A Detroit Tale

1.3 million people vacationed in Detroit this past weekend.

Well, that's a slight exaggeration, as a great many of the people who threw up armchairs and sunshades along the 20 mile route of the 18th annual Woodward Dream Cruise on Friday and Saturday were almost certainly folks living in the immediate greater Detroit region.  Still, though, it was estimated that several hundred thousand people drove and flew substantial distances to participate on this spectacle, which takes place annually in late August.

The Woodward Dream Cruise is a celebration of all things automotive, and especially the high-powered "muscle cars" over which car buffs drool.  There were thousands of these cars roaring up and down the avenue at the event, ranging from just pristinely restored and maintained "factory" vehicles, to elaborately enhances monsters with engines that bulged up above the hoods like aggressive tumors, roaring their distain for mere mechanical competence. The business parking lots all along the avenue are given over to food vendors and shiny aftermarket parts for these few days.  Nascar superstars are on hand signing autographs. At the many car dealers still lining the avenue, pretty blonde girls in tight tank-tops hawk the latest models from the auto companies who now make their vehicles in Canada or Tennessee or China rather than this area. The whole atmosphere is like a renaissance festival, albeit one where motor oil is the currency.

I'm not a car buff, but was there as part of a sales team experimenting with a new marketing tool—an old library book mobile that we converted and cloaked in an exciting modern "wrap" with a racing/automotive theme, from which we sell books on automotive subjects at various trade shows around the country. If you're interested, here's a link to an industry story about our experiment. The weekend was hard, hard work, but still a lot of fun and a truly fascinating cultural study. The car crowd isn't my demographic, but I was struck both by their inherent conservative patriotism, as well as by their genuine niceness.

It's ironic how the automotive mentality still reigns in Detroit, despite the fact that the automotive industry largely deserted the region some years ago now, taking with it thousands of decent manufacturing jobs that once made Detroit a major and enviable American city. The irony is certainly lost on the crowd I hung out with this weekend, though, as Detroit is most definitely still "Motor City." At our hotel 9 miles from the cruise route, the parking lot was full of trailers that had hauled vintage and souped-up muscle cars from Texas, California, Florida, just to take part in the cruise. I talked to visitors from Austria and New Zealand and other far-flung regions who make this annual pilgrimage just to take part in the Cruise.

Detroit's woes are of course equally due to bad civic financial management, not just the betrayal of Ford, Chrysler, General Motors. And underneath the glimmer of this world class event, you see the tragedy of Detroit. Driving through residential neighborhoods, the spectacle is quite a bit different than what you might see in south-side Chicago or the grittier parts of St. Louis. In those cities, you often see entire neighborhoods abandoned. In Detroit, though, the decay is somehow even more awful, because the blight occurs in pockets in most every neighborhood. In one stretch of well constructed brick homes, about half of the homes were still valiantly maintained, with owners who were mowing their lawns, painting their trim, taking general pride in ownership like they do in any suburban neighborhood. But 10% of the homes were ugly empty shells with hollow gaping window holes. And about 30% of the homes, while still occupied, were clearly owned or rented by residents who had just given up. Here you saw unkempt lawns, window glass patched with tape, roof gutters so long unattended that virtual trees had sprouted up out of them.

Somehow this all seemed more tragic that widespread urban blight, as you can't help but sympathize with the efforts of the residents who are fighting the good fight by trying to be upstanding homeowners in the midst of a city collapsing around them.

It's also clearly a Detroit problem. On roads that straddle the boundaries between Detroit and a first-tier suburb, the Detroit side looks like a war zone, while the suburban side couldn't be more different. How can it be that Detroit look like this while adjoining Southfield, mere seconds away, still looks and functions like a workable city? I don't know a lot about the recent politics of Detroit, but surely it has been poorly managed of late.

I couldn't help but hope that Detroit succeeds in its effort declare bankruptcy and start over. Yes, the city fathers may have made some serious mistakes here, but that's not the fault of the thousands of homeowners who still live here and provide services to schools, hospitals and businesses.

Here's hoping that Detroit makes it back from the brink.

