Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

We arrived in Los Angeles late morning on May 21. I was to be on the Tavis Smiley Public Television show, and we were scheduled to do the taping at 1:30. I had made arrangements to check in early at the Renaissance Hotel in the heart of Hollywood. The PBS station was paying for the room as well as limo service to the studio. We said that we hoped no one took our picture coming out of the hotel. It wasn’t a cheap one! We found the hotel and checked in. After marveling at the luxury – a bathrobe for each of us in the closet and expensive toiletries – we went for a walk. We saw the famous Hollywood sign from the mezzanine of the hotel, then the sidewalk with all the stars’ names on it. Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theater (where they have the Oscars and where the finals of American Idol were to be held the next night) were in the next building. We saw a few minor celebrities and scores of camera and other technicians, working professionally behind the scenes to keep the dream machine going. We were appropriately star-struck. Read More

Our first stop was at a Barnes and Noble in Orange, California. The long drive to there from Tucson was uneventful until we go to some troublesome highway construction near Riverside. Tucson is about a two-hours south of Phoenix. This stretch of Interstate 10 is unpleasant, overcrowded with cars and buses, darkened and made dangerous by frequent dust storms, and surrounded by ugly irrigated farm land and condominium and mobile home developments. Phoenix itself is about 1,000 feet lower in elevation than Tucson and therefore a few degrees hotter. We did a Barnes and Noble book signing in Gilbert, a suburb of Phoenix, and the temperature was 105. Dry heat to be sure but so is the heat in an oven. Like all the big desert cities in the United States, it sprawls outward into endless suburban cities and towns, baking in the sun and shamelessly wasting water. Pollution spreads for miles around, so dense that it is hard to see the nearby mountains. We met a man on the Atalaya Mountain trail in Santa Fe who grew up in Phoenix. He said that the air was more polluted in the 1930s than now. This is impossible to believe (see http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates141006.html). Read More

We left Tucson, Arizona on Saturday, May 19th to begin the major part of our book tour. We had five stops in Arizona, one in Gilbert, a suburb of Phoenix. The temperature was 105. Dry heat they say, but the heat from an oven is dry too. This event was a book signing at the Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble placed an early order for the book, unusual for a Monthly Review Press book, so I have been more than willing to do book signings at the stores. The staff at this one, as at the other chain book stores we have visited, have been enthusiastic and professional. I usually sell a few books at the signing and then autograph a few before we leave. Hopefully the staff will push the book and display it in a visible location. I did another signing at a small independent bookstore in Green Valley, Arizona, a large retirement community. This town is not unattractive, but like other similar places, it didn’t appeal to me. We don’t care to live anywhere there aren’t children. I think, though, that the warm weather, activities, and the instant camaraderie that develops among all these elderly folks, make residents feel less lonely and more secure. Loneliness is the bane of our society. Read More