Picto Diary - 17, 18 November 2020 - Susan. In Loving Memory, Trumann Arkansas
Above: Jim Thompson LSDM Zoom presentation in Sprinter van. Batesville, AR. 17 November 2020.
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter
LSDM speaker. Jim Thompson, EVP Qualcomm. Topic: Qualcomm's legal battle with Apple and the FTC.
Zoom has transformed LSDM speaker and audience reach. Thompson (speaker) is in San Diego. LSDM regulars are participating from San Jose, CA, Greensboro, NC, Batesville, Arkansas, Walpole, New Hampshire, and various Utah locations in addition to Park City.
Go to the woods to lose sight and memory of the crimes of your contemporaries. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Above: TiMDT and her Mom, Alma Jewel Smith Dickerson. Salem, AR. 17 November 2020
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter.
TIMDT captured "on tape" some of Mom's reminiscences as a young girl. She did theater when at Sloan Hendricks High School in Imboden, AR. We reminisced about Susan and grieved in her untimely passing. Mom, attended to by a nurse for two hours a day, was not in a position physically to attend her granddaughter Susan's viewing service.
The land is the appointed remedy for all that is false and fantastic in our culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Above: Tony and TIMDT. Salem, AR. 17 November 2020
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter
TIMDT and youngest bro, Tony.
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Above: Grandma Mattie's house. Ravenden, AR. 17 November 2020.
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter
Grandma Mattie Jane Sellars Dickerson Davis Dickerson house. Now empty. Grandma Mattie died in early '90's. Yes two Dickersons. Same Dickerson to whom she was married twice. Mattie birthed Bill, TIMDT'S sharpshooter Pa, at age 15.
While parked in front of Grandma Mattie's house, a guy, at least our age, drove up in a red sedan. "Can I help you," he asked. We told him why we were parked here. He said he knew Mattie Davis well, that he owned the unoccupied house we were looking at and that he was the Mayor of Ravenden.
Go to the woods to lose sight and memory of the crimes of your contemporaries. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Above: TIMDT, living in a van, down by the river. Imboden, AR. 17 November 2020.
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Above: TIMDT relaxes in Sprinter. Jonesboro, AR. 18 November 2020.
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter.
TIMDT relaxes IN HER OWN BED away from home. Sprinter purchase vindicated by this image!
TIMDT's FIRST HAND REPORT ON THE FIRST TWO OVERNIGHTS IN THE SPRINTER:
The first night in the van, I was thinking to myself, what have we done?
The bed was comfortable but everything else was crazy.
We arrived after dark at an RV place in Marfa TX. We had called ahead for a spot and they told us to just pull in. There didn’t seem to be a spot but we didn’t need a hook up so just pulled onto the dirt. Steve went to pay but found there was a party going on and a house full of cowboy hatted thirty somethings, male and female. He was told to come back in the morning. When he came back we started to get ready for bed and found the RV park toilets and bath house locked. So, not wanting to disrupt the party, we had to use the port a potty and forgo having a shower.
While getting the drinks out of the rear of the van, Steve dropped the cooler and all the drinks and ice/water from the cooler fell out onto the dirt creating a muddy mess.
We were able to get all the windows curtained except the front windshield. I couldn’t find a way to connect the shade, and, Steve was to big to squeeze into the space to help. We shuffled around trying to get ready for bed in the tiny space. There were thorny stickers all over the space where we were parked and they got into the van from our shoes, so I kept stepping on them with my bare feet.
Next morning we left early without paying. There was no one around to pay.
The second night was much, much better. We decided to leave our roller bags out and just take what we needed into the van to save space. The park in Batesville, AR was new and well organized. We paid in advance over the phone, were assigned a spot and instructed where to pick up the code to open the toilet and bath house. All went well. The facilities were excellent. Several cubicles with shower and toilet, very clean. A large laundry room which we didn’t use.
We slept well, but had a few problems in the morning. Steve took his shower, left a new bottle of body wash and more importantly the paper with the code to unlock the doors in the shower room he used which meant I had no way to get in when it was my turn. No one was in the office that early. After panicking, I went over to the shower building and tried remembering the numbers which I had punched in the previous evening. C568X, or some such! I was successful. Hallelujah. And I was able to figure out how to hang the front windshield curtain by bringing down the visors to hold it up.
The rest of the evenings ,so far ,we stayed in Best Westerns. We are now in Jonesboro, AR, where we will stay for two nights. Tonight we will attend the viewing for my dearly departed niece, Susan Greenwell. Tomorrow, we will attend her graveside service in Oceola, Arkansas.
Today has been a free day with no driving. This free time afternoon I didn’t like staying In the dreary hotel room, so I came out to the van which is sitting in the parking lot. It’s a sunny, 60 degree day and I’m writing this while lying on the bed in the van on my comfortable bed. There is a nice breeze from the window above my head, the van is sunny and clean and I’m really appreciating how comfortable it is. I think it will be very useful next summer when we can take shorter trips and be able to set up chairs and awning outside. It’s also very nice to have a small kitchen for making sandwiches, soup etc. In better weather we can grill and eat outside. It’s been too cool for that on this trip.
