Here is a patch of the old Route 66, the famous highway that
runs from St Louis south through the great deserts and finally
ends at the old Santa Monica Pier here in Los Angeles.


If you ever read the famous traveling chronicles of the
beatnik age, On The Road By Jack Kerouac,
you will recognize Route 66 as the backdrop for much of his
wanderings. That was in the 1950’s. In the 1960’s, it hadn’t
changed much. Then came the great Interstate Highway
systems, the Eisenhower Roads, sinuous threads of smooth
high speed concrete stretching from the east coast to the
west coast, looping around the great city centers, and
carrying not just explorers, but ordinary families,
and teenagers, and salesmen, and fleeing illicit lovers,
and Greyhound buses, and eighteen wheel trucks
in increasing numbers out into the heartland of America
where they found vast housing developments, shopping
centers, drive-in movies, and cheap motels. And with this
fracturing of our solitude came the end of the old two lane
highways, the soft winding roads that wound through
towns both small and large, that were flanked by
garish billboards advertising the end of the universe,
that supported run down diners of weathered clapboard
serving fast cheeseburgers prepared by a former
Marine Ginnery sergeant whose memory of the south
Pacific are slowly fading; Where cars traveled slow
enough to read Burma Shave Signs, and where families
tired from a long day’s drive, could pull over and have an evening
dinner in roadside picnic areas.


Alas, like most things of value, much of old Route 66 is now
gone, paved over and replaced by modern eight and ten lane
super highways. Gone are the little roadside cafes, the picnic
areas, the rock shops, the fossil stores, and the tumbled down
and poorly maintained zoos with underfed bison and
cages of tired rattlesnakes. Gone also are the little Indian
Villages that sold authentic Apache rugs (made in Columbus, Ohio)
and ancient arrow heads (from boxes of freshly chipped
points created each night with a hammer and a wet towel).

(more comments follow)

George Santayana --
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 
Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, page 284 

In the process of rummaging through some old boxes I found this newspaper article from 1994. Since it is now roughly 15 years later, I thought we might find its perspective on where we sit in history interesting. The year I graduated from high school (1964) is now closer to the election of Calvin Coolidge as president and J. Edgar Hoover's founding of the FBI than it is to us.

This is one of the very few images in my web log that is copyrighted (when a copyright still exists) by someone other than myself. The article is (c) Christopher Caldwell and is used without his permission. Even though I have included the entire article, I hope that Mr. Caldwell will consider this as fair use since I am using it as a jumping off place to begin a discussion on our place in the events of Western Civilization.  If not, of course, I will gladly remove this image.

Here is Earl in his role as Chief Topology Enforcer
In the 219th precinct of the three dimensional
shape police (temporarily located in an abandoned
refrigerator factory just east of Hoboken wedged
between the third and fourth dimensions.)


On the vast Plains of Geometry,
under a congruent moon of dissimilar lights,
equilateral rhomboids live in a state of constant fear,
worried that the shape police will discover their deceit
and transform them into Teflon particles: unsticking
quantum devices of amazing complexity through
whose convex windows pass the remains of tomorrow
and the befuddled DNA sequence that, on odd numbered
months, causes the metamorphosis of indifferent house flies.

And so here we see Earl reacting to the stress of his
intoxicating responsibility, falling apart under the necessity
of making decisions that will effect the Euclidean conformity
across the known universe. One lapse in judgment and
future geometers will no longer be able to trisect an angle
or approximate the value of Pi to seventeen positions
or elucidate the ineluctable axioms of parallel lines,
or proclaim a self satisfied Quod Erat Demonstrandum
after a weary day of theorem proving,
in a quiet moment over a glass of stale red wine,
In their sparse kitchens when the wife and kids
are asleep, and the house is so very quiet
except for the ticking of a distant clock.

More unimportant revelations to follow.

