BEING A TRAVELER: TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY

Three recent short trips have stimulated thinking about the experience of traveling.   

Traveling is one of many life experiences.  For most people, the everyday experiences of life are relatively repetitive and include the basic functions of maintaining a living space, traveling to and from some sort of work,  and performing that work.  These tasks repeat, and the experience  is often repetitive.  Some work tasks involve travel, most dramatically airline pilots and attendants, and these become repetitive in order to be performed safely and with precision. So the point of travel for most people is the opportunity to have an experience different from everyday life. Travel can take many forms including 1)tourism, 2) adventure travel, 3) exploration, and 4) personal development.  These may be combined in the same event,  and be different for different person's engaged in the same event.   

Tourism is travel in which the individual experiences a new environment that is designed, in some way, to attract and cater to travelers.  This includes comfortable accommodations that coincide with the affluence of the tourist, experiences designed to display unique features of the location to the tourist,  including local foods, and an arranged itinerary that ensures the tourist will not get lost or have undesirable experiences.  This may be arranged by a tour guide or other person, or be successfully arranged by the tourist himself.  The key to understanding tourism is the opportunity to experience a new location or culture,  without having to experience significant discomfort or conflict with one's own culture.

Adventure travel overlaps with tourism and has subtle differences.  An activity, an "adventure", is defined which the traveler will experience and or perform, which will challenge the traveler in some significant way.  The experience is created for the use of travelers,  and ranges widely.  It may involve physical challenges like scuba diving, skiing, hiking, horseback riding, bicycling, etc.  It may involve a physical endurance like walking across a specified region.  In adventure travel a specified activity is required of the traveler and the experience that results is partly dependent on how the traveler carries out the task.  For liability and other reasons,  adventure travels are always activities that are very likely to be safely performed by travelers,  but are sometimes presented as if they are dangerous in some exciting way.  The traveler's experience with the activity will affect this,  and very inexperienced travelers will, in fact, experience some danger.  Adventure travel is designed and organized like tourism experience but is often designed to create a specific challenge for the traveler.

Exploration is the travel experience in which neither the guide or the traveler can predict the experience that occurs.  This is sometimes seen in adventure travel when a hunting trip, a river passage, or some other journey includes encountering natural events or animals which are unpredictable.  It may also involve travel to places that are unfamiliar without the protective cover of tourism,  including dangerous locations,  or without careful planning.  Exploration adds both additional excitement to adventure travel, and some potential risk, which may contribute to personal exploration,  the last feature of travel.

Personal development is not an intrinsic feature of travel though it is often credited with being so.  "Traveling is broadening" implies that going out of one's comfort zone automatically provides learning experiences in a new environment.  But this is only true when the person is open to new experiences, and the design of the events does not prescribe the experiences.  Personal development  is likely to be more present in adventure or in exploration,  but this depends on the individual.  Personal development can also occur in very simple events that do not have dramatic features or depart from everyday life.  If personal development occurs, it is both  the type of experience the travel provides, and the person's openness to change.  This can vary widely. On a recent trip I visited the Steinbeck museum and was stimulated to read TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY.  

Travels was written as a journey to "learn about America" again.  It is a memoir in the first person, explicitly meant to be a "hero's journey", and begins with an heroic episode in which he saves his favorite boat during a hurricane in Sag Harbor, Long Island.  Steinbeck fitted out a special camper truck for the journey and brought along his dog Charley, a French poodle, hence the title.  The trip lasted three months or so, beginning in the Fall (September?) and ended somewhere around the new year.  Although the path circumscribes the US,  the trip included only certain spots. 

Steinbeck had recently had a heart episode,  felt his energies failing, and tells the reader that the journey is meant to show that he was still vital and able to take on the challenge;  the book provides evidence that this is not true,  that he is not physically or mentally up to the journey, and is a warning to older men that this is probably not a good idea.  Though he  intended to encounter "Americans" along the way to find out about where the country was going,  there are few actual encounters,  and at least half of the book are musings (rants)  about changes he does not like, which could have been written from his room in Sag Harbor. 

