Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

Minerals and raw materials are the building blocks of industrial capitalism. No industrial revolutions would have been possible without iron, coal, copper, rubber, and similar substances. The extraction of such materials from the earth has been, without exception, a human enterprise mired in misery, in which one small class of persons viciously exploited other more numerous classes of workers and peasants, with the sole aim of making as much money as possible. Theft of land, forced migrations, enslavement, torture, murder, brutality of every imaginable kind, injury and death on the job, the poisoning of the air, soil, and water, even concentration camps, all giving evidence of what Marx said more than 140 years ago: “. . . capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” Read More

We’re often on the road, moving from place to place and staying in motels. It is not possible to form close friendships under such circumstances, and even when we settle down somewhere for a few months or a year, it is difficult to make friends. People reasonably think that it is not worth cultivating a relationship with a couple who will be moving soon. And we feel the same. This is the way we have chosen to live, so we are not complaining. Still, however, we enjoy human interactions, so we try to have them in whatever ways we can. We enjoy talking to people in grocery stores, Laundromats, truck stops, and motels. Usually, we just make small talk, but sometimes we take on more weighty matters. A motel desk agent from India tells us how much he misses his family back home. He is going to miss the birth of his first grand child. The owner of a Laundromat confides her aspirations for her son. A grocery clerk with splints on both wrists badmouths the boss. The woman who has been cleaning our room introduces us to her little boy, whom she brings to work because she has no one else to watch him. We buy him a present for his first birthday. Read More