From a Distance
and Youth Will Be Served
(This newsletter is the rebirth of a project I started in 2017. My goal here is to offer information, insight, and maybe even entertainment. There will be personal experience included since I provide a point of view. But my focus is on this confounding state, its myths and realities. I will write about travel, literature, history, movies, politics, and just life its ownself under the Lone Star, and the broader influence of Texas beyond its borders.
It’s free to anyone who wants it, but those modest paid subscriptions, if you are inclined, can help fire the engines. Go ahead and be inclined. I’ll publish at least once a week, depending on interest, yours and mine. I will also post randomly with stories worth sharing and that are not part of the weekly newsletter).
“This town is so healthy we had to shoot a man just to start a cemetery.” - A.S. Goynes, Van Horn, Texas resident, who was later shot dead by his brother-in-law in a feud over a watering hole, and became the first man buried in the Van Horn cemetery.
From a Distance
(Van Horn, Texas) – I went out to West Texas for the Blue Origin rocket launch and I am still wondering what happened and why. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was trying to gain historical purchase by shooting himself and three others into sub-orbital space on the 52nd anniversary of the U.S. landing a man on the moon. Maybe he was trying to put an exclamation point at the end of a sentence renewing the notion of space exploration, but my sense is that he just stuck a period on the conclusion of an American epoch.
Bezos has claimed space for the wealthy, as if it were a South Pacific island that could be purchased with a Bitcoin fortune. His argument for spending billions on his project north of Van Horn in Culberson County is that we need to continue exploring and inspiring dreamers and doers to go into space to move mankind out among the stars. A persuasive concept but, instead, what he has built is a Disneyland ride for people with a lot of money. What science is possible with a three-minute weightless dance on the edge of space? Is there an obvious commercial application no one is noticing other than Bezos and Amazon? We know for certain there are solid business prospects for Blue Origin’s developer because Bezos claimed to have $100 million in tickets booked for the 11-minute ride. Space is already big business.
He mentioned nothing, however, about science.
There was probably more than $100 million dollars’ worth of publicity surrounding the flight of Bezos, his brother, the son of a French billionaire, and the historically mistreated Wally Funk. The news coverage gushed with hyperbole that included “amazing,” “important,” “dramatic,” “powerful,” “beautiful,” and every other flattering adjective that might be conjured up by a cable or network anchor. There was hardly any dispassionate observation by journalists and they all might have fit well into the Blue Origin livestream, which was cringe worthy with flattery and flowery terms that made it sound as if Bezos and company were about to ascend to a glory only for the chosen.
Network and cable TV ran the feed from Blue Origin, often without commentary, and frequently with more superlatives. Oddly enough, the live stream did not send video from inside the capsule. Those pictures were only distributed upon return to terra firma. I wondered if it was because Blue Origin or Bezos were worried about air sickness and breakfast spewed about the cabin, or they did not want the world watching a human exhibition of fear, if there were a critical failure of the launch system.
Nobody is going to deny that using a person’s own resources to successfully launch rockets even into sub-orbital space is a significant accomplishment. The science and the achievements of the endeavor, though, seem wildly overstated for Blue Origin. Rocketed to just over 62 miles above the Chihuahua Desert in West Texas, Bezos and crew experienced about three minutes of weightlessness before being recaptured by the earth’s gravity and landing after a 10-minute flight.
No minor thing, unless you compare the billionaire to a chimpanzee named Ham, who was the first hominid into space. He was trained by NASA to pull levers and push buttons during a sub-orbital flight that was designed to test the Mercury capsule for the U.S.’ first human astronaut, Alan Shephard. Ham’s flight in January of 1961 was 16 minutes and 39 seconds long and rose to 157 miles above the earth’s surface, which was more than 2.5 times greater altitude than Blue Origin. The chimp was recovered about 350 miles down range from Cape Canaveral by the USS Donner. Of course, the rocket was not salvaged and did not land back on its launch pad like Blue Origin’s, but, in sum, NASA and American taxpayers did what Bezos did, but we did it over 60 years ago with a chimp, and, in terms of raw numbers, we did it better; plus, it led to an accomplishment far greater than a few minutes of floating in front of big windows.
A little over four months after Ham had slipped the surly bonds of earth, Alan Shepherd became the first American to fly into space. The journey lasted 15 minutes and 22 seconds, and the Freedom 7 capsule splashed down in the Atlantic about 300 miles southeast of the Cape Canaveral launch site. Freedom’s apogee was 116 miles up, well above the Karman Line, which Bezos barely penetrated at 62 miles, which means, generally and specifically, NASA and US taxpayers had two flights more impressive than Bezos’. One was with a chimpanzee and the other an astronaut, and the explorations occurred six decades in the past. We probably also paid less for the accomplishment, even when converting 1961 dollars to 2021. Uncle Sam doesn’t have pockets like Amazon man.