He is at his best describing the countryside, as in New England in the Fall with the color changes, which includes his sit down with a family of French Canadians who are picking potatoes in Maine, and enabled by cognac.  The warm fuzzy feeling he reports is more likely the cognac than the people,  with whom he struggled to communicate!

He dislikes people who are stuck in maps, and avoids using them (long before GPS)  and he frequently acknowledges getting lost.   He drives past Minneapolis-St Paul, completely missing the cities, he intended to visit!  He gets lost many other times,  including his arrival back home on Long Island.  His carefree "follow my spirit" attitude is offset by his anxiety about not knowing where he is going.  He dislikes the new highways that isolate drivers from the natural world, but uses them frequently in his hurry to make destinations.  In short, he is humorously inconsistent about how he manages the journey, is not used to traveling on his own, and is unfamiliar with how travel has changed.  A dialog with long haul truckers enlightens him.

He falls in love with Montana,  but it is difficult to understand what appeals to him.  Here his writing is not eloquent, and the magic is not transferred to the reader.  By contrast,  his spiritual feeling about redwoods is eloquently expressed,  including a humorous incident with Charley.  Indeed,  the entire episode in the Monterey Bay/Salinas area of his youth is poignant, and expresses the reality that "you can't go home again".  

Southern CA is completely ignored in his beeline to Texas for a Thanksgiving "orgy".  His wife was from Texas, and meets him at the ranch of some wealthy Texans.  He notes the wealth of the ranch owners and friends, and goes hunting without shooting anything, drinks and eats a lot, but no other "orgy" behaviors are reported for anyone.  Common stereotypes and misconceptions about Texas are repeated, but the Texas that was emerging in the 60s is not described, and there is no sense that he engaged with the state  despite his wife's background.

In the last major section, he goes to New Orleans to observe a crowd heckling a Negro girl who is attending a previously all White school by court order.  He documents the hatred, exaggerated cursing, and general attempt at public display,  along with moderating comments by several locals.  It is a limited journalistic account, very intense, and totally different from the rest of the book.

Steinbeck failed to accomplish his stated mission: to travel back roads in a camper.  He used freeways at times, and slept in motels at least some of the time.  He  met few locals to learn about the country: a total of about eight encounters, mostly casual, some political, but often injected his own view,  and many regions are ignored including much of the South, Florida, much of California, New Mexico, etc. He struggled to get an "overview" of Americans, and claimed that there is something "American" in common with all he met, but could not articulate it.

Travels with Charley was intended to be an exploration and a chance for personal development.  gives clear messages:  An intelligent, talented older man he was unhappy about the changes he saw happening in the world, and did not show much personal development.   An older traveler alone, he had difficulty managing the journey and frequent "adventures" in getting lost, etc.  All these "accomplishments", unintended by the author,  are clearly documented by his honesty, reporting his weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  It provides a useful warning to older individuals planning to save the world, or rediscover it.  "You can't go home again." And the world changes and you must accept it, or be unhappy that it has.

ENVIRONMENT: A PERSPECTIVE ON CONSERVATION

The internet and news sources are flooded with messages about environmental disasters and the need for donations to support this or that organization that is helping to solve the problems.  Some are serious organizations,  others scams, and they attempt to address different, sometimes contrasting, solutions to the identified "problems".  It would help to have a common definition of the problem(s) and related sub-problems.  The most general goal is ensuring that earth maintains a physical state suitable for the continuation of life.  As humans we modify this to: conservation means maintaining the earth so that it allows for the survival of humans.  This is more specific than the first as pointed out by Dunn (A Natural History of the Future) who documents the extensive non-human life forms that also inhabit the planet. 