Above: Our niece (daughter of Margaret's sister Peggy and her husband [deceased] Burl Stalnaker). We've known Susan almost all of her 55 years. Born of strong, upright parents she left this life as an anchor for her family, a contributor to her community, and a loyal friend to many. We were privileged to be with her and her grieving friends and family members last night as we witnessed images of her life and exchanged reminiscences. She will be remembered by many, all of whom will know her as a force for good in this life. We thrill as we imagine her reunion with her Dad and how happy they both must be to see one another again. 18 November 2020.
Above: Margaret and sister Peggy, Susan's Mom, at Susan's Memorial Service. Trumann, Arkansas. 18 November 2020.
Seeing a Man About a Dog Tour
Out and about in the Sprinter 18 November 2020. Jonesboro, AR
PODCASTS:
We've been listening to podcasts along the route.
Eric Weinstein (The Portal) with J.D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy," for one. Weinstein's day job is as a partner of Founder's Fund, Peter Thiel's venture fund.
I've noticed an increase in the number of TED type "thinkers," usually progressively slanted, reflecting on the fact that something is deeply wrong with our culture. And, they don't talk about the need more progressive solutions. Their reflections are decidedly retro. Their recommendations often revert to traditional thinking about love of country, family etc. Go figure! While Vance identifies as a Republican, Weinstein declares himself a left of center type. Yet, in this podcast he seemed to be to the right of Vance in some of his pronouncements.
Among others, Weinstein and Vance talked about genetics as they applied to differences between men and women. Is there a nurturing "motherhood" gene built into females where nature demands that offspring, to thrive, require a nurturing attentive mother... a role that a male, genetically programmed differently, cannot fulfil? Or alternatively, that females must act upon to achieve ultimate self fulfillment? A gene which impels females to sustain species growth?
I first started thinking about this issue when I read, a year ago, "A Troublesome Inheritance," by Nicholas Wade. Wade explored the latest learning from genome peeling and concluded that human evolution is recent, copious, and regional.
He also noted emerging learnings about genetic differences between males and females. These differences were so stark, he found, that they conflicted with current narratives in culture and social science which minimized any differences, other than the obvious physiological differences, between male and female. Truth, the former New York Times science writer noted, was being suppressed, by social science scourges.
Vance and Weinstein danced around the question of cultural decline arising from weakening societal support for motherhood along with a fragmenting definition of what masculine means.
Vance and Weinstein bemoan the declining US birthrate and the tendency for couples to put off child rearing until even late in their thirties. A society that doesn't prioritize babies, both agree, is a dying society.
The two men talk about the tragedy of having many in our culture decide not to bear children (including adoption) at all. They talk about emptiness in the lives of those who deliberately choose not to bear and rear children.
The two fathers laud their own children and praise the contribution of their wives as parental focal points for the kids. Weinstein says, he may lose some listeners for taking his pro motherhood, men and women are different, position, but, he notes that if society is to thrive, babies must be born and that Mom has a unique, genetically driven, responsibility to play a unique, essential role.
I have long fretted that US/Western Civilization has failed in the most important job that a civilization can have... that of birthing babies and insuring those babies are raised by two parents, yes, but, two parents with unique, genetically driven roles in the child raising process.
America, following the dominant the social science narrative - men and women are the same - , has moved away from encouraging this family centered approach to child rearing, and, as a result, at least, in part, is well into per Weinstein, Vance... and Mwah (sic), civilizational decline.
There is a lot of other stuff on the male/female genetic differences discussion, that I've reflected on recently, not addressed in the podcast. Proto feminist, Camille Paglia notes that it is not clear whether civilization will continue to advance as more women fill what were heretofore considered to be male positions.
Women have superior (to men) genetic strengths for sure... multitasking for one. But, men's monomaniacal focus has been behind most of the technological advances enjoyed by our civilization. As social science has begun to equate monomaniacal qualities with toxic masculinity... and as more evenly balanced, multitasking females fill the vacuum left by societal neutering of male aggressiveness, can civilizational progress, as we have known it, continue? .. particularly in the wake of growing knowledge showing vast differences, beyond physiology alone, between males and females?
I love having discovered podcasts The ones I listen to... Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Eric Weinstein push me into the world of ideas and controversy, and away from the poisonous group think now being foisted on the general population by the legacy media and social media.
One of the benefits of the Sprinter, at least this trip, is enabling sufficient time to listen to podcasts which challenge our brains!
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Addendum:
Your musings as good as it gets. Keroaucish. You should be published. Love the details and back stories. Keep it up. Food for the soul. Awaiting your next installment.
Kat,
McKinney, TX