There is an enduring fantasy among the Tom Friedman set (overpaid gasbag pundits &c for whom politics is mostly a delightful game and no legislative action short of progressive taxation could possibly have negative consequences on their livelihoods) that the bulk of American voters stand between the ideologies of the two parties.
Unrepresented by anybody, this [...]

The state with the prettiest name is also the state most reliant on late capitalism’s boundless growth for its survival.  It is the state with no income tax that advertises its own website on its license plates (at least, some of its license plates.  It has so many varieties the Legislature had to pass a [...]

If evenly divided, the $787 billion stimulus package could make everyone in South Dakota a millionaire.  (They’d each get $978,619.59, actually).
There are more Californians (36.76 million) than there are Canadians (33.56 million) plus Alaskans (686,000) combined.  There are also more Californians than there were Americans at the time the Civil War broke out (31,443,321 in [...]

I’m sure it dates from Spanish times, since it means “The Royal Road,” and doesn’t seem to be a post-meaning place name chosen to connote aristocracy or California-ness like so many other places.
Here are some shots of the Bay Area’s equivalent to Nassau County, New York’s Old Country Road, Seattle’s Aurora Blvd or Austin’s North [...]

In pursuit of reaching all 50 states before I’m 30 (as I promised I would do when I was 20; seven to go), here are some road trip itineraries.  Not that they go to that many states, but I want to go everywhere.

S.F. – Carson City/Reno – Boise – Bend, OR – Crater Lake – [...]

This was the last night on our three week road trip before reaching San Francisco.  It’s Crescent City, CA, which I thought would be bigger, although the houses have a sort of Bermuda feel to them.  They’re small, neat, close together and pastel.  (I only took pictures during golden hour, when pastels don’t always shine [...]