This task has several features:

Managing climate: changes in climate alter the distribution of plants, animals, and humans, and if extreme may cause mass extinctions or severe population loss.  The recent changes in climate are associated with increased carbon dioxide production from extensive combustion of carbon containing fuels, and other sources.  It is impossible to "prove" this association experimentally since monitoring climate change is not a recurring event.  Various indirect measures suggest that the association is valid,  but freon was emphasized in the 1990s ("hole in the ozone layer"), and significant changes in freon and related gasses did not alter the rate of change.  Use of fossil fuels for energy production is associated with a variety of other events that alter the planet in other ways. Changes in climate have recently focused on average temperature increases which change the relative climate zones for plant and animal life,  and also alter weather patterns. The current distribution of climate zones is recent in earth's history with several cycles of ice ages in the past millions of years.  Humans survived the most recent "ice age" but comparable data about survival of high temperature cycles is not known.  Predictions regarding the effects on life of melting of the polar ice caps and other dramatic climate changes are speculative due to a lack of records of previous events.  Reasonable speculations about the impact of the potential rate of climate change are possible, but must be updated with changes in measured effects.  It is tempting to believe that world wide reductions in use of fossil fuel will slow or reverse climate trends, but the data to support this can only occur in conjunction with actual changes.  The extent to which humans can modify earth's climate is unknown. 

Managing pollution: a variety of chemical substances,  and polymer substances (plastics) have increased dramatically  in usage and disposal in the last 100 years.  These substances now clutter large areas of land, buried landfills, and drift in rivers and ocean gyres.  Micro-plastics have entered the food supply as a result of the distribution.  Many of these substances are produced by modifications of fossil carbon sources.  Pollution due to the creation and modification of radioactive materials as weapons or energy sources is another source.  Pollution has toxic effects on life, including humans, that are different from the effects of climate change.  The extent of human pollution is more easily measured and evaluated for impact.  The relative lack of emphasis on the seriousness of pollution reflects the strong economic impact of altering the production of polluting substances, and the change in lifestyle.  Organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council try to evaluate and monitor more serious pollution events,  and governments identify "toxic superfund sites" retrospectively to remediate.  There is little effort to prospectively evaluate and prevent toxic production.  Each individual has the potential to impact the economics by reducing or refusing the consumption of toxic products.  So far this has not been a powerful effect, partly due to ignorance of the dangers and partly due to the convenience of these products.

Managing Ecology: Everywhere on earth there are places which once had limited or no human development and now are  urban or semi-urban human environments.  Three factors drive this process: 1) the increase in the number of humans, 2) the economic advantage of urban environments, and 3) the potential protective effects of group living.  These factors have been in play since the "dawn of civilization",  but have greatly accelerated with the dramatic increase in human population, especially in under-developed countries, and the economic advantages.  The changes are offset by destruction of the natural ecology, concentrated pollution, and dangers of human proximity.  This issue is rarely understood as an issue of ecology, and  instead is discussed as "extinction of species", lack of water supply, pollution of rivers, homelessness, and etc.  "Civilization" seems to include the failure of every aggregation of humans (and other species) totake into account its needs for living space, water, etc.  The concept of the individual possession and ownership of land interferes with the understanding the ecologic responsibility of the group (called the "tragedy of the commons" in economics). The planner Soleri proposed urban environments that were somewhat attuned to size and ecology, and was largely ignored.  This problem is evident all across the United States,  but has become dramatic and profound in China were the aggregation of a dramatically larger population for increased economic production has created unsustainable urban environments.  There are too many people on earth distributed unevenly in dysfunctional patterns.  Water supply, pollution, crime, and transformation of land into concrete and structures all combine to alter the human experience.  (There is research on the ways in which rats and other animals coexist in these environments.)

The ecology of plants, animals, and foods.  Urbanization and farming create several confusions about ecology.  "Farming" means that the natural distribution of plant life in a region is altered to favor "food plants" with high nutritional value.  Smaller animals are farmed,  and larger ones are hunted or "ranched" to produce food.  The animals are bred to be better food sources,  and reducing their survival in the natural environment, because of protection on the farm.  Agriculture  made urbanization possible.  But the boundary on modifying animals and plants for food production is unknown, and many important genetic features have been lost, except in residual unmodified plants and animals life.  The relationship between humans and other life forms on farms can be conceived as "short survival zoos".  Plants and animals on farms are maintained for human benefit and sacrificed for human needs.  The original concept of hunting animals for food which required a balanced active interchange is lost.  The remaining "hunting" in most countries, including the US, is limited to defined regions and seasons, where hunters with limited experience crowd together to prove their "atavistic integrity" not the appreciation for the sacrifice of the animals.  In this context,  worrying about the "extinction" of wild species,  and preserving them in isolated game preserves disrupts both the human ecology of the region and the animal ecology.  The struggles of the Santa Monica Mtns near Los Angeles to manage its mountain lion population is an example.  Coyotes have successfully preyed on farm animals for centuries, and now have invaded more urban settings where pets and other foods are available.  They represent the dynamic interaction between humans and animals in a dysfunctional competition.