Saturday Breakfast

I had breakfast in the garden this morning. I mean this more literally than in the usual sense, as it

wasn't a matter of me carrying around a cup of coffee and a slice of toast as I sat at a patio table and enjoyed the morning. The raspberries are at last in full bearing mode, cherry and pear tomatoes are ripening, the herb containers on the deck are fragrant, and the first green and yellow peppers are ripe. It's not like my wife and I are prodigious vegetable gardeners; we actually lean more toward the ornament side in our gardening tastes, but we do grow enough edibles to offer enough for two middle-aged folks during the growing season.  This morning's breakfast was a matter of literally plucking the food from the canes, stalks, and vines and munching them whole while wandering around the early morning garden. 

One of those cool midsummer spells have hit Minneapolis after a couple of weeks of heat and humidity. The temperature this morning was in the high 40s, though the early morning sun brought it up to around 60 by the time I finished breakfast. In addition to the food available to eat, there is nourishment for the eyes,  too, as mid July is also the lushest time of year for ornamental plants. The daylilies are in full bloom, their warm colors complemented by an occasional balloon flower, laitris, or tradescandia.

Over the course of two hours, I felt some of the tension from the week drain away into the earth; gardens for me are literally grounding, soaking up

the static artificial energy created by the modern workplace. Over the course of six weeks, I have five out of town trips scheduled and time in the garden or walking in the woods or at an arboretum, is critical to my well-being.

This morning, anyway, that sense of well-being is profound indeed.

Liberals Have Deserted Me.

I'm seriously considering leaving a club to which I've belonged for my entire life—the liberals.

All my life, friends and acquaintances who are moderate in political and social outlook have regarded me as extremely left-wing in attitude—one close friend openly thinks of me blatantly socialist. But lately my liberal sisters and brothers are beginning to piss me off in the extreme, mostly because they project false arrogance and superiority that is just insufferable. The liberals who are bugging me come in several sub-species, among them:

The restaurant and coffeeshop snobs
Lord, am I tired of the aristocrats for whom the only thing acceptable is the newest, most

Seriously?  I asked for a cup o' Joe, black. 

expensive restaurant in town. Very rarely I've found some of these places to be really nice dining experiences, but generally speaking the busiest restaurants have little legitimate to recommend them other than the fact that human lemmings are swarming them for the moment. Fully ninety percent of these trendy places offer fare that has less taste than what you'd eat at a simple Perkins family restaurant. It's entirely false snobbishness that fuels the silly popularity of these places.

Similarly, I'm terribly tired of the coffee boutiques specializing in syrupy fluids with flavor that reminds you of the bottom of an ashtray. Let's face it: old time diners offered coffee with a pleasantly nutty flavor that surpassed most of the nonsense served in the upscale coffee boutiques.

The health food nuts
At various times lately, I've heard it said that virtually all world health problems, from autism to dementia, are due to:
• Gluten
• Sugar
• Lactose
• Statin drugs
• Red meat
• Protein
• Carbohydrates
• Caffeine
• Artificial Sweeteners
• Too many intestinal bacteria
• Not enough intestinal bacteria

Good grief. It's interesting to me that the folks frantically afraid of these health nemeses seem to be the ones who then develop them. (The real health problem is narcissistic hypochondria).  Meanwhile, I know perfectly healthy octogenarians who have consumed liquor and stiff coffee, smoked cigarettes and practiced all manner of debauchery and are are still alive and kicking rigorously.

It wouldn't be so bad if these food neurotics didn't insist on preaching to you their brand of insanity. At a recent neighborhood picnic, one fellow interrogated each person who had brought a potluck dish on whether their recipes were "gluten free" or not. Several were asked to go check labels to find out if he could eat without farting up a storm a couple of hours later.

And I have no need to convince vegetarians and "vegans" that their practices are somewhat against the biological heritage of homo-sapiens. It's no skin off my nose if they want to live this way. So why is it that when you eat a bit of fish and a sour-dough roll in front of them,  they can barely disguise their contempt?

Pseudo hippies
I really don't have anything against the true children of the 60s and 70s who continue to live the

Sorry pal. Abbie Hoffman you ain't. 

principles of that era, though it often seems just a little silly. Most of us from that generation have evolved a bit, or at least become a little more realistic about some aspects of the world, but it seems to me that these folks have earned the right to practice a philosophy that's natural to them. And there is a political genuineness (though perhaps not practical realism) that I rather admire.

But I'm increasingly surprised by the number of young (late 20s to early 40s) liberals who adopt a kind of false hippie aesthetic without any real idea of the underpinnings. On the commuter bus one casual Friday, I heard two young women comparing the quality of tie-dye skirts between Macy's and Nordstroms, one arguing that paying $250 was a good investment, as the designer was much more on-trend.  The idea that such garments were created by hand back in the day was utterly alien to them, I imagine.

