Rapid Travel Chai

Mother’s Day in Minnesota we stopped at home supply store Menards for river rocks for my parents’ garden. They had been waiting for my hauling service to arrive back home.

The weather is perfect. 70° with a whisper of a breeze.

We looked at the various mulch, sand and rocks until alighting on the desired river rocks.

$1.98 for a bag hard to lift.

I can’t fathom how it can be that cheap to gather rocks, clean them, package them, and transport them to a convenient store. My thoughts went to my recent travels in West Africa and the Pacific where through geography, history, and social conflict, even basic supplies cost dear.

I have endeavored to ignore the farcical, overlong nomination processes of the US presidential election, though Trump catches up to me everywhere. People around the world are enthralled with this election even more than the prior. Then it was disbelief that an African-American could become US president. Now it is that we have reality show candidates just as outrageous as their own homegrown politicians. Hey, the US is just as crazy as we are!

I put a happy face on the frivolity that our tremendous bounty allows. We have such a strong society that we can muddle through even with a branch of government not fully staffed and another branch flouting constitutional intent by doing nothing about it while paid on our taxpayer dime. How many countries have I traveled where a functioning judiciary is a fantasy? How many countries can afford to waste so much time on so many trivial issues and ignore the major?

Brick sellers are a mainstay roadside sight in much of world. People save up brick by brick to build a durable. Liberia, so recently emerged from civil war, it dotted with home after home in partial states of completion.

Somehow we have a land where we have the most advanced technology, tremendous wealth (though highly unequally distributed with many left out), and that bag of rocks costs only $1.98 to pick off the store shelf.

Let’s stop with the endless doom-saying, focus on real problems with can-do solutions, and enjoy this incredible life.