Making decisions about conservation requires involvement of human groups,  and so the conflicting interests of different stakeholders create political conflicts.  This should not be a problem.  The resolution of conflicting goals is necessary to balance different objectives.  However it does not appear that this has been possible in the US, and in much of the rest of the world.  The strong economic and political influence of the producers and refiners of fossil fuels and other commodities constantly opposes the efforts for conservation that address the possible role of fossil fuel combustion in climate change.  This is paradoxical. The perspective of the earth's total resources says that the store of sources of fossil fuels is finite, and many sites are depleted. The convenience of fossil fuels as a portable energy source gives them long term value.  It seems obvious that the current use of fossil fuels should be regulated and limited not just because of pollution, but also because they must be preserved for future generations. This is an obvious world wide need, but it is generally ignored because the businesses extracting and refining fossil fuels is determined to maximize current profits, and because  countries that nationalize oil production are desperate to sustain this revenue.  This perspective has shifted in the Arabian Gulf oil states who recognize the waning value of their deposits, and are trying to build alternative economic resources.  Whether they succeed is unknown, but many other oil producers who are more greedy have less perspective. 

Electric cars provide a related paradox.  Automobiles, and other internal combustion vehicles, contribute a significant contribution to the current carbon dioxide and other pollution that contribute to climate change.  Various estimate about the importance of their role have been calculated.  Trapping this pollution with catalytic converters is the current solution, an expensive and incomplete one because of cost and depletion.  The proposed alternative was producing cars that run on electricity without an internal combustion engine,  and many golf carts already do that,  using a conventional lead acid battery.  To engineer a vehicle with faster speed and longer range required major changes in the electric motor, and in the battery storage.  These engineering problems have been partially solved,  but do they offer a significant improvement in control of pollution?  A Google search on this question produces conflicting answers as it should.  Renewable energy sources do not account for sufficient charging for current vehicles, let alone an electric fleet for the entire country.  The promotion and rapid acceptance of this alternative was not based on calculations reflecting the entire population and energy sources but only on the reduction in vehicle emissions,  which is total.  Intelligent conservation decisions require the political will to make sophisticated calculations, and avoid letting economic decisions drive the process.  California, which suffered the effects of auto pollution earlier than other states, put in more stringent emission controls, and taxed gasoline to reduce driving, which has mildly improved air pollution, and given rise to its image as a "green" state.  But California produces one third of the oil produced in the United States, how green is that?

