Wednesday's postcard, and between the rocks and a hard place

May 15, 2024

Weathered Precambrian granite and holocene aspens on the western face of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains

About yesterday…

The story I wanted to share with you Tuesday wasn’t ready to be a story yet. So I gave a brief gasp and released my grip on what could have been some good news to share. I then got dressed in a real shirt with buttons, found my keys, and left for a meeting and two medical appointments.

The first appointment was an eye exam (I have nascent cataracts in both eyes) that required dilation such that—by the time I was excused—the glare outside was as though the earth had suddenly decided to shrink its distance to the sun by half. I winced and squinted as I drove south a few miles to my dentist.

I can’t drive and write at the same time, so I try to balance daydreams with ideas that arrive from god knows where. As I wrestle with our common experience, I try to stay up on what’s happening in New York, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, etc., in the various court proceedings where ex-President Trump and his enablers are either on trial or being sent to prison. I no longer wonder about Trump as much as I wonder about the souls of the sycophants who cling to him, like remora on a shark. The ease with which they lie and contradict themselves is fascinating but, more so, deeply disturbing.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was thought by many to be near the top of the list to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate this fall. She thought so too, which is why she decided to publish a book entitled No Going Back—to reach out to Trump supporters beyond South Dakota. Pre-publication drafts—sent out to reviewers—contained the shockingly true story that she’d shot her young dog “Cricket” because it was a lousy hunting dog and had killed several of her neighbor’s chickens. Her thinking (apparently) is that the story would make the point that life on the range, or a heartbeat from the White House, requires hard choices. And, boy, is she up for it.

No offense to dog-lovers, but the far worse story in the pre-publication draft was Noem’s claim to have met and faced down the murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. A South Dakota newspaper quickly challenged Noem’s account after finding no record of a meeting between the two. Noem replied that it was a mistake and that the Kim Jong Un meeting would be removed from the book.

Watching Noem try to explain this during her disastrous publicity tour last week was mesmerizing in that she displayed no responsibility nor shame. She said that when the error was detected the false story was excised from the book—as if the glitch in the advance version had somehow escaped her attention. She held to this line even as interviewers pointed out that she’d written the book and, for the audiobook, had even read aloud the version with the Kim Jong Un anecdote.

The press still has trouble with blatant lying. For example, a May 3rd AP story about the imaginary meeting reported it this way: “South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is releasing a new book called ‘No Going Back,’ but on Friday her office said she would actually be going back to correct some errors — including a false claim that she once met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”

Just to underscore the obvious: An error is when your best effort to return a a serve at tennis fails to clear the net. A false claim is what we call a lie.

Not that politics was free of lies before Donald Trump came on the scene, because there were plenty. But Trump showed you could survive lies by the thousands so long as you didn’t blink and lied with conviction. People are attracted to conviction. He has emboldened other politicians to lie and promote lies on his behalf.

J.D. Vance, the junior U.S. Senator from Ohio had become a famous author (Hillbilly Elegy, 2016) before he decided to enter politics. He had broken through as a writer, was never again to miss a meal and seemed destined for aplomb and decades of royalties from books and movies. His shorter works would appear in prestigious magazines, like the piece he wrote for the Atlantic, a month after his best-selling book hit the market. It was entitled Opioid of the Masses with the subtitle, “To many Donald Trump feels good, but he can’t fix America’s social and cultural crisis, and the eventual comedown will be harsh.”

The article includes this pithy, brutal diagnosis of Trumpism:

Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.

The sequel, in case you missed it, is that Vance has traded his reputation for ambition. Like Noem, he wants to be Trump’s vice-president on the 2024 ballot. So he was in New York, this week, attending Trump’s trial in what most people refer to as the Stormy Daniels case, which is actually less about sex and more about fraud. But, of course, Trump and now Vance and a parade of other Republicans—now including the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson—are there to grouse about Trump being persecuted by angry Democrats, including the judge and judge’s daughter.

I could go on, but it is dispiriting. It is the lies, but more importantly the open forfeiture of integrity.

For what? Your name on a post office or a bridge?

I don’t get it, and the stakes are enormous, especially when it comes to whether we’ll be able to face the inconvenient truth (as Al Gore put it) that our carbon emissions are a clear and present threat to the earthly biosphere.

It is depressing, but as you may have noticed, one of my antidotes is to photograph and write about natural settings and wildlife. It’s not a form of denial so much as it is a grasp for balance and sanity.

When I got to the dentist late yesterday afternoon the assistant prepping me was chatty and she asked me what I was up to, beside having a crown put in. I told her about my eyes (I’d come in wearing sunglasses) and then moved on to rocks. Because I write about geology and pester geologists I’d scored a press pass to attend the Geological Society of America conference in Spokane this week, a joint gathering of the GSA’s Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Sections, basically encompassing the region between the Rockies and the Pacific.

The meetings started yesterday and continue through the end of the week. The agenda of presentations is chock full of topics that interest me, so much so that I’m still having trouble deciding which to attend, as many of the sessions run concurrently. It feels like looking at the menu at one of my favorite restaurants—like the Mustard Seed—after fasting for three days and trying choose an entree or two or three, but really wanting to eat everything.

Anyway, the dental assistant told me she loves rocks as well and had even dreamed, as a young girl, of becoming a geologist. I told her about the conference, and she jokingly asked about the best ways to meet geologists.

About that time my dentist came in and joined the discussion. By then my mouth was already holding a swab to numb it up for a needle with novocaine and so I was laughing and mumbling my way through our conversation, which was delightful and animated. The next thing I knew—after the novocaine was injected—I has holding an examining a succession of mineral spheres that my dentist keeps in her office. They were beautiful specimens—like the samples for sale at the “Wonders of the World” store at the Flour Mill in Spokane—and they ranged in size from a meatball to a tennis ball, to an ebony orb the size of a cantaloupe.

Apart from the beauty of the mineral spheres I’m sure one of the things that bring me and others comfort about rocks is the storage of deep time within. It doesn’t solve the onslaught of problems we face, but it does offer some literal grounding, and a bearable weight of perspective. It was an unexpected and joyful conversation that continued past the point where I could talk intelligibly, given the additional equipment going into my mouth.

It was a good way to end the day. This morning my vision is returning, and the new crown fits just fine.

—-tjc