These pseudo hippies are frankly as blatantly materialistic as any 1970's yuppie that we used to ridicule. They've just deluded themselves into believing they are superior to other people.

Lords of craft beer
Here's another trend that's starting to annoy me—the obsession with "craft" beer. Surely this has about run its course. It's really nothing more than the latest iteration of wine snobbery. if you ask me. I've nothing again microbreweries—who could be against having more pubs around the neighborhood? But the level of gourmet pretension has become pretty unbearable. Beer is beer, and its the act of tipping back with your pals that is significant, not silly debate on the aesthetics of the decor and furnishings in one microbrewery over the other.

(Note: Scotch snobbery is not to be criticized, under severe penalty)

Parents who "befriend" their children 
This isn't all that new; some fellow liberals back when we started having kids were also practicing this way.  What I'm speaking of are those parents who have no ability to distinguish between the adults and the children. They treat their kids as friends, sometimes even encouraging kids to address mom and dad by first names. And in the homes of these folks, you'll find no distinction between spaces for the kids and those for adults—toys and games are scattered everywhere, and the entire family culture is dominated by the needs and wishes of kids. These are the folks who will never leave kids with a baby-sitter in order to go out and get stinking drunk and screw in the backseat. Because they are ordained by god almighty to raise supermen and superwomen, they are likely to home school their kids, because of course contact with other people is not necessary for a growing kid. They are the ones who insist that you need not discipline kids; only "reason" with them. (One fellow preached this to me, then in the next breath lamented that his 10-year old son had begun stealing from the neighbors after breaking through their windows).

Spare me. Parents should have no fear of being parents and making sure their kids understand that that they are the kids. Give the kids some space; your constant presence in every aspect of their lives is not very healthy.

The bicycle frauds
I work with some of these folks, who exhibit an insolent moral superiority in the fact that they

Got news for you. This ain't the tour de France. 

ride bicycles everywhere while others drive automobiles. Does a 50-year old bicycle commuter really have any reason to where spandex biking togs with racing numbers on the back?   In cultures where bicycling is far more ingrained (England, for example), folks ride bikes in comfortable clothing, not ridiculous costumes.

And I'm entirely weary of the indignant, defiant way that bicyclists now treat traffic laws, living in constant deliberate combat with automobiles. Now, I have no problem if bicyclists want to run a stop sign or red light, frankly, Generally, it's no skin off my nose, and I frankly am ready to offer some social leniency to those who are saving gasoline.  But at the same time, you do this at your own risk, and running a traffic stop means you must be willing to take responsibility for the consequences. Everywhere today I see bikes whizzing through intersections as though they have god-given right of way, paying no attention to cross traffic, and then filing lawsuits if they plow broadside into a car.

The television snobs
I know quite a number of educated liberals who sniff with superiority if you mention that you enjoy a particular television program or frequently watch ballgames on the tube.  Apparently they only read greek literature and study classic music for entertainment in the evenings. These are the folks who deny their kids television viewing or access to computer games due to a sense of moral superiority: it's the "we practice arts and crafts at our house rather than watch TV" group.

Yup. That's me, Mercurious. And proud of it. 

This is just horse crap. Television is inherently no more corrupting (and likely less so) than reading romance novels, or listening to Taylor Swift on the ipod, which is what a lot of these holier-than-thou sorts do on the sly. Steven Spielberg acknowledges that he watched television constantly as a youth, as did any number of creative and famous individuals. Probe a little bit and you'll find that these folks who claim to have never watched television can sing you the theme song to most every 1970s sitcom.

So I'll just say it: the big-screen, high-def television is illuminated and talking quite a bit of the time at our house, and we kind of treat it as a window that can be looked through when you want. As Joseph Campbell noted, studying a society's  popular culture tells you far more about it than scholarly tomes.

I read three books a week, on average.  But I also can't wait for the next episode of "Hillbilly Handfishin'" on the History Channel. It airs right before "Say Yes to the Dress."


.....I clearly need a new club. Time was when liberals were a 'live and let live' crowd, not a bunch of moralistic namby pambies.

 I wonder the entry requirements are for the Libertarians.

