Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis We have just spent some winter weeks in the sunny South, in the company of retiree snowbird families, small business owners and corporate people, a few professionals, people who have driven down from Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Maryland and upstate NY. These are people we have gotten to know over the period of two decades as we have shared our winters in a 90 unit condominium, with a pool and the Florida Bay for swimming and sunsets. This should qualify me to make some general observations about our fellow sun lovers and our country, not quite De Tocqueville but I am reaching. To begin with, our fellow voters are informed people. There is a morning rush for the coin dispenser of Miami Herald and USA News, and at least a quarter of us do crossword puzzles, with one couple driving out a mile to the Publix Supermarket for the NY Times. Some puzzle workers are compulsive, and carry dictionaries, though not to poolside. The rest read books, purchased hardcopy and paperback, or on library loans, by James Patterson and similar fiction, or do Sudoku games. Exercises are morning walks around the campus, bicycling outside, or climbing stairs, five stories at a stretch, while the morning coolness lasts. Poolside telegraph and reading are major daytime topics, between swims, and we all suffer when someone has bad news – health, predominantly. Kids and grands are chief topics. Few of the young seem to join family businesses, and three have taken to the pulpit, a Baptist and a Methodist preacher and a youth minister. E-mail literacy is essential for young and old, either on premises or at the local library. In evenings, most tenants congregate at bayside, in a teepee at a charcoal cooker or at picnic tables, to watch the sun set over the Bay. This used to require bringing a cup of cheer (only plastic, glass is dangerous to the pool and the marina), but now there are mostly soft drinks or wine. Given the close quarters, exchange of opinions is free, except for controversial stuff. When we, the liberal New Yorkers, are of the company, politics are shunned, which is significant. My test question is climate change, and denial still persists. An occasional word against Obama sometimes slips out, but any attempt of discourse is brings on change of topic. When a visitor’s nine year old daughter from Michigan had a political survey as homework, and asked questions at a Thursday covered basket get-together, her dad limited her questions, away from party affiliation. Surprisingly, at our table there were cautious middle of the road answers, even to a child (“Obamacare needs to be clipped”). During and after the January Republican candidates’ massacre any mention of primaries evoked groans and such characterizations as “shameful, is that the best we have?” \ As to Obama, one heard “never again” words with some frequency, but subdued. With a bit of background of my Midwestern friends I can dissect some of it. Thus, the WWII vets (we have a few, God bless) think of him as a pipsqueak usurper college professor (“ he has some nerve”etc etc), the self-made men likewise (”what does he know about business, life” etc). The racist tinge has faded, if it ever was there, the foreigner image ditto – people have begun to know that he is the seventh president with a foreign born parent. As to our return trip North, I think that Americans will never lose their thirst for gasoline. Of the 100 or so of my fellow snowbirds’ cars ,and of the thousands of Florida vehicles on the roads in the Keys, none were Chevrolet Volts, are comparable; there were no electric charge stations, and none were contemplated, and the same applies to the mighty overburdened I-95 as it winds from south Florida up through Maine. The road was full of large hatchbacks, with occasional Toyota Prius hybrids. For local travel one could find some Smart cars, and bicycles. tricycles, motorbikes (very macho with bearded ponytailed refugees from the 1968s) for shopping in town. Renewable energy? My friends from the Midwest speak of natural gas and how easy it would be to convert modern cars to it. As for sun and wind energy, little interest. The road was good, with stopovers at Cumberland-St. Mary’s in Georgia, where an animal- friendly Comfort Inn accepted us and our two cats, and at its counterpart in Rocky Mount, NC, both 450 mile points in our usual daily travel. Somewhat ahead of schedule, we interrupted the drive to dally in Washington, DC, passing the Washington obelisk and Jefferson dome on National Mall, looking briefly at the Occupy Washington tents on Freedom Plaza. Most cheering were the blooming cherry trees on the neat malls, and our capital city has lots of them along 14th Street. After a lunch stop on 17th and R streets, meeting friends and their new baby, we drove up the entire length of 16th Street , through three alphabets worth of cross streets until merging into the Capitol Beltway I-495 that circles DC and rejoining I-95 for a calm drive home. Well then, what of the country? The consensus here is that Obama will survive 2012, since we the people don’t favor the radicals. The Supreme Court is more of the problem, acting as though they were elected lawmakers. Good luck to all of us in June, their month of decision.