Jim Stewart's Blog

4th June 2016 was Day 9 of my USA trip. I went from Farmington to St George. On this day I visited Monument Valley. If you have ever been there you will know how easy it is to take a lot of photographs. I decided not to put them all in this blog, I’ll save the big photo day for the next two days.

The first place I stopped off was Shiprock. This was the start of the odd rock formations. Monument Valley is one of the places that appears in a lot of films.

I stopped in St George. A bit of a strange town – it seems to have two sides to the town, split by an interstate in the bottom of the valley. I would stay here for a couple of days and do day trips.

Anyway, back to the now. I’ve been checking numbers in images that claim to be data about COVID. So far I have yet to find one image with the correct data. I have found some that use odd data sets, some that use odd dates, some that use multiple dates and even some that appear to have been photo edited. I could understand one or two errors. In fact the UN have reviewed posts and found 75% have false data.

Some people have been quick to change their posts when I contacted them, these are often people that write a little bit about what they are posting. Others, often the ones with the data that looks to be deliberately falsified, don’t do anything and just post with no personal input.

To be honest I am getting a little bit fed up with people just posting newspaper articles (especially ones behind paywalls) or images without any comment. I am on social media to interact with people, not to read the books they are reading. So next time you feel like sharing a post you have seen try to include a few words about what you are thinking (even if it is to say “If this is true it is wonderful”).

Tough day at work today – busiest day for months. After 6 by the time I finished. I’m supposed to be working part time.

Spotted my neighbour had a grass delivery today – he is laying a new lawn. Now this comes a few days after I start discussing changing my lawn. Does he have a bug in my house? Or is this his secret way of starting another tunnel to find my toilet rolls?

So Day 8 of my 2016 road trip of the USA. This was a driving day. There was one place I really wanted to see. I drove from Limon to Farmington, stopping off at Great sand Dunes.

The Great Sand Dunes is an interesting place. In the middle of the USA there are some enormous sand dunes, and during summer there is a river runs past them from snow melt. Occasionally there is an odd feature called a surge flow and occasionally a bore runs uphill.

To get an idea of the scale then just pick out the people in this photo.

The drive from here involved high passes – also with snow, and some amazing views.

Finally got to Farmington.

I’m not a great fan of the song “All you need is love”, maybe because I also want a packet of crisps. But we need a lot more than love. Having said that I had a feeling today that there is a real lack of love and tolerance in all sides of society.

Too many people seem to be firing from the hip, maybe myself included.

I remember chatting about “rights” with my youth group. They put together a list of the rights they thought were the most important. The next question was who they should be applied to. To explore it I asked if they should apply to dogs, or maybe to aliens from another planet.

It didn’t really occur to them that some of the rights might not apply to women or blacks – that this had been part of recent history.

On a trip to the USA in 1996 there were black churches being burned, and the real threat that I would be shot for going to a “black” church.

So on with my road trip of 4 years ago. 2nd June 2016. This day would take me from Rapid City to Limon (never heard of it? neither had I, I was just tired and decided to stop there).

The first stop on this day was another massive memorial – Mount Rushmore. One of the best things about this place is the book store. The staff are great and are good at finding books that will be interesting for you.

As I drove on to my next stop I came across a small village called Scenic (South Dakota). Now this is an interesting place. The whole village was sold to a church group, but they have not demolished the old buildings. The old buildings on the street have real character.

I then drove on to the main place that I wanted to see. Wounded Knee. In 1890 there was a religion spreading in the Indian Nations. At the core were the ideas that people should love, not fight, work, and look forward to the return of Jesus so that they could live in paradise with their friends and family. It was a sort of adaptation of the Christian message, mixed with some native beliefs. Part of the beliefs involved a ghost dance (not too different to some modern charismatic churches). The religion worried many people.

On 28th December a group of Lakota led by Big Foot were taken by a cavalry unit (peacefully) to a place called Wounded Knee. There were 120 men and 230 women and children. The 7th Cavalry, led by several officers that had been defeated at the Little Bighorn, set up artillery on a hill, and surrounded the Lakota.

Remember that great 2nd amendment – the right to bear arms. The one passed in 1791. Well, 100 years later this did not apply to the Lakota. You see rights only apply to people. So the troops moved in on the 29th December and disarmed the Lakota. Except for one man (who was deaf). He refused to hand over his new Winchester that he had bought and in the struggle the gun went off.