Several proposals have come forward to address the issue of land and ecology.  The biologist Wilson proposed the "half earth" solution: to maintain half of the earth's land and sea for biodiversity (https://www.half-earthproject.org). Another concept put forward by biologists is the 30x30, to preserve one third of the land by 2030. (https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/thirty-percent-protect-best-biodiversity-on-earth/) There are several problems with these proposals, beyond the difficulty in getting them enacted world wide.  The academic biologist's notion that the wild places of the world protect biodiversity ignores the reality that certainly two thirds of the current world (not including the deep seas, except by pollution) has already interacted with humans for thousands of years.  This approach amounts to declaring a third or half of the world as a giant zoo or game preserve, and then encouraging its study by designated humans (biologists).  It is humorous to see how blind these proposals are to the self serving interests of those who propose them.  It makes much more sense to understand the human/nature interface and a complex blended zone with different levels of interaction.  In New York, Mumbai, rural Colorado, and etc animals and humans have coexisted for hundreds of years,  and altered their environments together.  Defining "zones of human engagement" and mapping regions for less human engagement is a solvable task which is already underway and creating its own problems.  The Nature Conservancy has purchase land for protection against  human development in many areas.  How much development should be permitted?  If this is contractual, when is protection more important, and when development? The Conservancy (and other organizations) have struggled with this.  The problem is most acute in National Parks, but is seen in other special places as well.  Every American National Park was once a tourist site-seeing attraction and disrupted in some way.   The National Park designation protected the site, and in many cases reversed some of the damage,  but increased the attraction and demand significantly.  Many National Parks now limit total visitors, require reservations, or create other barriers to use.  The trade off between preserving the environment and allowing the experience is increasingly difficult.  Yet these are the natural jewels of our country, and should be available to visit.  It is a difficult choice.  And state parks, national forests, and other "natural regions" have  less intense but similar demands.  How do we set aside regions of the world to not be overrun by human presence and human development, yet allow human participation and experience?  This dilemma is not easily resolved.  If you travel to a popular and dramatic ski area, or to the outskirts of a major National Park, you will see the expensive vacation homes of wealthy individuals who have acquired and built a chance to reside as near the public land as possible. (Or in ski areas, as near to the privately developed region as possible.)  If this process continues special places will be surrounded by "necklaces" of private development that isolates and destroys the context of the place.  This has already been completed in many areas.  Someone visits a beautiful place, and says I want to have a place to visit here all the time,  buys land and builds the house.  (It started long before the Rockefellers created the places that became RockResorts!)  The tragedy of the commons keeps bumping into real estate development!

There is no one size fits all.  The politics of conservation require balancing difficult trade offs for future generations. This is a maturity and political sophistication lost on many current leaders.  The decisions cannot be based solely on greed, nor can they be based on speculative preservation of what one group decides is best for everyone.  

HANUKAH IN PERSPECTIVE

Hanukah (Chanukah) is an exceptional Jewish holiday.  The books describing the events of Hanukah are not included in the Jewish bible (nor the Protestant, but are included in the Catholic versions).  The events are mentioned briefly in the Talmud,  but not any of its observances.  The eight days follow the pattern of other pilgrimage festivals,  during which Jews traveled to the temple, and the holiday supposedly represent the re-dedication of the temple after the Syrian occupation.  Several later historical sources describe a revolt occurring in Judea at around 170 BCE.  This is during the period of the second temple and long after the events written in the other books of the Jewish bible, except Daniel.   So one explanation would simply be that the books of Maccabees were omitted because they were written too late. (Current scholars put the dates of canonization of the Jewish bible texts between 200BCE and 200 AD,  so the inclusion was not prevented by date of their writing.)  Other explanations are also given for the omission.  The Syrian invasion of the territory is linked by some to request by the Tobiads, an assimilating faction of the Jews, which fits with statements in the book of Maccabees that the attacks were against unfaithful Jews.  The result of the Maccabean (Hasmonean) revolt was a brief period of priestly rule during which the borders of Judea were re-established, though later reconquered by Seleucids, and even later the Romans.  

The split in the observance of Jews at that time  eventually became  the distinction between the pharisees, sadducees, and essenes, in the first century BCE.  The sadducees were the priestly class who insisted in their role in mediating observances (even after destruction of the temple) to exert a "ruling" function over the pharisees who favored moderating the terms of observances and eliminating a separate priestly group.  (The essenes, disgusted with this conflict, isolated themselves away from the rest near the Dead Sea.)  The pharisees ultimately emerged the stronger group,  and Jesus was from this group, and many of his exceptions to traditional observances reflect their views.  The Hasmonean revolt did not permanently re-establish the priestly class.