Chief Topology Enforcer Drawing (c)2008 Earl Cox

Here I see myself as Xynthapus the Magnificent,
sometimes mystic King of the Mayans, who
as their chief astrologer, was famous for  once
forecasting the coming of the Spanish, the arrival of
the next ice age, and the thirteen hundredth
eclipse of the sun on April 10th of 1964. Only in the
past fortnight have my original powers returned
and I have started standing every evening
on the corner of Sunset and Vine  predicting
the times of the next low tide, the number of
hours in a day, and the necessity of the
aurora borealis in the pollination of avocados.

Once more women are fascinated by my manly
powers and my ability to mock them in spite
of their great beauty.  But I will refuse to tell
their fortunes and touch their lush bosoms
until they can recite the names of my bedroom
walls, guess the number of stars in orbit
around two undiscovered planets, and
help me finish translating the twenty-eighth
book of the Iliad.

 
Sigh, the world will little note nor long
remember what I say here, but it can never
forget what I did here. I have changed the
meaning of causality, abolished the effects
of the uncertainty principle, &  invented a new
alphabet whose ideograms cannot be used
to form gerunds and past participles.
Tonight the street women have ignored me.
So? I can do without their gravity-defying
anatomy, I am content to decode the hidden
messages of traffic signals while spending
my evenings as god intended, in my cardboard box,
with my bottle of Premium Boone’s Farm Chardonnay,
in the rain at the corner of Sunset and Vine,
hiding from the evil spirits of ancient Peru
who are searching the city for my
pristine spirit.

Xynthapus drawing (c)2008 Earl Cox

Self portrait of me as I am usually seen by my
neighbors - standing on my terrace watching the
night sky for the return of the Mother Ship, in whose
warm oxy-benzene tanks I will be carried back
to Jomlear IX, a tiny planet of insufficiently
evolved plants and air breathing fishoids,
orbiting Bernard’s Star in the lower
Sagittarius arm of this pitiful galaxy.

Real Me Drawing (c)2008 Earl Cox

I always wanted to follow in the footsteps of Paul Theroux and write stories about exotic sandwich shops in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Now I want to write travel stories about wandering through vast mythological cities perched on the edge of ammonia moraines at the foot of titanic nitrogen glaciers on an earth so old and barren that tourists in those days wander under a moonless night through the relics of ancient intelligent myrmidons that still remain, cracked and weathered beneath a huge red sun, and telepathic centipedes float through the dark sky hunting the last remaining flocks of organic ice crystals whose poisonous breath once menaced all mankind.

September, 1965.
This was the deciding point --
the moment in my life
when I knew for certain
that I would never be
an epic poet.

Which didn't really bother me
because the pay is so poor
and you have learn how to
force metaphors
about the wine dark sea
into lots and lots
of hexameter verse!

Just past Frederick and east of Hagerstown is a massive, old bridge built in 1820 as part of the great National Pike (the pioneer road that winds from Maryland westward into Illinois -- which was then considered the West). In the very early 1800’s, this road would have wound through small garrison towns, a few deserted British forts (left over from the War of 1812), and the remains of what was once a great wilderness teaming with Indian villages. Nearly all of these Indian tribes were Ottawas and Mohicans, which were part of the Algonquin Family now found mostly in upper New York state. Other tribes of Indians known as the Susquehannocks, Tuscaroras, and the Hurons were mainly from the Carolinas (where I was living at the time), but as pioneers pushed into the southern woods, these tribes moved through Maryland on their way north toward Pennsylvania – where, of course, they were eventually driven out and settled in the dry, hot wastelands of southwest. A small population of Tuscaroras settled in, and still remains today in, the area north of Frederick (a rough area that is today called Tuscarora). Along the rivers around Hagerstown you can still find Indian arrow heads, spear points, and shards of cooking pottery. I have a small box of these stored in the side drawer of my writing desk.

[1] That is, I didn't find the photographs. I did find the desert. It's hard to miss the Mojave -- you drive east from LA, take Route 15 through Victorville, and stop somewhere around Barstow (or when there is nothing but sand, scrub grass, and black mountains next to the road).