In response the cavalry opened fire. There is no agreed number of dead, partly because the dead were left where they fell, and partly because many of the wounded scattered and died later. But several reports agree that around 300 men, women and children had been slaughtered,

A group of wounded (4 men and 47 women and children) were taken to a nearby barracks. They were placed on the floor of the church . The banner over the pulpit said “PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN”.

General Miles estimated that 300 men women and children were killed and some had been chased several miles before being cut down.

American Horse, a Lakota that supported the soldiers said:

The men were separated, as has already been said, from the women, and they were surrounded by the soldiers. Then came next the village of the Indians and that was entirely surrounded by the soldiers also. When the firing began, of course the people who were standing immediately around the young man who fired the first shot were killed right together, and then they turned their guns, Hotchkill guns, etc., upon the women who were in the lodges standing there under a flag of truce, and of course as soon as they were fired upon they fled, the men fleeing in one direction and the women running in two different directions. So that there were three general directions in which they took flight.

There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce … A mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing … The women as they were fleeing with their babies were killed together, shot right through … and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys … came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.

American Horse

20 of the soldiers were given the highest military award for their actions.

The local priest said the soldiers were only defending themselves and only fired when they had no choice.

At some point the facts make excuses look stupid.

When you visit the site there is a sign. In the churchyard on the hill where the artillery stood there is a small monument, on this occasion with a few colourful rags.

Remember the memorial at the Little Bighorn? Remember how impressive it looked? It was a memorial to a bunch of soldiers killed in an attack that was intended to kill men, women and children- and it was extensive and well maintained. At Wounded Knee there is virtually nothing. And this is not 100 years ago, it is still that way today.

And just to annoy you a little bit. Do you remember that jolly song “We’re off to see the Wizard”? The Wizard of Oz – isn’t it great. Well, the author of the wizard of Oz was a newspaper editor at the time and wrote:

The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past

L Frank Baum

Yes, I know there is a call “Black lives matter”, but the imbalance in society extends to other people as well.

There is an independent candidate for president in the upcoming elections. For a long time his tagline has been #ALLTHEPEOPLE. I think I like that better. So if any American friends want to make a change then have a look at Mark Charles. And if you are not American have a look at what he has to say. Some stuff to think about.

Anyway, back to my road trip. As I drove on I came across an odd little arty town called Alliance. One of the attractions there is Carhenge, a reproduction of Stonehenge in cars painted grey.

I then decided to drive on as far as I could that day – and made it to a place called Limon. Not a place I would have thought about stopping in, but it had a nice motel and plenty of services. It had the look of a place that lots of trucks stop.

A lot of emphasis has been put on the number of people dying from COVID. I saw an interesting chart a week or so ago with the number of excess deaths. These were split in two groups, one COVID and a second group OTHER. This gives you an idea of some of the other side of the coin – there are a significant number of deaths being caused by lockdown.

As you introduce restrictions the number of deaths from the virus reduces to a low level. But at some point you also start to increase the deaths from other causes, and if you become too restrictive then you start to kill more people from the restrictions than the virus kills.

The worst case is actually not doing nothing, it is doing too much – and pushing restrictions to a point that society breaks down. This is because a breakdown in society effectively releases the virus and also kills people from lack of societal support (clean water, health service).

And if you think this is far fetched look at what is happening in the USA. It doesn’t take much to start to tip things over the edge, and it does not need to be related to the virus or the lockdown. It is just something that causes a pressure release.

In the UK you just need to look at the beaches over the weekend to see how much pressure has built up. The slow removal of restrictions is an attempt to release the pressure gently rather than waiting for a system failure. I mentioned before that lockdown ending was not simply about meeting criteria – it is as much about how willing society is to live with lockdown.

So what does that mean for us – well it means that every time we say “No I will not exercise my right to do….” we are still saving lives by choosing to extend lockdown. It means that the idiots on the beach may not be infecting people, but their idiocy is the pressure that forces relaxation and that leads to more deaths.

And now back to 4 years ago – the sixth day of my USA road trip. This day took me from Ten Sleep to Rapid City. I should say that one of my habits is to find places to stay mid-way between attractions – hotels are cheaper and you often find some unknown local attraction near the hotel.

As I said yesterday coffee was important to me on this trip – I managed to find a number of small local coffee shops that provided good coffee. One was in Ten Sleep – a shop calle Dity Sally’s.

I had a really pleasant start to the day chatting about coffee with the owner. They had imported their coffee machine from Italy. The coffee was fantastic. As I left the town the road started climbing, and it felt like it was climbing forever. The scenery was gorgeous.

