the “growing division of wealth and opportunity” is not a gradual slope; it’s a cliff, and a steep one at that. Education is very clearly one of the key difference-makers, if not THE difference-maker. And I’m not just talking about a four-year or longer degree; those are fine, but I’m also talking about certificate programs, two-year degrees, apprenticeships, mentorships, and training in the skilled trades. Education is the gateway to opportunity, but it is also the solution for dealing with unexpected change. Jobs have always gone away; we no longer have rat catchers, or lamplighters, or riveters, or telephone operators, or knocker-uppers (look it up), or Fuller Brush guys knocking on the door. So, having your job disappear is not a new phenomenon; people have always had to adapt to such changes. Paraphrasing Darwin, ‘it isn’t the smartest or strongest that survive, but those that are most adaptable to change.’ But adapting to the kinds of changes that happen today isn’t about walking down the block and joining a different work crew and learning on the job, because of the complicated nature of the world. If I work on an assembly line at a car factory and a robot replaces me, I can’t just start maintaining the robot tomorrow; that requires complex training. Hence, education. Sabine is forever reminding me that education, like money, won’t buy happiness, but it will buy choices. There’s nothing more valuable in this increasingly unpredictable world.
What I saw on this trip confirms my belief that education should not be a barrier to be overcome; it should be a gateway that is freely and aggressively available in one form or another to everybody, and everybody should be motivated to take advantage of it.
Unfortunately, the cost of education has become an impossible barrier for far too many people in this country, and that’s criminal, given education’s clear ability, in all its many forms, to accelerate success and raise people up.
But it’s more than that. Having an education provides little value if there aren’t places to apply it as a value-creation tool. When companies replace people with AI-driven robotic machinery, when they refuse to offer full-time employment, when they do nothing to make basic benefits available to all, al in the interest of profit, they damage the fabric of society. At the risk of sounding like an old guy—a moniker I accept with pride, by the way—I can’t help but think back to August 3rd, 1981, the day I joined Pacific Telephone, the California arm of the not-yet-broken-up AT&T, as an entry-level, wet-behind-the-ears, know-nothing new employee. One of the days we spent that first week was dedicated to a session with Human Resources, during which the HR person explained the benefits we would now get, in addition to full-time employment: two weeks of paid vacation, to start; a pension; a savings plan, which the company would match; complete medical, dental, and vision care; annual training in a variety of technical areas; opportunities for advancement; and other things that I no longer recall. I stayed there for eleven years; many stayed their entire career. I wonder why.
Just to poke the bear a bit, I did a little back of the envelope calculation, thanks to the Amazon Web site. Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder, is worth $177 billion. Let me say that a different way to add some perspective. There are 173 recognized nations on Earth. 97 of them—more than half—are worth less than Jeff Bezos.
According to Pew Research, the average four-year college degree in the U.S. costs $30,000. That’s average—I know that lots of schools charge much more than that. But, based on those numbers, $75 billion of Jeff’s $177 billion would pay for 2,500,000 four-year degrees, leaving Jeff with a paltry $102 billion to live on. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the potential and perpetual annuity earnings of all that cash, which would allow the fund to actually pay for far more than that. And four-year degrees are only one answer. There are also professional certificate programs, two-year degrees, and skilled trades training—all equally valuable, and many of them costing far less than a four-year degree—but often yielding more income. Have you hired a plumber or electrician lately?
Or, a fraction of that money could be used to pay for one-hundred percent of the healthcare needs of every employee at Amazon and perhaps even beyond. Want to see your employee loyalty numbers go through the roof? Reward your employees with things that matter—like real benefits and a livable wage and the prospect of a long-term, full-time job.
I have to be careful here not to sound like Bernie Sanders—I don’t do bleeding heart. I don’t believe in the Robin Hood thing—taking from the rich to give to the poor or punishing somebody like Jeff Bezos who figured out a legal way to be wildly successful, even if he spends a chunk of his money on a phallic rocket to go into space for no reason other than ‘because I can.’ That trip, by the way, cost just shy of six billion dollars. That’s a lot of food. Or education. Or healthcare. Just sayin’. But to punish someone for being successful? For working unbelievably hard to achieve success? I would never punish someone for that. You earn it legitimately? You deserve what you earn.
But after visiting Williamsburg, and seeing the prescience of Nelson Rockefeller (Jeff Bezos before there was a Jeff Bezos), and after driving around the country and seeing people who were working hard and striving for better lives for themselves and their families, facing challenges over which they have very little control, hoping against hope that they will be able to leave a better future for their children and grandchildren, but worrying that current events will never allow that to happen, I can’t help but compare: Where are the corporate leaders today who would use their time, talent, treasure and influence to motivate and challenge others, individuals and governments alike, to help them lock horns with these great existential challenges? Where are they? Who will step up? I like to think that if I found myself with more money in my pocket than I could ever spend in my wildest imaginings, I’d look for a way to make a legitimate, tangible difference with some of it, on the largest scale I could manage. Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Jeff Bezos and his ilk should wake up someday, infected by Ebenezer Scrooge disease, leap out of bed, and give their money away. Not at all. But what’s the goal? We’re all here on the same adventure; being remembered for making the adventure better by making a long-term, measurable, tangible difference in the lives of others seems like a good idea. Somehow, “He died wealthy” isn’t a particularly impressive or inspiring epitaph.
Stepping off of my soapbox, now. Thanks for letting me rant. It’s good to be home.
I just posted a new episode on the Natural Curiosity Project called “Fun with Geography.” It’s sort of an homage to my favorite TV show, the Big Bang Theory. You may recall that a recurring theme was a Web TV show produced by Sheldon Cooper and his then-girlfriend Amy Farrah-Fowler called “Fun with Flags.” It was silly, of course, but it was also interesting in a lot of ways. My own mini-obsession with geography isn’t all that different.
I love maps–I always have. I can sit for hours with a map. just following roads to see where they go, looking for the funniest place names (the subject of an earlier Podcast episode), identifying unusual landforms, and so on. I love the fact that if you follow the major north-bound roads in Canada all the way up, they ultimately just…stop. They peter out. They end. I want to go there. I want to stand at the end of the road and wonder, “Why here?”
Early maps, those produced prior to the 15th century or so, had vast unknown areas that were often drawn showing them to be the homes of fantastic beasts. I don’t know about the fantastic beasts, but there are still places that are largely unknown–not as many as there used to be, but enough of them still exist to tantalize.
When I was in college, I found myself puzzled by friends who were getting degrees in geography, the same way I found it odd that there was a degree in library science. At the time they both seemed silly to me–the sort of “underwater basket weaving” majors that people used to joke about. Today, I can’t think of two fields of study more useful and applicable than these.
It was Mark Twain who wrote, “Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness, and most of our people need it sorely on al three counts.” Well, spending time with maps, taking the time to study a bit of geography, is a noble snd useful pursuit. Just listen to this new episode and you’ll see what I mean.
You can find the episode on Soundcloud or on all the standard Podcast platforms.
Steven Shepard 