Citizens of 4F: June 28, 2013

During the spring, when I sat on left (east) side of the 4F bus in the morning as it traveled into downtown,  I frequently saw Sally on her bicycle at the corner of 42 st. and Bryant Avenue, Sally looked to be about 12 or 14 years old, and when I saw her she was usually paused at the curb straddling her bike, waiting for traffic to clear so she could cross.  Presumably she was heading to school.

Sally rides one of the old-fashioned bikes for girls, with the dropped front cross bar designed for easy use by girls. These bikes are somewhat rare these days, as most bicycling girls ride standard 10-speed or 15-speed bikes with the straight crossbar. But this type of traditional girl's bike is very helpful for Sally, because she is particularly tiny of stature.

Sally is very short for her age, although her facial features and arms and legs are fairly average in shape,  Sally's genetic condition makes her what political correctness now calls a "little person."  Some years ago we would have called this condition dwarfism. So the this bike is particularly useful for Sally, since a traditional bicycle would be difficult indeed for her to ride comfortably.

Sally's facial expression most mornings is one of melancholia, so often that  on the rare occasion when some private thought makes her look happy, it stands out as the exception to the rule. It makes me wonder at the reasons for the sad expression she wears nine days out of ten.

Is Sally simply one of those people who takes a while to wake up in the morning?  Will she grow steadily cheerier as the day goes on, as is the case with some people? Is she simply glum about going to school on nice spring days?  That's not usually in healthy young adolescents. Do I pay more attention to her because of her physical unusualness?  Is she really just like everybody else? After all, when people don't know you're looking at them, the expression you see is usually one of worried consternation, if not outright unhappiness. Members of the human species rarely look happy when viewed in social isolation.

What I imagine, though, is that her unusual condition creates a special isolation for Sally. Dwarfism, I've read, is a steadily decreasing phenomenon, which means those living with it have steadily fewer genuine peers. Sally is much more unusual now than she would have been 20 years ago, and perhaps it's the fact that she alway draws second looks that creates her melancholia. What teenager, except for cheerleaders and performance athlete, likes to be stared at? In the dozens of days I've seen Sally on the street, she has never looked up at the bus as it passes; she doesn't need to, because she knows full well that people above notice her and swivel their necks to keep looking as the bus passes.

I wonder if Sally, as she enters her teen years, will have a particularly difficult time developing relationships. Is this part of what's on her mind in the mornings? It would take a particularly mature  and sensitive male teenager to look past Sally's physical condition to the possibilities of romance. Mature and sensitive teenage boys aren't exactly common. Sally almost certainly will feel more isolation than most teenagers in this regard.

Suddenly one day Sally stopped appearing at the corner in the morning, and for a brief time I was worried about her—until I realized that the school year had ended and she no longer had the need to venture out early each morning. When school starts in the fall, Sally may well have now moved on to high school that requires a different bike route, so it's entirely possible I won't ever see her again.

But I'll continue to wonder how she's doing.

Is Tolerance Always a Virtue?

It's widely believed that tolerance and patience is a virtue that most of us need to cultivate. Liberals, especially, like to pretend they are supremely tolerant, especially on issues such as free speech. Now, my friend The Professor sometimes argues with good merit that this is a bit disingenuous, because liberals can be shrill indeed when it comes to verbal intolerance of conservative political ideals. He says, with some justification, that had a conservative president made the kind of recent public policy faux pas of the Obama group, the outrage would be deafening. But I'd argue that political discourse exists on a different level that everyday moral tolerance or intolerance that occurs outside the realm of political discourse.

After all, vocal though they might be, it's rather rare for liberal social intolerance to reach the level of violent reaction. You really can't imagine, for example, that right-to-choose proponents would routinely murder church leaders who preach against abortion, or those who argue against birth control.  No, the intolerance of liberals is generally political, and is of the verbal, passive, argumentative type. The last time liberals seemed really ready to physically fight for their beliefs, it was 1972 or so. Since then, we've elevated passivity to a virtue. 

Yesterday on Nicollet Avenue, one of those extreme evangelists on a soap box held a placard that said "God Hates You," printed on the back side with by list of bullet points enumerating the behaviors that made each of us worthy of Yahweh's loathing:  

"Fag thoughts" 

"Dressing like a whore"
"Loving animals"
"Israelites"

"Cursing"

"Recycling" 

(Yep. He was actually arguing that recycling is a sin).