Finally I reached the top of the pass. Just think of the weather we are having today. Warm! At the peak I took this photo to show that the snow was still on the ground at the side of the road.

On the other side I popped in to a small town to prove to a friend I had been to his home town.

It was on the way north toward the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Custer’s last stand). Just south of the memorial there is a small place worth visiting called Garryowen. This is actually where the battle started.

The site of the battle is interesting. Yes there is a large graveyard, but there are also gravestones where people fell and died.

Remember what this looks like – there will be more about this tomorrow – and there may be a test. One thing that is interesting is the term used on several white gravestones “An american soldier”. This suggests that the savages they were fighting were not american. You could draw a comparison with the racism that has led to the recent problems in the USA.

After this there was a long drive to somewhere I really wanted to see, and I was really pleased when I got there – it is an unbelievable site – Devil’s Tower. As you drive toward it it really stands out.

You might recognize it as the hill in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or the end of the film Paul. Close up it is even more impressive.

There are actually one or two people climbing this face in the photo, so that might give you a sense of scale (you can’t see them).

After this I drove on to Rapid City – and I can hardly remember anything about it.

I switched on the TV while I was cooking today and came across some hymn singing. It was interesting – it seemed to be more of a concert than a congregational event.

I remember seeing the NOS from Sheffield once, and that certainly was a performance.

It got me wondering a little bit about what church is about and why people attend. Somebody sent me an article today about the demand for church opening sooner rather than later. One of the statements in it really concerned me “75% of clergy and church officials said the closing of the places of worship during lockdown has had a negative effect on the local community” and then there is a comment about churches being “places of prayer”.

I do take this with a pinch of salt, because it is newspaper speak (on the truth scale I put that somewhere beyond a lie). But it does make me wonder what sort of religions are floating around this country. Do we really worship brick and mortar to that extent? Do we believe there are magic spells on them? Do we really promote the idea that you can only meet God there?

It took me down the road of wondering what church was to me. Why do we go there? Today our church had a 30 minute service and a one hour coffee get together. Rather than the building-normal 60 minute service and 30 minute coffee. To me the church is not closed, the church is being restored to something more relevant.

I almost felt like making a notice to go round and stick on church doors saying “God does not live here”. And now an apology – sorry if you don’t like country music, but this song came to mind.

And now back to my road trip from 2016, day 5. Four years ago today I drove from Idaho Falls to a small town called Ten Sleep.

This route passes through Yellowstone, and that was what it was intended to see. What I didn’t realise was just how stunning the road would be – passing through a park called “Grand Teton”.

The scenery is stunning. This is one of the odd things I found about America. Just like the falls at Twin Falls are hard to find there are so many amazing places that get so little mention. In Yellowstone there is one really famous place to visit – Old Faithful.

It seems that this is the place everybody goes to. I decided not to stay around too long and discovered that there were so many other areas of Yellowstone to see and there were a lot less people around them.

At Grand Teton and Yellowstone (not Old Faithful) I spent hours looking at stunning scenery. Eventually I drove on to Ten Sleep (apparently named as a point ten sleeps away from the destination – i.e. 10 days walk). On the way there I passed another really interesting place not on any tour guide – a sort of graveyard for fire-fighting aircraft. Although it was closed I was able to walk round the fence and see a lot of interesting old aircraft.

The motel was really interesting. It was run from a different state. I was sent an access code before I got there that would open my room door. There was an “Office” but that was just the place the cleaner kept their stuff.

I popped over the road to the saloon for an evening meal. Yes this was the old america. The walls of the saloon were plastered with marks from the local cattle ranches – their brands. And there on the wall were two six shooters with the sign saying “We don’t dial 911”. Maybe the guns were just for show – but I believed the sign.

It was a lovely town, but you could see it was struggling – businesses were dying. This was one of the days that made me realise how likely a Trump victory was. There was no doubt in my mind that there were good people trying to chase the american dream, but the class divisions had separated people so much, the middle class were fighting for their survival and a lot were drowning.

Just look at the suicide rate to see it – two thirds of gun deaths are suicides – it makes mass shooting seem smaller. I never argue mass shootings as the reason for gun control – I always point to the gun suicide rate.

Personally I could have spent a long time in a place like this – it felt so honest. The people felt so genuine. I made a note that the people in the saloon were friendly and chatted to me while I was there. If you visit Yellowstone this is a place worth a stay, especially for the coffee (but that is tomorrow).

