Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

We drove the long and dismal trip from Washington DC to Amherst, Massachusetts on Monday, August 20. It was overcast and rainy, matching our moods. It had been a long and difficult ninety days on the road promoting my book. I wondered if it had been worth it. True, the book has done well in terms of new books published by a small and left-wing press like Monthly Review. There has been a second printing, just five months after publication. And the book is in stores no Monthly Review book has ever been and noted in sections of newspapers probably very few books by a radical have ever been noticed. But still, a book like this should have a much wider audience. Unfortunately, it is really not possible to reach such an audience absent the greatest good luck. So, you have to ask yourself – what was the point of it all? Ego gratification? Yes, there was a lot of that. But that doesn’t last long or make you happy either. The hope that you will get a few people to think more critically about their country and the environment? Maybe, but more than a few are needed to bring about any kind of meaningful change. Read More

The last stops on the book tour were in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington DC, with a stop in Johnstown to visit friends. Much of this was familiar territory. Read More

While we were resting and visiting family in Joplin, Missouri, we went to the town of Carthage, a few miles away. Carthage was the site of a battle early in the Civil War, in 1861. There was strong southern sentiment in this part of the state, unlike in St. Louis to the east. The town was also home to owners and supervisors of the region’s zinc and lead mines, and there are still some fine old houses on the streets surrounding the central square. The square is dominated by the county courthouse, a magisterial, towered building made of Carthage “marble,” locally quarried limestone so hard that it could be polished like marble. As we drove into town, we noticed a large number of tents set up in front of a group of buildings. There were signs all around in both English and Vietnamese. After the United States was forced by the North Vietnamese Army and the National Liberation Front to leave Vietnam in 1975, numerous Vietnamese Catholics, including many who had been in or were supporters of the US-backed regime in the south (a million Catholics had already fled south from the north when Ho Chi Minh took power after the defeat fo the French), left the country and came to the United States. Some Catholic priests were given an abandoned seminary in Carthage, and this is the site of the big annual festival, which centers around a Marian Days festival, honoring Mary (Mother of God to Catholics), the Co-Redemptrix (this was the name of an order of priests in Vietnam who formed the base for the seminary’s rebirth in Carthage). Tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics from around the country flock to Carthage for the celebration. At first locals were hostile and racist, but today the festival brings money to town, and Carthage has made its peace with the Vietnamese, even holing an annual Vietnam Day. Read More