Space is being turned into a product. The billionaire boys club might be arguing they are interested in research, but they mostly give the impression they are developing tourism. Even Elon Musk, who has accomplished orbital flight with his Falcon heavy rockets and delivered astronauts to the space station, acknowledges private passengers paying a lot of money will keep his SpaceX ships flying. He may have a vision of electric cars on the surface of Mars, but it’s unlikely his commercial payloads and space cowboys will finance such an adventure. If humans reach the Red Planet, it will be as the result of government funding and public involvement, and because it became our mutual aspiration, not just an entrepreneur’s.
My guess is that I am like millions of people in the US, and we are all having a hard time connecting to the rich guy race to the edge of space. If they were seeking weightlessness, or that’s the product they will offer passengers, why not book a flight on NASA’s Vomit Comet? The Zero Gravity Corporation charters the plane NASA uses to expose astronauts to weightlessness and pays $5000.00 per ticket. Hell, it’s even free for some students. This is Zero G at closeout prices. The McDonnell Douglas C-9B Skytrain climbs to about 36,000 feet and then noses over and down to about 23,000. Passengers are lifted into the air inside the cabin in an artificial microgravity environment, and it’s a lot less expensive than a phallic symbol flying to space.
Not Quite Free Zero G
The initial space race between the USSR and the US was a unifying force for this country. Even though qualified women and minorities were ignored in NASA’s nascent years, astronauts became aspirational symbols for Americans. They had the same type of courage and commitment that had been utilized to save the world from a dictatorship. Their achievements, and failures, belonged to us. We were going to the moon together, not watching a corporation fire its executives off into the heavens. Our engineers and mathematicians and manufacturers and electricians and programmers were making it possible to do something once considered unimaginable, and we all felt great national pride when John Glenn orbited the earth and Neal Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and when Alan Shephard made the first American space flight.
And now we have wealthy men and corporations providing streaming online content.
I rode the old motorcycle out to Van Horn to see if I could connect with this new space race. Two of its biggest players, Musk and Bezos, are building their operations in Texas. I have watched it all with the same disconnect I might have staring at a rich man’s yacht leaving Corpus Christi Bay. I assumed that if I saw or felt anything in Van Horn, perhaps my reactions to this new step into space would be modified by experience. Instead, I should have stayed at home and watched the Blue Origin anchor lady on my computer as she waxed silly about how fantastic and historic and beautiful and important everything was; there was not much to see in Van Horn or its environs.
The Texas Department of Public Safety had blocked the road north toward the launch pad. The rocket’s wispy contrail was the only thing visible from a distance and the parachuting capsule, drifting down ten minutes later, was a speck on the far horizon toward the Guadalupe Mountains. To me, this is further proof that Blue Origin is little more than a rich man’s folly. Bezos does not require the public’s support, or he would have welcomed people to come stand by the road and crane their necks to see his rocket. Americans have been accustomed to witnessing across the Inter-coastal Canal from Cape Kennedy and watching rockets rise against the morning sun, participating as taxpayers and an enthused audience. Their connection now is mostly just a tracking number from Amazon.
American taxpayers, are, however involved in Blue Origin. Bezos, somewhat clunkily, tried to thank his employees and customers who made possible his trip to space. He did not mention taxpayers who provide health care, food stamps, and workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance for 4000 of his employees in nine states. In fact, he ought to have also thanked other businesses for subsidizing his little adventure because their payments to social security and Medicaid help to fund the social safety net often used by Amazon’s employees. His warehouse workers, referred to without irony by the company as “industrial athletes,” are not eligible for stock options or bonuses, and any attempts to start a union tend to get crushed. Using a huge network of contract delivery drivers also enables the company to avoid paying benefits to the people who carry their products to your front door.
The story of 49-year-old Vickie Shannon Allen of Haslet, Texas, has become an iconic example of what can go wrong when workers are not protected by insurance policies and an honorable business administration. She was injured while counting products for package and delivery at the fulfillment center in North Texas and became unable to use her right arm. Allen claimed a piece of equipment was missing from her workstation, which kept items from falling to the floor, and she injured her back while retrieving objects around her feet. She said Amazon frequently sent her home without pay because she could not keep up with her tasks, and after nine months of struggling, she was offered $3500 if she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Instead, Allen has documented on YouTube her eviction from her home and her new life living in her car. Amazon issued a statement saying it “does not recognize the conditions” described by Allen.
Allen’s experience is the type of problem that has much to do with Bezos’ public image. He is not exactly widely loved, which became readily apparent when he announced he was going to space. A Michigan man started an online petition to not let Bezos back to earth from space. Ric Geiger was just having fun by posting the idea at Change.org with the message, “Billionaires should not exist...on earth, or in space, but should they decide [to go to] the latter, they should stay there.” There were 165,000 signatures prior to the launch.