I remember the first trip I took in the USA. The car I rented had the petrol cap behind the licence plate. Then there was the pump – in the USA there is normally some sort of switch to turn the pump on before you can plump the petrol.

It is important to start your car from time to tie and to move it (there are a number of reasons why you should drive a few minutes every couple of weeks). Today I drove a circuit of the village. It suddenly struck me that my tank is still showing above the full mark and the last time I bought petrol was over 2 months ago. I’m not sure I will be able to remember how to fill my tank when I next need petrol at this rate.

I put down the first three strips of decking today. However my drill-driver had a bit of a problem. It seems like it doesn’t like to work in the heat. So I had to fall back on an old Sainsburys brand driver that I bought when I was between houses. Not the best tool, so I’ll wait till a new drill-driver arrives before finishing things off. Or maybe I’ll get too bore to leave it unfinished.

So today is day 4 of my USA road trip. This was a drive from Jackpot to Idaho Falls.

The first place I went to was Twin Falls, a place where there are twin falls. Actually the route to the park at the falls is not that easy to find – I am glad I good directions. The nickname is “The Niagara of the West”.

One of the things this river canyon is famous for is the rocket jump by Evel Kinievil. Or should I say the attempted jump.

From there I headed to the Craters of the Moon – a place that I have always thought sounded like a place to visit. It turns out to be a volcano park, with several loose volcanic gravel hills. The park is a decent size, and takes a good few hours to visit. There are a number of walks and caves (there was a warning about the possibility of contracting an illness if you visited the bat caves).

I really enjoyed my time at the park and walked a fair distance.

Next stop along the road was EBR-I, the first nuclear reactor in the world to produce electricity. Quite interesting seeing the massive amounts of safety in place in some areas and the lack of safety in others (smoking was permitted for example)

In the evening I stopped at Idaho Falls and disturbed some friends who were concreting an area for a wedding reception – a pleasant meal at a nearby restaurant.

I’m not sure why, but for a quiet day I have found myself pretty exhausted in the end. Too much sun I think. I think with global warming I might have to start siestas.

A friend called today. She said she feels that she is starting to see the reality of people by the way they are reacting. And I think it is true. We are all living more of our lives on-line. People are getting a longer snapshot of who we are, they are becoming more of a fly on the wall in our lives.

I find it almost as fascinating as the Zoom bookshelves, but not quite.

People can sometimes surprise you. I once chatted to a Christian in the USA (that I had known for over 10 years) about an issue, to be told “it’s only blacks”.

In the UK we have to have safeguarding policies when we are engaged with vulnerable adults. When I was drafting our policy I was challenged. It is normal to say “We vet people and if they have are dodgy we exclude them”. But we have a problem. We work with dodgy people – drug addicts, criminals and we will even work with people that have committed sex crimes (prison tends to have a lot of these dodgy people). In the end we opted to say “We recognize the possibilities of transformation in people’s lives and the chance of new beginnings.”

So often we have a one way door to exclusion. People are pushed overboard from the good ship normal society because they don’t conform. We offer them a ladder without steps for them to climb back on board as we push them down with long poles. Then we sing our songs about rebellion from oppression.

The Christian message is not as clear cut as some might have you believe in areas like this. The Jesus that overturned tables and whipped the money changers also said forgive them about the people that tortured and killed him (and many others). I can’t claim to have any rules that makes sense of this, it would be nice to say Jesus opposed predators, but those roman soldiers were certainly predators.

I remember one day at school. We were in the senior common room. News came that one of the tougher guys in the room had upset a local criminal, who was coming with his gang to stab him. The room quickly emptied, and soon the gang of about 50 arrived and surrounded the room. Maybe it was stupidity, or maybe something else, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave him alone in that room.

I struggle to find the right balance, but am sure the good ship normal society is not the boat I always feel happy on. I seem to feel more related to those in the water, whether they have jumped there, been thrown there, or just slipped and fell overboard. I get the feeling there will be more people in the water soon. I hope the good ship normal society can change by then.

Anyway, enough of that – on to my third day in the USA – 29th May 2016. This started in Gerlach with a trip to see a geyser and went on to a place called Jackpot in the NW of Nevada.

To the North of Gerlach there are several hot geysers that have formed pillars from the deposits as the water boils off. I drove there in the morning to take some photos. As I stood there in the silence taking photographs I heard a coyote howl in the distance. Then another, and another and another. I couldn’t help but feel they were all chatting about the breakfast that had arrived (me).

There were two places I wanted to visit on the route this day. I wanted to visit Winnemucca – just so I could play the song as I drove there.