This guy was, as far as I can gather, of the same ilk as those people from Westboro Baptist Church who picket the funerals of fallen soldiers, arguing that God has killed them in retribution for society's evil ways. 

As the crowds waited for stoplights to change at crosswalks, this fellow screamed insults at everyone in the most blatant display of intolerant hatred you can imagine. If a pretty girl walked by in a short skirt, the abuse was cruel indeed, as it was for a couple of fellows who may or may not have been gay. It was not mental illness we were witnessing; this fellow was well groomed,  had professionally printout hand-outs, the whole nine yards. But the civilized, and oh-so-tolerant response of the liberal downtown Minneapolitans was....complete non-response. To a person, the good citizens ignored the hate monger utterly. I watched for 20 minutes, and not once did anyone confront this fellow. There wasn't so much as a disgusted shake of the head. Only supreme, utter tolerance for extremely bad behavior. 

Now, perhaps this sounds like a mature, responsible citizenry respecting the right of all to speak their minds. But where is it written that a crackpot's right to speak hate is more important that our rights to a peaceful walk along the streets at lunchtime?  I wonder, really, if it is really responsible and wise, as citizens, to make such a Herculean effort to tolerate the intolerable. 

How long would this jackass continue his effort if people expressed more outrage when people behave so badly? When did we come to believe that when faced with unacceptable, intolerable behavior, the correct thing to do is tolerate it?

Maybe our moral imperative is swift, decisive intolerance of some things.

Citizens of 4F, June 20, 2013

Ned is an older gentleman, perhaps 70 or 75. He is lean, quick and lithe as he boards the bus, with no evidence of arthritic joints. He wears with a long full beard and dresses in expensive casual clothes. Now that the weather is warm he frequently wears a crisp long-sleeved button-down shirt, sleeves carefully folded up to mid forearm, under a high-quality trout fisherman's vest. Perhaps he has actually done some fly fishing in his day, but I don't think so. This vest, at least, seems to be more fashion statement than practical garment. I would guess he likes the outdoors, but perhaps more as a hiker or birdwatcher than as an active fisherman.

His trousers are carefully pressed khaki of a color that exactly matches his vest, and his footwear is clearly expensive, walking shoes of supple brown leather. Upon boarding the bus, he immediately switches to a pair of reading glasses, his hands very precise as he dons the reading glasses, tosses the lanyard over his head and carefully folds his other glasses and places them in his shirt pocket. His hands draw your attention; old hands but flexible and quick, without age spots or serious wrinkles. A man who has used his hands for finely detailed work; not muscular labor.

He immediately takes a book from his bag; it is a good quality illustrated book, and from my vantage point appears to be a book of color prints from modernistic art done in the 1930s or thereabout. There is precision about the way Ned turns the pages; his hands are elegant and careful, and I wonder if he might be a retired art director or graphic designer. The fact that his book carries the stamp of the public library supports the possibility that he's retired and on fixed income, as does the fact he's riding the public bus. His clothes and book bag are clearly quite expensive, though, and were perhaps purchased at a more affluent time in life.

Other days have supported my hunch about his artistic background; sometimes Ned pulls a sketch book from his bag and quietly sketches quick profiles of the passengers around him with a charcoal pencil to pass the time on the bus ride into downtown.

One morning I decided to stop a few blocks early in downtown to get coffee at a favorite shop, and realized that Ned is already in line ahead of me. He was obviously a regular (the fact that the shop owner greeted him familiarly is the reason I know Ned's name), and I began to get a mental picture of what Ned's days might be like. A leisurely start at the coffeeshop, followed by a stroll to the public library for a scholarly few hours, and then perhaps lunch with old colleagues at a former office or a walk along the shady Mississippi riverfront before taking the bus back home in the afternoon.

Much to envy there.

Early Sunday morning, my dad and I sit in the living room and watch the swarms of prairie birds swarm around his feeders outside the picture window. The nectar that attracts these flocks to the yard is, believe it or not, large dishes on the top of the fence,heaped with mounds of ordinary grape jelly, which my Dad buys in huge tubs at the Cosco store in Brookings SD. I can't imagine that true bird experts would see this as good nutrition for birds, but it makes Dad happy to see these flocks, and frankly I find it pretty amazing, too.

