Vacation in Seneca Nation and other notes from the heart of the Empire, 11 July 2023
Finally! After being together for well over a fifth of a century, I was able to take my wife to a resort. Only 2 hours or so away, no hotel tax, great rates during the week, a chance to see the Seneca Museum, gorgeous country, friendly people and, perhaps not coincidentally, legal recreational marijuana.
There was just one hitch: We had to cross maybe 50 miles of that nightmare for motorists and truckers of the Northeast…Pennsylvania.
We made it to North Kingsville, Ohio on I-90 in maybe an hour, then…dead stop. I managed to exit, we ate lunch at a wonderful place where we’ve been many times before, and decided to bypass I-90 in PA because it made the local news that Pennsylvania had narrowed the interstate to one lane each way till the gods know when for even the gods don’t know why.
So we went through Erie on US 20, which had no construction but a three minute red light literally every other block for at least 15 miles. What should have been no more than a 3 hour drive, with a couple of stops, turned into 6.
C’est la vie in the declining Empire. Speaking of which, there was literally an escaped killer who had survivalist training in some woods in the vicinity, and then Seneca Marshals showed up in front of the hotel this morning to grill some guy in a van who had driven on the sidewalk for I have no freaking idea why for about two hours.
And I am back in Twitter jail again. Apparently someone objected to my call for Adam Schiff to be tried for crimes against humanity and treason against the Constitution while a gallows was being built outside his jail cell, like they did at Nuremburg.
I was glorifying or calling for violence, it seems. Never mind that a US Senator can say that killing Russians is wonderful and that’s no problem. At least I know better than to appeal—too many have warned me that to do so is just to guarantee a longer suspension, and while I won’t say I wish Adam Schiff any physical harm, I will say that if he caught on fire I would just stand by and watch him burn.
I think I’ll just stick to wishing people in Twit World that they live in interesting times, or fascinating ones if they are truly vile creatures.
Well, more wonders call, and it’s a nice summer day. I’m getting out. Thank you for reading, have a great day, and stay sane as best you can.
When I lived in upstate NY in my elementary years, my mother always said of Pennsylvania, "It's a poor state"... I've lived in PA now long enough to agree that as soon as you are off its roads and into places like the "dreaded" Ohio, the roads get better. Of course he says this... he's a University of Michigan guy, and that's what he always says. But, who am I to disagree about PA with its crumbling infrastructure, a state with a bloated General Assembly that does a good job at supporting the oil and gas industry, a state with Philly at one end, Pittsburgh over at this end, and Alabama in-between. Who am I to fully weigh in on a state that was soon raped of trees (William Penn's "sylvan" commonwealth) for the sake of industries like lumber, coal and now the oil and gas industry? These entities now capture the lower corrupt courts who allow companies to continue to frack and capture so-called protective industries like the Department of Environmental Protection. Yessiree, Bob... PA is the canary in the coal mine of US crumbling infrastructure as the US is not committed to help its own anymore, just the empire outside our borders...
I'd love to visit more often places of beauty, or even go up to Western NY (no more family left in the Southern Tier of NY). We clearly have a country on the verge of collapse in its natural resources, roads and most of all, mass transit. Then there's that fetid disaster that exploded right over the PA to Ohio border (courtesy of Norfolk Railroad). They obviously captured Ohio Governor Mike Dewine and to this day deny all the people they are poisoning while the Environmental Protective Agency act like they can't do their job.
We got some problems, OB. Wouldn't it be nice to find a way out of it? I'm too old to move to Canada and not sure given the current state of affairs if I even would, eh?
Hope this heat misses you, or, if not, that you have plenty of great places to cool off.
I was born in Philly, and lived in or around it until I was 21. Parts of Philly look cool and gentrified indeed, but it is expensive, and seems kinda dangerous. Used to drive home from central Illinois a couple of times a year, and I do remember how green it was throughout the state, and even that there was an overhanging rock formation we called William Penn's nose, forget what road, and that meant we were getting close to "home". Of course, also a memory of being stopped for speeding at 2 am, and being taken to a conveniently awake judge so we could pay the ticket and not be "detained".
Which was nerve-wracking, because we had filled the trunk with booze from the vastly cheaper Illinois stores, wrapped like Christmas presents. Back then troopers kept an eye out for people coming in from Jersey and whatever, but not from the other end of the state. My father-in-law said hey, piece of cake, but I found out later that we could have lost our car. Was thinking, too, how we used to get Italian bread and hoagie rolls delivered to the door, also soda and beer from the beer store, we had doordash! And it felt weird to buy alcohol at a grocery or drug store in Illinois, and not in front of a bullet-proof window in PA. And the liquor stores in South Calonia have red dots and look like Wonder bread wrappers.
I am so grateful to Kamala Harris for telling us all that "AI" means "artificial intelligence", which is a "fancy thing". She sort of makes me think she might have been like a caricature of girl in high school who thought camel-toes were sexy. I am getting the horrible sinking feeling that a Harris/Buttigieg WWF card is in the future. Checks all the boxes except for stuff like brains.