1963
Glen Burnie Senior High
Maryland

While we taking a short break from the flow of the narratives that will ultimately carry us into the soul of western cognitive models, I would like to include something that is related, in a thematic way, to our journey of exploration. This juncture of relationships involves not only the way we teach and approach art in our schools and not only the perspective we have on freedoms of expression in a closed authoritarian environment, but also the general knowledge of metaphors and classical allusions -- now missing from today's education and culture -- that we, like the literate generations before us, had absorbed in the early years of our education.

A little over a year ago I was going through some old boxes looking for a magazine article from a 1968 Harvard Business Review (I save everything!) and discovered a folder with a collection of very old poems and short stories from high school. Alas, most of the stuff is not only terrible it is unbelievably painful to read. However, I found this poem, written for Mrs. Ferris' art class when I was a sophomore, which would make it sometime in the 1961-1962 school year. Mrs. Ferris and I had wildly opposing views on what constituted art (she had little sympathy for my abstract geometries which she considered no better than "idle doodlings").

I've always liked this poem because it got me called (or sent, I forget which) to the Principal's office (old Pop Wayland) and then sent home -- not formally suspended just sent home. Apparently Mrs. Ferris was extremely upset by my little mock epic covering my Odyssey through her art class. I guess, in retrospect, I shouldn't have taped the poem to the blackboard!!!!

No good deed ever goes unpunished!

****

Here is the poem, as it poured forth from my fifteen year old mind. Please, no critical analyses, word usage corrections (I already know them all!) or spelling corrections! This little gem was typed on my old 1938 Underwood in one inspired burst and I would like to retain that enduring sense of pithiness and freshness that still lingers after all these years.

On Boring Art Classes

Musa sing thy song to me,
Adrift Pernasus with a melody
That bespeaks and fortells
Of the many cursive hells
Which man endures a posterior part
Cast from paradise into Art.

As Aeneid on that ancient coast
His courage and his valor boast
When o’er Dido compelled by fate
His parting kiss held no more hate
Then I within my beating heart
Hold for the weariness of Art.

Prometheus can feel no more desire,
That Titan which gave man fire,
In odium at the King of Gods
That bound him in chains and iron shods
That I have felt from the start,
At the deathliness of Art

As Lucifer from Paradise was cast
And thru the gates of Hell fell past
To reek his vengence on all ‘man;
Across an endless tract of sand
Some dying Shepard in his cart --
Withering, a kinder fate than Art.

O Muses, now that we must part
I offer you, the God of Art.

****

Michigan Issues Permit to Kill Cougars

Nov. 5 -- The Department of Natural Resources of Michigan recently issued a permit to trap or kill cougars to a farmer even though the cougar is on the state endangered species list.

The action was prompted by attacks on animals owned by the farmer by "big felines that seem to be cougars," according to a Department spokesperson.

"Totally incomprehensible," said Michigan Wildlife Habitat Foundation Executive Director Dennis Fijalkowski. "Here we have proof from the (DNA) evidence and sightings that cougars are still around 100 years after they were thought to have been wiped out (in Michigan), and the first thing the (Department of Natural Resources) wants to do when it comes across a cougar sighting that it can't ignore is kill (the animals)?"

According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Mike DeCapita, despite the sightings and DNA evidence, the Service still takes the position that cougars do not exist in Michigan and therefore "the federal (Endangered Species Act) does not protect them (within the state)."

****

Hence the state has issued a license to kill an endangered species that does not exist, but if it did exist, it wouldn't be protected because it officially does not exist, and therefore the federal endangered species act does not protect them (but what "them" is this biologist referring to?) I actually had to read this twice to make sure I actually understood the stupidly in this last paragraph. If this guy -- Mike DeCapita -- is actually a biologist (that is, a scientist) he should have his reasoning credentials revoked