This historical context provides a background and perhaps some clarification for the celebration.  The story of oil which lasted eight days is nowhere in the Maccabee books,  though it is mentioned in later Syrian and Roman histories suggesting that it had become part of the myth.  Maimonides is one of the earlier Jewish references to it in the 12th century.  The importance of the menorah as a symbol of the dedication of the temple is part of the original text.  The dreidel/top has no historical meaning and evolved from a later gambling top and did not become associated with hanukah until the 18th century in Germany. The letters on it (N, G, H, S) were originally related to gambling outcomes,  and only later associated with "a great miracle happened there" (or "here" in Israel).  Gelt/money was not part of the holiday in earlier observances, but was typical of gifting service persons during the winter season, another northern European custom.  Giving money to children was more typical of Purim until the late19th century.  (And chocolate money is a recent American variation.)  Potato latkes reflect another northern European feature,  eating potatoes.  None of the current observances of the holiday have any historical basis, all are the assimilation of European customs.

It is impossible to assign a seasonal date to Hanukah in the way that Passover, Shavuoth, or Succoth are associated with pagan agrarian events.  It seems unlikely that the specific dates of the Maccabean revolt were known, and even less likely that, given the variation in calendars over eons, they were accurately preserved.  The association with the Christian festival of Christ's birth is interesting.  The placement of Christmas at the winter solstice is consistent with both association with earlier pagan holidays,  and also the desire to have a positive celebratory event at a time when Nature is contracting.  But this is much less true in the Southern Mediterranean climate and deserts of Israel and Egypt.  The seasonal variation is more subtle, and the lunar calendar the basis of Jewish culture.  The core observance of Mediterranean Christian culture is the manger scene,  and the evergreen trees covered in snow are from northern European pagan festivals "captured" into Christian tradition (and imported in various forms to the US).  It does not seem likely that Hanukah was a solar solstice festival, that coincided with Christmas.  Rather this calendar position may have been assigned intentionally to associate with Christmas.  Why might that have occurred?

There is no documentation for the following speculation:  In the early Christian era there was a battle for followers. Jews were encouraged to follow Jesus as the messiah, and Jewish leaders opposed this proselytizing and conversion.  The Maccabean revolt is explicit about attacking Jews who, at an earlier time, wished to follow Greek customs.  So it is tempting to suppose that the Christian era rabbis associated Hanukah and the Maccabean history with the celebration of Jesus' birth as a warning to Jews not to be tempted by Christian customs.  This gives a much darker interpretation of Hanukah's importance, which would not be openly acknowledged,  and explains the fact that current customs have no historical context.

This also raises difficult questions about contemporary Jewish life.  Although the Hasmoneans, a Sadducee culture, succeeded in their revolt,  ultimately the more moderate Pharisees prevailed to survive as the contemporary Jewish community.  Today in Israel, there is a political struggle between religious "hardliners" and moderates who do not maintain strict observance.  A similar separation occurs in other Jewish communities,  including the US, where the political significance is more confused.  And some, like the ancient Essenes, separate and observe the challenge from a distance.  Though the observant rabbis of Eastern Europe are credited (i.e., the Baal Shem Tov) with sustaining that Jewish community, in fact the community was destroyed in the holocaust.  The revolt against the Romans contributed to a long period of exile and dispersal in other cultures,  with recurring challenges of assimilation. In Jewish culture there is a constant struggle between maintaining Jewish identity and assimilation,  and Hanukah may present one statement about the choice, though its message is not usually interpreted this way.  Can we Jews learn something from history?

The observance of Christmas and Hanukah have been transformed in contemporary American society.  Honoring the birth of the founder of a great religious transformation has morphed, in our material culture, into an obsessional pressure to present gifts to each other that stimulate the economy.  And family gatherings are challenged by the separation of families over great distances (and sometimes the weather at this season).  Hanukah has yielded to the same pressure to gift and consume,  and struggles with the lack of elegant music or services that compare with Christmas celebrations.  The tendency to assimilate Christian customs,  including "Christmas Trees", that have little relationship to the birth of Jesus, is typical.  Every religious group must decide where to draw the boundary in following various customs.  Do Bahai have Christmas trees?  Do Scientologists have Christmas trees?  The decision is a matter of personal religious and cultural identity.  

Whether Hanukah was intentionally associated with Christmas or not,  the relationship in the calendar always poses the question of cultural and religious assimilation.