We've made it through all the difficult estate planning issues the day before, when I was pleased to find Dad's  comprehension pretty intact. He asks perceptive, sharp questions, even though he occasionally forgets some of the things we've talked about just a few minutes earlier. The new oxygen dispensing pump doesn't have the annoying click of the old one, and now that we're done with the issues I've been dreading, the visit is relaxed. I find myself considering the oddities of the rural Midwest culture as we comfortably watch the birds outside.

We're also watching the series of half-hour morning programs on television as we drink coffee and watch the birds. We're only a couple hundred miles west of Minneapolis, a relatively modern little city that lies at the top of the Mississippi bluff country valleys, but the feeling of this area is light years different. South Dakota is literally visible from the house, and we're in the dead center of the massive wheat and corn belt that runs all the way from Texas to Canada. Some of these farms are more like ranches, with spreads of 1,000 or 2,000 acres. Agriculture and fundamental ethics are the heart of the region. In this part of the world, the half hour Sunday TV programs alternate: a evangelical Christian program for 30 minutes, then a half hour of farming information for the owners of the big grain farms in the area, then back to the Bible-banging.

 In the first Christian program, viewers call in to ask trivia questions regarding the Bible.  "So what are exactly are the demons that come to visit people in the old testament?"  asks one viewer the host, a fellow with carefully slicked-back hair and a suit of the style we used to call a "leisure."

Now, with my more or less broad education, I have come to view the Bible and other religious texts as folk literature that offer allegories articulating some aspect of the human experience. For example, I see the idea of "demons" as symbolic of some human mental disturbance.  Such a story of demons is an ancient fable, in other words, that refers to what we would now call depression or pyschosis.

But the host of the 7:00 am program corrects my misunderstanding. "Some people think that demons are visitors from the land of the dead," he said on high-definition, big screen TV from a signal beamed thousands of miles, bouncing off a satellite positioned in space. "This is not true, however. Demons are not visitors from the land of the dead," he says, as though imparting a thrilling secret.  " The demons the Bible speaks of are actually simply fallen angels....thank you for your question, Denise."

The next program is for farmers, in which incredibly sophisticated soil chemistry is discussed by soil scientists. Today's farmers in this region are remarkably well educated, and the most demanded master's degree programs at South Dakota State university are in agriculture. It can also be among the most lucrative of careers, as successful farmers out here can be quite wealthy indeed. With this farm land now assessed at $7,000 per acre, you can imagine what 1,000 tillable acres is worth. Here, though, that gap between the haves and have-nots is enormous. These counties of Minnesota and South Dakota are among the very poorest, per capita, of any in these states. A lot of the family farms have collapsed because the sheer cost of running the places is so prohibitive. But a few people of great wealth thrive, provided they are landholders of substance.

Last night, I met a local entrepeneur who owns a feel of 40 huge, industrial-grade wheat harvesting machines (combines) that he sends out from late March to late November, to work the big fields all the way from northern Texas to Canada. An entirely different form of migrant farm worker. Each of the combines comes with a huge semi-trailer truck to transport it, and each of combine/semi teams comes with the nifty price tag of $600,000. And he owns 40 of them.

After the TV show announces that the "weed of the week" is leafy spurge, a new Christian program starts, this one a ventiloquist who uses a hideous stuffed doll to tell Bible stories to kids. Quite horrifying, but it seems quite ordinary in this culture.

My Dad nods off to sleep now and then, and finally I shut of the TV and simply enjoy the sunny day outside the picture window.  There are literally hundreds of birds at the feeder, meadowlarks, and
Baltimore orioles, and new bird I've not seen before—an orchard oriole. Some things never change: when I was a child, my dad was a dedicated bird-watcher, and in his declining years, it's the one pastime that he can still enjoy in comfort. His other passions were golf and gardening, but both are long since impossible.

In the distance, big electricity-generating wind turbines peek over the prairie horizon. These

carbon-fiber turbines, with blades 50 or 60 feet long, are state of the art, and the farmers who lease the land on which they're built can earn  $100,000 per year or more in royalties. One of the many advantage of land ownership out here.

On the way out here from Minneapolis, I drove right through one forest of these towers. At the end of the driveway, the farmer owning this high-tech grove of carbon fiber monsters had posted a bill-board with 10 directions for living. The top bullet point says, in letters 2 feet high:  "I am the Lord your God. Ye shall have no other gods before me."

This kind of collision of primitive and modern in Rural American is so common that there's not even any sense of irony when you see it.