Bezos’ finances undoubtedly are essential to how people feel about him. In our culture, we celebrate wealth and achievement. People who have a great idea and execute against it tend to be honored with wealth and a kind of fame. Not until the maturation of the era of technology and software, however, was there a widespread discontent over the amount of riches capitalism can bestow upon one individual. Of course, we had our captains of industry in the Gilded Age and robber barons and their railroads and banks, and oil wells almost seemed a necessity of our country’s youth. Bezos’ billions, though, have prompted a different reaction, in part, because of his tax evasions. When his returns were leaked to Pro Publica, the public learned he reported only $4.22 billion in income in his most recent filing and paid $973 million in taxes. His wealth, however, increased by $99 billion, which puts Bezos’ actual tax rate at 0.98 percent. A few times, Bezos and his rival Musk, have paid zero dollars in taxes.
And this is while wage earners around the country are paying income taxes to provide social services for his underpaid warehouse workers.
I have myself convinced that adventuring into space ought to be a common cause for Americans, and, indeed, the wider world, not just resourced rich fellas. I even believe the effort can be a healing force, which is what began happening prior to our landing on the moon. The Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act had both been passed by 1968 but laws do not quickly change behavior. Less than an hour from where I grew up, Detroit caught fire in the 1967 race riots and the next year Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Young black men were being drafted into the Vietnam War in far disproportionate numbers than they represented in the population because they had trouble getting into college and earning deferments and quickly acquired a 1A status. The nightly body counts on television news and the constant chaos and rioting and protests made me think I was coming of age as a young man at a time when my country was coming undone.
And then we landed on the moon.
There was an emotional union that transcended American borders and momentarily dissolved differences and conflicts. The entire population of the planet seemed transfixed by the capabilities of our species. Our greatest achievements might not yet just be building weapons for killing each other and chasing dollars at any cost. A certain patriotic fervor seemed appropriate because our country was leading the world’s dreams in a considerably more positive direction. People watched on TV at views of other people watching TVs as black and white images flickered back into our lives from the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the moon. In this one transitory moment, we were all connected by our mutual greatness and inspired by the direction of human evolution. We shared an epochal triumph of spirit and technology on that day in 1969.
I wanted to feel at least faintly some of those emotions that would connect me to the launch of Blue Origin. Instead, I got to see video of Jeff Bezos handing out new cowboy hats to his three other crew members prior to launch. Even that looked like a badly choreographed event. The hats appeared to be felt and wool, not the material Texans put on their heads in the dead of a Culberson County summer. Was everyone afraid to tell the big man about straw? Regardless, the entire event was more of a curiosity than an inspiration. Two very rich men in the personages of the Bezos brothers, the son of a very rich French investor, and Wally Funk, who ought to have been afforded the trip she earned to space while qualifying as a NASA astronaut in the prime of her career, not sitting across from Bezos.
There was not much evidence of Blue Origin’s presence in Van Horn, either. The rocket company claims to employ 275 people in the town but riding the side streets does not indicate there are many new homes or residential growth. A few TV satellite trucks from Houston and San Antonio were parked next to the famed El Capitan Hotel and a crew was setting up a stage for a celebratory event that evening in the courtyard, but the little town felt like it had never got to be Cinderella and remained a pumpkin long past midnight. The small ranching community was still playing its role as a way station for long distance travelers on I-10 and the little hall of fame honoring pro football coach John Madden, which is at Chuy’s restaurant, still appeared a mainstay of the local economy. Madden, who used to stop in Van Horn while traveling on his custom bus to call football games, is probably more well-liked out here than Bezos.
Me and the boys got back on our motorcycles and went south toward the border. I wondered during the long, desultory ride across the high desert, if the Bezos-Musk-Branson space race was anything more than the rich trying to get richer and the care and feeding of massive egos. An hour later, I was having a drink inside the Old Gringo Bar in Alpine and reading hilarious memes about Bezos’ and his rocket.
“Men will literally launch themselves into space on a giant penis before going to therapy.”
Anyway, the inescapable conclusion is that Blue Origin’s pricey adventures have nothing to do with me.
Or you.
Selma to Austin?
Former congressman and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke of El Paso is leading a voting rights march that begins this week north of Austin in Georgetown. The three day walk will cover the 27 miles to reach the south steps of the state capitol and is meant to be as symbolic as the Selma, Alabama civil rights marches. A coalition of rights groups is asking people to join the protest against laws that reduce voter participation in elections. Texas Democrats walked out of the governor’s special called session to prevent a quorum and passage of the measures they insist are unfair to minorities, seniors, and working class voters.
