I thought I'd drop by. I was in America for the last few weeks to attend a family reunion. A nightmare over there! Denial is higher than ever. Well-read intellectuals who should know better are still scoffing at us. Digital TV was initiated in early spring, I hear. My brother who is severely retarded and suffers from epilepsy has had a terrible time with seizures recently, says my mother. He was having five or six seizures a day, so his doctors prescribed some kind of controlled substance for it. When we saw him, he looked totally dazed. He and my mother decided to take a Greyhound bus back to Denver from the reunion, but she could not take his meds with them because she didn't have the prescription or whatever you need to convince the authorities that you have a legitimate need. Maybe nothing works! This is what I mean:
My husband and I also took a Greyhound for a three-hour ride, and lo and behold, they pull off behind a supermarket half way to Dallas and a plain-clothes cop comes on and declares a raid for narcotics. Honest-to goodness! He searches everyone's luggage and demands to know how much money we are carrying right there in front of all of these poor people. He even uses quite an impressive knife to open a tape-sealed box they'd taken out of the luggage compartment, with the owner standing there like some kind of helpless witness to this assault. I mean, it was obscene!
America is falling apart at the seams. I no longer promise anyone I will call them in America, but you can actually find with a working pay phone after a good long search. There does seem to be some demand for them from people who want to chat to two people at once, but do not have their second cell phone with them. It is a living hell.
My husband and I were both sick in small-desert-town Moab, Utah, but once away from towns we felt much better.
Another bright spot was the long-distance train service Amtrak, which is running full now and will hopefully prosper with increasing demand. I fear, though, that to attract more customers they will "upgrade" (how I am beginning to hate that word) to include wi-fi in their sleepers, which were very comfortable. Right now it looks like they are confining it to the lounge car.