So far, so positive!
I set off for Maine last night, leaving the wonderful womyn's land I've been resting and repainting on for almost 3 days to head upstate New York and begin my journey over Vermont and New Hampshire into Maine. It's been years since I've driven this way.
The Adirondacks are beautiful, soft and curved, misty and very very green. I'm on the thruway for several miles and lots of white people passing me are so positive, honking, waving, thumbs up, and I love you's!
At the rest stop, two different white men approach me, one in his 40's maybe, one over 75. They don't directly comment on my truck but the oldest one asks me what kind of reactions I get on the road.
I share my most recent interactions on the thruway and he seems dissatisfied, as he shuffles from one foot to the other. He has said he has to leave several times as the other man talks to me about how I must not have voted for tRump....duh!
The old man with the sweep of a gnarled veined hand, makes a broad, untrue statement about free speech in amerikkka so I move quickly to grab his attention as I tell him speech is free in the u.s. as long as it's the speech of those racist sexist old white males in power. My truck has been spray painted with penises, my tires slashed, my windshield smashed several times - and when my truck was painted mostly in spanish, I came out one morning camping at Yellowstone to see "GO HOME" written across the side.
He wishes me luck and I respond with good luck to all of us, yeah?!
The younger man wants to engage with me about global warming, claiming it's cloud cover, moisture raising temperatures. I'm like, no shit, we're melting the glaciers, burning fossil fuels - at which point I get to inform him that the military the number 1 consumer of fossil fuels in the entire planet, and our country is the number 2 consumer - but he's not convinced that we have to stop burning fossil fuels nor that we are causing the increased cloud cover. But he's trying to convince me we can find a way to melt the clouds without decreasing our consumption of fossil fuels of course.
I urge him not to wait for technology but to cut down right now his use of fossil fuels at least until his technology can catch up.
grrrrrrrrr
But this morning when I wake and head into the welcome center, the white womon working there rushing over to me, a huge smile on her face, asking me about my truck. She wants to take pictures, she gushes, as she tells me coming to work this morning, my truck made her whole day.
She tells me she doesn't often get to meet people as awake as I am at this center or in her community. I acknowledge she's the one who's trying to wake people up around here. The sadness that replaces her wide grin is palpable as she recounts stories of trying to wake up her neighbors. And she tells me, what we all know - most people do not want to be woken up, we value our sleep even here in these beautiful mountains!
The Adirondacks are beautiful, soft and curved, misty and very very green. I'm on the thruway for several miles and lots of white people passing me are so positive, honking, waving, thumbs up, and I love you's!
At the rest stop, two different white men approach me, one in his 40's maybe, one over 75. They don't directly comment on my truck but the oldest one asks me what kind of reactions I get on the road.
I share my most recent interactions on the thruway and he seems dissatisfied, as he shuffles from one foot to the other. He has said he has to leave several times as the other man talks to me about how I must not have voted for tRump....duh!
The old man with the sweep of a gnarled veined hand, makes a broad, untrue statement about free speech in amerikkka so I move quickly to grab his attention as I tell him speech is free in the u.s. as long as it's the speech of those racist sexist old white males in power. My truck has been spray painted with penises, my tires slashed, my windshield smashed several times - and when my truck was painted mostly in spanish, I came out one morning camping at Yellowstone to see "GO HOME" written across the side.
He wishes me luck and I respond with good luck to all of us, yeah?!
The younger man wants to engage with me about global warming, claiming it's cloud cover, moisture raising temperatures. I'm like, no shit, we're melting the glaciers, burning fossil fuels - at which point I get to inform him that the military the number 1 consumer of fossil fuels in the entire planet, and our country is the number 2 consumer - but he's not convinced that we have to stop burning fossil fuels nor that we are causing the increased cloud cover. But he's trying to convince me we can find a way to melt the clouds without decreasing our consumption of fossil fuels of course.
I urge him not to wait for technology but to cut down right now his use of fossil fuels at least until his technology can catch up.
grrrrrrrrr
But this morning when I wake and head into the welcome center, the white womon working there rushing over to me, a huge smile on her face, asking me about my truck. She wants to take pictures, she gushes, as she tells me coming to work this morning, my truck made her whole day.
She tells me she doesn't often get to meet people as awake as I am at this center or in her community. I acknowledge she's the one who's trying to wake people up around here. The sadness that replaces her wide grin is palpable as she recounts stories of trying to wake up her neighbors. And she tells me, what we all know - most people do not want to be woken up, we value our sleep even here in these beautiful mountains!
posted by Xan @ 5:10 AM
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