The next place I wanted to visit was another ghost town. This time because of the name. Metropolis. I wanted to see where Superman used to live. It was interesting visiting a city that had recently (75 years ago) become a ghost town. The thing that was probably most striking was that there were new burials. I guess some people had a family plot.

I then drove on to a place called Jackpot, just inside Nevada. I had a fantastic hotel. Jackpot is a gambling destination for the people from Idaho – so has good hotels to attract visitors.

This was one of my long drive legs to get me to the area where I had a lot more things to see, as you will find out tomorrow….

Two major events today – I spotted my newly planted tree was crawling with ants. That means one thing – aphids. Two hours of inspecting leaves and killing them.

And another non-working day that ended up with a lot of work. Providing a set of legislation for a country – I enjoy helping countries improve their safety standards.

Tonight was apparently the last “clap for the NHS” night. I live on an ambulance route. Around half of the clap nights have seen an ambulance pass. It sort of changes it from “we are all doing this to show unity” to “thank you, the two crew in that ambulance driving past”. I understand for a lot of people the whole thing seems a bit empty now, but for me I will be out next week. But I will wait for the first ambulance before I clap.

I enjoy the USA, there are a lot of really nice people there. Genuine nice. I was reading last night that Imperial College have predicted that the latest relaxations in the USA will result in 200,000 more deaths in the USA over the next 2 months. I guess that means I will not be visiting the USA soon. In fact there is a real probability that if the virus spreads this much in the USA it will be years before I get a chance to go there again.

The other thing that happened today is that my photobooks arrived. When I opened it I realised that 4 years ago yesterday I did started a road trip of the American mid-west. So I thought that, over the next few days, I would take you on a tour of the USA with me as it happened day by day.

So today I will cover the 27th and 28th of May 2016. Day 1 took me from Las Vegas to a town called Tonnopah.

One of the reasons for avoiding the direct road was that I wanted to visit Rachel, you might remember it from the film “Paul” (the black mailbox and all that). Most of the way there was desert.

Quite a desolate road, and night by the time I reached Tonnopah. In Tonnopah this is one of the tourist attractions, they call it Bob’s Big Boy Burgers.

I saw no aliens on the way. in fact I didn’t even see any odd shaped aeroplanes. I met a guy in Rachel on a previous visit (a sponsored bike ride from San Francisco to the Olympics in Atlanta – I drove the support truck). He ran a memorabilia shop, area 51 t shirts etc. I talked to him about whether he really believed in aliens. He said absolutely not, but he collected stories from visitors looking for them and sold them key rings, t shirts and other stuff. He was aiming to create a walk in flying saucer. Rachel is 120 miles from anywhere (imagine having to drive 120 miles to fill up your tank with petrol!) so he needed to find a way to make money. People seem so keen to be misled, and he was willing to make money from it.

On day 2 I did a much longer drive – and boy was that a desolate road!

Again I avoided the direct road because I wanted to see both Mono Lake and the ghost town at Bodie. But there was also the large Turtle made out of rock at Fernley.

Mono Lake is an interesting bird life area. The water flows in, but not out. As a result there are brine shrimps living there which encourages migratory birds that feed on them. You can see the odd structures sticking out of the water (the water level has gone down since some of the incoming streams have been diverted to Los Angeles). The next stop was an old ghost town called Bodie. I spent ages there exploring old buildings, churches etc. Fascinating place to walk around.

One of the odd things I found was the rock turtle in Fernley. It really is big – 5m high. This is part of the Burning Man art park, but more about burning man later.

I then drove along a really desolate road, through the Black Rock Desert, past the town of Empire, which is pretty much becoming a ghost town since the gypsum mining failed. I eventually arrived at Gerlach. There you find Bruno’s X (replace X with hotel, restaurant, casino, bar or whatever you want be the look of it). I had made a booking by phone. No booking number, just “okay”. So I was a bit nervous about whether I had a room (the nearest alternative was not really driveable). But no problem. I had to eat at Bruno’s – nowhere else within 100 miles. But the food was superb – I can see why they say it is the best in three states.

Gerlach is the main town in the Black Rock Desert. They nickname “Centre of the known universe”. Every year they create a temporary Black Rock City to support the nearby Burning Man festival. That interested me, but the picture on the wall interested me as well.

I often wonder if the Channel 4 railway tracks were filmed there.

I think I like the desert. There is something about finding a place away from everybody, away from the noise and business, to just recharge the batteries – and heat feels good to me.