My PAC, Truth for Texas, is raising money to support the efforts to stop changes in voting regulations. If you are inclined, please consider clicking on the name above and making a donation. Money received will be donated to organizations supporting the campaigns to protect our voting rights in Texas.
Youth Will Be Served
The last time I saw the Pawnee National Grasslands I was driving a beat-up old Ford from Burlington to Greeley, Colorado. I was a radio announcer on my way to do the play-by-play of a high school football game on the Western Plains. The native blue stem and buffalo grasses had lost much of their summer green, but the wind moved across their tops and the sky and road seemed like a single piece of creation, and they gave me memories I still cherish.
Pawnee National Grasslands, Colorado
I daydreamed about buffalo herds and indigenous peoples moving through those flatlands, but I also noticed the road. It had not changed since I had first traveled this section of the national park system on a motorcycle when I had been tempted by the throttle and the highway. The asphalt was straight and fresh and there was not a single curve on the horizon nor a vehicle on the road.
My bike was hardly up to any dream of unfettered speed. I was riding a Honda 450 and had cleaned the plugs so many times it seemed impossible for them to deliver spark. I was a college student that summer and did not have the money to buy plugs; my first concerns were gas and food and sometimes a paid campground with a shower.
But I had switched out bikes with my buddy and he had been riding a Kawasaki KZ 1000, which was one of the fastest production bikes on the road when they first came into the marketplace. We had stopped to hear the silence, turned off our engines, listened to them tick, and walked away to where there was no sound but the wind moving through the grass tops.
“You wanna try it?” Bobby asked.
“The KZ?”
“I’m offering.”
There is an unspoken rule among motorcyclists, even those with the most modest of machines, that you do not ride the other person’s bike; you especially do not make the request. But an invitation is a different thing.
“Yeah, I’ll give it a go,” I said. “You sure?”
“I figure you’re staring at the white line and wondering about speed.”
I laughed. Friends understood. I tended to move through the world slowly and with observation of detail, but motorcycles were transformative. If I felt safe, I liked to roll up the power and let the bike perform. The KZ would carry me faster than I had ever ridden.
The Dream Machine
We had come down from Nebraska on Highway 71 and the road had been impossibly straight and true. Rocky buttes rose out of the grass and the late afternoon sun turned them white against the sea of green. Our pace was leisurely and slightly burdened with cheap backpacks with metal frames and heavy cotton sleeping bags increasing our drag coefficient. The sun and clear sky and the churn of the little pistons were comforting and made me feel like I never wanted to get off the bike.
But I have always felt that way.
Bobby and I walked back to the bikes and exchanged keys. We had turned onto Highway 14 and were headed west. The road looked like it might not have a single bend before it reached California.
“It’s faster than its reputation,” Bobby said. “Be careful.”
“Yeah, I will. See ya in Greeley.”
I pulled my helmet with the bubble shield over my head and wondered what my Ma might think when she got the news her son had gone down speeding on a motorcycle not his own out in the middle of America’s big empty. She had taught me to entertain the worst scenarios and I had decided to spend my youth in defiance of fear.
I had never been on a bike with that big of an engine displacement and compared to my little Honda it felt as though I were driving a car. The gears made a solid clunk like what I had heard when riding next to Harleys and I pushed the RPMs upward before shifting. I was at 80 by third gear and the wind was roaring in the ears of my thrift store helmet.
I passed the cutoff for Keota and tore down the asphalt toward Briggsdale, and as the speedometer crossed 100 the only disconcerting feeling was the loudness in my ears.
There was still too much roll left on the throttle and I wanted to see where it might take me. I did not pull it back all at once but eased the RPMs higher and felt the bike easily increase speed.
A bit of buffeting began to change the aerodynamics and I realized Bobby’s backpack had loose flaps that were now being torn to bits in the slipstream of 130 plus miles per hour, but I did not want to stop, and I did not. I took what little turn was left on the throttle and spun it until it would not go further.
I lost my nerve on that long, gleaming straight when the speedo crossed 140 mph and was still climbing. Maybe it was the wind, or I dreamed the ride but when I eased back on the throttle and got back down to 60 mph, I had the sense I could get off the bike and walk next to it as it rolled down the road.
I have never ridden faster since, nor do I expect I ever will. I crossed the Nullarboor in the Australian Outback on a BMW 1200 GSA while staring down the 90-mile straight, which is known as the longest roadbed without a curve in the world. I did not speed. My eyes were out for ‘roos and camels and wombats and sunsets. High-speed riding is not what motorcycling was ever about for me.
But just one time, I wanted to know. I would much rather slow down and think about natives riding the plains or spring winds through the gramma or wildflowers tilting before a summer storm off the Rockies. But I never remove motorcycles from my mind.
They have taken me to those memories and keep me rolling toward new ones.