Yosemite is one of those places people who live in California and on the West Coast know is there but they often have not gone there themselves, because, what's the rush?
I was like that, when I lived in Washington, D.C., only it was worse in my case because I drove by the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial frequently. I could bicycle to the Mall from my house in suburban Maryland, but I was too busy with life to pause.
For people who live in Berkeley or San Francisco, Yosemite is three hours on California freeways.
Where they got that name "freeway" is beyond me. Must have been the embedded irony in the name. California roads are not free at all, in the sense of being wide open or unencumbered. Next to California freeways, the Washington, D.C. beltway looks like a open prairie. On California freeways, trucks and cars are packed tight as sardines.
But once you get to Yosemite Park, you realize how big everything in California is.
Texas makes much of its bigness but Texas is empty big. California is full big.
The other thing about Californians is they do not seem to cleave to the past, to the importance of heritage and tribalism. They don't seem as intent on classifying you, at placing you in a group or on a ranked list.
I visited a medical school friend and his wife who live in the Berkeley hills with a breathtaking view of the San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate bridge on the right and the Bay Bridge on the left. He grew up on Long Island and she is from England. They smiled at the view from their front window and said, "We're happy here."
In their neighborhood, Bernie signs have not been taken down. If you were for Hillary in 2016, you were considered right wing. Houses have signs on them: "Health Insurance for the 99%." This is in the front window of a private home.
The faces on every road and sidewalk are from a United Colors of Benneton advertisement. Black, white, Asian, South American, Polynesian. Mixes you cannot classify. And they all seem to get along. Kris Kobach should get out of Kansas and spend some time in California. Maybe he wouldn't be so worried about what an America which is not 99% white would be like.
The thing about California, is it is a Republic of the New. There are families which have spent generations in California, but there is a sense of newness and openness which is striking to someone fresh off the plane from the shire back on the sea coast of New Hampshire.
People have been writing about California since Mark Twain, straight through Steinbeck and Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion. I cannot do it justice. Movies are made in California and about California--"Chinatown" and "Roger Rabbit" and "The Big Sleep" and the list goes on. Fables are made about California. California is a fable, in some important ways. It's where imagination meets technology and vice versa. It's Dreamland. Disney. Wish upon a star land.
It's no accident Silicon Valley is in California, no accident that Mark Zuckerberg hopped a plane from Harvard to San Francisco.
It's worth a visit. There's still hope out there. They are a long way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I was like that, when I lived in Washington, D.C., only it was worse in my case because I drove by the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial frequently. I could bicycle to the Mall from my house in suburban Maryland, but I was too busy with life to pause.
For people who live in Berkeley or San Francisco, Yosemite is three hours on California freeways.
Where they got that name "freeway" is beyond me. Must have been the embedded irony in the name. California roads are not free at all, in the sense of being wide open or unencumbered. Next to California freeways, the Washington, D.C. beltway looks like a open prairie. On California freeways, trucks and cars are packed tight as sardines.
But once you get to Yosemite Park, you realize how big everything in California is.
Texas makes much of its bigness but Texas is empty big. California is full big.
The other thing about Californians is they do not seem to cleave to the past, to the importance of heritage and tribalism. They don't seem as intent on classifying you, at placing you in a group or on a ranked list.
I visited a medical school friend and his wife who live in the Berkeley hills with a breathtaking view of the San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate bridge on the right and the Bay Bridge on the left. He grew up on Long Island and she is from England. They smiled at the view from their front window and said, "We're happy here."
In their neighborhood, Bernie signs have not been taken down. If you were for Hillary in 2016, you were considered right wing. Houses have signs on them: "Health Insurance for the 99%." This is in the front window of a private home.
The faces on every road and sidewalk are from a United Colors of Benneton advertisement. Black, white, Asian, South American, Polynesian. Mixes you cannot classify. And they all seem to get along. Kris Kobach should get out of Kansas and spend some time in California. Maybe he wouldn't be so worried about what an America which is not 99% white would be like.
The thing about California, is it is a Republic of the New. There are families which have spent generations in California, but there is a sense of newness and openness which is striking to someone fresh off the plane from the shire back on the sea coast of New Hampshire.
People have been writing about California since Mark Twain, straight through Steinbeck and Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion. I cannot do it justice. Movies are made in California and about California--"Chinatown" and "Roger Rabbit" and "The Big Sleep" and the list goes on. Fables are made about California. California is a fable, in some important ways. It's where imagination meets technology and vice versa. It's Dreamland. Disney. Wish upon a star land.
It's no accident Silicon Valley is in California, no accident that Mark Zuckerberg hopped a plane from Harvard to San Francisco.
It's worth a visit. There's still hope out there. They are a long way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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