Ugliness

It is difficult for me to describe the unpleasantness which is El Paso.

I would like to take a walk, to get out of the house, but where would i go?

I might walk along the sidewalks, sidewalks in front of small square suburban boxes. Most homes surrounded
by a fence or wall. many have three or four or five trucks--usually trucks, big trucks--parked in front.

dogs bark at me.

There are no trash cans. That is no public trash cans--indicating that walking is not desired or encouraged.

If I walk from my home to the Northgate bus transfer center, there are no public garbage cans along the way--a thirty minute walk.

I look at these houses when I walk to the bus stop, and I think: What is the point? To have your own little house with
your own little piece of grass?!

Sterile and anti-social. It's mine, mine, mine, all mine. No wonder these people continue their climate criminal
life style...
driving at the least whim...

driving large trucks here and there...

I prefer Vienna's crowded public transport--more frequent than El Paso's buses--to walking in the
blazing sun along the sidewalks as enormous trucks zoom by me in the obscenely large streets...

not civilization this
always a barren wilderness in the land of the free...

USA not advanced

I am about to walk to the nearest pharmacy to pick up medicine for my father.
IT is not easy for him to go out.

There's a bus every hour. I am too impatient to wait for it.

Even if I caught it immediately, I'd still have to wait for another bus to return.

Since I am impatient I will now waste 90 minutes or so walking.

This wouldn't happen in Bratislava or Wien.

It would be unthinkable.

Don't tell me the US is an "advanced" country. This is primitive.

The myth of El Paso's "good" weather--El Paso Texas--city of Miserable weather and cars

My neck is burning from the sun. I am sure it looks like leather.

The bus stops here have no protection from the sun or the elements.

The joke is occasionally there is a bus stop, but it's more an aesthetic experience

than a shelter.

I am sure the local government doesn't think any protection is necessary for bus riders.

Of course they do have money to do desert scenery landscapes in the middle of the massive

roads they build here. Landscaping with rocks and stones and palm trees.

Not to mention the atrocious would-be sculpture in the new changing center

downtown... a sculpture of hideous unoriginality...... pointless in the extreme...

Instead of desert landscaping, why don't they expand bus services?

But it would seem that landscaping is very important to the local city

government..... More important than public transport.

One of the things I hate most is waiting for the bus on Mesa Avenue at 7pm as the aggressive

cars speed by at forty or fifty or more miles per hour, their headlights blinding me...

not pleasant....

not nice...

not civilized...

a wretched uncivilized place

I suspect that many are pleased by their enormous trucks and the mobility

it gives them,

ignoring the fact that people are dying from global warming...

a culture in denial...

technology does not make for civilization......

Blind Militarism El Paso Style

Last weekend there was an event in El paso Texas--sponsored by Toyota--

which involve (primarily) military war planes flying around.

It was very loud and disturbing in my neighborhood, so I posted a longer version of the

following message on the web site of the El Paso Times.

Apparently it was CENSORED because when I went to check it out today, Tuesday,

it wasn't there...

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Today should be, by rights, a quiet Saturday.

Instead my nerves were just destroyed by a jet passing overhead.

This is part of an event which is euphemistically called an “air show”.

This is not an air show but a show of military might, part of a broader propaganda program designed to convince ordinary people that wars are waged in their defense and for noble reasons.

The truth is that what we have here is a display of weapons of truly mass destruction. To say that airplanes are not weapons but merely the means by which weapons are “delivered” is a cowardly evasion. The delivery of bombs is not like the delivery of a letter from your sister or mother. It is the delivery of death, destruction, and suffering.

We should stop kidding ourselves. Technology is wonderful, but the uses to which technology is put are rarely as wonderful as the promises of marketing and advertising agencies and the politicians whose life styles are deeply entwined with those dubious businesses.

after-thought

The key point, as I think of it now, should be that

these machines are primarily used to kill civilians. That was true in Europe and Japan during World War Two.

It was probably so in Korea as well, and in Vietnam.

And then there is the case of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even Palestine.....

El Paso Texas's Celebration of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Today should be, by rights, a quiet Saturday.

Instead my nerves were just destroyed by a jet passing overhead.

This is part of an event which is euphemistically called an “air show”.

This is not an air show but a show of military might, part of a broader propaganda program designed to convince ordinary people that wars are waged in their defense and for noble reasons, and that they are perfectly normal and routine business.

The truth is that what we have here is a festival of destruction--a celebration and display of weapons of truly mass destruction. To say that airplanes are not weapons but merely the means by which weapons are “delivered” would be a cowardly evasion. The delivery of bombs is not like the delivery of a letter from your sister or mother. It is the delivery of death, destruction, and suffering.

We should stop kidding ourselves. Technology is wonderful, but the uses to which technology is put are rarely as wonderful as the promises of marketing and advertising agencies or the politicians whose life styles are deeply entwined with those dubious businesses.

El Paso Texas: an isolated community?

Yesterday I took a new bus. that is I took a bus route which I'd never taken before.

When I boarded the bus I asked the driver, "Do you go (motioning with my hand)

as far as UTEP?"

My hand motion was intended to express what one would say with the words:

continuing along Mesa Street, the street we were then on...

I would have thought that my question was enough to indicate that I was unfamiliar

with the bus's route, if not the local geography.

Soon thereafter, the bus turned left, off Mesa Street, and I became apprehensive.

I requested a stop, and then decided I could continue, apologizing to the driver.

Then, about a minute or so later, I began to recognize the local streets,

and, seeing a stop coming up, I requested the bus to stop.

As I was leaving, the driver admonished me. I should have requested a

stop sooner--at least half a block in advance. I explained to him that I had

recently moved here, and didn't know the neighborhood. (How the hell

was I supposed to know where the bus stops are when I'd never been here

before? How could I know when one was half a block away? And, how can I recognize bus stops when most don't have any shelters and the signs indicating bus stops are curiously

similar to signs which don't indicate bus stops but only say "no parking"????)

But, he seemed to presuppose that I knew his route and the local geography,

advising me to signal him "half a block in advance."

Frankly, I don't even know how to count blocks in the neighborhood in

which the bus was traveling.

I don't know what landmarks to use. I'd never been down that street before.

The conclusion I drew from that experience is that people in El Paso, Texas

resemble the way people used to be in Bratislava, Slovakia: both assume

that everyone is from there, and that everyone knows certain things--

in El Paso: where the bus stops are, how to count blocks, what route

the bus is going.

For a newcomer or foreigner that can be maddening. Not everybody knows,

and, really, you have no right to assume that everyone does.

This seems to be characteristic of an isolated community, a village,

a stagnant backwater....

an afterthought: nonetheless, I have often found bus drivers to be helpful when

I tell them I am lost or don't know what to do. So, don't want to generalize too much

on the basis of this one example.

Idiotic El Paso Texas

a golf course in the desert?

do you really need that?

I suppose it's for the generals fresh back from killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan?

a golf course in Scotland or England, that makes sense.

But in a desert?

irresponsible.

stupidity